Waves Don’t Quit

"That boat's back."

"What boat?"

"That sailboat that's been across the dock from us. The one that had the big send off last weekend."

We never met the people but knew their story.

Caught up in the cruising fantasy and short of cash, they had decided to build their own boat. They rented space in the boat yard next to where we were docked—at the Mosquito Creek Marina in North Vancouver—and rolled up their sleeves.

In the spring we had seen their completed boat launched to the splash of Champagne and the cheers of friends. The marina manager said they had been working on it for six years.

That sounded about right. Two people with day jobs should be able to build themselves a small, seaworthy sailboat in six years.

Others, determined and perseverant, had done it. They worked most evenings and every weekend, with maybe a day off now and then for Christmas or a special event, or illness perhaps. They ended up going to sea in a vessel they knew intimately.

The Long Anticipated Departure

Following the launching the couple completed their sea trials, made everything right with their boat, loaded and provisioned her.

 Then a second small crowd gathered on the dock to toast them on their way. They brought their lines aboard, reversed out of the slip, and set off to cruise the world.

Now, five days later, their boat was tied to the same dock, having slipped in quietly during the night.

The next day a For Sale sign hung from her bow rail.

"Must have been the waves," we said.

Barbara had experienced serious waves. The summer of 1979 a big storm devastated the Fastnet Race in the Irish Sea. Of the 303 boats entered in the race, half were either knocked down or rolled completely. Eighteen people died.

Barbara was in the area, comforting two children on a sailboat that was battling the same weather.

There Will Be Waves, for Sure

Everyone who dreams of living the cruising life needs to accommodate into their fantasies the possibility of big waves.

However, the certainty of constant waves was what set off quiet alarms in the back of my mind. Even when ordinary seas were running how would I handle days and nights of routine—and incessant, uncontrollable, and inescapable—pitching, rolling, and yawing?

That was likely the encounter that so quickly turned back the couple who, urged on by adventuresome expectations, had spent years building their dream boat.

A year later Barbara and I would challenge the offshore waves ourselves.

We had spent three years cruising the protected waters of the British Columbia islands and Puget Sound. Then, like scores of cruisers before us, we encountered the reality of the North Pacific when we sailed out the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the broad passage between Vancouver Island and Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and turned south.

We left much later in the season than we should have.

Mosquito Creek Marina . . . then. It's much bigger now.

Waters of the Straits of Georgia, near Vancouver.    

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First Storm of the Season in the North Pacific