Before the Voyage Part 1: Skipper Returns

By Skipper Krystal:




Coordinates: 48° 23' 53.2176'' N 122° 29' 36.3372'' W; 39° 19' 15.528'' N111° 5' 37.4316'' W

"If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most."

-E. B. White

Skipper Krystal is at last back to keeping the log book, and there's a lot to log. In my last entry Boat-Swain Jack and I still hadn't sailed so much as a newspaper boat in the bathtub. None of the crew had seen our dinghy yet (nor had it started leaking. More on that later). I was blissfully unaware that I'm sort of terrible at rowing, especially for a skipper . And I didn't know how disconcerting and splendid all at once it is to feel and hear little wavelets lapping against the hull when you're falling asleep.

Yes, there's been a lot of water under the bridge, and the skipper's been under the weather, but now its time to set the books straight.

After that last entry, I put the laptop away, and a few hours later found myself in a Seattle hotel room, bunking on the floor while the Captain, First-Mate, and Boat-Swain got the two queens. (Hey, Boat-Swain Jack, I just realized. I'm pretty sure I outrank you. How come you got the queen? :D) The next morning, with great purpose, we ventured into Seattle, a weird city where even the fire stations have modern art on their lawns and mossy pine trees grow next to sky scrapers. We were searching for a dinghy and surplus boat junk, and our first stop was the dinghy shop. A whole shop for dinghys, just imagine! (auto-correct says 'dinghys' isn't a word. What is the plural for 'dinghy' then?).

From my personal logbook, I wrote about the experience: "We found a dinghy that had been in the warehouse for ten years lost, and now he’s selling it, but because it is old he was selling it half price—the only way we could afford it. God was watching out for us on that, a very good day too. We went to a fun, eclectic Mexican restaurant, Me and Jack and Mom and Dad."

The Mexican restaurant was very good, (with sombreros everywhere) but what I didn't record is the rather fantastical sight of us streaking down the freeway with an 11.5 foot white dinghy strapped onto the top of the rented mini-van. It took almost an hour, scads of borrowed bubble wrap, two 2X4s and lots of rope before the Captain was satisfied our new boat wouldn't fly off and cause a massive pile-up: "Flying Dinghy Causes Traffic Jam on I-5". No, thanks.

Happily, we weren't a headline and made it to Le Conner safely. Jack and I climbed onto Northern Star and opened the hatch, getting a massive whiff of stale diesel (which they've since fixed). Inside it looked somehow different now that it was ours. I had to sniff in every compartment and peek in every cupboard. As for my first night sleeping on the Northern Star, this is what I wrote in my bunk: "First night on the boat. I’m lying here on the bunk with the sound of water lapping. It’s like sleeping in a bath tub." You're never quite the same after experiencing that. It's not just heard, its felt, and in your bones you remember.

We used the fish wheelbarrows to get our bags down to the ship, but how to get the dinghy to the sailboat was a bit of a problem. At last we decided to row it, the Captain and I, but soon I discovered rowing a dinghy is very different from a canoe. For one thing, the Captain insisted you row these things backwards, which makes no sense to me. Why shouldn't you face the direction you're going?Anyway, I flailed--it took us fifteen minutes to go thirty yards--but it was still fun.

Hanging the dinghy on the back of the ship.

That night we packed the un-dinghy-fied van full of stuff from Wal-Mart.  Mom and I scoured the aisles coming away with things we were looking for and some we weren’t; everything from a glue gun to a ship-in-a-bottle that we couldn't resist. It took wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow to get it all down to the ship, and then it exploded in the salon, while we attempted to organize it. Amazingly it all fit, and fit well, and something psychologically changed once we'd put all that stuff in its place. It felt like we were making it our own.


The Salon Post-Wal-Mart

The second night aboard was different. I wrote: "I’m overwhelmed tonight. Every sense is being challenged with this thing. I’m loving it". The cans and can opener were in place, but we all knew that on the morrow, we'd meet Captain Mark, who would teach us to sail Northern Star hopefully all the way to Alaska.

Still, that was so near the beginning. Now, all but Alyssa have slept on the Northern Star (your time is coming, Stewardess), but that night, there was still a great deal of uncertainty. Did we maybe have some issues casting off?

You'll just have to find out in Part 2. Suffer. ;)