Belly of the Whale

The First Tale of Adventure on the Grim.

Part 1



There is a time for patience and a time for daring. Experience is a pendulum swinging between the two. For two and a half months I’ve worked in Port Townsend, learning slowly, taking small steps, listening, aging like a Bristlecone Pine in the Nevada desert. The weekend before, a friend I had sailed Grim for the first time. Everything had gone smoothly, easy winds and clear skies. Now it was time for my first trip alone. This was the last weekend before I flew home to South Carolina on Monday to spend an easy time with family over the holiday. I needed to do something important, something noteworthy, something to represent all the work of my time here; I wanted something to show for all the effort.

The plan was a simple trip: Friday I would head out across Port Townsend Bay, enter Tilisuk Sound, and head down the Sound to Mystery Bay. I’d anchor my boat there for the night and head back to PT Sunday afternoon in time to clean up, pack up, and drive to the ferry on Bainbridge Island, catch the ferry to Seattle where I would fly out of Monday morning. It would be a long day for sure, but it would provide me with something to smile on while away in South Carolina for two weeks. And indeed I have smiled a lot about it sense, and laughed, but nothing ever seems to go as planned and this weekend was no exception. The calm Saturday was but the calm before the storm. Sunday was my true Christening as a sailor.

Saturday was clear and calm—no wind. I fueled up and headed back out, loaded with fuel, food, water, and just about everything else I own. The idea was to sail, but with no wind, I’d have to motor I motored along, relished the blue sky and warm weather, made a little video for my family. The entrance to Tilisuk Sound is tricky, but Brian and I had sailed through it just the weekend before. It was almost too easy. I was hardly paying attention, just following the buoys. Mystery Bay grew in front of me, a small divot in the coastline to the left, then the masts of moored boats came into focus. I swung in behind them and drifted slowly up to a mooring ball. The current didn’t stop me as well as I had expected and I kept on drifting past the ball. I reversed a bit and was able to catch it and tie on.

I stowed the sails and made clean the deck. As the sun set a thick fog rolled in. The sensation was like drifting in space. There was no way to distinguish land, air, water—everything was grey and the same, all around. It was quiet and there wasn’t a wave. The boat was as still as the ground. I ate some dinner, fixed a cup of cocoa and spent hours on deck, smoked a cigarette and watch the fog drift. The horn of the ferry would bellow in the distance, impossible to tell just how far. I slept hard and had good dreams.


As I slowly awoke I could hear the wind whistling outside through my drowsiness. It was another clear day, but this one, more typical of Washington, was blustery, a bit too blustery. The VHF relayed that there was “a small craft advisory” in effect for the day, and things weren’t supposed to improve until evening.
This wouldn’t do.
My flight was at eight am tomorrow morning—in Seattle! I didn’t have time to mill around Mystery Bay all day. This would prove to be a perfect example of why you never ever sail with a schedule. True as this my be, what I was really thinking about was a different sort of timing: I had been patient. I had practiced and started small. Small steps. Perhaps it was time for a dive into the deep. The wind wasn’t that bad, 15 – 20 knots. I’ll see worse I’m sure, some day. It wasn’t like I had to go all that far either. All I had to do was get closed hauled, get heeled way over, scream with exhilaration, make a few tacks and I’d be back. I tried not to think about the entrance to Tilisuk Sound or docking with this sort of wind. I was simply trying to gear myself up. I was feeling pretty good. Really, I knew I could wait it out and be fine, but I wanted it. I wanted to work for it; I wanted to risk failure. I thought I was ready, at least ready enough.

Perhaps I didn’t know what that meant, but I cranked the engine and got ready cut loose the mooring ball.


TO BE CONTINUED………..