Before the Wind

by Jim Lynch

  While the bankruptcy proceedings continued in slow motion, I learned of a potentially exotic windfall in the works. A retired forty-six-year-old tech tycoon had approached Father after Ruby’s funeral to give his condolences as well as his phone number, saying he’d be honored if the Bobos would consider trying to design and build him the fastest mono-hulled sailboat in the Northwest in time for the next Swiftsure.

  And so began the perfect diversion for our post-Ruby world. Drawings were anchored at the corners with beers and wineglasses after dinner, with me and Mother and even Sunita offering comments and ideas over the Bobos’ shoulders.

  They were leaning toward a light and narrow carbon-fiber 69-footer (the maximum diagonal length of the boathouse) that would excel in light and erratic winds, with a 100-foot mast and a deep-bulb keel that retracted upward, reducing the draft from 13.5 to 8.5 feet depending on needs and conditions.

  Once the preliminary drawings and an estimated $1.9-million price tag were enthusiastically accepted, every family brain cell focused on this exclusively; with Father’s boat speed, boat speed providing our mantra alongside his vision of a sloop that sailed effortlessly at fifteen knots and left almost no wake. He worked feverishly on all the options, as if this job offered not only solvency but an immortality that came with building the fastest sailboat in these waters.

  Grumps insisted on perfect sailing ergonomics, challenging us to make it as comfortable as it was fast. After running fluid-dynamics equations on different hull shapes, Mother advocated a flatter, dinghylike hull with a wider stern. Sunita suggested bigger wings—oh, how Father loved to hear her talk about sails—with a wider, more powerful main that would overlap the backstay by three feet. My role was to make sure the rigging, winches, blocks, electronics and plumbing were all as handy, lightweight and durable as possible.

  During this creative frenzy, we heard from Bernard for the first time since Swiftsure. His letter to the Teardown came with a clipping from the Herald Sun about a vigilante vessel ramming and disabling a whaling ship in the Southern Ocean.

  Dear Blood Relatives,

  I’m not sure why but I’m compelled to tell you what I’m up to even if it violates my own code of secrecy. When I left you all in Victoria I flew to Melbourne where I’ve teamed up with like-minded people to start a new organization to defend the whales of the Southern Ocean. (We’re still arguing over what to call ourselves. But we’ve incorporated in Canada and we’ve got a few anonymous sugar daddies backing us for now.) And as you can see from this article we’ve taken action with a crew of 11 courageous men and women in their 20s and 30s. We’re Americans, Australians and Canadians and one New Zealander (me!) aboard this big, fast and very stout trawler.

  We’re going after whalers who violate international moratoriums. Right now, it’s the Japanese slaughtering hundreds of minkes in the name of “scientific research.” You wouldn’t believe the carnage. We tracked their lead boat at night. And when we got close enough, we (I) told them through a megaphone to stop their illegal whaling immediately and leave the area or we would enforce the laws of the International Whaling Commission and incapacitate their vessel. They ran. We followed and found them whaling again two days later. We didn’t give them a second warning. We rammed them at 10 knots right in the side. Nobody was hurt but the boat had to be towed away. Well, you can read the article.

  I must be getting old and soft because I find myself sitting here on deck at nightfall, halfway around the globe, wondering what my family would think of me. That’s the danger of seeing you all. What I know for sure is that I’ve never been more at peace with what I’m doing. To stay on the safe side, everybody down here knows me as Charles Chapman, from Wellington. (Please destroy this letter, Josh.) So the crew calls me Chap or Captain Chapman. That’s right. I am running this fucking show. I am the sheriff of these southern seas. How do you like that?

  “Good God!” Father exclaimed. “Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse, he gets twice as crazy! What are you smiling about?”

  “I like it,” Mother said softly.

  “You like what? That Bernard’s a suicidal egomaniac?”

  “No, I like to think that the illegal whalers and poachers of the world have to watch out for my son.” She pushed her hair back over her ears. “In fact, I love it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I like it, too,” Grumps said sheepishly.

  “That makes three of us,” I said, borrowing Grumps’s lighter and walking Bernard’s letter to the fireplace.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Father said.

  Bernard’s words were still playing in my head when I rolled up to Sunita’s green bungalow north of Ballard. Three days before, she’d asked me to move in with her but quickly admitted her one and only reservation: Mia hadn’t warmed up to me yet. That was an understatement. The chubby four-year-old terrified me ever since I put my hand on her head and she looked up crossly and said, “I don’t want two daddies.”

  But with Mia’s father out of town and her one reliable babysitter unavailable, Sunita asked if I’d watch her for a few hours. “Just don’t let her watch Toy Story 3,” she whispered on her way out the door, “or that’s all she’ll do.”

  I asked Mia to show me her toys and games, but she didn’t want to play with any of them. “C’mon,” I said, picking through her closet. “Legos are awesome.”

  “Legos are dumb,” she said.

  “You’ve got great dolls. That’s for sure. Look at these!”

  “I hate dolls.”

  I showed her some simple card tricks. They were too complicated. I tried to win her over with ice cream. She wasn’t hungry. I did some remarkably convincing impressions of dogs, goats and Canada geese. Still nothing. I flipped through her videos. “You wanna watch Toy Story 3?”

  “Not really,” she said.

  “Oh, come on!” I begged. “I love that movie!”

  “Okay,” she said grumpily.

  We giggled on opposite sides of the couch for 103 minutes. “You want to watch it again?” she asked.

  “Definitely!” I said. When she scooted closer, I finally started glancing around at my new home.

  NOTHING IS PERMANENT

  Einstein’s doctor ordered him to quit sailing in his late forties or risk antagonizing the inflamed walls of his heart. He agreed to a salt-free diet but wouldn’t give up his hobby. It was part of who he was, and he sailed most of his remaining years while seeking a simple and beautiful unifying theory of the laws of the universe. Simultaneously, he also was advocating a world federation of sorts that might help curb the warmongering that usually accompanies nationalism. So yes, as Mother pointed out again recently, Einstein was trying to leave the world not only better understood but also at peace.

  Flash forward sixty years to early 2013 and Grumps, too, is ignoring his doctor’s advice to stop sailing. His goals and ambitions, though, are modest and shrinking. He hopes to leave his business solvent, his family comfortable, his geese with plenty of stale bread. Mostly, he wishes he could hold on to the memories he feels spilling through his fingers.

  He’s used a cane ever since Swiftsure but often looks like he needs a walker. His doc insists that if he boats at all, he should putter around in the powerboat that a grateful customer willed to him, yet I still take him sailing if the wind’s light enough. When I hand him the tiller, his agility returns in bursts, as if the unsteadiness of a sailboat focuses his joints and inner ear. He doesn’t steer as well as he used to, but I just adjust the sails to suit wherever he goes.

  And we talk about Ruby.

  My parents avoid mentioning her. But when Grumps gets me alone, he asks me to tell Ruby stories, as if he’s afraid that otherwise he’ll forget her altogether. Most of them sound brand-new to him, no matter how many times he’s already heard them.

  “On my eleventh birthday,” I tell him now, sailing across Lake Union in the fading light, “you guys left us for some Great Lakes regatta. Mother said you wer
e just postponing my party until you got back. I tried not to pout, but Ruby picked up on it and talked Bernard into helping her blow up a couple hundred balloons while I was asleep. So I woke up on my birthday to a room stuffed floor to ceiling with so many balloons I could barely walk.”

  Grumps smiles and nods.

  “Here’s another one,” I tell him after we tack back toward the marina. “And you might remember this one. We were all headed for the locks on a Friday night for a week in the islands, but our air horn was dead. So we couldn’t honk to get them to open the Fremont. We had to keep circling, and Father was yelling up at the bridgeman, pissed that we couldn’t get his attention, while the rest of us continued searching for the spare horn. Finally, Ruby said, ‘Let’s just pretend we’re the horn!’ Mother and I played along. So the three of us counted it down and, in unison, gave one long ‘Uhhhhh!’ Followed by a short ‘Uh!’ It sounded like bad a cappella. And there was no response. So we did it again, all of us this time, much longer and louder: ‘Hoooooooonk! Hoonk!’ Albert and Isaac got excited and started yapping, too. Then the bridgeman tooted the will-do retort, and the cars suddenly stopped on both sides, and the little bridge began to lift.”

  “I do remember that,” Grumps says.

  “Have you had enough?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says, though I can see the tears in his whiskers. “One more.”

  “All right, but then we’re dropping the sails and heading in.”

  “That’s fair,” he says. “Let’s hear the last one.”

  “It’s early fall,” I tell him, “and the three of us are bicycling down to Golden Gardens to catch the sunset. Ruby’s idea, of course. And once we’re on the beach, she and I hop from log to log to see how far we can get without ever stepping on the sand. Bernard thinks that’s stupid and starts throwing rocks. Little ones for distance, at first, then larger ones, until finally he’s hurling boulders, spinning and grunting like a discus thrower, heaving them high out over the water. He’s going for maximum splash. That’s when I start whining that summer’s over and the days are getting shorter and our guinea pig, Rufus, just keeled over and that one of my favorite teachers, Miss Winters, just died in a car crash. And Ruby says, ‘Oh, Josh, it’s like a play: you gotta see everything while it’s onstage because after that it’s gone.’ Even Bernard stops throwing rocks to hear what she’ll say next. I think she was ten at the time, maybe eleven. ‘Look around!’ she says, and twirls like a gymnast with her big hands out wide. ‘The trees, the birds, the dogs, the houses, the people. Nothing is permanent!’ And she’s smiling. That’s what gets me. She’s delighted.”

  THANKS

  To Norman Franzen, my inspiring math guru, and to Suzanne White Brahmia, my friend in physics.

  To David Elliott, Norm Smit, Genny Tulloch and Mike O’Brien for sailing insights. To Lenny Mason, Jeff Shurtz and Neil Falkenberg for boatyard wisdom.

  To Chuck and Dee Robinson for the writing getaway. And to my insightful early readers, including Jess Walter, Grace Lynch, Cindy O’Brien, Tom Nelson, Delia and Rich Whitehead.

  To my agent and accomplice, Kimberly Witherspoon, and to my editor and friend, Gary Fisketjon.

  And, as always, to Denise. Without her faith and humor, these pages would be blank.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jim Lynch is the author of the novels The Highest Tide, Border Songs and Truth Like the Sun, all of which were performed onstage. His honors include a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, an Indies Choice Honor Book Award, a Dashiell Hammett Prize nomination and a Livingston Young Journalist Award for National Reporting. Lynch lives and sails in Olympia, Washington, with his wife, Denise.

  An Alfred A. Knopf Reading Guide

  Before the Wind by Jim Lynch

  The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Before the Wind, Jim Lynch’s compelling saga about an estranged family of eccentrics who reunite after years in order to compete in a world–renowned regatta.

  Discussion Questions

  1. The Johannssen family treats sailing not as a sport, but as a way of life. Discuss how sailing acts as a sort of moral compass for each member of the family. How does the philosophy of sailing echo throughout the book?

  2. On this page, Josh states that his father called him a “thinker, which wasn’t a compliment.” Explore Josh’s relationship with his father. What aspects of Josh’s personality does his father find irritating? How does Josh handle his father’s aggressive (and often unfounded) criticism?

  3. How would you describe the parenting styles of Mr. Johannssen versus Mrs. Johannssen? What behavior or traits do they value most? How do they impress their values on their children?

  4. On this page, Josh states “There are so many ways to disappoint your family.” How does this early admission set the stage for the rest of the narrative? Who, from your perspective, is the most “disappointing” child?

  5. Discuss the idea of “legacy” and how it echoes throughout the novel. How do Grumps and Bobo chase the idea of preserving their legacy?

  6. Describe the atmosphere at Swiftsure. How has it changed over time? What is each family member’s motivation for participating in it?

  7. On, Josh asserts that “things never did add up with” Ruby. Explore the mysticism around Ruby’s persona. How would you describe her personality? How does her free-spirited nature help to build a mythos around her?

  8. Trace the roots of Bernard’s radical, anticapitalist behavior. What stokes his anger toward societal conventions? After the Johannssens determine that he is living outside of the law, how do they react?

  9. What import does the “doomsday” scenario predicted by Noah’s father have on the plot of Before the Wind? How does it affect the mood and atmosphere of the marina?

  10. Josh’s dating history is explored throughout Before the Wind. What does he value in a relationship? What is his hubris? Why is he attracted to Sunita?

  11. How would you describe Sun-rise Marina? What does Josh enjoy most about it? Discuss the incident in which the storm ripped the docks away from the marina. What symbolic importance did this hold for the narrative?

  12. The momentum of Before the Wind comes to its apex during Lynch’s description of the Johannssens’ participation at Swiftsure. Discuss the family dynamics at play during the race. How does the trip act as a salve among family members? How does it open old wounds?

  13. Josh’s narration provides the framework for viewing the Johannssen family. How does this fit in with his role as the “glue” of the family? How does he act as mediator between family members?

  14. What was your level of familiarity with sailing before reading Before the Wind? If you are a frequent sailor, did you find Lynch’s appraisal of the sport to be accurate? If you are not, did Lynch’s descriptions of seafaring adventures inspire you?

  Further Reading

  The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

  Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

  A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols

  The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum by Geoffrey Wolff

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