Precious Cargo

by Clyde W. Ford

  I veered toward the Guemes side of the channel. The Noble Lady shuddered under me as though a giant’s hand, thrusting up from the water, had grabbed her bow and shaken it. I’d nipped the outer edge of a whirlpool just beginning to form off the head. It pulled us in toward the center of the channel. I cranked the wheel hard to port and fought the waking giant until we’d traveled beyond its reach. I’ve never doubted that early mariners imagined monsters living beneath the oceans. Standing on the point at Cypress Head, I’ve heard this current roar when it’s running at full strength.

  The ebb flushed me out of Bellingham Channel into “Neptune’s Little Trident,” my name for the meeting of Rosario Strait and Guemes and Bellingham channels. From Bellingham Channel, the trident’s middle prong, I angled starboard toward Rosario Strait, its western prong, which also served as its handle. To port, I passed a ferry, sitting at dock, lit like a tiny city, readying for the day’s first run into the San Juan Islands.

  The sun rose and the moon dissolved into the day’s light. The ebb built.

  Passing through a long, narrow body of water is like running a gauntlet. The worst hazards often occur at the beginning and the end. Rosario Strait ends at “Neptune’s Big Trident,” a place where it meets Haro Strait and Admiralty Inlet, the trident’s outer prongs. All three then dump into the huge Strait of Juan de Fuca, the trident’s crooked handle.

  I gripped the wheel and wrestled with a tide rip at the end of Rosario Strait. After the rip, I nudged the Noble Lady west and now faced down the twelve-mile-wide expanse of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. My body tingled from a rush of blood at the sight of the horizon over the strait, leading out to the waters of the open Pacific.

  A subtle tremor also rippled through me with the realization that I was now heading into a watery unknown. On my left, the morning sun crowned the majestic, snowcapped peaks of the Olympic Mountains in gold as they stood sentry over the waters of the strait.

  With mechanical diction, Donna and Craig reported light winds in the strait of ten to fifteen knots from the west. Canadian weather radio agreed. I checked my course and heading, which had me north of the shoals and kelp patches that extended from Smith Island, then turning gently to port for a straight shot to Neah Bay.

  Smith Island, a desolate rock pile, took forever to put behind me. Just as I did, several waves clapped the Noble Lady’s bow; not steep waves, but each of them a whitecap. Around me a sea of whitecaps grew, a sign that the wind had already reached fifteen knots. Ten o’clock had not yet arrived, so the land would continue warming and the winds and seas would continue building.

  I hit the button marked WX on my VHF radio and tuned to the NOAA weather radio channel. Donna and Craig still predicted light winds in the strait. I punched in the Canadian weather radio station. They still agreed.

  I switched back to VHF channel sixteen. I also monitored the vessel traffic channel. Tugs and tankers reported in, but I didn’t hear a call to or from Longhorn. I could have waited, and watched Cypress Island with Raven. But Kincaid may have decided to divert Longhorn to another location. Even if I had only a slim chance of intercepting Longhorn at Neah Bay or on the water, I needed to take it. That slim chance might save a young woman’s life.

  Outside, whitecaps built and wave heights grew. I switched back to VHF channel sixteen. Two-foot waves now came directly at the Noble Lady’s bow, which rose slightly, then slapped down on the backside of each wave. My grip on the wheel tightened, but I’d count myself lucky if the sea stayed this way. Suddenly, my VHF radio crackled with static, then came a monotone voice.

  “All stations. All stations. All stations. This is Victoria Coast Guard Radio. Victoria Coast Guard Radio. Victoria Coast Guard Radio. For a revised marine weather forecast, listen to VHF continuous marine weather broadcast. Victoria Coast Guard Radio out.”

  I jabbed the WX button with my thumb and pushed the channel button until I reached the Canadian marine weather station.

  “Revised marine weather forecast issued by Environment Canada at Zero Niner Three Five. Strait of Juan de Fuca revised forecast. Small craft advisory. Westerly winds ten to twenty knots, rising to twenty to thirty knots later this morning. With possible gusts higher. Seas to one meter.”

  I switched to NOAA weather radio, but Donna and Craig hadn’t caught up with their human, Canadian counterparts. A gust of wind blew across the sea, knocking the foam off a few whitecaps. I didn’t fear a small craft advisory. The Noble Lady could easily take thirty-knot winds, though I’d sooner take them from behind than on the nose, to make for a smoother ride. Even four-foot seas posed no problem.

  I feared that this first revised forecast might spawn others as meteorologists came to grips with conditions far worse than initially predicted. I thought about turning back, but high winds colliding with a rising ebb tide meant angry waters at the mouths of the channels leading back into the islands. I could ride the winds up Haro Strait and duck into the islands farther north.

  The Noble Lady rose on the crest of a wave and careened to port as she dropped down into the trough. Below me, plates rattled in their racks. A cabinet door hit the wall with a smart crack. I turned a few degrees to port, away from meeting the wave fronts head-on.

  I switched the VHF to NOAA weather radio. Donna and Craig now issued a small craft warning of their own. The Noble Lady rolled from side to side as she hobbyhorsed on a wave. The open cabinet door smacked into the wall again.

  I hummed a country-and-western tune. Hold ’em, fold ’em, walk away, or run? I’d been through plenty of small craft warnings without a problem, I reminded myself. I couldn’t fold. It wasn’t time to walk away. And, at eight knots, I couldn’t run.

  I could, however, lower the stabilizers into the water, although that meant leaving the safety of the wheelhouse and working out on deck. It’s a funny thing about passive stabilizers like mine: When you need them most, the conditions are worst for deploying them. The cabinet door crashed into the wall as the boat rolled in another wave.

  I clicked on the autopilot. Then I slipped my arms through my life vest. I also slid a portable VHF radio into my pocket. When I opened the pilothouse door, a steady wind beat me back. I grabbed a handrail and pulled myself through the door.

  Handhold after handhold, I climbed slowly up to the pilothouse roof, where both long stabilizer poles stood upright, locked into a crossbeam affixed to the Noble Lady’s mast. I wrapped my arms around the mast and held on in the wind as though grasping a lover.

  From this height, when we rolled I looked down into the troughs of the waves. With one arm locked around the mast, I undid the lines holding the poles in place. Using pulleys, I slowly lowered each pole until they stood out from the boat at nearly a forty-five-degree angle. I cleated the lines. Next I had to get the delta-shaped metal dolphins into the water.

  Whitecaps now broke all around the Noble Lady. Ahead, a wave larger than any up until now came roaring at us. I dropped to the surface of the pilothouse roof and grabbed the mast with both arms. The bow rose, then crashed into the wave. Salt spray soaked me. The boat rolled first one way, then the other. I needed to get the dolphins in.

  I let go of the mast and reached for the railing at the edge of the roof. I inched my way toward the ladder leading down from the pilothouse roof to the roof over the aft deck. Another wave crashed, rolling the boat in its wake. I tightened my grip on the railing. A few more degrees of roll, and I’d be hanging off the side of the boat.

  I lay on my stomach on the pilothouse roof with my hands clutching a railing stanchion. I took some deep breaths, closed my eyes, and with my body sensed the height, the roll, and the period between waves. I waited. The next large wave hit. I counted. We rolled to port, then to starboard. I swung my left leg down until my foot found a ladder rung. Then I swung down my right leg. I let go of the stanchion.

  For a brief moment, my body, bent in an L-position, poised precariously in the space and time between two waves. My legs locked tight against the ladder. My upp
er torso leaned over the pilothouse roof. My right foot searched for another rung, but it slipped. I lost my balance and started to fall backward. I lunged for the rails on either side of the ladder and held on as we rose over a wave and crashed down. The forecast may have called for three-foot seas, but the ocean actually called for six.

  I dropped to my side on the aft deck roof. I held onto another stanchion while I undid the line locking one dolphin into its holder. I waited until we’d completed the next roll to port, then I grabbed the dolphin’s line. We started a roll to port again. I quickly pulled the dolphin out of its holder and let the finned metal wedge fly away from the boat. It tugged on the end of the chain attached to the line from the stabilizer pole, then splashed into the water.

  When we next rolled to starboard, the dolphin attempted to dampen the roll, but with only one in the water it ended up pulling us off course. I had to drop the other dolphin or risk losing control of the Noble Lady.

  I hauled my body along the railing at the edge of the aft deck roof until I reached the other side. Again, I held on with one hand while the other worked the dolphin’s locking line, but I’d cinched this line so tightly around the cleat that I needed two hands to work it free.

  I waited for that brief moment between two waves and reached up with my other hand. But we rolled quickly again. I slipped across the aft deck roof with the dolphin’s line in only one hand. I grabbed the line with my other hand and held on until the roll subsided. Then I pulled myself toward the cleat. But holding on through the force of the roll had only cinched the line tighter.

  This time, I turned over onto my back, swung a leg out, and locked it around one of the railing stanchions. This gave me enough stability to work with both hands to free the dolphin from its holder. I lowered it into the water. After the dolphin dived, the Noble Lady settled down with the next roll. I scrambled into the pilothouse and yanked the door shut behind me.

  I shivered from the cold, the wet, and the fear.

  I grabbed the wheel and checked the compass. I steered the Noble Lady back onto course. Then I put her on autopilot again. I climbed down to snatch a change of clothes and warm my cup of coffee in the microwave, which I rarely use unless I’m being bounced around by the sea.

  When I got back to the pilothouse, I sat at the helm, savoring the aroma of the coffee and the soothing heat of the cup in my hands. The rush of warm liquid down my throat calmed me.

  I switched the VHF to the Canadian weather, where I recognized the announcer’s voice. He often interjected a note of humor into his broadcasts. After reporting on nearby areas, he came to the strait.

  “Strait of Juan de Fuca.” The man’s voice dropped low. Absent humor, he continued. “Small craft advisory upgraded to gale warning. Winds twenty to thirty knots, rising to gales thirty-five to forty knots with higher gusts.”

  twenty-two

  The sea built gradually, with only an occasional wave breaking over the Noble Lady’s seven-foot bow. Wind blew the foam from the crests of breaking waves in long, wispy streaks. The chains holding the dolphins vibrated with a high-pitched tone and clinked rhythmically, sending eerie sounds traveling through the hull.

  The period between the biggest waves shortened. We headed into a stretch of water with fewer whitecaps. With this much wind, neither one a good sign. I flinched as the next breaking wave sent a wall of green water crashing against the pilothouse window. Soon after that, another. Wind-whipped foam blew all around. The windshield wipers barely kept up. My legs quivered.

  The Noble Lady rolled deeply to starboard. I heard the cabinet door slam, and the crash of dishes on the cabin floor. I grabbed the wheel and pulled myself up to look out at the portside stabilizer. At the end of the taut chain, the dolphin’s dorsal fin cut through the water near the surface. With another roll just a little deeper, both dolphins could launch from the water, becoming airborne missiles headed at the Noble Lady’s sides. I’d be a fool to go out to lower the dolphins further. But I couldn’t continue bucking and rolling in these seas.

  If pilots always have in the back of their minds a fix on the closest airstrip, then mariners must have a fix on the closest safe anchorage. I brought up a chart on my navigational computer. Then I smoothed out a paper chart with one hand, while I steered through the angry seas with the other. Port Angeles lay abeam, but nearly six miles away.

  Another mountain of green water rushed at me. Even behind the windshield, I ducked reflexively. After the wave, we rolled deeply again. I eyed the starboard stabilizer chain where it entered the water. The dolphin remained submerged. Turning left now would mean exposing the Noble Lady’s flank to the wrath of this gale, rolling more with a greater chance of launching the dolphins at the boat.

  My body shook from hunger. I hadn’t eaten since leaving. I’d anticipated breakfast under way. I needed food. I needed to get out of this gale. Every wave now broke over the bow. My arms tired from clutching the wheel as green water pummeled the pilothouse. I checked my speed. Even with the ebb behind me, I made only six knots into the wind. I decided to fight on for another hour, then turn sharply left and head back to Port Angeles. Though I’d be bucking the dying ebb, I’d be running with the rising wind.

  For the next hour, I clutched the wheel. Frothing seas slapped the bow, burying it under tons of water, then picking up the Noble Lady and rudely tossing her aside like a mere child’s toy before rolling her one way, then the other.

  In these wind-whipped, current-churned seas, my arms strained as I cranked the wheel side to side, trying to keep the bow pointed just off a right angle to the wave fronts, trying to keep the dolphins in the water.

  An hour out, I’d had enough.

  The upwelling of the next wave lifted the Noble Lady. My gut also rose in response. I sucked in a breath. At the top of the wave, I jerked the wheel hard to port and gunned the engine. The Noble Lady spun left, but not quickly enough. A wave caught her broadside, throwing me from the wheel. My shoulder crashed painfully into the side wall of the pilothouse. Out the window, I looked down into the belly of a beast.

  The Noble Lady didn’t snap back from the roll as I expected. And when I pulled myself up to the helm, it seemed as though we careened broadside along the edge of a wave, in danger of capsizing. That’s when I saw the starboard dolphin completely out of the water, swinging close to the hull from the end of its chain. My muscles burned as I threw my entire body into spinning the wheel in the direction of the roll, trying to take the pressure off of the other dolphin. I needed to regain control of my boat.

  Another big wave hit, this time from slightly astern. It did what my arms and the rudder couldn’t. It pushed the Noble Lady around so she faced down the path of the waves. The starboard dolphin dropped back into the sea, and I had control of the boat once again—if control is what you’d call piloting a thirty-six-foot boat in ten- to twelve-foot breaking seas.

  I picked a wave and rode it like a surfer, working the throttle to speed up and slow down to match the speed of the water. In the midst of the chaos I chuckled, giving thanks for the Noble Lady’s rounded rear, which shed following seas and made her easier to steer.

  My heart soared as Ediz Hook came into view. I’d been so focused on the sea that I’d barely noticed the cobalt blue sky overhead, and the snowcapped Olympics in the distance.

  In the lee of long, narrow Ediz Hook, the ocean calmed down. Smoke rose at a steep angle from a slender industrial stack ashore. A tug glided across the Port Angeles harbor. Cars moved along roads. A seal popped its head up in front of the boat, then dived as the bow got too close. I said a mariner’s prayer, thanking the sea gods and goddesses for releasing me bruised but alive from their dominion.

  After rounding the harbor breakwater, I slowed the boat, shifted into idle, and went on deck to pull in the stabilizer poles and the dolphins. Back inside the pilothouse, I called the harbormaster on the VHF radio.

  “I can see you now,” he said. “Just pulled in your stabi poles, huh?”

&
nbsp; “Roger that.”

  “Stared down the devil out there, did ya?”

  “Roger that.”

  “Look, we don’t have much space. Your boat don’t look like one of them chichi yachts, so maybe you won’t mind rafting to a fishing boat.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “Last pier near the shore. You’ll see a fifty-eight-foot fishing trawler, the Juan de Fuca Queen. You can tie up next to her. She just got in from fishing. She ain’t leaving for at least a week. Hey, you need a hand tying up?”

  “I’m single-handed.”

  “Be right down. Port Angeles Harbor out.”

  I stepped out on deck and threw three round fenders over the side. They bounced against the hull. I eased the Noble Lady deeper into the harbor and slid past the Queen. Then I spun her around to dock into the wind.

  The harbormaster, a short, rotund man with a gray beard and a red face, stood on the rear deck of the Queen in front of the large drum-shaped gurdy used to reel in nets.

  The wind blew my bow away from the Queen. Without me saying a word, the harbormaster knew exactly what to do. I spun the Noble Lady’s stern in toward him. He grabbed a line and tied it off. Then I drove the boat forward into the wind and turned sharply to port. The stern line groaned but the bow swung in. By this time, the harbormaster had scurried to the front of the Queen. He grabbed my bow line. I shut down the engine. When I stepped off the Noble Lady onto the Queen, I tied fore and aft spring lines.

  I stood on the Queen’s deck. The harbormaster walked over to me. With a clap, he wiped one hand against the other, then extended a hand to me. I shook it.

  “Name’s Al Monroe,” he said. “Say, nice boat you got there. No bow thruster, huh?”