S.V. Sovereign Nation

I hope you don't mind if I use you as a safety valve again, you've never complained before.

There are changes in the world occurring at too fast a pace. I can't tell you what I am involved in,just let me say that even though I was instrumental in the downfall of the Catholics I am not sure if our world can easily handle The death of another religion so soon.

How are you? Are you with the new family yet? Did you get your official squatters status made permanent? I had another two squatters assigned to me last week. I guess it isn't too bad, I've built a wall between their side of the house and mine. Actually I only kept two rooms for me, the other eight people have 4 rooms and a bath. What can they expect for nothing? And don't ask me where I got the material to build the wall.

Are you still thinking about trying to visit soon? If it works out it would be better in the winter. It's difficult to function in 132-degree heat but if you come in the summer I'll manage. Would be best also to wait until your status is official and permanent, the gov shooters are very busy here. In the evening the bodies that died from the heat are picked up and in the morning the bodies of the ones without ID. Sometimes I think they recruit specifically for psychotics, they seem to enjoy their work too much for me. And where do all the people keep coming from? There are a few jobs around here but it seems that for each job 500 people move in. I guess with the loss of Florida and most of Miss and Louisy to the raising sea people don't have too many places to go. You would think that they would at least wait to get official permission to be displacers, other wise if the shooters find them their dead.

My research continues to provide me with a reasonable living but as you can tell from the above not enough to get me off the list to take squatters. I was thinking that if you can't get that status made official you might go back to mattress work. I know you got tired of it but you know you were very good (I should know being your father) and there seems to always be openings in that field. Do you think you could still pass the test? I'm sure you could.

Must go and try to do some work, it's evening and down to 115 degrees, a nice fall day.

I started reading that thing that I mentioned in (entry#5{asp-Y/2197M/10/10}), I know it's been way too long but they've been trying to kill me at work. I mean, I want to stop everything in the world for the sake of some old grey box sealed in ("what looks to be", that's you!) a hand blown glass cask but that thing called archeology keeps calling me back to my knees in the mud and rain.

Speaking of rain, The hot-sweeps were coming through the valley at a rate of once every ten minutes today, and they seem hotter then usual, about 90 degrees! The locals say that means this summer, this whole valley will be under water.

By the way, I do want to see those results from your "Impact program" but It'll have to waite till the end of my present research stream. We just don't have the room for anymore of your elaborate simulations on our H-drives. Your pH-ogs are brilliant but they're just too big!

“Civilization!? You know, I really do believe I'm allergic to the human race - I have a violent verbal reaction dot, dot, dot."

"I mean, fuck my time, fuck this country and fuck this broken planet! I’ve watched an entire generation - my peers - sell out their grand ideals of life with little environmental impact for their own procreation, thus contributing to the destruction of the host!” He said.

“You know that adequately liberal late 80’s shit.” He takes a deep inward breath, angles his torso forward and assumes the position for a rant.

“These people - a generation with whom I watched some of the most dramatic events in human history! The fall of the Berlin wall, the rise and ultimate slaughter of a democratic movement in China, the systematic destruction of the last tropical rainforests on the planet and of course the subtle and then catastrophic collapse of the Soviet Union! Is it possible that someone can view these events, smell this decaying planet from the point of view of an urban landfill and then turn around and perpetuate this disgusting status-quo by contributing to the population boom and retreating into their own little suburban worlds?” He is red faced with depleted lungs.

“You’re goddamn right it is!" He wheezes, Not only is it possible but it’s a done deal!” Says he with the tone of the absolut and absolute it is.

“What, wait,” she tips her head back and to the left. “How does that follow?”

“The World! Yeah, I know it sounds a bit dramatic but wasn't I, a white male American supposed to be able to change things if he deemed so necessary? Some how I feel responsible! I’ve blamed myself for not being loud enough, strong enough or persuasive enough to change all this shit! I’ve blamed myself for not being pretty enough, rich enough or powerful enough to bring this fucked up species into a whole new level of evolution! I’m talking about a level of evolution that would bid, once and for all, farewell to poverty and inequality, a level of evolution that, for the first time in the history of this species introduce the concept of unity!”

"I think as a species we can, don't you think the television, the car and the meat/death industries has had a serious effect on our natural evolutionary patterns, as a species look how lazy we've become?"

"Yeah, it's believable but not proven scientifically and what do you mean by unity?” She demands. “It usually means homogenization. Everyone seems to want a unified people – but in their own shade of gray. Talk about unity usually means that someone wants me to give up my version of right. I respect the differences between people! I mean, ‘United States’, my ass! The likelihood that some flag-waving, wife beating, dog kicking asshole and I could be united on any issue is pretty damn slim.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about at all! I mean working for each other and not against each other! Unity of sex, unity of race, and unity of philosophical and political concepts for all the species on this planet. And yes I guess it would seem like I have a god complex but I don’t think that’s uncommon for a super hero to have at least once or twice in his or her incredibly long lifetime. Do you?”

She leans in closer and says. “I still can’t wrap my brain around the way you mean unity. I totally agree that working for and not against one another would be an evolutionary step up. I just don’t understand how you can have unification of categories like sex and race and ideology and species when they contain so much diversity. But if you’re talking about civilization, I think true civilization is the unification of people in the belief that all species have worth, that the planet has worth, and that we can live together and work together without giving up the passions that make us individuals. And uh, I see what you mean about the god thing. I agree.”

When he explodes he really does come apart you know, like a cartoon, apart and back together again in six frames. He is James and James is I, one of the narrators, now standing with my arms above my head and the head is thrown back, post cartoonish explosion.

“That is unity and I think unity is civilization! But we don’t seem to be able to unify with each other on any of those levels. I accept my share of the responsibility for not living in a perfect world. Rhetorical, yes but are there still only a hand full of people on this Earth that do? We've got to evolve as a species or be replaced by a better one before unity can civilize this world.”

“You talk about evolution and unity-as-civilization like you don’t believe that civilization exists on this planet!” She challenges me,(him, whatever) frowning.

She is Dena a narrator as well, our now 23 year old heroine of extraordinary talent and will, and you dear reader will now do as you are told! You will now jump through the hoops of suspended disbelief and salty nomenclature that we, James and I provide for you. Yes, but please keep in mind that this is not a difficult task. If you don’t know the difference between a half hitch and a starboard tack, know, at least, that you will if you persist in your journey through these words. Know, also that these stories you are being told have two witnesses who are both narrators and sailors and that’s really the way we talk. So all we really ask is that you believe that the aforementioned stories indeed have two narrators that are both sailors and witnesses to these events. Easy!

Yes, and sometimes we, Dena and I, will provide you, dear reader, with the proper tools, or omni-trampoline if you will, for hoop jumping such as, he said, she said, easy to follow time lines, quote marks, dot,dot,dot.

Dena is also a super hero. Unfortunately for us both neither one of us are the kinds of super heroes that can bounce bullets off of our bodies or fly or see through anything but lead or have rubbery bones or lots of money, you know?

“They don’t! Unity or civilization,” he says. “I’ve been to many places in different parts of the world, but I’ve never seen anything that even comes close to that definition of civilization. The way that people everywhere mistreat each other and the land and sea and air that support them makes me sick. And there’s no frontier – shit, even Antarctica is piled with trash from laboratories and military bases.”

James is stopped cold, truly shaken by that fact. Nothing wrecks a passionate tirade like facts.

"Well, that means we’re going to have to discover civilization or build it ourselves, on this planet Right? I'd like to think we could reach escape velocity in an old wooden sail boat but it's highly un-likely.” Dena leans forward and now I can feel her breath gently brush my cornea. “We’re going to have to sail to all the places in the world where we think it would be possible to find paradise. Just to find out for ourselves. Just to see for ourselves if civilization really doesn't’ exist on this planet. And maybe someone will teach us the unity trick along the way.”

“Traveling around the world,” he says solemnly, looking out over a perfect reflection of the moon on Lake Union on a still, cool Seattle, September night in 1998.

“Seceding from governments and joining communities. Seceding from the world and discovering civilization. How long do you think that’ll take?”

Hey daddio - safety valve is my middle name. Would I have gone into active sexual therapeutics if I didn't need to take on the problems of the world? And yes - your slang is horribly out of date. If you want to sound snap, you'll need to call me a "quick fix" or say I'm going back to touch work. And as you do know very well, it's noble work to actually touch people with desire. And, well ...I have gone back to it. It's the best work around here for someone who's trained well. You know I'm the best at it when my fuel cells are charged up, and boy am I charged! I'm making as much per week as a 14 year old and you know that's not easy for a no-lift 32 year old. It's the weirdest thing - puberty isn't hitting the girls up here until as old as 9! This land has been so protected for so long by the glacier that the seep water doesn't have any bioagents at all. Suprasnap for a middle worker. Wait until I hit 55, though - I'll be back to making clicks like you can't believe!

Greenland is lovely. I can't believe how fast the lichen and mosses turned over to willows and cottonwood here. The alder and Sitka spruce just below us is so well ensconced that it's got to be right behind. Watching a glacier retreat from your house is an amazing thing.

I'm glad you got a wall up - that's really exciting! Visiting in summer is definitely not an option. I've actually gotten used to being chilly! In this world!

Texas is the only place with shooters that actually have work to do. Most places put so many restrictions on shooting that they've gone to trapping their prey around here. Luckily I'm working at a good house that takes care of us...and I don't have to worry about squatter status, since I'm working!

Yeah, and notice how I don't ask about the work you're doing? See how circumspectly I tell you that there's only one other major religion that you could be downfalling? I'm dying of curiosity, so you might see me this winter after all!

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Two months ago while "progging" or digging around in the local tide pools on my lunch break. I found a large (69 cm. in diameter) glass cask of unknown age with a dark rectangle box on the inside. The location was just outside of the Butchart dig on the Island of Ecotopea

First of all let me explain the cask itself. Once cleaned (of about 200 years worth of Ocean accumulation, barnacles and the like) this thing was a true work of art! It was as clear and as perfectly round as any sphere I've ever seen with no visible seams on the outer shell, it was so perfectly smooth that it was incredibly hard to handle. There were what appeared to be three different shells or chambers from the outside with a package of some kind in the third innermost chamber. The only way to get into the two inner chambers was to break the outer one. The two inside chambers had visible door mechanisms on them but the outer most shell was perfectly smooth. Two nights ago the job of breaking the outer shell was done by mistake, by me, very late at night almost two months after I found the thing and hauled it back to my work site at the Butchart dig. In those two months the cask became quite the focus of much light hart ted conjecture concerning its origins. Nobody really knew or cared what I had found at the time until my friend from the Ecotopean Historical Society (EHS); Ken Staunch made this interesting discovery.

Ken played a hunch and determined, by running a laser-spectral analysis through the glass along with a pH-og (photo-Holographic) simulation program that he wrote, that one of the most remarkable things about this cask was that it was designed with it's own ballast in mind. Between each chamber it was filled with helium so that it would float just below the surface of Ocean salt water for a very specific period of time, about forty years with average yearly natural accumulation, (barring being struck by a ship or something like that) before making landfall or sinking. We ran the simulation hundreds of times and each time we got the same results, If it sank the outer shell would crack in a way that would release the contents of the inner chambers at about 800 meters below the surface of the Ocean. The cask would then rise to the surface thus increasing its chances of being discovered by someone from another generation or another time as that of the original sender. It was brilliantly designed and over built to the point that all three chambers made it for almost, what we believe to be200 years.

Once the outer shell was broken away the two inner chamber door mechanisms were exposed to reveal the most intricate glass multi geared locking mechanism that any one of us in our little band of hacker-searchers had ever seen. The first of the chambers is a sphere with four visible round glass gears lining the inside with a complete equatorial separation. When the top hemisphere is twisted counter clock wise from the bottom all the internal gears moved in unison revealing more gears. At that point the cask seemed to just take over! Gears inside gears (all glass) were revealing themselves and they were all being turned at the same time by tiny, tightly wound glass springs. Three short delicately curved legs came out from the bottom of the lower hemisphere. That's when I set the cask down and just watched the most beautiful dance of glass I'm sure too ever see. The topmost hemisphere then separated into eight pieces that then collapsed and slid into the lower hemisphere setting in motion the innermost chamber. Mind you, all this is happening at sunset which is the only time of day my pathetic little room gets any natural light so the inner workings of this incredible machine are causing a disco ball effect on my walls that would thaw even 'ol Travolta's frozen corps!

Though the wind’s a bit heavy for our usual “prudent sailor” sailing, nothing’s going to keep us from getting under way this time. We’ve been waiting for a break in the weather and fine-tuning the new electrical system for days, and our ordinarily cautious assessment skills are blasted by nerves. We have our engine warmed up and ready, and we need to leave!

Dena and I spent all last night charting our trip from Point Roberts, Washington to San Francisco, even though we knew the plans would probably change. Dena is jittery and nerved up after waiting so long to leave and working out all the bugs in the Link 2000 pretty much every day.

I found the tides for the planned anchorages on our tides and currents program in our “old beater” computer, an indestructible T. I. Extensa 560CDT. a.k.a. “old last leg”. Dena wrote them down and then decided to go back and figure it all out with no stops before Port Orford a place to which she felt some "unnatural attraction".

”Why’s that little spot on the chart looking so good to you?” Staring at the chart of southern Oregon, rubbing his rapidly bearding chin.

“I don’t know, It just looks so snug tucked away there behind Cape Blanco. And besides, we’ll need some rest by then anyway.”

We then slept a little and did not recognize that our state of mind when we woke up was not really clear enough to cast off, but we had to!

Up to this point in our secession journey, already well into our second year, we’ve made little more than 100 miles of actual headway, not counting the odd cruise on weekends with Dena’s dad and our almost weekly shake down cruises. The crew of the Sovereign Nation is itching to put some nautical miles under our keel.

The plastic destroyer crowding us in the slip, MV Borborygmus, a Bayliner 4788, turns out to be no problem to squeeze out past at all. Even with twenty knots of wind in our faces and eight inches of space between MV Borborygmus and us, Sovereign Nation eases out of his slip straight as an old-growth, Doug-fir-heartwood, two-by-four.

To the world’s sub-mariners, the words “ship” and “target” are synonymous. That’s why they call their submarines boats - if they were ships they’d be targets. And you have to believe that a submarine would be a pretty dangerous target.

Twenty five tons of slow moving target is Sovereign Nation. Designed in 1959 and built from mahogany, teak, and oak in 1969 and finally launched in 1972, he is a fifty-foot, William Garden Seawolf ketch. He is our object of obsession and our mode of transportation. He is our ship and together we will discover civilization on the planet Earth, in the twenty-first century. Unarmed and not dangerous at all.

"I don't know about all this calling Sovereign Nation a 'he', it's just not right."

What do you mean? My older brother, the only pomo-pro I know, would say "Calling a boat a 'he' is Modern; calling a boat a 'he' and then adding:"

[ Now, before the turn of the 20th century Josh Slocum proved in a court of law that a boat was more then just the sum of it's parts and the mariners I've met (a few, mind you) hold firm to the belief in an entity of some kind. I don't buy any of that shit, I just want to bring people back to the fact that this is a story that they're being told and the teller really wants them to believe that he thinks his boat is a he.]

Yes, but it is a point in this story,a virtual-pomo, sailing adventure, dot, dot, dot.

"Yeah, I get it but I just don't know if I buy it, I mean, just look at her lines, so sleek and smooth like a grand lady of beauty, grace and wit."

What?! Come on, It just takes some getting used to is all. You can see it, a stern elderly gentleman gliding through the endless pussy of the Earth's flowing Oceans...

"No, you are going to call Sovereign Nation by the personal pronoun that you chose and I will call her by the personal pronoun I chose."

One of the last nations of grand absurdists to believe they could discover civilization on this planet was the Spanish. Those guys sailed all over the place thinking that their wooden boats were male and that the ocean was a beautiful but fickle woman who sometimes allowed them passage. They were armed and very dangerous.

If you’ve ever seen a clipper bow wave cut through glass water on a warm Puget Sound August morning, you’d get the male/female reference. It looks something like this: ))) ^ (((

As soon as we round the point of Point Roberts it was “Haul yards away!” and Dena and I realize that we aren’t looking at a beautiful sailing day. First day out and we get gale force winds in the Strait of Georgia and six to eight foot seas across the bow to match. That long, narrow straight lends force and fetch to the waters between Point Roberts and Active Pass, BC, our supposed goal for the morning.

I tire quickly because of the combination of “pre-cruise stress” and slamming through the chop with a double reefed main and mizzen with the smaller of our two cruising jibs stretched tight across the bow. The first of the big waves brings the bow up so quick that all I can see is slate sky for a second. Then we come down on the next wave with the bone-shaking but hopefully not wood-breaking force of twenty five tons of wood landing in the water from ten feet up. Without making any real headway in the direction of Active Pass! Getting mad is futile, so I just get tired. We’re heeled over at 20 degrees, riding the luff and hauling ass through the water but the GPS, our positioning instrument and knotmeter, says that we are not going anywhere! Dena is looking green and trying to hide it. At the end of my four-hour watch, we are both beat and we are only a third of the way across the Strait of Georgia. So we tack, tack again and again and again…Damn, this shit is not easy but the fact is we both know it's best to work out all the kinks in "Sheltered Waters" but all I really want to do is sleep…

Nothing cures seasickness like taking the helm. The concentration I bring to steering the boat and working the sails gives me a distraction from my queasiness. In my first hour behind the wheel, I average 6 knots sailing tight on the luff but every time I come about our lee-helm catches us and we end up going backward as much as forward. It’s a very strange a thing to see the exact same position two or three times on your GPS. At one point, I am encouraged to see our speed reach 6.5 knots - until I realize that the GPS registers our heading as east. We aren't facing east. We are facing west, going east, and making the best time of my shift to that point. I angle off the waves and still end up going west rather than northwest, still backwardish.

James is getting into the spirit of taking watches by napping during all this. He wakes and comes above decks, yawning, and notes, "We haven't moved." I am saddened by his lack of discernment. I can clearly see the difference between my original position and the one boat length I've gone in two hours.

James diplomatically drops the subject and starts looking consideringly downwind. I catch his eye and realize that we have to change heading or stay in the Strait until the wind dies down.

We turn tail and run before the wind and waves that want us to go south. As soon as we turn, our speed falls down to 5 knots, but all those knots are in the right direction. With the wind behind us, the waves are slower to reach and pass under us and the effective wind is only a breeze. We shake out the reefs and manage to hold wing-on-wing for a full two hours.

As it turns out, all that infuriating, sideways-headway that we struggled with all day put us in the perfect position to ride the weather around Saturna Island and into a perfect little bay called Narvaez. We put the hook down in this beautiful little horseshoe of a bay located on the south-east point of the first of the Canadian Gulf Islands, Saturna. We had cruised there earlier in the year with Dena’s dad and a coworker of his from Budapest so it was good to be safe and steady on our ground tackle in familiar territory. The wind is still screaming over the hills around us, but we settle the anchor in sand at two fathoms and have two more hours of sunlight. As far as we can tell, the crescent of this little Canadian bay is the home of two breeding pairs of bald eagles, one on each side of the bay. The sun begins setting early behind the high green hills that seem to gently fall down into the water. The eagles seem to be calling to each other from across the bay. Torn between watching the best movie in the world and a floating sort of empty hunger, we finally get to work on dinner.

After a wonderful meal of "White Trash Hash," mac-n-cheese with a can of tuna fish mixed in and vegetarian baked beans on the side, James and I have an exhausted, humbled conversation regarding our aim for this trip. We come to the simple conclusion that our biggest priorities are being together and keeping each other safe. We decide to head somewhere quiet, check the gray matter a bit, and wait out the wind storm that pushed us backwards for a large part of the day and promises to give us a restless night at anchor.

By the time I was awarded my bachelor’s degree in English Lit from University of Washington, I was bored by school and ready to ignore the occasion. James asked me a couple of weeks before school was out, “So what are we going to do to celebrate?” I looked at him quizzically and replied, “Well, I haven’t really thought about that. It’s just not that big of a deal. How about you give me a back rub or something?” James would not allow that, so we decided to take a bike trip for the sole purpose of finding the coolest place possible to watch “The Graduate” and celebrate the nothingness that is modern higher education.

I was a new convert to cycling life, finding out that you really can ride anywhere you want to go. Seattle is a beautiful town, and the Burke-Gilman Trail allows a cyclist to cut right through it, north to south, faster than any car stuck in traffic. I got really excited about testing my new bike legs on a longer trip.

I arranged to take a week off from the classy little optical boutique I worked at and James arranged a caretaker for the micro-radio station , FUCC 89.1 FM, he was running out of the basement of our apartment building.

From Seattle, we took the ferry across the Puget Sound to Bremerton, drove North up 101 to Port Angeles, and found a safe place to leave the car. We unloaded our bikes and coasted down to the ferry terminal, where we boarded the M. V. Coho for the trip across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. At the time, I knew very little about that body of water and thought that the heavily loaded, very stable ferry was rolling cause that’s what boats do. I was excited by the motion, and we felt like we were lucky to get a lively trip.

In Victoria, BC - absolutely one of our favorite cities - we rented a cheap motel room and split up. I rode to every video store nearby, then to a few farther away. I finally found one with The Graduate, rented the movie and a VCR, and loaded them into my backpack. When I got back from the store, I marveled, “Just imagine a US video store renting a movie and a VCR to a traveler with no address and ID from another country!”

“…Not likely!” he retorted, but his mind seemed to be on other things. He gave me a devilish grin that I had an easy time interpreting. I swaggered over to him and leaned over to kiss him. “Sorry, I’m too smelly for sex. After showers,” I promised.

I was thoroughly amused by poor Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate. Feeling good about my life (especially in comparison to his), I got to feeling pretty sparky. James showered first, and I followed him, luxuriating in the hard, hot spray from the shower. A cheap motel room with a great shower is my version of heaven.

When I got out of the shower, I was relaxed and horny from, ahem, cleaning really well. James was lying on his stomach, spread-eagle on the bed, fingers and toes drooping off the edge. When he heard me step toward the bed, his ass and back clenched in a mini-stretch, then relaxed as I ran my right palm over the softness of his ass cheeks and down his thighs to his knees.

I gripped the solid muscles at the top of his thighs and asked, “Are you sore?” He shifted and mumbled into the pillow, “I wouldn’t mind a leg rub.”

I started at his toes and took my time touching every bit of skin on his feet, lightly smoothing the delicate tops of them and firmly pushing my thumbs into his arches. Working on one leg at a time, I stretched and kneaded the muscles of his calves and thighs in the warm room, not really thinking about my nakedness.

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(note: I'm sorry sir, but I thought you might want to view the CensoredDocument in the privacy of your own quarters.)

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When we left the next morning, we were sated and sleepy, to say the least. We split the load of the VCR and movie and huffed back to the video store, confusing them with our heartfelt thanks.

We decided to trace a back road track to Brentwood, a small town inside the Saanich Peninsula just north of the Butchart Gardens, 22 km North of Victoria. The upside to our route was all scenic with thick, misty, green-covered hillsides and a sun that would sneak out now and then just to say, BURN! We were off the main roads and the woods and houses came right up to the road in many places. The greenery and the views from the hills were magnificent.

The land between Victoria and Brentwood is hilly, and those back roads don’t slice through the countryside like highways do. The downsides were that we had to ride right on the road and that the road itself had to ride right on the hills. More than once, I hauled my sorry ass up a big hill for the promised downhill on the other side and was disappointed to find an all too short decline or a turn and more incline!

I finally gasped to a stop on a particularly long hill and just stood there, wondering why my daily rides in Seattle hadn’t better prepared me for this. I raised my head and saw that James had stopped at the top of the hill and was reading a sign and watching me unobtrusively. I sighed and pushed on up to stand with him a moment. Together, we read the sign for the planetarium at the top of the hill and laughed at the fact that they are only open during the day! It didn’t make my muscles ache any less, but it lifted the beat-down feeling off my head and we enjoyed the rest of the ride.

In Brentwood, we bought groceries and rode down to the motel on the bay. Canadian prices are wonderful on everything except gas, alcohol and cigarettes, so we got a suite with a kitchen, a bizarre convertible bed from the sixties in the living room, and a separate bedroom with a regular bed that was almost as old. After unloading the groceries, we slept.

The next day was magical. We rented a little skiff with a seventy-five horsepower motor after dickering the price down to that of the forty horsepower version and took off. We decided to explore the inlets down the bay and motored noisily past startled birds. At first, we headed toward a hillside that shined like it had a temple built on it. As we drew near, we realized that the building was that secular temple of urban comfort, the condo. We sped away before we could ruin our wonderful mood contemplating the only ugly spot in sight.

We ducked around a little point of land and slowed down to appreciate the beauty of wooded hillsides falling right down into the water only a few hundred yards from each other. We idled down the neck of the inlet and caught sight of a beautiful old ketch-rigged sailboat at anchor in the most exquisite, glass calm water ahead. We emerged from the narrow neck into a good-sized bay, half studded with old pier pilings. The trees and blackberry bushes seemed to be Platonic forms in their perfect rioting and healthy overgrowth. Neither seemed to choke the other; they looked like old, bickering lovers. We later discovered that the world famous Butchart Gardens are on the other side of that hill. Though I’ve never been to the gardens, I love them by extension.

As we cursed the noisiness of our motor, we discovered a tiny dive platform in the midst of the old pilings. Gratefully, we tied up and shut off the motor. The sudden silence was shocking, until our hearing acclimated to the small sounds of distant birds and the motion of the water itself. We pulled out our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bananas, and Mountain Dew, carefully stowing the wrappers. After settling in to eat, I slowly realized that the water around us was full of clear and white jellyfish. Some were too small to cover the tip of my smallest finger, some spanned two feet or more. I tipped my head up to James, who whispered to me, “Be careful – they sting.”

There was nowhere to dip a hand in the water, they were so thick. We were made solemn by the shear number of the creatures, obviously living out strange necessities of their own in those close quarters. We reclined on our gently rocking seats and watched the birds fly around the rigging of the sailboat anchored on the pile-free side of the bay.

“James,” I murmured. I felt my first yearning then for the life that led those sailors to this beautiful place on that beautiful boat. “We could do that.”

He looked at me sideways and turned back to the peaceful view. “We can do anything. It is certainly beautiful but so much work and a fuck load of money.” We sat contemplating our future seriously for the first time. “Travel, see the world. We wouldn’t be reliant on big oil. Solar power, wind power, water-maker the works. Hell, we could get off the grid completely.”

In the glowing light, filtered through thousands of tree limbs, the idea of traveling by sailboat found fertile ground. Only one idea brought a hint of discomfort. I ask searchingly, “It kind of feels like an escapist fantasy, doesn’t it? What good can we do in the world aboard a boat.” I began to answer my own questions, “Well, I guess that its ok to escape as long as you are going toward something better. We can certainly tread more lightly on the planet if we do it from a boat.”

“Even if we never left the dock, living on a boat pretty much guarantees that we’d be more environmentally conservative. And if we could efficiently get off the grid, our lives could become an example to others on the way to live life with less ecological impact.”

An idea struck me, “Damn, we could also get rid of landlords in our lives. I hate paying rent – you just toss money at some stranger and poof! It’s gone and you never get anything back from it. If we could get a small boat and pay cash, or even get a loan, we’d be buying a home that we can take anywhere. Actually, we’d be buying a home that would take us places!”

By this time, we were both leaning in and searching each other’s eyes for a sign of how serious we were being. Our excitement grew and we decided to work off some of the energy we were building up by taking off for the bay. We regretfully started up the engine and putted out. The big motor on our little boat embarrassed me once I realized that the people aboard that sailboat probably saw us as nothing more than annoying little mosquitoes, mucking up the soft sounds of their anchorage. I had an image of myself calling to James, “Look at those assholes. Wasting fuel, running off the birds.” More than ever, I wanted to sail.

Once into the larger bay, we pushed up the RPM and expended some of our high spirits and costly petroleum by flying over the choppy wind waves. We grounded the little boat in a tiny sandy beach and clambered around on the rocky, deserted shore. I climbed a small hill and stepped carefully across the bare, crumbling shale, heading out to the tip of the small point. Out there grew an old, gnarled madrona tree, deeply rooted in indifferent soil, growing year after year through the shale, erosion, and wind. The earlier peace of the inlet combined with the beauty and determination of the madrona to inspire a new feeling of happiness and rightness in me.

We left Vancouver Island with an itch. I don’t know if that itch will ever be sufficiently scratched.

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Things are getting so strange in this hot swamp... The local death tolled as of last night (Jan 14, 2198) was 35 confirmed

and hundreds missing. With each hot-sweep through the valley shortly there after we get hit by hot flash floods that are fallowed by a series of "small" earth quakes that last about 3 or 4 x-klicks after the floods end.

...And if that wasn't enough, last night after dealing with that all day, the six of us that made it across the new raging river that is about a meter from our front door came home to find that we'd been robbed! That's right, and what they couldn't take through the door they busted up with what looks like bats or sticks, some kind of Cave-man club. Everything but the cask, that was still at Ken's Lab in Vic's City.

...Anyway, here's the holo you asked me for with the text below, good luck and please be careful!

...The third and final chamber made five complete 360 degree rotations inside the primary chamber before rotating on it's axis 180 degrees and separating into eight slivers and sliding back into the lower hemisphere of the of the primary chamber. The entire opening procedure takes exactly 23 seconds, every time and we've tested this mechanism now 100's of times.

Inside the third chamber was a completely dry unfinished gray rectangle (23cm X 30cm X 6cm) vaguely resembling a large plastic hinge with the words "Movement Not Government!" etched in the top/center of the rectangle and in the lower right hand corner the words "'Ol last leg" were etched in the same font as above. A small plastic latch in the middle of the front of the case was drawn slightly back and the top opened smoothly to reveal a small rectangle screen and a old style finger keyboard. The most perfectly preserved Old fashioned "Lap-Top" computer I've ever seen, a 110volt power supply with a small solar collector and one very old data storage unit of unknown origin with the word "Zip" printed on it."

Sir, please excuse my rude intrusion into your most important Silent Pilgrimage to the sacred Island of Vancouver-Todds Inlet but I believe this to be of great importance to Movement!

The data storage device has been translated from its original digital-binary format to a readable 2d holographic memory filmcard. This medium is old and very slow but it was the only thing that we could find, outside of the S.I. computer gallery that could translate this Data. Delivery to you by skiff within the x-hour at

We still haven't found out what a "VCR" could possibly be but I think all other questions that were posed by you should be answered in the holo-link below.

Your name came to me through a mutual friend that assures me of your delight at receiving his name in good health. Dr Fredeus Stein. Dr Stein tells me that some ten years ago while studying in his department at the Harvard, Printed Word Research Collage, your paper on the resurgence of legitimacy issues concerning the now infamous "Dead Sea Scrolls" was one of the most brilliant research documents that the man has ever seen and upon your findings the fate of the Catholic Church was ultimately served. If indeed this epistle finds you (as well) in good health then you are aware of the substantial weight of my last statement.

Dr. Helm I have taken great pains at securing an encrypted two way channel broadcast at a rate of 700 tera/hrtz per second between you and I for the sole purpose of employing your services as a "document legitimacy investigator" in a case of utmost importance to Movement and will spare no expense to make all research concerning this case possible.

I must ask you at this time to abstain from discussing this case with anyone whether you deiced to accept the case or not. This offer is available for 24 hours after you receive this e-mail If you reply to this e-mail you will agree to my terms of total and complete non-disclosure of any information discussed between the two of us on this completely secure two way channel.

Your weighty person almost induces me to an immediate agreement to your suggestion without even asking for more details. It is however needful for me to have a few answers supplied prior to any agreement between the two of us.

First a few statements of fact need be made. I do not discuss my work or investigations with anyone outside of a small circle. On those times I have been retained by others I discuss my work with them only. I do not double sell my labors.

Secondly the Catholics continue in secrete to practice their black arts, they have not been completely missed out. However, as you state my research did finish they're having a seat at the world Beliefs and Practices council. And now to serious business of business. As of 6 months ago I ended the acceptance of US dollars in payment for services and in fact now only accept Wallers as currency. Being, as you know, based on the world market value of one gallon of pure water this is now the only stable currency in the world.

My current rate is 2 1/2 wallers per day payable weekly to the Texas World Bank. I use the south Texas branch located in Acapulco, Burr-Texas Freestate.If this is agreeable to you I will leave further discussion of the exact nature of my next crusade to future correspondence. I wait your reply.

Movement is very much aware of your impressive research techniques as well as your ethical standards.That is, as we say, why we called you. Of course your terms will be fine. You will note that a deposit to your account of 15 Wallers has been made to the EarthBanco De So-Tahas,

Very well then let us begin, Three weeks ago a young Archeologist by the name of Nathaous Sutra

while working on the Butchart Dig just outside of Todd Inlet, Ecotopea. Found a large crudely sealed, hand blown glass bottle containing what we've been told was a beautifuly prserved original laptop computer., On the computers very limited memory is a document that very much resembles the writings of the First Coupling, JamesIndena!
The most shocking thing about this document besides the vulgar, blasphemous language is the fact that the C-scan date of the "Hard-drive" the the document was recorded on is marked at AD 2024-07 just seven years after the completion of the now holy 15 year circumnavigation of the Sovereign Nation. The first Sovereign Nation! The actual data-storage unit in question has been relocated to a "secret" location for further study by the World Archeological Fund at the Smithsonian Institute (which of course is puffer shit, they couldn't hide a banana in an asshole). The WAF assures us that Movement will have full access to the document in question in "just a few months". After they're hacks have put their slimy fingerprints all over it I suppose thus destroying any chance of legitimate research of the data-storage unit in question, a perfectly preserved, orginal TI "lap-top" computer!
Sufficed to say we have our connections in the WAF and have succored a holo of the first chapter of the data in question for your critique and comparison to the works of our holy first coupling, "The Words" By JamesIndena. I'm sure you have a copy of "The Words" but if needs be I will forward a (signed) holo of a copy of that work for you to keep as your own at, of course, no cost to you. We have arranged a meeting between you and our contact in the Smithsonian (a Mr. Reginold Smithers, a red haired Ausasian gentleman, you can't miss him he'll have a old style "tie" on around his neck) at Ruins Park in Capitola, Rep .Va. Next Tday at One Marina way at 14:00UxT. A small hypocraft

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The courier brought your letter today, I'm glad to hear that you are doing well in your present circumstance. I will take your word on the safety of this address. As you now know the project I referred to in my last note is working for Mr. Big Ship himself, Saul Tarious the 8th! I will be frank in these messages, if he knows of this address and is already tagged on then it doesn't matter anyway. I can see your recent problems in two ways; either it was done by people who don't want me to finish my present research or by the hooders of Mr. Big Ship. Since I accepted this job I have been poking a stick at His Reverence at every opportunity. I have pretended total ignorance about his sect and it's dogma. I started on this path simply to keep him off balance in dealing with me, something of a habit of mine. Unfortunately he may have covertly sent a message to me in your "attempted" kidnapping. Did you see the two men that were supposed to have been wounded saving you? At this point I don't think it matters who is responsible, you will be treated well in your "friendly" jail and will probably be safer they're than any ware else for now. Unfortunately my research results could endanger us both, I am truly sorry that you have any possibility of harm due to me. I will do all in my power to see that you are protected. My research continues, from the preliminary clues I am afraid that the document in question will prove to be genuine. I have hinted as much to Mr. Sorrius. If true he will not be a happy demigod or whatever it is you call the 8x, inbred clone of an insane freak.

Life here continues, my income has removed me from two squatter lists but it takes time to find new places for the ones already here. I don't remember if I told that one of my squatters was a licensed psuedomate. When she offered her company for a share of my part of the house of course I accepted, after all its not every day one has the chance to have sex with one of the top pros. She said she is from the Derseta Amazonia and started as a mattress worker like you were (she also tells me that my slang terms are way out of date), she had a very happy client who paid for her to go the psuedomate training and she moved here. It must have been the 3rd time we were together after about an hour with the cerebral tronics she ask if I would do touch sex. Again how could I refuse? Well------it seems that my psuedomate is a pseudo-psuedomate, she is pregnant. Her papers are black market so she didn't have the sterilization procedure that is mandatory for her profession. Makes me wonder if she is sterile as far as diseases go, they may have stopped AIDS, STAIDS, and BANGERS but new diseases come up constantly. Anyway where you are it is only a fine for unlicensed pregnancy but here it can be shooterville. If I can't convince the cohorts that I took her papers for legit I may be in more trouble. Another reason to backpull on my attitude towards the Major Floater, I may need to ask him for some arm-twisting. Have to admit his organization or "Movement" or whatever it is they like to call it has the push to get it on. Hope you continue well, don't try to contact me unless it is top need. I will try to keep you up to date when time permits. Your father

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I don't think they're that loud at all, we've been here for three days and this is the longest conversation we've had.

I know, let's pull up the hook right now sail back to Narvaez with the tide and start the fucking engine tomorrow morning in that loud wind tunnel of a bay rather then spoiling everything here! I love you too.

After a leisurely but small pot of coffee, I pull out the ignition box of Sovereign Nation and turn the key. Nothing. We try every combination with the battery switch, check the ignition wires, double-check the wires. Nothing. I pull out a screwdriver and head for the starter. Now, Dena doesn't realize how easy it is to hotwire a diesel engine, so she is confused when I stick that screwdriver against the switch lead and the battery lead at the solenoid. Nothing but…a click. Also, the Link 2000 (our digital battery monitor) and the analog voltmeter on the DC panel both freak out. The Link blinks off and back on, flashing an error message. The analog dial swings to the low end (8 volts) and back up. So now we guess bad battery?

We just bought one set of two, three or four months ago and the other set three weeks ago. So Dena pulls out the tester. Each battery bank reads over 12 volts. They ought to work fine. Well, this engine is designed for battery failure. It is made with a hand starter shaft, the handle for which is, well, damn. No handle.

So while Dena twists the starter shaft with a set of channel locks and fails to get any response, I devise a method of turning it over from the crankshaft pulley with a rope like an old outboard. When Dena sees what I’m doing, she abandons her channel locks to work the compression levers. You decompress the cylinders so the crankshaft will move, then crank like mad and close the compression valve to create enough pressure for the fuel to combust. I wrap the line around the pulley, brace myself and pull. The crankshaft spins. Dena pushes the levers. The crankshaft stops. Do it again. After I work up a sweat, we switch places, but Dena can’t pull hard enough to spin the shaft. We go back to our original places and repeat this thirty or forty times, for which effort we receive two tiny, burping chugs and a plethora of sore body parts.

So then we decide that we will just have to figure out the battery problem and begin the process with the battery switch. We get out all the tools we haven’t pulled out for the hand starter project and take apart the switch. Then, we touch the starter cable directly to the battery terminal. No response from the starter. All this and insufficient caffeine, too. Other terminal…no.

“You know that Vessel Assist will charge the insurance company a small fortune to tow us back to the U.S.,” I say, searching the bay for the best way out under sail. “Not only that, but remember, we have something like a thousand dollar deductible on our policy so no matter what we’d get ripped off! And besides, we built this electrical system. There’s no one else that’s going to know it like we do,” Dena says, going through the last of the electrical tools.

“Man! The Sailing around the world industry really is built around elderly, wealthy, fixed income types. I sure do wish that was part of my super hero thing.”

“Right, you’re right! We should have had more coffee. We need a percolator - a tough one, made out of thick hand blown glass or something! I’m going down below to start tracing wires out from the starter.”

“Ok, I’ll jump down into the “dumpster” and you can I. D. the wires to me through the bulkhead,” she says, lowering herself into the aft, starboard lazarette.

I realize that the starter itself has a tag with a name and phone number on it. I grab the phone on the off chance that we are within reach of a cell tower and call Bill at Townsend Electric in Port Townsend.

Bill gets all riled up on our behalves and starts in with the questions. Of course, his first question is did we check the batteries. When Dena pops her head out of the dumpster, hears me tell him they are fine, she gets a funny

look on her face and I realize that the (oops!) electrolyte hasn’t been checked since before our last major power drain in Point Roberts less than a weak ago. (Another crazy-ass story, but I’ll save it…)

So I’m on the phone talking to this guy and Dena starts unpacking the battery access hatch in the lazarette.

Sovereign Nation has two banks of six volt batteries in sequence, meaning two batteries for each 12 volt bank. Two batteries for the house, the 12 volt lights, the water pump, etc. And two for the 12 volt starter on the engine.

The problem quickly becomes obvious. The negative terminal on one of the new batteries in bank one (the house bank) is broken, literally cracked right at the bolt hole. I thank Bill and when I tell him the problem, he shouts into

the crackling cell connection, “You be sure to call back if it still doesn’t work!” Then Dena checks the batteries’ electrolyte levels. We are down to bare lead on one chamber and almost as low on the rest. And this is the good bank. So we isolate the broken battery and its partner from the good bank. A little purified water in bank one and the engine starts right up. Ignition’s still out, but who cares! She's running!

“We can do anything!” I scream into “our” isolated anchorage and an eagle flies from a nest high above our starboard freeboards.

Tomorrow morning, early, we will be forced to go to Bellingham (decidedly the wrong direction, E.N.E.) to exchange our broken battery at Redden Marine, where we bought it. We also need to fix the bow pulpit; it’s beaten up pretty bad from all the tossing around we got fighting the Strait of Georgia four blurry days ago.

We allow the little bitch (oh, the engine, that is…) to warm up thoroughly while ruminating on the most painless way to raise the anchor in the big old wind screaming through the narrow walls of the bay. Deciding that we are ready, we hoist the jib to pull us free, weigh anchor with a minimum of trouble and motor/sail out of the bay. Coffee maker screaming out a thick black pot of the good stuff.

“Well, we could make it all the way to Bellingham or Larabee State Park to anchor before sunset and start first thing in the morning. We have got to run this engine for a good long time to charge those batteries,” says he, looking Bellingham-ward.

“We could, or we could go to Doe Bay and do the hippie hot tub thing tonight and head out first thing in the morning. Really, it’s only about three hours from here and it will put us in a good position to get to Bellingham early,” Dena opines, clapping her hands and jumping up and down. Bare feet on a warm teak deck. We decide to try out our recently installed inverter with the stereo blasting and dance our way under Jib and Mizzen all the way to Doe Bay.

We anchor at the mouth of and row into the small, shallow bay while admiring, as always, the look of our boat at anchor.

Dena is rather put out to discover that the cost to use their hot tubs has gone up to $7.50 per person!

Dena rather fuzzily informs the turbaned woman at the desk that she wants to use the tubs and the woman rather fuzzily replies, "Seven-fifty, please." Dena vaguely considers correcting her, decides not to let her in on the fact that she is one of two, and puts the ticket she gives Dena in the mesh pocket of her backpack. She strolls out of the office and covertly informs me that I’m not paid for, but to follow her lead...

She has to be from California, she speaks perfect "Network-English" and that tan, "Scandal!"

Sure enough, there is a bored, skinny little white guy with long, messy dreds (their version of a “security” guard) sulking beside the trail down to the tubs and he asks to see our tickets. Dena just turns around and says, "They're in my backpack, sorry dude." He nods, says, “cool man” (to Dena!) and goes back to his grumpy slouch. We thoroughly relax in the tubs and sauna, then make a great pot of spaghetti by candel light and crash out in our bunk, on the Sovereign Nation in the summer twilight, hook down off Orcas Island.

We leave Doe Bay early and motor through placid waters around the Viti Rocks, Eliza Rocks and Lummi Island. It takes quite a while to get to Squalicum Harbor in Bellingham in windless company with four or five other sailboats (no motorboats, although all the sailboats are all under power). We reach the harbor in a hot, still moment that stretches out all day.

We begin our day’s walk with a stroll to the Harbor Office. There we learn that if we were normal people we could stay for free up to four hours but since we know everybody in the office (they were all transferred from Blaine, Washington our winter hideout for the last year), we are invited to stay as long as we need. Then we head back with a cart, load up the broken battery and start off for Redden about a mile and a half from our berth. We are rounding the basin for the 20-25 foot boats when we spy a familiar face. It’s Jeremiah, who’s just returned from a passage of northern Vancouver Island, Canada, on a tall ship.

“Hey!” was his waving response. “Wait a minute, what the hell are you two doing here? I thought you’d be long gone by now.”

“We got stuck in Narvaez Bay yesterday with what we think is a brand new ‘bunk’ Interstate battery. We’re taking it back to Redden where we bought it in hopes that they’ll switch it out,” I told him.

“They’ll take it back. They have to take it back - that’s Interstate’s policy! Hold up, let me walk up there with you,” he says and cups both hands around his mouth and yells. “ The real question is,” he says “What the hell am I doing here, I mean aren’t you supposed to only introduce a new character only if there’re going to move the plot forward or some shit like that.”

“Your right I guess we’ll have to come up with something else for you to do then take all of our money. It’s good to see you man. What are you doing here anyway?”

"I didn't take your money you gave it to me, willingly and let me tell you something my friend. You can forget about finding a family owned chandlery in the Bay Area that's for sure."

"No it's not going to suck, the Bay's great your just not going to get any deals that's all."

We met Jeremiah at the Pacific Marine Exchange where he was doing the wage slave thing to pay the bills and doing it rather well, he’s a very knowledgeable sailor. He’s also the reason we depleted almost all of our savings at that one little chandlery. He quit that job (much to our chagrin) shortly before we finished the refit of Sovereign Nation for this journey.

He then took off north for the Inside Passage of Vancouver Island on the old wooden schooner "Lady Victory". That didn't work out so well so he ended up back in Bellingham to wait for the next tall ship opportunity to come along. You’ve got to love those punk rock sailors! He's a good one.

When his tall, thin, shirt-less tanned and tattooed form gets to the top of the dock he invites us down to see his boat, a 24-foot vision of hard work. Built by some long forgotten engineer in his backyard, it looks tough and springy. Jeremiah rigged it himself and the looseness of his shrouds look a little iffy at first glance, but I have read that they are actually quite solid when properly applied. Jeremiah has a 70-watt BP solar panel and gets all his energy from that one panel.

“Don’t look so shocked, this thing has been single handed around the world twice by two different crazy-ass hermits and I plan on being the third. She’s a very efficient boat.” He says with a black scurrvied grin.

"That's a bullshit lie, I don't even like the Circle Jerks, not sence the first line up anyway!"

The three of us then walk over to Redden Marine, where we get hassled about the broken battery terminal. We show the Redden employee the terminal and he says, "Well you hit that with something." I calmly say that we did not, that

the battery stays in a box that keeps it from shifting or being bumped, and that we would like him to replace it. He calls over another guy, who leans across the counter and says, "Oh, yeah, you hit that with a hammer or something."

I am a bit annoyed, of course. “Why would anybody want to do that?” I ask as evenly as I can. "I tell you we did not break this battery terminal. Will you replace the battery or not?"

the guy behind the counter calls his Interstate representative, and sniggers while passing along his words of wisdom: "Either they hit it with something or God did it." Knowing that this is the wrong time for a theological debate. "Will you replace the battery or not?" He replaces it, but repeats several times, "You need to realize that we will probably not get our money back for this because it is obvious that you broke it."

I stare at him stonily and Dena shifts her stance and glares. Although we get our battery replaced for free, the attitude of the "ol' man of the sea" employee who hassles us is intolerable. “You’d think it was going to kill them to do some honest business.” I say walking out of there with our new battery, I am glad that we will never have to deal with that limp old American again.

The rhetorical, diatribe about the strange connection between capitalism and random assholes!

"Hey, save that one for later, I like that one and this little guy doesn't deserve that much thought."

On the way back, Dena stops by Rasmussen's electrical supply store and stocks up on ends and connectors. I give Jeremiah a tour of the boat and he gives his opinion of our readiness (a qualified thumbs up).

"Wow, next time we meet this whole adventure will be behind you and I'm sure we'll both have some great stories to tell".

"Well then", He says as he comes above decks. "I guess I'll just say 'Fair winds and following seas' then!"

As Jeremiah walked away with his hands stuffed into his old torn up sailors jeans, he sang a vaguely familiar old shanty and managed to pull it off without making it seem at all stupid or cheesy, just real.

I then run over to the closest “Gouge ‘em-at-the-dock Boating store ” to get a six volt (flashlight) battery for our new dark-to-dawn anchor light. Dena presently fills the water tanks, moves the boat forward so that the bowsprit overhangs the walkway, then pulls the jib up and lets the anchor down on to the dock. The bow pulpit was pried out of its frame in the heavy seas of the Strait of Georgia yesterday

and is in pretty bad shape. Our favorite tool, ol’ Mallet (a three pound blacksmith’s mallet), comes in handy yet again with various wood blocks, as we gently pound and pry the pulpit out of and back into its frame.

Dena suggests that she make up a mess of egg rolls for dinner and far be it from me to resist, for Dena's veggie egg rolls are by far the best in the known universe!

Hmm, I say to myself. I haven’t been seasick in who knows how long, maybe I should stuff myself silly before going on our first all night sailing adventure aboard Sovereign Nation.

Right about that time Dena discovers that she has misplaced her good sunglasses. We search the boat from stem to stern and come up empty handed so, after all the trouble with them, we have to go back to Redden Marine with cap in hand. Her glasses are there, of course, so Dena has to listen to another lecture from our "friend," the salty curmudgeonly employee from hell. I choose to stay outside. It’s either that or go aloft on the guy! After that, we walk…

Finding egg roll wrappers in downtown Bellingham is no small feat, so we walk some more. All their grocery stores and most of their shops of all sorts are clustered in the malls, which are spread out among the suburbs.

Bellingham’s largest eyesore, the Bellis Fair Mall, sits on land that used to be an animal refuge. The land was left to the city of Bellingham by some wealthy land owner who was obviously riddled with guilt. He left the land in some kind of “trust” that was no more trustworthy than he himself had been. His spoiled-ass brats wanted to sell the land to the maul people and make enough money to spend a lifetime driving the Great American Highways in their huge RVs with their little cars on trailers following behind. Well, they had the old man’s will overturned, much to the chagrin of a large portion of Bellingham’s and the surrounding area’s adequately liberal voting populous. The maul people have really good lawyers, and now the brats are living their dreams, I guess.

One of Webster’s definitions for the word civilization is “a situation of urban comfort.” I don’t see any of that shit as being civilized.

Finally we end up at the best grocery store in the entire State of Washington, the Bellingham Co-op, the happy anti-mall. They have the egg roll wrappers and a bunch of other things we need, so we take a taxi back to the boat and go to work on a truly wonderful dining experience. We have plenty of time to make and clean up the mess from that meal because the tide is going to be raging against us for another couple hours.

After recovering from our huge meal, we get ready for what we hope will be a two-day sail to either Sekiu or Neah Bay.

Hey! We have to be optimistic! We couldn’t have gotten this far if we weren’t.

We leave Squalicum Harbor at eight in a dead calm and the last of our light deserts us before we reach Lummi Island, the first of many in our path. Our first great discovery of our first night sea journey on Sovereign Nation is that in all our planning and re-fitting we have forgotten red flashlight filters for nighttime chart reading. So we both have to take the first two watches and navigate our way through the rock infested, volcano-created waters of the San Juan Islands at night. Dena manages to navigate a perfect course through the Bellingham channel, flawlessly using a tiny flashlight pressed tightly through the filter of her fingers, lighting only a miniscule amount of chart at any one time. Don’t be fooled by this explanation! This is a long and arduous procedure!

My half-decent memory of the trip to Squalicum Harbor from Doe Bay this morning does us little good in the dark with green and red channel marker lights abounding. As we round Eliza Island for the second time that day I realize that from here on we're in virgin territory, then I see the first of our green lights pointing our way to the Pacific ocean. Dena finds a corresponding green on the chart and merrily plans our course. Moving farther around Eliza Island, the water is slowly filled with green lights and our way becomes more and more confusing. We give up on green and start hunting reds. Wealmost miss our big red until we are practically on top of the very shoal we are trying to avoid. With that red so precisely found, our channel becomes more obvious and we carefully make our way through some of the most complicated islands in the U.S. northwest.

As we head down the last stretch of the San Juan Islands, the water is glass, becalmed, and every buoy light, every star, and every town off in the distance creates an almost perfect reflected image of itself on the water. I can’t help but reflect myself upon the duality of our lives compared to those reflections on that endless oil black rocky pool. So many of us Homo sapiens are pale reflections of the dreams that we loosely hold for our young selves. Even when those dreams are within our grasp, we somehow let them go and they eventually fade off into the meaningless rippled wake that is the time of our lives.

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At 1:00 AM we spot the green flasher that marks the Straight of Juan De Fuca the wind has kicked up and with it go the sails with a single reef in the main (just to be on the safe side). Now Dena can finally get some shuteye. About an hour after she disappears belowdecks we round the flashing green light just off the coast of San Juan Island and I look outat the darkness of the Strait. Suddenly and by suddenly I mean at about fifteen knots, a ten-foot wave breaking at the top and lit by a million phosphorescent plankton, strikes our bow at about a forty-five degree angle. I think for a brief moment, that it’s got to be a rogue wave, but it’s not - those big waves continue to hit us every ten seconds until 10:30 AM the next day.

The Strait of Juan de Fuca is a narrow, vicious body of water that inherits the power of the Pacific Ocean, reaching high winds and tumultuous waves with very little encouragement. As we pass the last buoy marking the last island of the San Juan Islands, the Strait abruptly lifts our bow on a wave that is more shocking for having been unprecedented in our travel so far that night. We once again make very little headway, for the wind and seas has got us on a broad reach from the west and in my single handed state I can’t quite head into. I can’t imagine attempting to turn back and anchor somewhere in the islands with such a fierce storm in progress. We will learn later that we are experiencing the Strait in a serious, but not unusual, blow and that there is no corresponding storm to make anchoring difficult in the islands. That’s just the way it is most of the time!

After the waves start throwing the boat around, it takes Dena about fifteen minutes to come back up on deck to see if everything is okay. I take this opportunity to pull another reef in the main and rig for a storm foresail. It isn't until an hour later that I talk her into going back down below and at least trying to sleep. She does - try, I mean.

At 4:00 am, the fog sets in. I sail along in stunning headwinds and work hard to keep a course that pounds the boat least without either broaching or crashing headlong into the oncoming waves. Like a good little sailor, I aim for 45 degrees and often manage to keep the boat from either hobbyhorsing or pitching from side to side. With the fog lightly wrapped around us, we tune the radar on and I begin the exhausting watch of radar, compass, wind and sails that our navigation depends on. I can only hope that we don’t catch a rogue and if those gusts continue to increase incrementally like they have been we’ll be taking on water by eight bells for sure. I don’t think my body can handle a knockdown right now.

Each wave commands my absolute attention and after a couple hours the monotony of wave after wave begins to melt into horror at the idea of another two hours of manhandling the boat through this. I barely notice James popping back and forth between bed and engine hatch. The cold wind peels my layered defenses and chaps my skin everywhere it can touch. My face, my neck and the thin band between coat sleeve and glove all begin to feel as though I have a full face sunburn. I cannot get warm and cannot huddle to conserve what warmth I have left. At the helm, I am forced to present the full length of my body to the wind and the wind takes full advantage.

Back on deck the conditions haven’t changed much, except to turn into bright fog. I am daunted by the idea of four hours on watch after being wrung out all the way through Dena’s watch.

As soon as she took over at four, I stumbled down below to fall into our bunk. Most of the waves were striking us on the starboard forequarter with an intensely loud slap right about where my head is on the other side of the planks.

I laid down and the spinning started at once. It had been so long since I'd been seasick that I didn’t even recognize the feeling. Besides, there was this smell, strong and pungent, like onions - rotten onions!

Holy shit! Rotten onions! That’s propane gas! At this point I realize that during our shift change one of us had bumped into the stove and turned it on. Our old marine stove doesn’t have one of those fancy-schmancy auto lights so if you don’t light it manually, it very efficiently fills the cabin with death in the guise of propane fumes. It’s already been about fifteen minutes and the boat is full of propane gas. I turn the stove off, open all the vents, and go back to bed.

Next, it’s that damn engine compartment hatch, the one under the forward galley settee. It keeps flying open because the hatch lock was long since broken under another crew and really I should’ve just fixed the fucking thing before we left! Every ten minutes or so I have to get up and shut the thing simply because without it in place it flies all over the cabin like a loose cannon and there’s no ware else to stow the damn thing. In my fully catatonic semi-sleep I couldn’t quite figure out how to make it stay shut. Swimming in the propane gas, the constant howling of the wind, the disorienting seas, my dehydration, and my strange perspective I look aft, out of the companionway and see Dena stoically bearing the burden of her watch. Suddenly, from about thirty feet behind her, our dinghy, called Sojourner Earth, safely on her painter, leaps straight up just over Dena’s left shoulder, turns 180 degrees in the air, and comes crashing down on the sea-foam with a jolt that sends a shudder through the entire boat. My gut wrenches and out come my egg rolls practically intact, right in the galley sink. I clean the sink out the best I can given the shape I’m in, wave up to Dena with a half-hearted, drool-faced smile and stumble my way back to the bunk.

What can I say about the next four hours? The loud moan of the of the wind and the new gut wrenching sloshing sound along with the pitch darkness of the cabin are to much for Dena so she grabs a pillow and shivers in her sleep right at my feet on the poop-deck but not before rigging a bungy on that evil engine hatch. The 1.5 knots of head way slowly turns to 2.6 as the tide turns in our favor and then finally we make it all the way up to 4.1 knots with a perfect 15 degrees of heel. The radar tells us that there are giant ships all around us and no land in sight so we give a good long blast on the canned-air foghorn every few minutes or so until the can’s pressure is gone. Darkness turns into dim gray, turns into light gray. I don’t quite fall asleep at the helm but I do manage a few dangerously long blinks.

Dena and I trade places physically but I get the feeling we are both in about the same headspace.

Finally from out of the fog we see our first indication of life beyond fifty feet. A big, beautiful ketch rigged sailboat is under full sail.

Dena plots our course and slowly realizes that we are still at least 18 hours from our original goal of Sekiu. Without much discussion, we decide that Port Angeles is more reasonable, being closer, and that if this is what the Strait of Juan De Fuca has to offer we’re going to need a day or so to get ready for this.

Just as Dena is coming back up on deck, the radio screames, "Sailing vessel Sovereign Nation, Sovereign Nation, Sovereign Nation. This is the S. V. Marushka, come in, over…"

Well I'll be damned, it’s the Baldwin family going back home to Bellingham from their summer circumnavigation of Vancouver Island and that sailboat off in the distance, well, that’s them. It is indeed a small world!

Gary and Mary Baldwin are the proud parents of two sons, Brad and Ian. The four of them live on a large 55 foot Garden ketch and they seem to be the happiest family that either one of us has ever known. We met them shortly after we sailed to Blaine Harbor from Bainbridge Island in the summer of 2000. At first Dena and I thought them way too cheesy, as most families tend to be. Gary was too loud and asked too many questions. Mary seemed to be withdrawn and always doing laundry. But the two young men turned out to be their parents’ salvation, to us, so to speak.

I met Brad and Ian at the same time and for the longest time I didn’t know who was whom. They seemed happy enough but what really set them apart from most boys their ages, Ian-11 and Brad-12 or the other way around, is the way they would listen to every word that you said. After hearing you out, they would explode with commentary and expletives. They really seemed to enjoy life and ultimately I think you can attribute that to their parents.

I never got the whole story but it seems that Gary Baldwin did rather well for himself and his family in the desert of eastern Washington as some kind of diesel mechanic/engineer/welder guy. One day they decided to sell the house and property, buy a boat, and sail to all their favorite places in the world. As we know all too well, that lifestyle is much easier dreamed about and talked about than lived, but the Baldwins seemed to be genuinely enjoying their lives on the water. Besides all that – they’re good people.

Gary and I have a great radio conversation in the first calm since we reached the Strait of Juan de Fuca, mainly about all the new gear that Dena and I had to buy to refit for this journey. Gary is a gear freak, Marushka is rigged stem to stern with the most cutting edge sailing technology so he has to know all about our new bells and whistles. Every time he presses the transmit button on his radio you can hear the whole family talking at once in the background. Although we both know that we can’t say all the things that we want to say to each other, Gary does manage to give us the lowdown on the sparkling little city off our port bow, the port of Port Angeles. They loved it there but really, they were only there for three days.

We bid each other "fair winds and following seas" and we watch the Marushka slowly sail off into the fog.

Presently, we reach the Ediz Hook light and enter a large bay that is home to a semi-permanent fog bank. We follow a series of fast fishing and pleasure boats through a mist that obscures even the giant tankers and freighters until we are way too close to their anchor chains or sterns for even our tattered comfort level. We drop sail and Dena brings us in at the Port Angeles Small Boat Basin with a bit of messy backing and sidling after I jump to the dock. After coming to a complete stop about three feet from the dock, Dena gives up on controlling our full keel reverse and jumps to the dock to haul “him” in with the dock lines.

In classic Sovereign Nation fashion, we make fast our moorings and head out on foot for some nourishment and some semblance of normal Homo sapiens behavior.

The food we found at this great little Mexican-food place about two miles from the Boat Haven. Don’t think for a second that our bodies aren’t constantly telling us that we have been awake for 34 hours, by the time we get to the restaurant but we are starving and we do well in that department. We are absolute suckers for Mexican food especially after a particularly invigorating cruise. I have the seafood burrito, which by the way, is the best I’ve ever had. Dena has a plate of huevos rancheros that thoroughly kicks her ass, and she can’t even finish half of it!

There isn’t one motel room available in the whole tourist infested town. Every room under a hundred and fifty dollars is taken.

We’ve arrived on a Saturday in a tourist town in August. From the restaurant we literally call every motel in town. No go. So, we drag our tired asses back to the boat and shower at the dock, slathering ourselves with Teshan’s special skin care potion. We then sleep for ten hours straight.

Friends are those people who you can call when you absolutely have to. Dena and I tend to stress ourselves out and put off that phone call or that late-night house call until we hear a wonderful voice reminding us that it’s ok, because we are friends. Teshan is such a person.

Before we took off for this leg of our journey we discovered the very sad fact indeed. Our cat, Fritz, was not the ocean-going world explorer that we had hoped he would be. He got sea sick at the slightest hint of rough weather.

I know, but you got to hand it to him, he was the only sailor on Sovereign Nation salty enough to spend every single night on the boat for the last two years!

Teshan didn’t even think twice about taking him in. When Dena dropped Fritz off in Seattle before we left, Teshan, an expert aromatherapist, hooked us up with what turned out to be a life-saving care package of aromatherapy odds and ends. Teshan is the quintessential friend. She asks for nothing and would give anything to see our dreams realized. For that and a million other things, we will always love and respect her.

After our long, long sleep, we decide to stay a few days and recoup our energies before attacking the Strait again. We walk miles and miles around Port Angeles, buying groceries and then finding a room in which we slept soundly after watching HBO all evening. Normal… Homo sapiens… Behavior!

Happy, although a bit numbed by t.v. and once again itching to be moving along, James and I wake up at a comfortable time and eat a good breakfast before starting up the engine and warming her up. I look over the log and realize that a fueling is in order. We don’t like getting more than halfway through what we suppose is our tank capacity. So James toddles around in a sunstar-point turn in the small space between docks at the Boat Haven and tucks up next to the pumps. We only take on 20.7 gallons and have motored a total of 49.5 hours since our last fueling. Wow! That’s only .42 gallons per hour. Far more common is one or one and a half gallons per hour. Ok, but we can’t take that too seriously. The best we ever had before this is more like .75 gallons per hour but that was when we had a working tachometer so obviously we are running our “Volva” ,the engine, a little light.

We leave the fuel dock at 10:15 a.m. and realize quickly that we have just enough wind to sail. Not being fully comfortable sailing in close quarters or with crowds of boats zipping about, I request that we wait until we get closer to the end of Ediz hook. James reluctantly acquiesces and we raise sail just inside the hook at 10:40 a.m. Yippee, we’re sailing!

With all sails aloft we make slow headway out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, I study the wind and realized that we will be lucky to make any kind of headway west. Sure enough, my shift comes up, I take the helm and the boat is fog-bound in no time at all. The wind tears through the fog without dispersing it and drenches us as though it were rain. Since we can’t see and can’t head close enough to the wind to get where we want to go, we pull in a reef and start the engine and run “her” to maintain as much helm on the wind that we can. It is just a little too stiff for heading into with out a little help. I have a nice quiet shift, though I can’t see a thing. The monotonous sound of the cranky old engine dominates my hearing and the fog circumscribes my sight. I finally resign myself to focusing on the compass, the radar and the sails.

I can keep the coastline a safe distance away using the radar, but the compass is more useful for staying at a safe angle to the wind and waves. Back and forth I look, slowly tiring of this game.

James’ shift! Unfortunately, I have no desire to sleep. We have three days of rest under our belts and I’m unable to let go and just relax. I take GPS readings and try mental tricks to make myself sleep. No go. Ok, I guess I’ll just wait for my shift.

A long stiff, arduous watch. Finally, at the end of my watch we get a break from the fog just long enough to get a beautiful twilight purple and red light show of a sunset with a thick black cloud line just above where the sun had just been moments ago. It is like the Earth has just now invented these colors and Dena and I are the very first sentient beings to witness this event! After I hand over the boat for Dena’s watch, I try to sleep and have what even seemed to be a dream but between Dena’s pee breaks and the continuous pounding of the seas the hours from 8 pm to 12 am are just down time.

I take the helm and realize right away that the damper is completely off the wheel. Sure enough, things are a bit rambunctious and I’m forced to steer this big old boat in these mean seas constantly from the start. Thick fog and lack of sleep combine to exhaust me fairly quickly. By five bells, 10:30 p.m., I really look forward to all those bells left to ring. After six bells, 11:00 p.m., my mantra is “Please let it be 11:30, seven bells, please, seven bells.” I’m too worn out and too focused to cry, but my throat is tight and my chest hurts along with my wind-chapped face.

I have a weakness concerning radar navigation that does not help me deal with the stress of foggy nights. I have problems gaining a feel for the direction and speed of radar blips, mostly because every time the boat spins a little, pushed about by waves or turned by me, it looks as though they have turned or changed position. I’ve had a couple of close calls so far tonight, ships within a mile or so, but the fog is so dense I can barely see my bow, let alone a ship a mile away.

Not long after six bells, though, I realize that the one I’ve been keeping an eye on is way too close and headed straight at me. I think for a moment it is on my port side, so I tack to starboard. I’m concentrating on the radar and only lightly scanning the area around me visually. I sense more than see the motion in the fog and looked up to see the side of a giant freighter crossing my bow. I can’t even see up to the deck of this huge ship in the fog, just a black wall about fifty feet away. I spin the wheel hard to starboard, luff up the sails and wallow deep in a trough before coming out onto the crest of the next wave. Then the freighter’s bow wave hits, pushing our bow around and helping me get straightened up to the following seas. I make a complete 180 jibe and through out some sheet to gain speed away from that monster! Before long, the big stern goes by and I surf a 15 foot stern wave with a fifty foot, twenty five ton stick with green rooms on both sides! My eyes are pulsing; my hearing is sharp. It’s done, the whole event over with in seconds and we’re still alive!

I turn back into the wind once the ship is safely past, riding on my adrenaline high for a little while, then crash again far too soon.

By James’ shift, I am a shaking wreck. I lie down to sleep…and the engine dies.

At midnight I’m at the helm once again. The fog is so thick that you can’t even see the bowsprit and it’s only about 42 feet from the helm. Although the wind has died down a bit the waves are still huge and still making that cracking sound that only a big wave on a wooden boat can make.

At night, in the fog, under sail and auxiliary power, my attention span is split into just two small places directly in front of me and the tight looming sails above. The amber radar and the red compass are all I have really. The radar on Sovereign Nation is located in a beautiful teak deck box about three feet to port and forward of the binnacle that houses the compass and the steering wheel. I end up focusing so intensely on those two things, the compass, the radar that to me, the whole world becomes very small. The more I focus, the smaller I become and as I shrink the sounds of the large world around me fade out of view. Smell and taste are not far behind. I’m left there in my miniature world of direction, illuminated by the red of the compass light and eye straining amber punctuated by the large dull pains of my very, very small body.

At 12:45 AM on the 15th of August, 20--, I look out from my small world and hear the sound of the engine on the sailing vessel Sovereign Nation spit, sputter, and…Die!

I hold my breath for a long, tight moment, during which nothing happens. I fall off the wind just a little bit and get broad sided by a big wave, spin the helm to port and just save us from a knock down. Dena is now standing at the companionway. We stare at each other blankly and refuse to believe that it’s serious. I turn the key and the engine starts right up. Dena wilts and lies back down to sleep, but soon there after, the engine chuggs and dies again. She rises again with a renewed hatred for internal combustion technology.

Dena takes the helm and I go down below to see if I can, at the very least, comprehend what the problem is. Once below I grab the rechargeable flashlight and take off all the engine compartment doors.

Hey baby, try to be as light on me as possible, even if you have to fall off, ok?

I’ll do my best but it’s going to take me a minute to get this boat settled down. Just hang on to something for a second!

The bilge is getting full from the leaking packing gland but other than that I can’t see any thing out of the ordinary. The way it sounded when it died, there must be something wrong with the fuel so I get out a screwdriver and tighten all the fuel lines I can see. No go!

Dena stares at me from the helm quizzically, but I am without ideas. I try to finesse the throttle to keep it going, then find that by putting the transmission in neutral when it hesitates and throttling forward a little when it chugs I can keep it going. Then it dies again. There is no sleeping in this situation and I know that that’s all she really wants to do.

We decide that we’ll just have to sail for a while. Maybe the engine just got a little too hot. So we bring “him” into a broad reach and get shoved around by the weather until we feel that we’re getting too close to shore. We tack back out and try the engine again. It runs. It stops.

After a paralytic few minutes while we tried to decide what sail is best to strike and raise first in wind like this, we decide to try the jib. I go forward, buckled and strapped to the hilt with safety gear, to hoist the tiny storm jib.

The foredeck on a sailboat in a big blow is a very scary place. The wind and the crashing of the waves, along with the constant flow of water over the deck and the fact that the world itself is twisting and jerking all around you, make every step crucial to your survival. I loose the jib halyard on the main mast and through it slack with a half hitch on top for good measure, slowly move forward from there and snap my safety line to the bow pulpit lifelines, step out where the bow pulpit should be and into the icy, cold waters of the straight of Juan De Fuca!

The shock of freezing cold water on my body distorts every single aspect of reality. The cold is like fire really, but only for a second and then it’s heavy. Everything gets incredibly loud all of the sudden and yet I can still hear Dena say, “Are you ok? Please tell me your ok!”

Ok, I'm ok… I didn’t fall over, thus not breaking the first of the two rules that we have on board.

One: You must not fall overboard! You can jump when the weather conditions are good for that kind of thing, but you must never fall.

After lifting myself back up and out of the water I proceed with the plan. Just get the sail up, that’s all I have to do. The sail goes up without a hitch and the boat starts to perform. He heels into the wind and settles into the waves like a charm.

I come back to the cockpit looking as though I’ve been through hell and take the helm. Dena considers my freaked out expression a moment, then jumps down below to grab the GPS and do a reading. Her hunch is right on. Instead of heading WNW, like our compass reads, we are heading ENE. Backward, straight into the ship channel and of course the radar says it’s full of ships!

“I’ll get it!” Dena replies and within seconds the mizzen is down and stowed. Dena then jumps down below again to grab the GPS for another reading, “shit, we’re still going the wrong way! How is that happening? That must be one hell of a tide that’s coming in or this is the strongest wind we’ve ever been in.”

Ok, in case your still a little confused by our flippant use of pro-nouns, our engine, affectionately called “Volva”, is female and the boat as aforementioned is male. They are two completely different entities.

The main is up, but even double reefed we can’t quite make any headway. There is no more fight in us. We’ve been stalled and slowed all day and night by adverse weather. Now our asses are kicked and we’re dead in the water with an engine that won’t run and conditions all wrong for sailing. Wait, we could probably sail with a tail wind…

After agonizing for a brief moment about going back to Port Angeles, we bring him about and he starts to pick up speed. The waves are still huge, but at least they’re following us. Just as my shift ends at 4:00 AM, we reach a strange balance. The waves and tide are pushing the hull faster than the wind. Effectively, the wind dies with the exception of a mighty gust now and then.

I dream I see myself as an infant. Over my head is a large piece of corrugated foam rubber. It keeps striking me on the top of my head, and making a loud crashing sound so I laugh uncontrollably. As I come to, I realize that Dena has been calling me for quite some time. I bolt upright and head aft to see what the problem is. It’s nothing, she just has to pee. I take the helm and realized that that crashing sound from my dream is the pumping of the main. I grab the main sheet and ride out this variable wind like I’m John (fucking) Wayne riding a whale, main sheet in one hand with the slack in my teeth, wheel in the other!

The game for this watch is trying to keep the boom from tearing up the main sheet. I experiment with all different angles to the waves, but I never do find a heading that keeps the boom down and the sail tight. After a couple of hours, I have to pee and call James on deck for a break. We decide that the pumping is unacceptable and try the engine again. She starts; she runs. Best of all, she keeps running all morning and brings us back to Port Angeles twenty-eight and a half hours after first starting the engine the day before.

Today, we have set out asking everyone who will listen what he or she thinks our problem is.

“Air leak in the fuel lines, that’s my best guess,” says Big Bill at Sunset wire and rope.

“Water in the fuel, it’s gotta be water in the fuel, aint that right Zeb?”

Fuel! The destroyer of civilization, in less then two generations mankind has almost completely wiped out all of the biologically stored petrol-chemicals that the planet Earth has so unsuccessfully hidden from our greedy ilk.

We decide to change the all of the fuel filters and clean out the entire fuel system. This is a job for people who are not us. If we were into this kind of thing I’d be inclined to say that the fuel system on Sovereign Nation was pretty straight forward and easy to work on. The problem lies in the fact that we’re not into this kind of thing!

In 1994 James proclaimed his independence from the oil industries of the world by selling off his last internal combustion street vehicle, a 1983 Gold Wing 1200cc. He also sold his T.V. the same day and hasn’t gone back to either one of them since. He in turn bought a really nice hard tail mountain bike, a Cannondale M-500, set up for hauling ass on the grueling, concrete hills of Seattle, Wa. And just like that his life changed. I got rid of my last car shortly after James and I met in 1996, a ’92 Ford Taurus, and turned around and bought a Cannondale M-900 and although this shit aint easy it does prove to me that independence is all in the proclamation.

So anyway, now we have to take the fuel system apart and in doing so we discovered that the water/fuel separators were both full of water. Next we have to order the filters and in the mean time flush the fuel tanks. We wait; get the filter. Putting it back together, a fuel vent screw breaks. James gets both pieces out of the engine casing, but then we have to order a new vent screw. No one in town has one. We wait; get the vent screw.

My impressions of Port Angeles are bleak at best. Partly because after two weeks of chasing down parts, on foot, from one end of this redneck hellhole to the other, special ordering this filter, that vent screw, we are inexplicably still here. And also, it's just a shitty town. Killed in It's prime from lack of culture and a logging industry who's only visible functions are to make money, make filth, and promote hatred and fear amongst a largely television shocked and mostly poor populace.

The only nice thing about the town is its library. That’s right! Of all things. Obviously new, probably funded by a bond that many residents resented, their library is bright and shiny and has fifteen public access computers on a T-1 line. We check the weather and our email daily. We have to wait through all this August bad weather and bad news about our erstwhile cat “Fritz”, who ran away from our friend in Seattle, Teshan, the day we left Point Roberts and came back beat up with an infection in his leg on the day our engine died in the Strait.

When we have all the parts we need and the weather has a little break, I stop by the counter in the library on my way out. I describe my situation, explain that checking the weather like this increases my chances of making it to the Pacific safely, and I thank them for making the computers available. The response from the stoic hairspray smelling library assistant: silence and a sneer at my ragged sweat pants and fancy boating jacket.

Nine days after arriving back in PA, we leave again. Up at sunrise, 6:00 AM, stoked about getting under way. We cook a big breakfast, start the engine, and put out by 7:00 AM. About three-fourths of the way out of Port Angeles Bay the engine starts to spit and sputter.

Ok, so we head back in. This time we go for the public dock in downtown Port Angeles, right next to the M/V Coho, the ferry to Victoria, B.C. Canada. The whole way in the engine is straining to stay alive but with a little finessing we make it all the way to the farthest finger out in the marina.

It look’s like there is fuel leaking from the vent screw areas and if fuel is leaking out, then air is leaking in. Ok, so we are supposed to replace the old, worn copper washers. Everyone we talked to told us that we have no other option, but no one has copper washers.

I didn’t want to spend another special-order week in this fucked up, sulfuric smelling, redneck housing burg and neither did James. At this point, we are unwillingly noting the help wanted signs. I mean, you never know…

After taking the fuel input system apart and waiting for Dena's return, she took off on her bike to try to find the copper washers we need for the fuel injector, banjo bolts, I resign myself to basking in the sun on this truly beautiful summer day.

I ride to every single auto parts place in town. I ride to every single hardware store in town. Finally, at Swain’s general store, a lady calls every place she could think of and asked them all to give her more ideas. Finally, someone suggested a trucking company with a shop just a little ways out of town. Sure enough, they run diesel trucks and they have those little copper washers for our fuel lines. Unfortunately, a little ways to a driver is not quite a little ways to a bicycle rider.

The helpful lady who found my washers also tried to give me directions. She showed me a map and traced my route in red so that I would be sure not to get lost, even though the map is no longer accurate because of road work they are doing. After a moment’s thought, she drew in the new roads and scribbled out part of my red route, replacing it with a fat green line. I gazed at the now illegible map for a second, looked at her again, then smiled and said thank you.

A soft faced, soft spoken man in his early thirties touched my elbow as the lady turned away, her good deed done. He took me aside and explained that he biked out that direction to his job every day. Turns out, the great green road she showed me is the most torturously hilly way to get there. He swiped me a new map and traced the best bike roads with a dirty index finger. I thanked him sincerely and he blushed and waved away my thanks.

If not downhill both ways, his route is at least fairly flat with a very few fast steep hills. The other way would have meant many long ups and downs. When I reached Atlas Trucking, I introduced myself to a grease monkey in the shop who grunted something that must have meant follow me, because when I didn’t, he grunted again, this time with a guttural monosyllabic string of consonants and gestured impatiently for me to come along. He then opened a five foot long metal drawer in a seven foot tall metal chest and poked through the small metal boxes inside. When he’d fished out the one he wanted, he flashed his teeth at me in what I take to be a smile and hands me the box.

“Oh! Um, thanks!” I bumble as he walks away, and opened the box. Inside are stacks of copper washers, neatly arranged by size and spotlessly clean. I pulled out the sizes I needed and tucked the box back in the long, shallow drawer. After looking in vain for someone to thank again, I left, thinking good thoughts about Port Angeles for the first time in this trip. On the beautiful downhill ride back to the boat, I reevaluated my impression of Port Angeles a little. Just a little.

I just heard this fat tourist woman, dressed in a pink and chartreuse aesthetic insult, say to her complacent partner.

I pop my head out of the companionway to say, “You really think so? Because I think you’re fat, ugly and loud and I can paint my big boat to make it prettier! Now, can you please get the fuck away from both my boats!” They gaspingly shuffle away with the zip, zip, zipping sound of fat legs stuffed into a polyester pants suit.

Just after noon today, we said goodbye to Bill, the diesel mechanic, who finally fixed once and for all our Volvo MD3B fuel system. He moved through our fuel lines like the scientific method personified. He handled his tools like detachable parts of his hands and moved around in our bilge like our cat use to, only Bill didn’t leave white fur all over the place. The only thing Bill left is a fixed fuel system. She purrs like a kitten! He found a fuel-water separator that we didn’t even know was there way back up in the bilge. He pulled it out to reveal a totally water logged filter. “Yep,” he said, “this here’s your problem, she should run fine from here on out.”

“Well, you owe me seventeen bucks for the fuel filters and I’ve been here for, I don’t know, let’s just say fifty bucks!” He said.

“Wow! You bet, thank you so much!” I reply and shook a hand that felt like metal coming out of Bills large body and Dena went down below to grab the checkbook.

Dena and I decided to enjoy the rest of the day by taking a long walk along the waterfront back to the Boat Haven for showers and then getting ready for our 6:00 AM departure the next morning. As we leave the public dock, the M/V Coho is just about to load so there are tourist all over the sidewalks, the streets, and every parking lot along the waterfront. A group of guys with a video camera are pointing it at people and asking them where they are from. For the most part they get the expected responses: Issaquah, Renton, Bellevue.

I must say that my impressions of Port Angeles changed quite a bit after meeting Bill the diesel guy. I mean, here is a guy who made a house call on a Saturday, at a public dock, in the middle of summer and only charged us fifty bucks to get our engine running when he knew that we would pay pretty much anything he asked for. His civility blended with that of the woman who made all the phone calls for Dena at Swain’s General Store and the guy that gave us the copper washers for free at Atlas Trucking and Bill at Sunset Wire Rope and Zeb and Wayne. It just goes to show you that when you’re truly in need, civilization abounds.

Even the tourists seemed better today. As we’re coming back on board from our long walk, this very nice young Asian girl waved and asked in that international hand-language whether or not she could see inside the boat. Being a sap for a pretty face, I agreed. She ran down the dock and jumped on board. She very nervously went below, checked out the way we live, bowed, said oh and thank you about twenty times and ran away. After that we have a great big plate of pasta each and watched the sunset on the Puget Sound for the last time.

We took off from Port Angeles with our bellies full on a strait of windless glass.

My first watch is short, only an hour and uneventful. On my down time I manage to rig the bow pulpit back in place again re-broken on our last “night from hell” and get some foredeck duties done. The water is so calm and the air so clear that you can see the trees on the hills of Vancouver Island about 10 miles away. I read some, but the bilge is filling up so fast from our now blown-out packing gland that it keeps us both pretty busy all day. We just have to watch it constantly and turn the bilge pump on now and then.

The packing gland is the point where the propeller shaft comes through the hull, it’s housed in what’s called a stuffing box. Basically, it’s a large bolt with waxed flax stuffed into it. When the bolt is tightened and the flax gets wet it expands and keeps the water out. It’s supposed to anyway!

On my second watch a really thick bank of fog rolls in on top of us and produced our only scare of the day. We only have about twenty feet of visibility so I have my eyes peeled on the radar and the compass. Suddenly, a small plastic destroyer with no radar reflector appeared off our starboard bow, blowing a very long blast from a squeaky, weak hailing horn. I spin the wheel over to starboard as did the skipper of the little plastic destroyer and we manage to just miss each other by a whopping fifteen feet to our portsides, both of us smiling and waving as we sail on by. In seconds, the other boat disappears into the fog. By 3:45 PM the fog…Just, up and quits! Out comes the sun to warm our chilled wet bodies. Dena takes the helm at 4:00 PM and at 6:30 PM we made landfall in Sekiu, WA, the land of a million RVs!

…And no cleats on their creaky-ass docks! Some dipshit had apparently decided that when in Sekiu, you don’t need cleats. They have small holes drilled into the docks themselves, through which you have to thread your line. More than anything, this means we have very little control of the boat with the mooring lines as we pulled up to the almost sunken dock. You have to get your boat to just stop and wait for the lines to be fixed in place. Not an easy task when there’s a 15 knot wind blowing you away from the dock and about 5 tons of windage above the water line.

After a triple-pass landing in that stiff wind, the only wind of the day, Dena gets us down for the night but we have no time for rest - not yet anyway. The water is coming in through the stuffing box like it’s a fire hose turned on full. After we shut the engine down, I jumped down into the aft port side settee, our access hatch to the packing gland, and went to work. Right out of the gate, the access hatch falls on my head, along with my screaming headache from breathing diesel fumes all day this makes my mood for this little operation much to be desired. Dena runs forward to find some flax while I unscrew the bolt on the stuffing box. After getting the bolt all the way off I discover that there is no packing gland at all. The flax has completely disintegrated! Dena found the flax, which is the wrong size, and cut it in half along the length of it so it would fit between the nut and the shaft. I then stuff the flax inside the packing bolt and tightened down. It worked! The water just stopped.

So we shagged the night on Curly's dock and slipped into Olson's RV hell for some, unbeknownst to Olsen, free showers. Then back to the boat for some of my killer "Apocalyptic Pizza" and a good night’s sleep.

Tonight, the boat’s completely silent except for the minute sounds of two people engaged in the act of synchronized breathing.

At 9:50 AM we are underway once again. It is another windless, sunless day as we slowly motor our way up the clear-cut coast of the Straight of Juan de Fuca. By 2:10 PM we are moored at the Makah Marina in Neah Bay, Washington. The not-so-happy home of the last remaining whale hunting tribe in the U.S. the Makah Indians. We pull in, plug in and take off on foot for the closest grocery store.

Let me tell you, Neah Bay has the best general store that we've found so far. We get the Mountain Dew, the Mexican foodstuff, and the best little glass percolator in the world.

From the outside the Makah marina facilities look to be pretty good. Not so - one minute for one quarter on the showers! On top of that, the whole facility stinks like fish and feces. On my way back down to the boat from the shortest shower of my life, I saw a group of seven presumably Makah men and woman docking in a faux-dugout, made out of fiberglass, whaling boat. As I walk by the group, I smile and nod in that living on the water kind of way, when I make my way to the last woman in the group she hocks up a big loogie and spits it right in front of my left foot! Although I can't really blame her for this pathetic act of vulgarity, it has always seemed to me that people who live on the water, no matter what their color, bear the same burden in life. I truly hope that that bullshit somehow makes up for all the oppression that my colorless ilk have bestowed upon her race. We won't be staying in this lovely place one second longer than we have to.

Up at 7:00 AM. The fog is so thick that you can't see the rock jetty leading in to the marina 20 yards away.

So we wait… Perfect Pete (the mechanical computer voice on NOAA weather radio) says it's going to clear up by 11:30 AM. He lied.

With the radar on and Dena on the bow, we take off through the soup. Neah Bay is a maze. I mean, it's even hard to navigate on a clear day without all the little fishing boats zipping across your bow much less in the fog with every gung-ho salmon fisher in the area within ten feet of our bulwarks. It’s hell but we don't hit anything so I guess we do it right. All day long we motor due west in the thick-ass fog surrounded by huge ships and little plastic destroyers. At 6:45 PM we just couldn't take it any more. We put the sails up and turned the engine off! By the time the sails are up we are out of the fog and the clear silence is beautiful.

At 6:55 PM August 8th in the year 20-- the crew of the sailing vessel Sovereign Nation is at long last sailing in the Pacific Ocean.

Just as the boat really starts to perform under full sail, right next to us swims a struggling Sunfish slapping at the surface of the water. It literally looks like it is waving us a safe journey.

At 8:00 PM I’m back on deck for my 8 PM – 12 AM watch only this time I’m sailing in the Pacific Ocean. This is something neither one of us has ever done before and the emotional rush itself is all that I had expected it to be. And the experience…Is so much better! The large Pacific Ocean rollers comb under us at the beautifully slow pace of nine feet every 20 seconds.

We settle in at 185 degrees, almost due south, on a starboard tack with a following swell that ranged from 9 to 14 feet all night. This is it! All the bullshit we've been given, all the pounding we've taken, all the walking we've done, all the lies we've been told, all the sweating and itching and crying and puking. It's worth it, every second of it!

The sun is completely out of sight by 10:00 PM and the moon is a gloriously bright crescent that by 11:00 PM is my tracking line. Once the moon sneaks in behind the main mast all the sails seemed to light up at once. It is one of the most beautifully peaceful moments of my life so far. To say that I will never forget this moment would just be selling it short, but what can you say about words. They sell everything short…

Dena is on at 12:00 AM and sleep I did. For the first time in as many days, weeks that we've been out to sea I slept the sleep of the sailor, deep and sound with a fathomless peace that was indeed too short.

For four days and three nights we sailed in the evening and motor sailed during the dead hours. If not for the sonic intensity of the engine and the fact that we only have 60 gallons of water on board I don't think we would have ever come down from that high, the sailing in the Pacific Ocean one.

The farthest out we went was about 120 miles. For the first two days the land isn't even a thought in our collective heads. We pass each other at the change of watch with a kiss but no words for two whole days, complete silence with the only exception being the engine from 5:00PM to 8:00PM. By 3:00 PM on the second day the clouds settle in on top of us and we know that we are in for a night of squalls with maybe even some rain. Squalls with rain, yep, all night!

A small Asian fishing fleet paced us for most of the day and well into the night. I say Asian because I can’t understand anything that’s being said on the radio and those two boats with their downriggers out are the only things within sight, all day! Strange things happen to your perspective when you are paced by another boat at sea. You get a not-so-funny feeling that you’re not moving. Every hour on the hour I would do my GPS reading and, sure enough, it would confirm our headway but those two boats have been in the same place all day and most of the night. It’s very frustrating because when there is nothing on your horizon the loneliness and isolation can becalm your fractured nerves but when there is another boat out there you have to watch it.

After the sun goes down the squalls start coming at us at a rate of once every fifteen minutes or so and they get worse each time they hit but the wind was consistently from the SSE so at least we don’t have to (get to) tack. At about 9:30 PM I decide I’ve had enough of our Asian fishing friends and hauled out all sheets to change our course from 185 south, a close reach to 270 west, broad and off the wind and that kicks us up to 6.5 knots. With the wind coming from the south and the swell coming from the north-west we take a beating for the two and half hours it takes to get out of sight of those fishing boats. Once the boats are a dim glow on the horizon I changed our course again to 185 and Sovereign Nation settles in very nicely to the following seas for the remainder of my watch.

Our Seth Thomas watch clock rings eight bells every four hours, the evens on the top of the hour and the odds on the bottom. It always seems that the first 30 minutes take three hours and the last three and a half is just the painful residuals of Einstein's thing. I would hear that first bell and I would cheerfully announce "One eighth down!" And Dena, if she’s awake, would always give a little chuckle.

After that night of squalls, rain and pesky fishing boats, Dena comes up on deck to do her 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM watch and announces that it’s time to head back in towards land. My reply is a simple, "ok".

She plotted a course that would take us into Newport, Oregon by, her estimate, 2:30 PM the next day and be damned if she isn't right on the money, I mean, within ten minutesto the dock! There must be something to that "Portuguese Navigator" thing. Whatever it is, I love it.

As we approached Newport, Oregon we get our first sight of civilization from the small fishing boats that swarm the area before we even see land. Mingled with the fishing boats are tourist boats that hound a small pod of gray whales for hours with they're green peace inspired oooo's and they're adjectivally liberal ahhhhh's.

I watched the horizon on and off throughout my shift, expecting to see something before too long. We are still about fifteen miles out when I realized that the dark band running through the cloud on the horizon is not a sign of bad weather. The clouds are very thick at ground level, but as we ease in closer to land, the tops of mountains begin to take shape within the clouds.

We approach at a heading of 115 degrees, ESE, and as the mountains become more and more defined I feel a sort of nostalgia for them. Mountains would never again own my imagination. I feel so strongly my attachment to the sea that I begin to regret our decision to make landfall here. The waves and weather some how seem friendlier than the people and buildings ever have. Even my sleeplessness seems a sharper pleasure than pain.

Shrugging off my desire to just turn back out to sea, I point the mountains out to James and get into the spirit of being the first human to discover land aboard Sovereign Nation. I studied our course, position and speed and realized that my estimated arrival time is right on!

I’m back on deck at 12:00 PM to bring us into port under perfectly clear skies and a minimum of 12 miles visibility, a beautiful day indeed. At about 1:00 PM I spot the Yaquina Head lighthouse which is 4.5 miles north of the entrance bar to Newport. The swells are huge, ranging from 12 to 14 feet, but following us, so not too scary. The approach to the bar is easy enough but because of the strange angle of the jetties, sweeping SSW, we get some rough seas just as we enter the bar. The entrance itself is not very wide, only about 500 feet, so if you approach on an ebb tide, which we do, the water is pretty rough. The outgoing tide fights the incoming swell and gives us a bit of a chop. We must have caught it at a good moment, though, because we have little trouble over the bar and none in the channel.

The only way to see Newport, Oregon as a beautiful city is to approach it from the ocean. If you don't it just looks like another strip mall along Highway 101. But from the water it’s quite a sight. One of the biggest tourist attractions of the town is the massive suspension bridge that crosses over Yaquina Bay. It’s truly impressive, but again, only if you approach it from the water. Just east of the bridge to starboard, inward bound is the Port of Newport public marina, our lovely home for the next eleven days.

In honor of our now firm tradition, we cleat, stow, tidy, pay and leave. With directions from the cheery lady in the marina office, we take off on what ended up being a very long walk to Mexican food. People that own cars just don’t comprehend distance! The marina is across the bridge from the town, meaning that all of us sailboat cruisers, and we met more in Newport than anywhere previously, have to either walk miles to groceries, restaurants and the library, pay ruinous cab prices or bike and we only have one. Buses? Whatever, the New Port Bus schedule sucked! The bridge itself is perhaps a mile long and the town, as opposed to the highway spread, is at least another two miles away.

Starving, stumbling over the strange stillness of the land with our sea-legs, we speak little but hold hands. Coming around a wide curve, my gaze grazes a billboard advertisement for a concert by Chuck Berry and Sha-Na-Na. I smiled vaguely at the Chuck Berry Breakfast (private Joke) but James’ response is more excited. “Have I ever told you the story of…”

In 1993 I sometimes played percussion and background noise effects for the “Surrealist Magic Theater” a poetry night held at the now defunct “…The Weathered Wall” nightclub in Seattle. The show would all ways go at least until 2:00 A.M., then we would all go over to Nicks Place on fifth and Virginia for some over priced greasy food.

On one particular night I was there with my friend Rick and the road manager of our band at the time (Tchkung), Mark. After our food is served to us in rather large, luke-warm, clumps I noticed this guy from across the room staring at us with a 3:00 A.M. post grease-consumption, nicotine coated grin on his face. After about ten minutes of just staring he gets up, walks straight up to our table and says.

“You’re a percussionist!” To me and just stands there and waits for my response.

“Not me, I’ve been here all night, didn’t even know there was a show. No, I play base and I just know a percussionist when I see one. Do you mind if I have a seat?” He said in a very relaxed English accent and proceeded to be seated.

“Well, I play in a band that does lots of big expensive parties and I’m going to be here for a few days. Tomorrow night we’re going to play this birthday party for this rich guy named Bill Gates. Ever hear of him?”

“Ya, I’ve heard of the rich guy Bill Gates. I’ve also heard, If we’re talking about the same guy here, that he’s the, the um, richest guy in the world. ”What band do you play in?”

“Oh, I play base for this little band call Sha-na-na. Ever hear of us? He shows us that same grin again.

By the time he got the second na out of his mouth we all three busted up laughing!

“Hay man,” Mark jumps up on his seat and says. “Is B…B…Bowser still in your band?” And pushes his right bicep up with his left hand and flexes, Bowser style.

Presently calmed down after a barrage of Sha-na-na impressions we finally get around to asking him his name.

His name is Chico and he’d been playing with that band for quite some time I never really got how long exactly but I knew it was longer then I’d been playing drums and shit, I’ve been playing since I was in the 6th grade.

We sat there for at least two more hours drinking really bad coffee and talking to a guy about how it felt to be in a band that played the same shit over and over again, year after year for an incredibly long time! We came to the conclusion that he was a very cool guy that had a great paying gig for pretty much the rest of his life. On top of that he has a full package of bennies with vision and dentistry! The dude is set up and all he has to do is play the base on a bunch of songs that he knew too well. He had also developed an almost permanently sad look on his face.

“Don’t get me wrong!” Chico said. “I really love all the other guys in the band and their families, hell, some of them even have grandkids, and I love doing these big shows. You see, the people are almost all ways nice and the money is as good as it gets but what I’d really like to do while I’m in Seattle is play some good old fashion surf music in a small night club with a bunch of local guys. You think you could make that happen?”

Mark leaps out of his seat once again and practically launches our, now very old, very cold, breakfast remains all over the table next to us. Now the temporary home of a small group of gangsta types who were as blown away as we were that this guy, that sat at our table, really was in the band Sha-Na-Na.

Make it happen, are you kidding?” Mark says. “Every Wednesday a friend of ours does a poetry slam at this little place in lower Queen Ann call “The Emerald Diner”. James here is booked to play there tomorrow night which is Wednesday! I’ll call the Boss Martians as soon as I come too, there a local surf trio, and Dave, our booking agent friend at the bar, I know once they hear who wants to play with them they will be there, and you know Dave will just love it!

“So,” Rick said to Chico. “Just like that your dream to open up for a “Poetry Slam” in a dive in Seattle with a bunch of surf punks playing old Ventures tunes is finally going to come true. You’re a lucky man!”

“I would say so, yes, but unfortunately my paying gig is tomorrow night as well so I won’t be able to open the show. We’ll have to be the headliner for this one, now won’t we! You see the old folks don’t like to have us lowly musicians around for very long. They like to get on with there business, if you know what I mean (I didn’t). So, I’ll be there at about ten, how’s that then?”

“Of course you played the show! How was it?” Dena asks taking one last bite of chilli Reano.

“It was great! Chico and this guitar player guy showed at about ten, the Boss Martians had been there for about an hour and I had been there all night running sound for the poetry slam. From the time Chico pulled out that 30 year old Fender Precision Base with the word CHICO written in a wavy reflective decal till 2:00 A.M. when we practically had to chase people out of the place, it was just magic. Those two guys from Sha-Na-Na knew every old surf tune that the Boss Martians knew with such precision that it just inspired all of us to play that old shit just like we’d written it. The list of songs was unbelievable, well enough to last for almost three hours. And the place was on fire, I mean there were people dancing all over that packed little room! Hell, even those ‘gangsta types’ from Nick’s the night before showed up. It was a truly great show and the fact of the matter was, Chico’s shit eating grin was non-stop the whole night through.”

After that it is only two miles of stumbling across the still noticeably unmoving land to our bunk aboard our Sovereign Nation.

From the beginning of our cruising life until even now we have communicated with our friends and loved ones primarily through the Internet. Because we don’t have an SSB (single side band ham radio) on board we have to resort to using the public library for the aforementioned Internet usage. At first it was rather pleasant, I mean the computers usually have DSL connections and the waiting times were never really more than, say, ten minutes at most. That is how it worked in Washington State but not in Newport, Oregon. The social scene at the “Pub-Lib” in Newport was a bit odd. We saw the same group of losers every single day and their petty power struggles became a kind of game by which we were highly entertained.

There’s the “Printer Woman”. She’s fat in a fluffy way that contrast sharply with her flat, straight hair. She has a very bad bright pink complexion and a Band-Aid that hops daily from her right eyebrow to her left cheek and back. She sits at the terminal just to the right of the printer and every time a print comes up she holds her left hand just above the print output tray on the printer so as to intercept the print and hand it to the person to whom it belongs. I found this to be so annoying that one-day I had to stop what I was doing and look up at her every time she did it. She would return my look with a condescending smile that is truly painful to behold. It seems that her behavior is unacceptable to pretty much everybody who needed any printouts I gladly never had to print anything but as far as I could see no one ever said a word to the poor wretch.

Then there is the “Dumped Yuppie”. He is most definitely a hard luck case who has been thrown out by the “little woman”. He is about five feet, six inches short with a neatly trimmed beard and hair to match, perfectly. At first glance he is normal enough although a bit pathetic looking. He looked at the street, sidewalk, floor a lot, always with his shoulders a bit on the downward slope. I don’t handle the hard luck case very well, so every time I saw him sadly looking at the floor in the library I just wanted to scream in his ear “hey man, lighten up will ya!”

One day, when I’m out side the Pub-Lib sucking on my American Spirit, I see the ol’ Dumped Yuppie pull up in his 1996 white Volvo station wagon. When he thought that no one was looking he goes around to the back of his car and opened up the wagon hatch to pull out his spiffy briefcase. There it is, in the back of that Volvo wagon - the most perfectly made bed I’ve ever seen in a car. What a sad schmuck. I felt around inside and just couldn’t muster up any sympathy for the fucker. He is just too pathetic and by the time Dena and I walked the two and a half miles to the Pub-Lib from the dock I’m always in a piss-poor mood.

The last of the regulars is truly the most annoying of the lot. My name for him is “Compu-Geek sans computer”. He’s a dick! Physically he looks like the “printer woman’s” annoying little brother. Bad complexion, a big spare tire and no visible signs of a personality. He is the guy who would come up behind you and let you know that you had five minutes left till your time on the computer was up. He wore navy blue high water slacks, a white short sleeve button up, brown penny loafers and carried a laptop computer case “sans computer,” slung over his shoulder every single day. When he sat down at the computer he would always give the person sitting next to him a dubious sideways glance and adjust his computer screen away from his neighbors encroaching eyes. There’s just nothing you can say to a guy like that, so most people don’t say anything at all and because of that he’s bitter. Shit, for all I know he’s taking over the cyber-world from a public computer in the Pub-Lib in the beautiful little town of Newport, Oregon and as far I’m concerned, more power to him.

On the first Tuesday after we made landfall in Newport we made our daily commute across the bridge to the Pub-Lib to do our computer thing and stayed there for most of the day. As we left the library we realized that we haven’t eaten all day, so it’s a gorging that’s in order. We asked the librarian if he knew of an all-you-can-eat and the only one he could think of is the local Sizzler about a mile up the road. Well ok, so we dragged our tired hungry asses all the way up strip-mall alley, highway 101, to the Sizzler for some good-ol’-down-home-trough-eat’n.

We stuff our faces on the most mediocre post-lunch buffet that I think either one of us has ever had the “pleasure” of gnawing on. As we come out of the place Dena is holding her abdomen in genuine “post Sizzler trauma” kind of way. I’m hurting too but I just attribute it to too much bad food so I really thought nothing of it. By the time we make it back to the Pub-Lib she is in definite pain and wants to go in and wait it out. She said it is like a huge cramp that started “here”, just below her heart, and ended “here”, just above her pussy. As the evening wanes into night she gets much worse. She cant stand up for any length of time and she starts talking real slow. Then she hit the bathroom and stayed there for a good (bad) 30 minutes. When she finally did emerge she simply says, “call a cab”.

I do and fifteen minutes later we are back on board the boat and she is in the throws of the worst case of food poisoning that either one of us has ever experienced. It isn’t until three days later that we could even talk about getting under way again. By that time we get hit by wave after wave of extreme high-pressure zones off the coast of Oregon. Best to wait them out.

In the process of all that waiting we entertained the thought of wintering in Newport. So, we looked over the local publications’ help want ads and walked a lot back and forth to the library.

All this time Dena is getting her strength back up by checking the San Francisco job listings on “craigslist.org” and answering some help wanted ads that she thought would be good. I take that time to catch up on all my e-mailing and reading.

The weather is beautiful in New Port but “Perfect Pete” and all the weather faxes that we can get our hands on are insisting that just offshore it is really bad. About 400 miles north-north west is tropical depression “Cail” and there is another big bad high pressure off of cape Mendocino just south of Eureka, Ca. Looks like we’re are stuck, for a while at least.

The Ocean is a most unforgiving old dame. Respect, caution and, most of all, patience are the keys to one’s trespass upon her skin. From our living vantage point, Newport, Oregon, September 10, 200- we can plainly see that those three things are not to be compromised…Ever!

The bottom line is, we don’t go out even if we just feel it’s going to be bad.

Just as we resigned ourselves to staying in New Port, Oregon for the winter Dena got word from, what seemed to be a really great job opportunity in down-town San Francisco. All we needed at this point was an impetus.

The weather is back to being perfect and a good job offer in the Bay area is enough. We are out of here!

I watched the “Yahcties” next door to us get under way in their “Great plastic vessel” with their matching rain-suits and their “Aye-Aye sir’s” at 7:00 AM sharp. I yawned my impression.

By 7:30 AM Dena is up and on the cranky side. We skipped doing the coffee thing (always a bad idea) and decide go out for the last of the provisions needed for the long trip, well two-day trip ahead of us off shore.

Our first stop is the little “Rip-off-the-tourist addiction store” at the top of the dock. The only thing they have to offer is a group of tongue tisking red-necks with their faces practically stuck to the T. V. set. On the screen is what appeared to be a smoking pile of rubble in the middle of a city scape. Now, I don’t usually concern myself with what is on that screen but these guys are really into it and it doesn’t look like we are going to get any help from the guy behind the counter if we don’t at least ask what’s going on, so…

“Some towel-head fuckers just flew a couple of jet liners into the World Trade Center! Knocked that son-of-a-bitch right over!” Was the voice of one of the hypnotized “customers” but never taking his eyes from the screen.

“Yep, and you know Bush ain’t gonna sit on his ass like no Clinton neither,” said the customer representative behind the counter.

“Yeah,” I said and turned to Dena, and said “We got to get the fuck out of here! Let’s go to the super-market up the road.”

All the way to the “Newport Market” about a mile up the road we talked about the implications of what we had just experienced but at this point we just don’t have enough information to form a decent opinion.

At the market we load up on little odds-n-ins that we knew we would consume under way and then made our way back to the boat. Deep in thought, we hardly say a word all the way back.

“Look at that.” Dena says and pointed at a yellow arrowed sign on the side of the road that read, “God Bless America,

“Yeah, it means that a few guys can fly a couple of planes into a building or two and just like that Bush, our not-so elected President, is going to get everything he wants out of the blind-faith tax payers of this country! We’ve got to get out of this bum-fuck town!” I said.

At 9:40 AM we head over to the fuel dock and Dena whips us a perfect 180 in tight quarters, maneuvering us perfectly on our starboard moorings. Sovereign Nation gulps down 21.5 gallons of diesel fuel. And finally at 10:02 AM with Dena at the helm of her boat we get under way. I go down below to stow our gear and all the food we just bought and I notice immediately that it’s getting pretty rough and the fog has already laid in thick. Right about that time I get hit with the relentless shits that keep me unpleasantly preoccupied for the better part of an hour. Just as I’m heading back up on deck I notice that Dena in visibly shaking and we are socked in to the hilt in fog and cold and the big waves from the bar are just starting to kick up. She has just her Teva sandals on with no socks, shorts, a tee shirt and no coat at all! As soon as she sees me she calls my name and asked me to take the helm so she can gear up proper. As she gets back up on deck she smiles that beautiful smile and says. “I thought I lost you for a while.”

“You did, kind of.” I said. “I was stuck to the head! I didn’t know you weren’t geared up, I’m so sorry!”

“It’s ok, I’m ok! I love you.” She says and nudges me back out of the way to do her watch.

“Shit!” I say through a green faced smile, “I have to go!” and take off towards the companionway.

“I’ll be all right, let’s blow off setting sail for now we should motor out as far as we can any way, see you at four! I love you!” She said. And off I go “The king of the seas” to puke my guts out…

At 4:00 PM I take the helm and Dena just looks beat. The fog is relentless and the wind and waves although in our favor are much bigger then we are. A fifty-foot wooden boat is a really big deal until you put it up against the Pacific Ocean and then it’s just a spot on a roller, a blip on a radar screen somewhere. During the day you still get a feeling for the size of the vessel even though the waves in the Northern Pacific average from twelve to fifteen feet in hight and any ware from twenty five to fifty yards width in the late summer and early fall, but once the sun goes down your small.

Just after I take over I notice this incredibly annoying creaking sound over my right shoulder that has gotten progressively worse over the last two watches. Our dory, “Sojourner Earth” hangs off our dinghy-davits about half the time while we’re under way and sometimes she swings a bit causing the davit rig to creak maddeningly. I get frustrated with it quickly and whipped up a “super-duper-improv-knot” that I would all too soon regret.

At 6:30 PM the wind eased to about ten to fifteen knots. Perfect! Time to hoist the yards. Dena comes back up on deck to take the helm while I take the fore deck duties. With the sheets run, covers off and all halyards at the ready I give the order.

“Ok, head him into the wind!” We come about and take a couple of big breaking rollers over the bow with a loud crash, my lungs are then filled with the slightly bitter sea-spray, the pay off. Up goes the main like Marconi rigged it himself after that, the Jib, smooth as glass!

“Ok, finish the engine and bring him about!” I yell from my place at the Main Mast and by the time I get back to the cockpit Dena has already got the Main sheet trimmed and cleated. What a crew!

“Quite a change from that first Straight of Georgia nightmare,” she says and I give her a big wet sloppy kiss and say, “You said that right.”

I take the helm and Dena heads for the companionway. Before she goes down she turns to me and says.

“I’m going down below to take advantage of the quite time” She says and disappears down the hatch.

“Hey, if you’re going to go to sleep, why don’t you hit the running lights before you bed down and oh yeah, can you switch the batteries over?” I asked.

Every time that engine goes off it seems we magically come out of the fog. So now that the main and jib are set and we’re tracking at about 210 degrees S. S. W. at a heel of ten to twelve degrees our speed kicks in at 5.2 knots and of course the fog starts to break.

The wind has died down a bit more in the ten minutes it took to get the yards up, trimmed and everything secured for the next 24-hour starboard tack. As I turn my attention to the radar I notice that it has some how shut off. I see that Dena is still stirring below so I say.

“Hey, the radar shut off! And wait, the running lights are off as well. Dena, could you check the batteries to see how much juice they’ve got?

“Ok, I’m going to try the radar again. Keep an eye on it, will you?” I said and hit the switch for the radar. Just as I turn it on I hear a click and…

“Shit, the batteries just shot down to 8.25 volts!” Dena says and then gave me that all too familiar look reminiscent of Narvaez Bay that says, ‘what now?’

“Ok, switch it back over to both banks and we’ll try the engine. If it starts, we’ll motor sail into Port Orford and go from there.” I said and by the time I had finished saying it she had already done the switch over.

“Here goes!” And I turned the key. The old “Volva” didn’t even stutter! She just started right up. We both look at each other and give a mutual sigh and Dena heads back down below to listen to that grumbling old engine.

Ok, so we’re back to using our “auxiliary” power for this leg of our journey as well, damn! And back into the fog we go. There’s nothing like knowing that one of the most beautiful coast lines in the world is just on the other side of that fog bank!

Because our tachometer still doesn’t work we keep the R. P. M as low as we can and use our engine simply to maintain our fourtyfives on the waves. The current, following seas and our slight tail wind is what really drives the boat and slowly at that, about 4.2 knots with everything up and the sheets as tight as piano strings. We’ve got a loud slow night ahead of us. I reef hard on the wheel damper and proceed to get small.

8:00 PM Rolls around and Dena comes into view looking beautifully haggard and gives me that old familiar.

“Hi!” Stretching the vowel out to two syllables sounding as happy and fresh as if she had just gotten some sleep and is really stoked about inhaling four hours of diesel fumes.

“Hello my love. Sleep well?” I ask and in response she just scrunches up her face and shakes her head in the negative. I knew that but there is that off chance…

Dena plops down at the helm, surveys the navigation gear and puckers up for the “shift kiss” in witch I gladly give up along with those fumes.

Not much in the wind department but those waves should keep you awake for a while.

Sounds like fun to me, hey listen, for some reason the head keeps filling up all the way to the rim so I shut off the input valve. If you have to go you’ll have to turn that valve back on first, ok?

I head below decks to do my chart reading and check the bilge. At 8:00 PM on the 11th of September we are about 40 miles off the shore of Oregon dead even with the Siuslaw River and on a heading of 180 degrees dew south. Upon my bilge inspection I find that it’s full, of course.

I open up the packing gland access hatch to see ware all the waters coming from and discover that the water is spraying in much like that aforementioned fire hose from Sekiu, Washington. I proceed to turn on our 2,500-gallon per hour bilge pump and fill the skipper in on our present situation.

I really can’t sleep from 8:00 PM to midnight mainly because that time in the summer is mostly twilight and the most beautiful time of the day unless of course you‘ve got our luck with the fog then it’s just that spooky gray color that is just too much light to sleep with. So I just lay there and listen to our diesel and think of all the wonderful things that could go wrong. After about ten minutes or so I get up to go to the head to relieve myself of the “watch-dose” of Emer-gen C and I notice that the head is full to the rim with water. The wind has kicked up above decks so the water in the head is sloshing all over the place. I open the input valve, empty the head with the hand pump, do my thing, pump out the head again and close the valve. By the time I turn around I hear a big gulping sound, turn around to see the head is full again.

“Hey Dena, I think the head is leaking in through the output I’m going to have to shut the output valve as well as the input. Do you think you can hold it until we make land fall?”

“We’re still at least fourteen hours away from that, I don’t think so but go ahead and shut the valve, I’ll deal.”

I reach in to the sea-cock access hatch just below the bowl for the head and start turning the valve on the toilet output.

Just as I feel the valve start to tighten we get hit by a rather large wave on our portsides, where the head is, and the head literally explodes with a stream of sea water that shoots all the way to the trunkhouse top. I try to cover my head with the arm that is supporting my weight and I come crashing down on the valve with the entire weight of my body, breaking the valve off at the planks.

Now, the output for the head on this ship is about three feet below the water line so you can believe that when that two and a half inch valve broke off it started spewing a stream of water two and a half inches wide with the force of a twenty five ton ship in rough seas on top of it. The stream of water hit me in the middle of the chest and slammed me against the access hatch to the head, just as I turned to avoid the spray it gushed all over our bunk in the stateroom for just a split second. Just long enough to totally drench our dry, cozy little bunk. It was the force of that one wave that made the stream gush like that so presently the geyser has reduced itself to a steady influx of water. I grab what I can to try to stave the flow, a rag, a towel and a shirt or two and start stuffing what I can of them in the now gaping hole slowing it for just a few seconds.

“I’m fine but the sea-cock for the head output broke off at the planks and now we have a big hole in the boat. I stuffed some towels and shit in it but we’re going to have to plug it up from the outside some how.”

“Wow, um, well grab the emergency plug from the locker above the head and come on up here; I think I might have an idea.”

“Well we’ve got a good strong breeze to our portsides right now so we could haul everything in nice and tight, adjust our course to go on as broad a reach as we can get him, then let’s see if we can’t get the water line up above that hole.”

“Yeah, I see what your saying, If we can heel over enough I can climb out on the side of the boat and put the plug in from the outside.”

“Ok, but you’ll have to man those winches before you go,” and I hand over the plug.

I take the helm and slack the sheets to slow us up a bit to square us up on the waves then I change our course to a heading of 335 W.N.W. Dena grabs the jib winch handle, puts it into place then crouches down next to the winch.

“Ok, let’s get this straight, you’re going to haul the jib in as tight as you can get it and then move on to the main sheet. As soon as you get the main hauled in your going to have to move into place on the amidships taft rail really fast. By the time you get into place we should be heeled over as far as we’re going to go so you should be able to just hook on to the safety lines and climb on over the bulwarks to find the hole. Got it?”

Dena starts cranking on the jib sheet winch with everything she’s got and the boat starts to heel hard to starboard. As soon as the winch comes to a dead stop she jumps up, winch handle in hand, and moves to the main sheet winch.

The main sheet is a lot harder to haul because the sail is so much bigger then the jib is but she gets it pretty far in and then looks back at me for confirmation.

“I love you too,” and with that she moves forward along the now very high windward side of the boat, stops about mid way, hooks her harness into the life line and steps over the side of the boat and disappears. The Boat at this point is heeled over to about 25 degrees and I can hear the rigging start to vibrate and shutter with the immense stress that is now far more then we have ever put it through. The GPS is reading 7.5 knots when I hear a faint call above the scream of the rigging,

I lash down the helm with the slack from the jib sheet and go to the main to try to pull what’s left of in. One and a half turns and that’s all he’s got! We heel over to thirty degrees and I lose all helm because the rudder is now completely out of the water on the windward side. I still can’t see Dena. Shit she’s been down for too long!

According to the GPS we’ve now slowed to 5 knots but the boat is heeled over so far that the mast spreaders are just inches from splashing in the water and the jib is already getting wet. We’re going to lose the mast!

I can hear nothing but the rigging vibrating so loud now that it sounds like a freight train at full speed from about a foot away. Dena!

Another ten seconds of this and we’re going to lose the mast! I have to slack these lines now or we’re both going to die. I grab the main and pull it off the cleat and stand at the ready, still no sign from Dena.

I through a loop of slack in the main sheet to let it fly, the sail goes luff and the boat comes up with a gut wrenching lurch. Just at that moment I see one of Dena’s hands grab a hold of the life lines, then the other one with which she then swings her self back up on deck as the boat levels himself off. She’s drenched to the skin but she’s alive with a great big smile on her face and quick double thumbs up!

“Damn! I just couldn’t find the hole!” She says with a grin and gives me the best salty kiss I’ve ever tasted in my life then says, “shit I have got to pee!”

“You go down below and get as dry as you can, take your time, and when you get back up here I’m going to try and get some sleep for real this time.”

“Ok, By the way, thanks for holding on to it as long as you did, I don’t know if I could have done that.”

I dreamed I was lying in a green field with my head in Dena’s lap looking up at her lovely, piercing blue eyes I could just barely hear her over the sound of some great engine off in the distance. “What would you have done without me?” She says in a voice that was low and horse as if she’d been screaming.

About an hour after bedding down I decided check the bilge to make sure we are making progress in keeping the rest of the ocean out of our wooden vessel when I made the most dreadful discovery. The bilge pump is not working! Matter of fact it has not been working for the last hour or so and now we are full to the floorboards with bilge muck! Shit!

“That’s what I said! I guess I’ll get busy with the Gusher and try to at least get the water down to a working level. Whatever that means. I’ll let you know how it goes! Shit!” Now the real work starts.

The Gusher 25 proudly made in Ireland is pretty much the industry standard in manual bilge pumps. It’s all that, but the only problem that I have with it is simply that it's’ not self-priming but the fact is, if you have to use it it’s probably already under water and primed. Which, at this point our trusty Gusher 25 most defiantly is under water. Before we left Point Roberts I spent all of one of our, oh-so-valuable, work days rebuilding our, at least, 15 year old Gusher so although the circumstances are a bit stressed, I’m kind of psyched about putting it to the test. So I pump. Oh yeah baby, I pump! I pumped once, I pumped twice, I pumped… What the… After the third pump I could feel the inside diaphragm tare loose and that is the end of our Gusher 25!

“I felt something tear on the inside and then it just quit!” I said and went franticly looking for an alternative not knowing what it is that I’m looking for. The floorboards in the main saloon at this point are floating about an inch above their supports so every time I step on one it sinks just a little and squirts water straight up in the air. We’re sinking!

Finally, after about ten minutes of running the full length of the boat, flapping my arms and squawking profanities, I remember that we have a small tube style bilge pump in Sojourner Earth, our dory. Up the companionway I go at a full-on leap, right past Dena at the helm and into the dory nice and quietly hanging there on the davits. There it is our savior! The old Thirsty Mate a four foot gray tube with a long black handle, an input hole at the bottom and an output spout at the top, dry as a bone and totally operational. Here we go!

“You got that right.” I replied and went back down below to our pitch black, diesel screaming, carpet sopping, cave of a stinking, sinking boat.

The only bilge compartment I could find that is deep enough for the Thirsty Mate and close enough to the Gusher 25 output hose is the one directly under the engine. So, when I open up that hatch the engine got twice as loud, of course. I submerge that tube in the bilge, pull the output tube off the Gusher, insert the thirsty Mates output spout, get on my knees in the freezing cold, now about two inches deeper water, and pump.

For three hours I pump serenaded by the pounding of three Volvo diesel pistons and I finally get the water level below the floorboards. I sit up, shake off some of the cramping in my arm, take a deep breath and hear the terrifying sound of eight bells chiming out the shift change. I stand, stretch my now incredibly sore back, and with a horse scream I say,

I seem to remember Coos Bay and this fleet of fishers that went on for miles. The fog and the cold along with the drone of the engine and the sea, the never-ending black sea.

At 4:00 AM I stumble below to warm myself up with the old Thirsty Mate for a while. When my arm finally goes numb my mind is short to fallow. I awake to find that I have some how made my way to the portside settee and for some reason I manage to get up before the seventh bell rings.

Back up on deck I notice that the wind has kicked up to about 20 knots with seas between 12 to 15 feet and of course the fog is as thick as I left it, about 50 yards of visibility. At about 9:00 AM I get a blip on the radar screen that is a bit of a puzzle. It flashes on for about a second and then off for a long time. Whatever it is it’s huge, fast and coming right at us, and then it just disappears! I thought at first that it might be just a thicker version of our present fog bank because the radar is saying that it’s practically on top of us. Just as I’m on my way below decks to fetch the binoculars, Boom! From out of the fog comes a 100-ton Foss tug towing an over loaded barge of what looks to be wood pulp. Because our angle to the seas and the speed at which he is coming at us, with very little helm with all that weight he’s towing, I have to swing wide to his port, a taboo at sea to say the least. But hey, at least we’re not dead!

Dena, all this time has been down below pumping like mad on Thirsty Mate and pretty much missed the whole thing except for my expletives. Unfortunately for us both being desensitized to my freak-outs means that when there is a real emergency at hand, such as this one, she tends to under-react. Not her fault! For years I’ve been saying that I need to curb my emotional reactions to the little things.

“Holy shit, we almost got killed by 300-tons of steel and sawdust!” If nothing else, so as to get a better reaction from her. Presently she pauses from her labors just long enough to drowsily look up and reply.

“Sailing vessel off my port bow, this is the Kathryn Foss out of Cape Blanco, come in, over.”

(Katheryn Foss) “Captain I just wanted to let you know that I have two newly calibrated radar’s and for some reason you’re not appearing on either one of them, over.”

“My deepest apologies Captain. I don’t know if you can see from this distance or not but I do have a radar reflector attached to my mizzen topping lift, over.”

“Yep, I’m looking at you through my binoculars now and I can see what you’re talking about. I’ll be damned if I can figure that one out, I mean I’m picking up birds and waves and fog but no pretty little sail boats, over.”

“Well, at least we’re all still alive and much more awake now for sure. Thanks once again for the heads up, it will definitely keep me on my toes for the remainder of this journey I can assure you of that! I would wish you ‘fair winds and following seas’ but it looks like you make what you get so I’ll just say good luck to you. This is the S. V. Sovereign Nation, out.”

(Laughing) “Sovereign Nation, I do appreciate that. I don’t know how far you’re going but ‘Perfect Pete’ says it’s looking much better for the rest of the week. I can wish you ‘fair winds and following seas’ and I most defiantly do, but most of all, be careful out there. This is the Kathryn Foss, out, standing by on one six…”

After that Dena comes up the companionway with a fresh bottle of our drink of choice, two packages of “Emer’ gen-C” in a 24 once squeeze bottle with a big smile on her face and says, handing me the bottle.

“Thanks,” taking a swig from the bottle, “if I didn’t freak out about everything you could’ve at least joined in the terror.” I said, literally shaking from my fear, the wind and the cold.

“James if you didn’t freak out about almost everything there’s no way that I could love you the way I do. I mean, you do over react to a lot of things but those over reactions are a byproduct of your passions and I wouldn’t trade those passions for anything in the world. They make you who you are and I love that person.” She said and kissed me as the sound of eight bells marked the end of my watch.

Chilled to the bone I make my way down below and commence pumping. There’s no doubt that the best way to warm up after a cold foggy watch is to pump your ass off on a Thirsty Mate. Granted, I am beat and I’m desperate to do pretty much anything other then driving in the fog. I pump for a half an hour or so and then went forward and dropped dead tired onto our soaking bunk humming the theme song to “The Odd Couple”. Before I even get to the second verse I’m in such a deep, comatose sleep that when I hear Dena yell my name I just bolt up with a gasp and think for a split second that gravity had finally gotten us both.

“Could you take the helm please? I really have to pee!” She asks, crossing her legs and moving up and down in that all too familiar desperate gesture.

“Sure.” I said and went up on deck rubbing my sore eyes. She then grabs the five gallon bucket, shrugs and takes off down below.

Up on deck I notice that the whether has gotten considerably worse. The wind has increased to a stiff 35 knots with swells now averaging 12 to 15 feet and cresting. Dena has to change coarse quite a bit to line us up with Port Orford so now those big waves are slamming into our portsides mid-ship and sending a, no cavity is safe, body drenching spray of salt water every ten seconds or so into my face. The closer we get to land the more visibility we have so by the time I made my way above decks for Dena‘s pee break the fog had completely dissipated but it is still so very cold. By the time Dena comes back up on deck I’m soaked to the follicles and visibly shivering.

“That’s Port Orford!” She says pointing to a rocky spot off our starboard bow about five nautical miles ahead.

“There should be. What I thought I‘d do is keep on this heading for as long as I could and come about 90 degrees when we get close enough and let the wind and the following seas blow us in wing on wing. What do you think?”

“Sounds good to me if you think you can handle all this spray for that long. What do you think about going in a bit closer to land and making our way back up from there. It looks like there might be less wind closer in.”

“I don’t think so and plus there’s a lot of rocks around here!” She says, yelling above the din of the screaming wind.

“Oh yeah, there is that!” I agree and go back down below to hump on that pump for awhile and get warmed up again.

“Hey James! Could you call the Port of Port Orford on the VHF to find out what kind of facilities they have? I know they don’t have a regular dock so maybe we should find out what they do have.”

“Port of Port Orford, Port of Port Orford, Port of Port Orford (a real pain the ass to say), this is the sailing vessel Sovereign Nation come in over!”

“Go ahead Sovereign Nation this is the Port of Port Orford,” came a voice after three tries.

“Port Orford we have a little emergency on our hands, we broke off a sea-cock below the water line last night in rout to here from Newport and of course both of our bilge pumps died as well.We got the hole stopped up but we’ve been taking on water for some time now through the packing gland with nothing to pump it out but a little hand pump. I’m not saying we’re sinking (we are) but I would say we are in desperate need of some new bilge pumps.

“I have two questions then. 1) Can we purchase a bilge pump in the town of Port Orford? And 2) Is there a dock in your harbor that we can moor at for at least three days? Over.”

“Ok, we don’t have a dock that can take your depth but we can set you up with a mooring buoy in the harbor and I just got word that you can get those bilge pumps that you need right here on the dock.

“Sovereign Nation we are standing by and ready to tow you in if you need that kind assistance, also if you need someone to bring a pump out to you we can make that happen as well. Over.”

“Sovereign Nation are you the vessel that called in a MAYDAY last night off Cape Blanco? Over.”

“That is a negative, sir. This is the first attempt at contact that I have made with you. Over.”

“Ok, I’ll explain that question to you when we see you here on shore. If you need anything and I mean anything! Don’t hesitate to ask. I’ll be standing by on 09 alpha, this is the Port of Port Orford, out.”

“I wonder what that was all about?” Dena asks. “The MAYDAY question I mean.”

“Who knows, I guess we’ll find out though.” I reply and looking up I noticed for the first time that Dena is completely drenched in salt water.

“Hey!” I said. “You look cold, you should come down below and put on something dry and warm.”

“Ok, as soon as I come about and get us steady I’ll take you up on that. Witch by the way, I’m going to do right now.” She says and proceeds to spin the helm to starboard.

I held on to the balance post in the galley and with a great lurch and the slow creaking and popping of a 25 ton wooden sailboat coming about Dena made the turn that brought us back into the following seas and shook out some slack on the sheets. Just as I was going to tell her how graceful that was I heard the sound of a huge splash that sent a deluge of water cascading through the companionway followed by a loud crack and a smashing sound that came from just over Dena’s shoulders! We have been hit by a huge wave that has pooped the entire cockpit and aft section on the boat from the galley back. I heave myself up on deck to discover that our dory has been filled to the gunwales with seawater and torn off one side of the davits. The weight of the full 6-foot by 4-foot boat is bringing the bow of Sovereign Nation up at a terrifying rate.

We stow Dena’s bike just behind the pilot’s seat in the cockpit so getting to the dory is kind of a drag unless you are in an emergency and willing to chunk the bike overboard. I guess we haven’t reached that point yet.

I squeeze in behind Dena and lumbered over the bike to try and undo the “Super-Duper-Improv-Knot” that I’d tied in the dory painter to hold the little boat firm to the davits. I manage to get the knot loose by using my Leatherman in my right hand while hanging out over the water clinging to the mizzen, boom-gallows with my left hand. I through the end of the painter line over my shoulder and asked Dena to wrap it around something. As soon as the knot came loose the dory came crashing back into our beautiful bright worked transom on Sovereign Nation. After that first crash the dory gets caught up in another wave that brings the bow of the little boat up just enough for me to get a good hand hold on it’s port side bulwarks. Ok, so I managed to get the boat free but she’s full of water and the Thirsty Mate is predisposed at the time being. I have to some how in my present contortion, hanging off the davits with one arm on the back of a boat in wicked seas, lift this heavy little fucker up out of the water, turn it on it’s side, empty it and set it back down! Ok, I grunt and lift, turn and empty, let go and that empty little boat falls to the water with a mighty smack! I grab the end of the painter line from Dena whip up a bowline on the davits, paid out enough line to keep the dory at a safe distance and pried myself out from behind the pilot’s seat.

“ Well, I don’t think we can use it and remember we’re going to be tied to a mooring buoy. Shit, that reminds me, I told the harbor master I’d call him back to let him know when we’d be coming in.”

As I head back down the companionway I notice that the boat is full to the floorboards. Again!

“Port of Port Orford this is the Sovereign Nation on oh-niner come in, over.”

“ I just wanted to let you know that we are just coming around your jetty now and also to see if you have any other directions, over.”

“Sovereign Nation it’s good to hear from you! Just come into the harbor and hook up to the blue and white buoy with the red dinghy hanging on to it, over.”

“The blue and white buoy with the red dinghy, received. Hey listen, we just got pooped by a big one and our dinghy was torn off of our davits and is beat up pretty bad. You mentioned that there is a dinghy on the mooring buoy that we will be occupying. Do you think it would be possible for us to borrow that boat while we’re here? Over.”

“Well the owner of that boat is standing right here and he’s nodding his head and saying yes, so I guess the answers yes! Over.”

“Ok then! I can’t tell you how much we appreciate all your help. We’ll be seeing you real soon. This is the S. V. Sovereign Nation standing by on oh-niner, out.”

“It’s no problem and it’s my job, so just get here alive and that will be thanks enough! This is the Port of Port Orford, out.”

So the situation is this, Port Orford is a small fishing village nestled in a hook shaped cove surrounded by cliffs. The marina looks like an extension of one of those cliffs because it is in fact a cliff in itself. The giant dock stands about 20 feet out of the water at high tide and is primarily used by fishing boats. The small fishing boats pull up to the huge Teflon coated post that support the dock and wait to get hauled up by one of the massive cranes at the top of the dock, two cranes a ten ton and a twenty ton. If you wish to use this facility they leave it up to you to rig your boat with the properly balanced strap supports so all they have to do is lower you down a hook and haul you up. It really is quite impressive to see but by the time we come around the jetty the only things we can possibly think about are quite, sleep and safty.

As soon as we entered the little cove, we could see the red dinghy that is hooked up to a blue and white mooring buoy. Great, they did their thing, now all we have to do is ours. The wind didn’t die down as we came around into the shelter of the cove as we’d hoped, so we have to do this little operation in an unexpected unrelenting stiff breeze. At least we didn’t have those big waves to deal with.

Dena brought us in nice and slow, heading into the wind as close as she could keep it while I am on the bow ready to grab the bow line of the little red boat that is attached to the mooring buoy’s loop. As we get right on top of it I reached for that frail little line with our gaff hook and suddenly that little boat just takes off with the wind down the length of our boat. It came away from the mooring buoy before I had a chance to even grab it and now I have to chase it down!

Dena, all this time, didn’t know what was happening so I have to inform her as I’m running aft to catch their little boat before it takes off for the Pacific Ocean. I did get a hold of the bow line of their boat with the gaff hook before it took off and attached it to our little broken dinghy but because of that we are now in a bad place to catch hold of the mooring buoy. We have to bring our boat all the way back around and try our approach again from the same angle. This time I grabbed the mooring buoy with our gaff hook right as a gust of wind hit’s us, now our gaff hook snaps in two over our portside whisker stay. So I grab our mooring line and give Dena the signal to try our approach again, which she does.

All this time a fisherman and his deckhand are waiting to be lifted up by the crane and on our third try and failure they decided to give us a hand. It takes us quite some time to bring our boat around this last time because the wind is screaming in what seemed to be all directions. I just couldn’t get my bearings straight and it seemed like the entire right side of my body is in a cramp from pumping on the “Thirsty Mate” all night. I run back to the cockpit to tell Dena that it looked like that fisherman is going to tie up a line to the mooring buoy and through it to us and all she has to do now is bring us in the same way as the first time. This she does, beautifully!

The old fisherman and his mate are at the buoy tying a line on the buoy loop by the time we come back around. As we make our approach the mate through me the line (a razor thin nylon crab pot line) that just misses my grasp as we come into position. He quickly reeled it back in and made another attempt. This time the line landed on the deck, amidships just aft of the mast shrouds. That’s when I notice how much line there is, about 75 feet! It landed with a thunk on the deck. I grab the coiled up, knot infested bunch of twine and as carefully as I can weave it outboard of the shrouds at the same time trying to find an end to what seemed to be a mobius nightmare. I found the frayed end just in time to poke it through the forward portside scupper from the outboard when a brisk gust of wind hit us and sent me to my knees.

I started reeling in that line with all my strength trying to shorten the distance between us and the mooring buoy not paying any attention to where it’s landing behind me. Another big gust of wind sends our boat with a surge backwards and that dangerous little line starts to pay out like we’ve got a whale on a Zebco-202! Just as I turn to tell Dena to give it more throttle forward I notice her at my right shoulder trying to untangle the line that has looped its way around my legs. By this time the line is screaming through my fingers so it’s almost impossible to make it fast on the foredeck cleat. Dena gets a hold of the end and started doing figure eight’s on the cleat and I manage a few loops around the portside Samson post. But, there is still about three feet of looped line on the deck just aft of the post and I cant get my hand out quite fast enough!

I muster up what can be described as a squeak that sounds like. “Dena! My hand!”

Dena, by this time is over my right shoulder pulling on that little line with everything she’s got and her legs braced against the starboard Samson post. I can feel the skin on the back of my right hand start to burn off at the same time I can see the fingers on that hand start to flex up and back. That razor thin line is cutting my hand in half about an inch below my knuckles leaving only my thumb on my right hand and all I can do is watch.

“No!” I hear Dena scream and at that moment the gust seemed to die just enough for me to get my hand free.

I fall backwards and land against the forepeek hatch and hold my (intact) right hand with my left and immediately start shaking. I then look up at Dena and notice that she hasn’t let go of the line yet!

Another gust of wind and this time I can hear it screaming through the standing rigging and the whole boat lurches back but Dena is yanked forward into the Samson post with her arm stretched out towards the forward portside scupper!

“Dena! Let go!” I yell above the ripping wind but the only reply I can hear is.

“I…I…” And at this point her left hand is firmly wedged in the portside foreword scupper.

When she first grabbed a hold of the line she made a slight twist in it to give herself something to hold on to. The knot is actually called a “half-hitch” and is one of the easiest, fastest and strongest of the all the knots used on a boat and at this point it is doing it’s job rather well taking Dena’s hand apart on the bow of Sovereign Nation!

I leap forward right next to her and grab the line on the outboard side of the scupper to try to hand-over-fist the thing to give her the slack that she needs to get her hand free. All I can hear is the sound of my own voice saying “No! No! No!”

The blue and white mooring buoy gently bumps up against the dolphin-striker on our bow and all around us the water is like glass. I can hear the sound of our little three-cylinder diesel engine putting away at the stern of the boat. Our poor broken dory rubs against the transom and the heavy sloshing sound of all that water in the bilge.

I look up to see Dena taking the glove off of her hand and for a long moment she doesn’t even look at it. Our eyes are frozen on each other and then I look.

I open my eyes after what seemed to be years but was surly only seconds to the sound of the beautifully familiar voice of Jeremiah, our friend from Bellingham.

"We've been watching you for the last few hours through the Binoc's and listening to the drama on the VhF as you came around Cape Blanco, Good work Captian's!"

"Well, I got a job working on the Tall-Ship "Honolulu Rose" out of Richardson Bay and they take off for the Big Island in four days from San-Fran.I hooked a ride with this Capt'n Courageous here on a brand new Swann that'll do 18 knotts slow. We're pulling up the hook in that little sloop in about an hour so's we can catch this high pressure system all the way down to the Gate in two day's!"

"Two day's, Bullshit! You better not be in a hurry, you know that's your first mistake."

" Yeah, yeah I just wanted to row over here to give this weather-fax and wish you luck. Listen, you don't want to get stuck here in a So u-Westerly blow and it'll be here by Saturday. Do your repairers and get the hell out of this place. I'd say get at least as far as Eureka before you start thinking about wintering! Take care of each other, ok?"

... And once again he was gone to the slowly descending sound a familiar old shanty.

Turn the drip-damp towel over every two hours and the amidships, saloon portside settee is, well, more comfortable to sit on in the wet Eureka wintertime.

Go from the 1200 to the 3000 watt heater in November. Wow, this place is just like Blaine without the glorious sunsets and all the great people.

It’s December 22, 2001 Eureka, California- “a situation of urban comfort”.

Of course we made fast the best we could given the fact that we are looking at 30 knots of wind for our near future and 27 hours of bleak awareness in our most resent past.

Sovereign Nation is very wet and we’re too damn tired to row the 150 yards left in our day.

We didn’t sink that day, we didn’t die that day. Oh, what the hell! Let’s splurge a bit and get a motel room for the night. We can each take showers and try to figure out if this fungus is going to spread all over our bodies or just stay where it’s most uncomfortable.

We know we will discover it with in the first two decades of the 21st century. Until then Sovereign Nation winters in Eureka.

…………………………………………………………..Only 13 years to go.

Eureka to San Francisco

Ok, Here it is!
If you want to read the ending of this part of our journey
(...and boy is it a doozy!)
All you have to do is order it. When we receive enough orders to make a first-run-printing (about 500) we'll send the first 500 people a first run beautifully illustrated hard back edition signed by the artists!

All you have to do is send a check for $15.00(USD) to Dena Hankins and James Lane c/o Gravityfeed 1959 Shattuck, Berkeley, Calif 94704 and you will recieve your copy as soon as we can get enough orders.