Becalmed

Becalmed, we drifted by current and not by sail power. The sepia-toned water ruffled by mild breeze and gliding seals. The sun was bright and the landscape hazy. We left Roche Harbor after a day of hiding from bad weather, unwinding from the rough travel of the previous day, and set sail on a new, calm day. Hallelujah!
 
We sailed the channel between Johns Island and Orcas Island. To the west, on Johns Island, we imagined the tents, boats, and busy camp activity when Susanna was a counselor there several years ago. We looked east to Mt. Constitution where we had stood a few days before on the summit. In that direction, the sun was directly in our eyes. The landscape blurred, trees indistinguishable from each other, not from our speed, but from the glare of the sun. My first day out of the protection of the canopy, I sat basking on the foredeck. Our sails fluttered. We drifted along at 2 knots. Seals swam past us; we moved that slow.
 
Warming sun, hazy shoreline, metallic sea, drifting seals: we entered a slippery, dreamy state where magic can happen. Something unusual might surface. Instead of losing myself to my book, I scanned the water and watched the seals.
 
I heard a breath. I turned the direction of the sound. Then there was a spout of water, the crest of a whale, and a tail breaking the surface. I shrieked like a delighted child.  A Humpback we later learn, named Stitch. They had been hunted to near extinction, to almost a memory, but in recent years have experienced a rebound.
 
Four hours later, we arrived in Echo Bay on Sucia Island. A day absent of any motor. Three other boats had already moored. We choose a spot in the remaining light of day and removed from the other boats. We grabbed a mooring, dropped the dingy, and motored in as the sun dipped behind the trees of the island. We walked across the narrow neck to the western shore of Sucia. Over Shallow Bay, the sky lit up orange, streaked with narrow slivers of dark clouds. Day slipped to night, and in the dreamy twilight, the ocean refracted the golden hue. The sun sank over Vancouver Island, and thoughts of my dad surfaced.
 
Twice I have been to Vancouver Island, both visits with my father, both by boat.  First, on a family trip at age nine, we motored into Genoa Bay aboard the Cadrew. The story of my father as a child on a dairy farm on a Canadian island came to light. I always thought he was only the businessman before me, so this departure to a farm! On an island! In Canada! was somewhat startling. The currents of his mother’s quest for peace eddied here in this bay, for a time.
 
My father was born in London in 1939. When Dunkirk fell, children were removed from the city. The forces of war ripped the family apart. Their staunch nanny—a toddler and an infant strapped to her—climbed the ladder, led by my father’s four-year sister, to board the US Washington. Eventually, they arrived outside Boston to live with their grandparents. His Austrian-American father joined the RAF and after over 130 missions he was shot down and killed off the coast of France. Five years later, their mother arrived, newly remarried, reclaimed her children, and took them to find peace on an island. She had married a Canadian Air Force pilot, a member of her husband’s RAF squadron—also a dairy farmer. And for a few years, this man created an experience of a normal family. My father always appreciated that. We watched my dad shake hands with his former stepfather, this man newly materialized to our personal history.
 
When we returned eighteen years later on Star Rover, the farm stood empty—absent of the belted Galway cows, the stepfather, and even the farmhouse. It had burned down years ago. We rowed ashore and stepped over the broken fences. We walked past the crumpling barn, through the overgrown fields, up a hill to Sorenson’s rock, so named for the old farmhand. By the rock, Dad pointed across the bay, past Star Rover, to the town of Duncan: “that’s where we rowed to tutor’s house. Every morning we got out of the boat and waded ashore. Then mother decided we weren’t learning anything and sent us biking to the school on the other side of the island.”
 
Walking down the hill, he chuckled, “That’s where Polly the plow horse ran off with my brother. He bounced all over until he finally fell off.” His mother, after a few years of her children biking eleven miles to school and using their wits to grab ahold of passing logging trucks to climb the hills to arrive two hours late each day, discovered that she wasn’t a good dairy farmer wife, not well-suited for life on an island, and perhaps limiting her children’s bright futures, took them on a summer vacation to her parents and never returned to Vancouver.
 
After our stop in Genoa Bay, Star Rover sailed north into the Gulf islands. My father so at ease on a boat.  How did he manage to bend his 6’7” frame into the bunk aboard? He fit easily behind the helm. I picture him settled off to the side a bit, one hand on helm, his face softened to smile, staring up the mainsail in his white sailor hat. His peace gave me courage to ask him questions. I wanted to know how he felt when his brother had returned to reclaim the family estate in Austria and he stayed in Boston, with no property to inherit, to make his own way. “Did you feel ripped off I wanted to know?” I mean, from my twenty-five-year old perspective, it seemed like he had a bad deal. As if his brother, caught in currents of the family history, passed him by, and my father was becalmed in Boston.
 
“I didn’t have the confidence,” he said. I couldn’t imagine this but realize now how confidence comes so slowly, even when you’re barely moving and only the current carries you. And of course, he didn’t drift idly, he harnessed his power, built success, not only for himself and us, but also his civic involvements.
 
On Sucia Island, we continued our walk. The sky was lit by the memory of the sun. We stumbled a bit on the forest trail, a well-trod single track that hugged the island perimeter.  So close to Vancouver Island, only a narrow channel divided us, but I couldn’t touch it, like I can no longer touch my father.
 
Before I left to fly to Seattle two weeks ago, I stopped to see my mom. “Take some of his ashes with you,” she said. “Please spread them in Genoa Bay. He would like that.”
 
“We can’t cross into Canadian waters.” I said. “Next summer.” This fall I can only stare at this island of his childhood. My memories rise like the tide; my father, he’s here, caught in the currents of a history ripping through my present.
 
My dad was so at ease on a boat. He wasn’t a man that brought his worries home from work, or the problems with healthcare and the Boston Public school system that he was committed to find solutions for. But he wore them. He was a big man and could carry much. I don’t know how he found comfort on Star Rover. Was it the distance from his work? Was it the absence of interruptions and communications? Was it sleep afforded by the rocking of the boat?  Was it the magic that can descend when you slow your speed down to match the tide, hoist a sail, and take charts and wind as your only direction?
 
We completed our small loop and returned to the stony edge of Echo Bay. We carried the dingy to the falling tide and pushed off into the still waters, to return to Rapport, a silhouette in the night sky. Kent and I sat on deck for a few hours, watching the final twilight dim, and then fell into the deep sleep of another night aboard, arising to another day to chart our next course.
 
The sun is bright and the landscape hazy. The water ruffled and sepia-toned. We drift by current. Islands linger. Sails flutter. Be calmed.

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