Gale

2/4/10 1320 hours, wind N.W. 45-50 knots, Eastern Straits of Juan de Fuca--

This is no time to be crossing the straits, but the ebb has already set in and there's no turning back now. Turning the wheel hard to port and pointing up to a tremendous wall of grey sea, I struggle to maintain steerage way as the angry crest topples onto Wicca's foredeck. It seems all the fiends of hell are loosed upon the Eastern Straits and I pray the house will not part from her concrete float.
Down, down into the trough, and just when I think Wicca will continue on into the very bowels of the ocean floor, she starts to rise again to meet the following wave. This is a massive beast of a comber, on whose face I seem to behold the countenance of some personal, malignant evil, bent on all manner of mischief against myself and my trusty, little vessel. I shouldn't like to lose her.
The massive sea, towering above the plastic owl perched on Wicca's dormer, hurls itself with redoubled fury against the front door, and jets of water stream in through the jamb like it issued from a fire hose. Lord!
Wicca seems have found her stride. She's a lofty ship, built before the war as a boat house and converted into a stout cutter by Renaldo Keys of Bainbridge Island in the early 70's. But that was long ago, and now her timbers creak and moan like some elderly dowager rising to Sunday ablutions and bingo. Smash!
Lightening etches the somber sky to the North where clouds hang in long melancholy streaks like the folds of Nosferatu's mackintosh as Wicca flounders in a confused cross-sea, pitching and rolling like a thing possessed. Steady lads.
Painting in these conditions is no child's play. I keep spilling the bloody turpentine.
I recall that great 19th Century artist, Joseph Mallord William Turner, who lashed himself to the mainmast like Ulysses in the Siren's offing, the better to portray the tempests fury. Though some call him a Romantic swab, I laud his stalwart heart and cockney vision to bring the typhoon's roar to the staid halls of the Royal Academy. I find it significant that his appearance was likened to a pilot of a North sea cutter.
But this is no time for such pleasant reflections. How long can Wicca withstand such rude treatment? She is fabled to have nine lives and was faced with extinction in a Port Ludlow wreaking yard when Big Ray mounted her on a new float, bringing her back home to Eagle Harbor in glory like a phoenix risen from the ashes.
Rain begins to pound the metal roof, adding a staccato hammering to the deafening cacophony of wind and raging sea...