At slack water, an ominous rumbling from the Widbey Island Navy air base resounds over the Straits. The Romeo Alfa buoy lies a mile and a half off the port beam when I start Phyllis and ease sheets for a broad reach Northeast toward Cattle Pass. Old Hand's sail's fill with the rising Westerly as she bears away toward Cattle Point with the first push of the flood. McWhirr calls from below:
“We'll make good headway with this big flood.”
A sea lion's rust-red hulk sounds astern as we catch the current past the lighthouse on Cattle Point. We steam past Goat and Deadman Islands where I struggle to hold Old Hand's course amid the boisterous eddies.
Easy, lad. Don't set us on Deadman.”
“Aye, Cap'n.”
The jib is backed and sets our bows to leeward toward the doleful Isle.
“Hand the jib. I'll take the helm.”
McWhirr is ever on my case. He's always after a better trim of the main and critical of the least breach of sea etiquette on my part. I thought he'd mysteriously vanished somewhere Southeast of Hein Bank, as if drawn in rapture, toward the heavenly harbour of infinite light, leaving only a cryptic missive highlighted among the pages of Vergilius Maro's heroic verse:
From me learn patience and courage, from other's, the meaning of fortune.
After pondering this laconic admonition at length I've come to appreciate the archetypal nature of this relationship and regard my inscrutable Captain with respectful awe. There's more to him than meets the ear. Our northward voyage seems propelled by the combustion of our contrary natures. My poetic flights are countered by his exacting demands. Some may see this dynamic as one between states of soul, an epic struggle for fictive supremacy, whose only hope for rapprochement lies somewhere in far golden latitudes where some Arcadian Isle awaits Old Hand's final landfall.
But McWhirr, as if nothing were amiss, as if he'd merely taken a pleasant constitutional along the strand to relieve himself of authority's burden a spell, has again descended to his rightful office and again lords over this yarn like Gregory Peck.
“Blast ye, ya walleyed galoot! Hand the foresail!”
After uncleating the halyard, I crawl gingerly onto the bowsprit and furl the jib, lashing it with a few turns around the pulpit while grebes dive for herring in the scud below my dangling feet. Now Old Hand sails past Goat Island without the backed jib setting her bows to leeward toward Deadman's Rock.
Once past the eddies I again set the jib, trim the main and shut down Phyllis for a lovely reach along the west shore of Lopez Island.
What can be more idyllic than a warm breeze off the port beam with Old Hand steady up channel while the tea kettle steams on the galley stove. It's times like this I feel I may have finally attained a state of something like grace, no longer assailed with the demons that beset my youth; that all my worry and preparation have lead to this particular point where all flows into the realization of a fleeting instant's perfection.
That is, if it weren't for McWhirr and his uptight commands.
Beyond the entrance of Fisherman's Bay, we open Upright Channel and ghost into the lee of Shaw Island; passing the reef net boats anchored off Squaw Bay with their ladders ascending the blue sky.
I strike all sail and flake the chain on the foredeck before letting go the anchor into the soft mud of Indian Cove.
When all is secure a profound silence reigns, broken only by the sound of frenetic splashing from the rocks off Canoe Island where seals flap their tails against the calm surface of the water.
After a dinner of Spaghetti, anchovies and merlot, I sit lazily in the cockpit, and see the rough-hewn shapes of the reef net boats silhouetted against the vivid red/orange sunset . In the old times tribal Chiefs would climb these ladders and intone the ancient songs to welcome the Salmon as honored guests to the Spring Equinox feast. At this respectful tribute those below would draw up the net.
Tired after the day's passage, I lean against the bulkhead, lulled by a faint sound that comes and goes with the intermittent breeze-like the sound of a passing diesel engine: thump, thump, thump.
A vortex of rising gulls call to the deep. A dark form climbs the reef-net ladder and chants low over the bay:
Come up the straits with the influx of tide, O my brothers
By Clallam's icey waters run.
Past Ediz Hook hie with the flood
Thump, thump, thump
Haya haya haya
Thank you elder brother; come elder brother.
Dark against the red sky he hails the salmon's return. His chanted drone summons fish people to the shoal, where falls the ladder's crooked shadow deep into Indian Cove.
Come, O my brothers, past Sooke Inlet and Esquimalt shore.
Look, look , look!
Thump, thump
Song of vanished tribes drift over shallows and beat gently on sand, ebbing again to where descended the first reef net ladder- a link between Creator and men; when salmon first came to Salish shores.
Raising his hands, he calls:
Lift, lift ,lift
Hauling away, the crew sings welcome to the glistening catch.
He'e'e'e'e'e' he'e'e'e'e'e'
Thump, thump
Old Hand rocks upon the seas begining, where fresh breezes exhale the cedar's swaying advent and creation forever unfurls on this crude scaffold of years, days and hours.
