Yes, it's true! North Star Press, Inc., is publishing the story of our year in the Bahamas, and a few other stories too. And a bunch of pictures. Stay tuned for a May/June release!
Just to get you excited, here's a piece of the introduction...
When did our thirst for watery adventures begin? When I was a teenager I found myself out on Lake Huron one day in a wind that was a tad strong for our small vessel. We were in our 18-foot sailboat, Sunlight. Clouds scudded briskly across the sky and the wave tips sprayed us as we pounded along. My dad, chief of all family adventures and initiator of today’s sail, was the captain. My sister Vera and my cousin Val were there too. I was sitting in the bow enjoying the splashing and swaying, when suddenly the boat began to spin rapidly. The headsail, no longer flying in front of us, flapped uncertainly then did a total about-face, flattening against my body as we changed direction. I ducked and the sail whipped past me, instantly heeling the boat over the other way. “Dad!” I shouted in consternation, just as I saw a rotten piece of wood slide by in the muddy green water near my dangling feet. Could it be? I scrambled to the cockpit. My dad was, for the first time in memory, shocked into stillness. His words were short. “The rudder is gone. We are out of control.”
The rudder is the critical slab of wood below and behind the boat that is attached to the tiller, or steering device. When the tiller moves, the rudder follows, and the boat turns. To lose the rudder is nothing short of disastrous. For three silent seconds we took this information in. Then we burst into action. Vera and Val hunkered down in the center of the cockpit, low and stable. I flipped the now-useless headsail loose, crawled out on the bow, and pulled down the flapping sail. Without steerage, it would never take us where we wanted to go. The boat spun in circles and rocketed in the swells as my dad readied the tiny outboard motor for this most important job in its so-far uneventful life. The outboard sputtered to life. When the stern of the boat was underwater, the outboard valiantly pushed us towards the harbor a mile or two away. Every time the stern was thrust upwards by a wave, we lost control and spun around. Sometime in the next hour it became clear that, slow and erratic as our progress was, it WAS progress, and we would probably make it to shore without help. We arrived at the pier and zoomed willy-nilly into the protected waters behind it. The breaking waves followed us voraciously in, seemingly eager for one last shot at overturning us. Then, they flattened and it grew calm. We glanced at each other and burst into uproarious laughter, already glorying in the story we would soon be telling our family.
My husband Mark was a rock climber. As a young adult he climbed voraciously, setting himself goals and traveling the country in search of ever-more remote and difficult peaks to scale. Climbing satiated his thirst for living on the edge while allowing him an intimate relationship with the cliffs beneath him. Up close and dirty with the rock, he thrilled in the wee bit of control one has over an environment dominated by the merciless elements.
Mark was also a wilderness instructor for boys. He took them canoeing, backpacking, and climbing. One year he had the opportunity to take them sailing on Lake Superior. He’d never been out on the water and learned along with the boys. Soon after, he witnessed Ted, captain and father he’d never met before, slide his little boat into tight spots or careen it gracefully over rough waters. Mark watched Ted’s every move, awestruck, and his obsession with cliffs and vistas changed overnight into a passion for wind and waves. The setting would be different, but the elements were still up close and personal. He befriended Ted and learned all he could about harnessing the limitless energy of the wind. Soon he owned his own little boat. All his climbing gear found its way aboard and he never looked back. And then he met me.
Comments