More of the introduction to our first book, to be published this spring/summer:
Had I gazed into a looking glass, I would have seen things to make me hesitate to embrace family sailing. What if I’d seen that two-hour sail that turned into a four-hour nightmare, with water spraying into the cabin through the portholes (windows), our daughters Cedar (3) and Lamar (less than 1) sobbing and throwing up, and the engine keyhole breaking open as we tried to stick in the key--right as we headed for a rock? After that trauma, I was sick of the whole thing. “Why do we torture our children and ourselves?” I wondered. “Let's get off the water and have a normal life!”
Apparently I didn’t listen to this voice because a month after that incident, in a remote corner of Lake Superior, we were motoring through narrow straights on a gray day. We were feeling pretty good, having successfully navigated the remote side of the Lake. After six weeks on the water, we were headed home. Cedar was taking a nap in the v-berth, and Lamar was in my arms at the foot of the main hatch. Mark was in the cockpit steering. A rare break in the action of life aboard with toddlers afforded Mark and I a moment of conversation.
“So what do you think the wind will do tomorrow?” I asked, knowing that this would be a topic about which my quiet husband would have something to say. I never found out what he thought, because right then and with a loud grinding noise, the boat reared up like a bucking bronco. We all fell backwards. The engine grinded in protest. The boat lurched forward, then down, then lay on its side, still grinding noisily. “Whoa! Whoa!” Mark called fruitlessly. I held Lamar tightly in one arm and turned off the engine with the other, trying to figure out what had just happened. I figured it out when Mark grabbed the VHF radio and called for help, his voice kept carefully low but still betrayed by a little shaking. “We are on a reef in the Moffat Straits.”
Then, all was quiet. Our boat was lying on its side. There was little wind and just ripples washing gently along our hull, not quite high enough to wash in on the low side. Mark urgently searched the hull where he could see it, looking for damage. He rechecked the life raft deployment instructions. I waded through the mess in the cabin, which was lying at a fifty-degree angle, and peeked into the v-berth (the bunk at the bow of the boat) where Cedar was groggily waking up. I thanked God for the pillows that had cushioned her flight to the side.
“Cedar, honey, you’ve got to get up and come out here. We hit a rock . . . ” Obediently, she came forward. “Kind of a mess in here, mom,” she commented cheerfully. We lifted both girls out of the cabin, donned lifejackets, and sat up on the high deck. We were not far from land but the dinghy was folded and stored away. If the boat suddenly moved or sunk, we would be using the life raft. The water was probably around 60 degrees. I peered in horror at the smooth rock below, just one foot underwater, knowing that a few feet away the water was thirty feet deep. Mark lifted up the floorboards; water sloshed around in the bilge underneath. We didn’t know where the water came from, but a large hole in the boat seemed inevitable. A tugboat was on its way. The boat lurched and we stopped breathing again.
“We hit a rock,” I murmured again to Cedar. “But we’re about to be rescued.” My shaking voice settled as I realized the truth of this. Cedar quickly concluded that this was just another “adventure” and began snapping the clothespins along the lifelines (our equivalent of a net fence) to make Lamar laugh. In twenty minutes we heard the distant rumble of an engine, and a tiny dinghy came into sight. It motored up to us. Two men were aboard. “Got in a bit of a pickle, eh?” I heard as rough, kind hands reached in to swing the children to safety. (Intro.2 “Rescue in northern Lake Superior”)
Our rescuers were hardy Canadian fisher men and women. Their message to us was clear: anyone who comes to grief in this god-forsaken part of the lake is one of the family. They whisked the girls and I away to the tugboat, where anxious wives served us chips and soda and voiced outrage at the unmarked reefs in the channel. Back outside, we watched the drama unfold. The Canadians had evidently seen this kind of thing before; they expertly pulled the boat off the rock with some heavy-duty chain. She was good as gold—barely a scratch on her half-inch steel hull. The vent for the water tanks and the sink had poured thirty gallons of water into the cabin, soaking cushions and clothes and filling the bilge. Other than broken eggs, that was the extent of the damage. Our rescuers never charged us a dime.
After this near-disaster, something crystallized for Mark and I. First of all, things happen. What does one do with this reality? Anticipate and dread? Cower with shame? Shrink from any risk at whatever cost? We knew that we had made an inexcusable mistake, and come away unscathed. On the other hand, we can be vigilant and still get burned. Mark had paid a professional to rebuild a hard-to-find engine part for the express purpose of ensuring that it wouldn’t leak. Soon after he reinstalled the part, it started leaking. Some of these things are out of our control. Our path, we realized, was simply to give it our very best, take reasonable precautions, and move forward with both confidence and humility.
Besides, the good moments always outweighed the bad. That very evening I lounged on the cabintop with Cedar who was shouting loudly to passing fishermen. Dark skiffs were silhouetted against a pink and gold sky. Cedar knew that fishermen were her new best friends.
“Did you catch any fish?” she hollered. One lone fisherman threw up his hands up in mock despair—not a one. She shrugged back and rolled her eyes—What can you do? Lamar toddered in the cockpit and chortled, pre-verbal but palpably delighted in the scene. Within a year she would be dogpaddling in the water to the front of the boat and shouting “Alone! Alone!” just in case I dared assist in her attempts to climb, hand-over-hand, up the anchor chain. You can’t request times like these; they are blessings that come with the territory.
Our story is simply one family’s earnest attempt to get off the beaten path and out there into the world of adventure—to bust through our own limitations and to realize a semblance of our dreams. Many lessons came to us the hard way. Today, we feel a sense of ease as our children grow older and our voyaging style morphs into “tried and true” rather than “dive in and hope for the best.” I have a sneaking suspicion that Mark’s and my inclination to be together as a family and to live life with a vision, is a common if not universal desire. Like you, we love stories that remind us to ask for more than what’s right in front of our noses.
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