April 18th, 2021
It has been 11 years and 8 months since my trip to Spencer Spit. The morning after sailing into Oak Harbor, I set out for the Seattle airport to catch a flight to Salt Lake City. I visited more family and eventually flew back to Virginia. I really did set a date, and count down the days till I could return to life aboard.
I visited every marina within a 100-mile radius just to walk the docks and stare at boats. I bought a necklace with an anchor pendant. I watched Captain Ron and White Squall probably two dozen times over a period of 10 months. I finished my enlistment in the US Army and moved back to Whidbey Island in hopes of finally fulfilling a lifelong dream.
“Lifelong,” you ask? That wasn’t just something that came about in 2009?
No. Not in the slightest.
Let’s back up a bit.
In 1997 I was going into 4th-grade. I was a terror of a child—grounded constantly. Most of it was well deserved, I suppose. Needless to say, I spent a large portion of my latter elementary years confined to my room. While wasting away with nothing to do, I’d build ships out of LEGOs.
After spending most of my 4th grade year grounded, my mother sympathized and allowed me to watch movies during my groundings. My request was always the same—Treasure Island (1990) with Charlton Heston. I fell in love with that film. Heston’s portrayal of Long John Silver, and the fantastic one-liners that were written into that script, made that movie one of my all-time favorites. For the next 3 years, I watched that film, for all intents and purposes, on repeat.
I managed to incorporate Hook into the mix from time to time, but nothing ever really topped Treasure Island.
Every Halloween from that moment on I dressed up as a—you guessed it—a pirate. I even began making my own costumes. The garbage sold at seasonal costume stores just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Thrift store scarves made amazing sashes and bandanas, used leather belts with giant buckles seemed to support a sword quite nicely, and an oversized, ragged, button-up shirt with a vest brought the whole ensemble to life.
I suppose that covers my obsession with pirates, but how does sailing and a passion for all things nautical fit into the picture? After all, many people love a good pirate tale, but could never imagine a life on the sea—living in an area the size of a small storage shed. Well, I suppose I have my dad to thank for my love of sailing.
My parents were divorced, which is not a foreign concept for most who grew up in my generation. I spent every other weekend with my dad. He didn’t have much money, but he always managed to make the weekend an adventure of some kind. We camped—a lot. My brother and I thought it was just because he liked camping. Turns out that taking your kids into the forest with hotdogs is much cheaper than Chuck-E-Cheese, or a movie theater and popcorn every two weeks. Sure, he could have just taken us to his house and sat us in front of a TV, but that wasn’t in his nature. He enjoyed those camping trips as much as we did.
At some point, he had saved enough money to buy a small sailboat from the Sea-Scouts in southern California (they’d fix up old boats and sell them for cheap as a way to raise money for their club). That weekend our trip appeared to be starting the same way—a drive up Parley’s Canyon. But we didn’t have our camping gear in the back of the truck, and we took a different route than normal. Usually, we would have taken the Kamas exit off the highway, and headed east toward the Uinta Mountains. Instead, we stayed going straight on the highway and down the hill, toward a large body of water. The sign on the side of the road at the turn-off read, “Jordanelle Reservoir.”
We pulled into the marina parking lot, parked the truck, and got out.
I thought, “Perhaps we’re just going to fish instead of camp…”
But then I realized my dad was not walking toward the marina store to buy bait or gear. He was walking toward the docks.
He stepped onto a sailboat, turned to help my brother and me board, and said, “You guys ready to go sailing?”
It was a Catalina 27’. He motored us away from the docks, pointed us into the wind, secured the tiller, raised the sail, came back to the cockpit, and shut off the motor. I was puzzled. Why would he shut the motor off in the middle of the lake? Was this one of his “gas-saving tricks”? Then he turned the boat about 45º to port. The sudden movement overhead caught my eye and I glanced up. The sail had filled with wind and swung to the left. The boat was even leaning a bit to the left.
“What is happening?” I thought.
My dad looked over at my puzzled, wide-eyed face and said, “We’re sailing now!” I was hooked.
We could move through the water without a motor.
Without paddling.
Without oars.
Just… just wind!
It was at that moment that all the hustle and bustle aboard the HISPANIOLA made sense. As they raised the anchor, climbed aloft to drop the sails, and blistered their hands pulling ropes, it wasn’t just for show. They were catching the wind—harnessing its power—sailing. This is what it meant to sail.
We sailed from one end of the lake to the other, multiple times. As the sun began to set we sailed to the southeast inlet. The lake was shaped a bit like an “L,” with the taller portion running north to south, and the shorter foot (southeast inlet) west to east. The inlet was narrow (not more than 500 yards across, north to south). The shoreline shot nearly straight up in some parts. It was like sailing through a canyon.
On the south shore, about halfway into the inlet, there was a smaller canyon (Charcoal Canyon) jutting off to the south. It was only about 300 yards long and 150 yards wide. We slipped in and anchored there for the night.
At this point, you might ask, “All of that was fine and well, but how does a day-sail make someone want to sell all of their landlubber belongings and move aboard a boat?” The answer is, “It doesn’t.” However, what happened the next morning was something I’ll never forget. It was the moment the spark inside of me was created—the spark that was fanned into a flame in July of 2009 aboard MARANATHA.
I woke the next morning to the gentle sound of water lapping up against the hull. It was cold—but wrapped warmly in my sleeping bag, I couldn’t have cared less. The boat was rocking ever so slightly on top of the water. It was like being rocked as an infant or toddler. I nearly fell back asleep due to the boat’s soothing motion, but something else caught my attention. With every breath, I could smell something familiar. As my tired mind struggled to identify the smell, I heard something. It was crackling, popping, and sizzling. The smell. The sound.
Bacon.
The cold didn’t matter to me anymore. I crawled out of my sleeping bag, climbed up the steps, and poked my head out of the companionway.
My dad turned from the stern pulpit grill and said, “Morning Moe!”—an odd nickname I had as a kid—“You ready for some breakfast?”
I didn’t even respond. My eyes were fixed on the surrounding water and canyon walls. Surface mist and patches of fog surrounded us. The air was chilled, but calm—no wind. The water sparkled and glistened as if to provide light for sailors before the sun came up. The only sounds in the world that morning came from the ripples brushing against the boat, a halyard tapping lightly against the mast, and the crackling of bacon.
I don’t recall a single moment of the remainder of the trip. That morning—that quaint, perfect morning—is all that remains in my memory of that weekend.
We sailed often after that, traveling to Flaming Gorge, Joes Valley Reservoir, Lake Powell, The Great Salt Lake, and eventually moving to the Pacific Northwest. We were building a boat—a Westsail 32. My dad had acquired it years before the move. It was just a bare hull—not a board in it. We’d been working on it for years, trying to get it ready to go… anywhere. That was the dream. We wanted to sail away. We’d stay up late staring at charts and maps, talking about cruising the world. Unfortunately, time was faster than we were, and I was graduating—headed off to the Army as a watercraft engineer.
I believe that pretty much covers it. You should be all caught up at this point.
Yes, it’s been a lifelong dream.
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