We asked our friend Stephanie to take a photo of us right before we left our marina for the last time. I think she captured our true feelings on the occasion.
Written 8/27/12 on my computer, retrieved 9/8/12 after shaking about 100 rice kernels out of my laptop’s innards.
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Internet has been harder to come by since I dropped my iPhone in the river. For those counting, this was on Day 1 of our two year voyage, much of which I was planning to rely on my phone’s charts, GPS, maps, music, and data capabilities, not to mention its ability to place calls and receive texts from friends who planned to come to our shove off party later that afternoon.
We haven’t really mastered tidiness yet. Jeff From The Future suspects that this may come back to bite us in, ohh, three or four days.
The incident occurred as I squatted on the back of the boat, trying to lock up our outboard and “keep the honest people honest,” as I’ve been told locks are for. My phone had been in the cargo pocket of my cargo shorts, but there was no label on this pocket to warn the wearer that the gap on either side of the velcro closure was ample space for a smartphone to slide into and, as it happens, out of. I heard first the slap of it hitting the deck, then a skitter as it slid off the back and into the water with a plop of finality.
The first stop was Cathedral Park, two hours from our departing location. Gotta ease into these kinds of things.
I perked up just in time to see it sink into the Willamette River where we’d just docked at the park and ran through all of the things that had just gone overboard in that one little package. A calm rose within me, a tide of acceptance.
The world does not want this to be easy for me. It was saying, “Jeff, live in the world!” “Jeff, talk to people when you want advice or directions!” “Jeff, maybe start planning ahead a little more.”
Experience has taught me that rice is one of the most essential tools of sailing. It’s akin to the towel for space travel.
Unbenownst to the world, I am a stubborn SOB. I scrambled to the gear locker and grabbed my snorkeling gear, stripped down and threw on a swimsuit, and gingerly eased myself into the chilly river. I only had to swim down about five feet before I saw the gleaming white case staring up at me from the bottom. Up it came, right into a bag of rice where it has stayed for the last three days. And boy have they been an eventful three days.
We had the aforementioned shove off party on Saturday, prefaced by a short trip from our now former marina to Cathedral Park in St. Johns Portland. We were contending with Star Trek in the Park, an annual theatrical reenactment of classic Trek episodes attended by thousands, so I was personally dubious whether anyone would attend. Part of me would have been content to slip away in the night, letting the last time I’d seen my friends be the last time. There’s something about going away parties that I don’t understand – who needs a four-hour goodbye? Can’t you just say it with a text these days, or a blog post? I felt uncomfortable being the center of attention in some manufactured sense. Same reason I’m not fond of throwing birthday parties.
Fortunately for me, Harmony has more social grace than that. She took it upon herself to cast out the invite list, and it was good to be able to get one last dose of some of my favorite people. With everyone I talked to though, it was like it was their going away party – they were disappearing from my life, and I wanted to know where they’d be in two years when we got back. In the back of my mind of course was the possibility that the boat will sink next week and we’ll come slinking back into town, calling these people up one at a time to beg for a ride someplace because our cars are up and sold.
We woke up Sunday morning under the St. Johns Bridge, a marvel of beauty and engineering designed by the man who would later go on to design the Golden Gate. We had a partial view of it from our townhouse apartment the past year, and there was something fitting about having our first night of this voyage be beneath it. When I went outside to make coffee in my bathrobe, I noticed that there were people taking photographs of our boat from the shore. It looked like they must have been part of a college photography class, momentarily distracted from the primary subject they’d come to capture.
Looking around the deck I saw the shabby lifelines with fenders hanging off them, the clothes laid out on deck to dry after a wet dinghy ride last night, how dusty the solar panels were. Casually, I wandered around the deck, still bathrobed, rectifying these blemishes and paying special care not to look in the direction of the photographers, though as soon as I got below, I put my face up to a porthole to check if they were still looking.
We were ready to go by 10am, which was an hour later than planned. My parents decided to travel down the river with us on their own boat, their own journey having started way up in Eastern Washington in the Tri-Cities over a week before. We had the opportunity to try out our new electric autopilot on the 30-mile leg to Rainier, OR. I spent all day steering by pushing a button with my toe. I am never going back. If this thing breaks tomorrow, I am buying another one, I don’t care. Dare I say it, the autopilot may actually make the Oregon Coast passage fun?
My parents escorting us down the river in the boat my Dad built and my Mom humored. Harmony spent a good portion of the river trip like this. She got a kick out of the ship names. Our autopilot, dubbed “The Doctor” in memory of our companions on the moderately-fated Pacific trip of two years ago.
We got to Rainier without incident and dinghied to shore for dinner with the folks, then came home to watch some Angel on my laptop before bed. Harmony repeated the refrain we’d been passing back and forth for the last two days. “Can you believe that this is our life now?”
Not really, no. We’ll get there though.
One more photo to grow on. What do you do if your bridge is looking sad? Put on an ACE wrap, clearly. Let’s all pay our taxes, shall we?