As Becky drove to our dentist appointment, I worked on sharpening her new knives. I realized that the hunting knife she had purchased had a heavy blade and a nice sturdy backbone. The handle was a rubberized material that felt very comfortable in my hand. The wording on the tag I took off it before I began sharpening, indicated that the manufacturer had approved the knife for salt-water use and it had a ten-year manufactures warranty. The fillet knife was also top quality and I quickly sharpened it razor sharp. I ran the knife alone my arm and it cleanly shaved the hair off. I would try to finish the sharpening job on the other knives on the return trip home after our dental appointment. I looked at Becky and said, “Girl, you did a fine job picking out these knives. They are top quality and were very sharp right out of the boxes.” Becky giggled, and I knew she had a story to tell me about her knife purchase. She said, “There was an elderly man in the store that liked looking at my large boobs. He knew a lot about knives and showed me which ones to purchase and which ones to leave on the shelves as junk. I made certain to lean over the counter and show him as much cleavage as possible, and he gave me a 10% discount on my purchases.” I laughed at her story and said, “You are such a little devil, and by the way, did you notice the signs that said everything in the fishing section was on sale.” She looked at me and said, “You mean I could have stood there like a proper lady and still got my discount?” I chuckled at her words and located the store coupon booklet from the dash that the store greeter had passed out the last time we were in the store. She looked at me and said, “That is okay, the grey haired man will have great dreams tonight.”
When we got back to the boathouse from our dental appointments, we loaded the rescue air tanks and regulators into the cabin of the Pacifica and created brackets to hang them on, one at each hatch ladder. I noticed that Becky had strapped the new hunting knife on her belt and was wearing it. I commented on the knife and she said, “I intend to wear this knife on my body whenever we are on the water. I do not want to fall off the vessel or go swimming without it. It might not save my life, but it might, and I intend to hedge my chances of surviving in this new world we will be living in. Never know when my prince might tire of my endless talking and push me overboard.” I went to my cabin and put my own knife on my belt. I decided that Becky was correct about wearing our knives while we were out on the ocean. Then I realized that Becky had also purchased a knife holder that would strap to her legs, just above her ankle. I liked that idea a lot.
We made a few last minute checks around the workbench for any forgotten items that we might need one day. We also checked inside the Pacifica, hoping that we might remember something we had forgotten. Then we went inside and began lowering the seawall to block the water from the ocean. There was no way to get the heavy timbers in place while standing up on the concrete floor, so I jumped into the water and moved them into the pockets. As soon as they were in place, I jumped out of the pit and Becky started the pumps to remove the water. Within a couple of minutes, the water had lowered a couple of feet and the seawall settled against the timbers and wedged itself into place. As the pump continued to empty the canal, I got the long handled net and began dipping the fish out into the ocean. Some of the smaller minnow swam through the dip net and Becky handed me another net with small mesh. She said, “The pump’s suction pipe has a fine screen on it and the minnows will not enter the pump. When the water gets a little lower, I will turn off the pumps so we can get the last of them out.” I chuckled at Becky’s concern for the minnows, but I certainly would not chastise her for her concern for their tiny lives.
***
I woke with two blue eyes within inches of mine. I smiled as I realized Becky was awake and obviously was trying to wake me. She kissed the end of my nose and said, “You need to wake up boy. We have much to do today. The Pacifica waits.” I looked over at the clock and it was quarter past four in the morning. I giggled and said, “Sorry to have slept so late.” I rolled out of bed and heard a giggle. As I walked towards the bathroom, I heard her comment, “Do you usually wake up with that erection?” I continued walking and said, “Usually.” I heard her say, “Fantastic,” as I shut the bathroom door.
We quickly showered together, dressed, and went downstairs to fix some breakfast. We seemed to eat in haste as if the Pacifica might be impatiently waiting for our arrival. As we closed up the house and walked towards the dock, I took her hand in mine and we giggled as we walked. The deck of the Pacifica was wet with dew and seawater. A couple birds had pooped on the nice paint job and I heard Becky scold them for being so rude. I unlocked the padlocks on the hatches and then we went down inside of our new home. I grabbed three of the old beach towels at the bottom of the stairs and spread them out on the deck to walk on, and then we used the propulsion motors to maneuver the Pacifica out into deep water. Becky went below and began passing up the mast posts for the sails, and then she passed me the rigging pieces in the correct order I needed them. Setting the two masts and sails took all of ten minutes.
Once we were ready to set the sails and begin our adventure, Becky took both of my hands and then kissed me hard on the lips. I saw the tears form in her eyes, so I pulled her into my arms and hugged her until she was able to calm her emotions. She looked at me and said, “Crew, make ready to sail.” I saluted her and said, “Aye, aye, Captain.” Then I watched her take a penny from the pocket of her tight pants and lay it on the deck just under the mast support post. Then she took a small tube of glue from her back pocket, wiped a spot dry with the edge of a towel and glued the penny to the deck. I laughed at her actions and she said, “It will give us good luck on our voyage. My father placed a penny on deck every day when he boarded his tugboat. It became a ritual with him.” I asked her who had taught her how to sail and she said, “My father loved the sea, and we would spend many hours out here along this coast while he taught me how to sail, and how to respect the sea. He was a good hardworking man.”
Our goal for today was to sail up the coast a few miles north of where we had visited during the sea worthiness testing we had done a few days ago. The sandbars were a good place to spend a couple days to insure that we had not forgotten some important detail, a detail that might cost us the vessel, or our lives. Becky had insured the new vessel for 1,400,000 U.S. Dollars, but we certainly did not want to have her sink to the bottom of the sea.
The trip to the sandbar we intended to use was only fifty miles, and we would easily make that goal by dark if the light southerly wind continued throughout the day. We were careful to keep watch of our compasses and adjusted the sails to stay on course. We only had to make slight adjustments as we sailed throughout the day. Becky seemed to understand where the sandbar was located and how to get there. I, on the other hand, could not have found that sandbar again if my life had depended on it. Becky laid out a map on our navigation table and used a compass to mark our position as we sailed along.
As I watched to the starboard side of the vessel, I spotted a lighthouse; at least I thought I had spotted one. Becky looked to where I pointed and said, “Yes, that is a lighthouse.” She watched the light a few moments and said, “That lighthouse is northeast of us and is called Point Arena. In the clear air, as the sun begins to set, it looks close, but it is actually twenty miles to our northeast. When the lighthouse is at the fifty-degree mark on our compass dials, we should be directly over the sandbar. If not we will have to travel due east or west to locate it, however, I believe our course is true and we will find the sandbar in another ten miles or so.”
I looked the woman in the eyes and just shook my head. She stepped behind me and put her arms around my waist. She told me that I would soon understand the lighthouse identifications, but that I did not have to memorize them. She told me that the maps in the cabin showed where each lighthouse was located, its coordinates if we used the sextant or GPS, and gave their light identification signal. Then she explained that the lighthouse we were looking at flashed on for fifteen seconds, and then off for th
e remainder of a minute, and the identification on the Coast Guard Light List would show it as, F1 W 15S. She said that the identification simply meant that it was a flashing light, that it was white in color, and would visible for fifteen seconds out of every minute. I turned to her, kissed her hard on the lips and asked, “What happens if we are in a storm for two days. How do we find ourselves without a sextant, stars, or a lighthouse?”
She giggled and put her hand on my butt. She said, “You sail by the seat of your pants, and become a very good judge of speed and your compass headings. We call this method of navigating in a storm, dead reckoning. The early sailors chose the name for an obvious reason, because if you get it wrong, they reckoned that you would soon be dead. However, since you have bestowed upon us these modern day GPS systems, we will use them to find home if needed. I have accurate navigational charts down below and we can easily plot our location if we know the latitude and longitude. The sextant or the GPS will give us that information. I want to chart our position by the traditional methods and then refer to the GPS only for a double check.”
About noon, Becky went down into the cabin and returned with her sextant in hand. She sat down on the deck and leaned back against the mast with her back. She wrote down the time on the navigation sheet, and then took a couple measurements and wrote down some numbers. Then she went down into the cabin and I could see her working at the navigations table. About ten minutes later, she walked back up to the deck and said, “We are off course by five compass degrees, we need to steer more towards starboard.” She adjusted both booms and then sat back down and leaned against the mast. I sat listening to her explanation of the sextant and she told me she would spend a lot of time with me so I was again comfortable with its use.
Since my lovely wife was doing such a splendid job sailing, I decided to fix us some lunch. I went down into the cabin and made tuna sandwiches with dill pickle slices on the side, applesauce in individual serving plastic cups, and some Chexmix snacks that we had left over at the beach house. Then I perked a pot of coffee on the camp stove inside the cabin. When I served Becky her lunch, I commented that I had gone all out for lunch. She giggled and said the lunch was just right. She smiled as she sipped the hot coffee and said that there was very little room on the deck for running, so she would have to eat very carefully and the tuna was perfect. I reminded her that she could always get in the water and pull the Pacifica along if she needed a good workout. She looked me in the eyes and said, “Or we could have a quickie once in a while.” I laughed at her comment and then told her that this vessel could sail itself for a few minutes each afternoon in good weather. She licked the Mayonnaise off her upper lip and said, “Once were out in the ocean a few hundred miles, we can have our quickie up here on the deck.” I raised my eyebrows and looked up into the sky. She giggled and reminded me that the pilots could not read our boat numbers from thirty-thousand feet in the air. I reminded her that the military satellites could see a pimple on her cute butt from outer space. She looked up into the sky and held up her index finger to the satellites.
By late afternoon, I realized that Becky was getting red from the sun. I rubbed her down with suntan lotion, and she did me. As she was rubbing lotion on the back of my neck, I looked down into the water and realized I could see the bottom of the ocean in places. When we were well oiled, I went down into the cabin and watched the new sonar system to check the water depth. When I went back up on deck, Becky asked how deep the water really was. I laughed and said, “We might be able to see the bottom in places, but the water depth is still over eighty feet or more deep.” She looked me in the eyes and said, “I don’t know feet out here, only fathoms.” I looked into her eyes and realized she was not serious, just commenting that I should begin thinking in nautical terms instead of engineering dimensions. I smiled and did the math in my head and said, “Captain, the water depth is running thirteen fathoms.” She giggled and kissed me on the cheek. I felt her oiled belly rub against mine and realized her skin was very warm. I asked if she needed some water or Gatorade to drink. She said, “You watch the deck for a moment and I will get the water.”
When she returned, she had two porcelain cups with handles in her hands. Tied around the handles were nylon cords, just like the cord we used on the sails. She handed me a cup and I realized it had my name stenciled under the lip above the handle. I smiled as I checked out this discovery and then started to take a sip of the cups contents. I smiled again as I realized the cup had a hint of scotch whiskey in the water. She giggled and said, “Father would often prepare us an afternoon drink of water in porcelain cups. He would add what he called a thimble of scotch. I always suspected he put more than a thimble in his cup, but I came to like this beverage on a hot afternoon on the deck of our sailing vessel. I was careful not to put more than a thimble of the fine scotch in our cups, but it flavors the drink nicely, don’t you think?” I could not help but to smile at Becky, not so much over the delightful drink, nor the porcelain cup she served it in, but the memories this woman had of her father and of life’s little pleasures that he shared with her. I looked into Becky’s eyes and said, “I wished I had met you when your father had been alive. I know I would have loved him as much as I do you.” Becky giggled and said, “He was a fine man and would have liked you. He always enjoyed the company of people who could listen well and also tell a good tale.”
It was getting dark and Becky had lowered and secured the main sail, but left the foresail in place. She raised the boom and slid it into the slot in the steel plate that connected the boom to the mast, and then secured the sail and boom to the mast with Velcro strips, followed by two polyester ropes. This slowed the Pacifica considerably and Becky headed back down into the cabin for the sextant. Again, she sat down on the deck, but this time she used the moon as her reference. Then she headed to the cabin and did the math to pinpoint our location on her maps. In a few minutes, she stuck her head up out of the hatch and said, “We have arrived. We are within a mile of my intended destination.”
She came up on the deck to help me lower the foresail and secure it. I used my new fathom rope and determined that we were resting in thirty-two feet of water over the sandbar. As we dropped the port anchor, she walked up to me and said, “I have never been as excited as I am today. Thank you for joining me on this adventure. We are going to have a blast in the next few months.” She continued to look at me and said, “Shall we try to catch some supper.” I went down into the cabin and passed up two fishing poles, along with a glass bottle that contained some smelly bacon rind things in it. We only fished a few minutes until I caught a small fish about ten inches long. As I stood patting myself on the back over being the male and providing my wife with food, she also hooked a fish. When she pulled it onto the deck, it was about an inch shorter than mine. She giggled and said, “As it should be.” I giggled over Becky allowing me to catch the larger of our two fish. Normally, she would have kept fishing until she bested me.
While Becky cooked the fish, I put the two solar panels into the overhead shelves for the night. The batteries were now fully charged and we would have power for the deck lighting and cabin lights for a couple of days. I was very pleased with the solar panels we had purchased, and hoped they held up for the entire trip. When the fish was almost ready to eat, I prepared us two cups of water and peeled two apples, sliced them, and put them onto a small plastic bowl. As we sat and ate our food, we discussed our plans for tomorrow. I hoped to spend some time in the water with the swimming gear and see what was on the bottom of this sandbar. Becky laughed and asked if I liked crabmeat. I told her that shrimp and crab were my favorite seafood. She said, “We will look for some Abalone tomorrow. They are very good to eat, but are a protected species here in the Pacific. I take care not to harvest them often and then only take one or two small ones when I do find them. If cooked carefully, they are very delicious and nutritious. My father showed me how to find them along these sandbars, but few people even know they are here sinc
e they remain well camouflaged in the sand.”
There were no bugs tonight, so I brought up one of the lanterns and two deck chairs onto the deck. I put the screen over the aft hatchway and lit the lantern. Becky moved over to the portside swim ladder. I watched her drop her clothes on the deck and climb down into the water. When she climbed back up on the deck, she sat down in her chair and let the warm ocean breeze dry her body. I decided to follow suit and take a bath before bedtime. I stripped down and swam alongside the Pacifica for a few minutes. When I returned to the deck and sat down beside Becky, I realized that it was now very dark, and the only light we could see on the ocean was our lantern.
We could hear the gentle waves breaking on the port side of the vessel. Our new home seemed very surreal. Becky leaned over, turned the lantern off, and said, “Are you afraid of the dark and the things that go bump in the night?” I looked at her but could not see her face. I heard her giggle and then she began telling me a story of her childhood. “The first time my father anchored our small sailing sloop out on this sandbar and turned off the lantern, I jumped at every sound around me. I swear to my God that I could hear the fish under our boat discussing their secret plan to chew a hole in the bottom of the vessel and sink us. I could hear the voice of every dead sailor that had ever perished in Davy Jones’ Locker, wailing in the wind around me. My father let me squirm in the darkness for over an hour. He smoked his pipe, sipped scotch and water, and only talked when I asked him a question. After an hour, he lit the lantern and looked at me. By that time, I had tears in my eyes and was so scared that I almost peed in my pants. He asked me what I had discovered within myself after listening to my inner soul in the dark. I really did not understand the lesson he was trying to teach me at that age, but I finally got it two days after his death. I was so distressed with the loss of my father, my best friend, that I sailed out here to this reef and spent two days alone, thinking about what I needed to do to get past the horrible lonely feelings I felt. I knew that my life would always revolve around the sea and sailing, but was not certain how to get a grip on exactly how to get my life back on track. I had been thinking about building this vessel and finally made up my mind to concentrate my energy and talent on its design.”
SS Pacifica Page 9