Up the River without a Paddle

If you have vacation time, and you are looking for something to do for the day, sailing up the Columbia Gorge on a tall ship might be the perfect trip for you.  Board either the Lady Washington or the Hawaiian Chieftain and imagine yourself back in the 1800s.

Lady Washington at dock in Washougal, WA with Hawaiian Chieftain astern

We had our choice of sailing aboard either ship, and although we'd sailed on the  Lady before, we chose her again.

Brig Lady Washington

We Our trip would take us from Washougal, Washington up the Columbia River, through the Bonneville Dam Locks, under the Bridge of the Gods, and end at Stevenson, Washington. Bruce, Ryan and I met at 6am at Starbucks and drove up the Columbia Gorge to drop off a car, and back to Washougal to board.

You see the gangway beside the ship.  That must be hauled in when preparing to get underway.

And we were off, with the Hawaiian Chieftain astern.  The Columbia Gorge is a beautiful drive on either the Oregon or the Washington side, but neither compare with sailing up the river.

Hawaiian Chieftain in the sights of the Lady Washington Stern Chaser

I've been loading some video and hope to have some raising the sails in the next post,

Kissing the Truck, Part Two

Lukas:

Fortitude and Triumph

Lukas May 2007 (one year after)

“I don’t remember kissing the truck,” Lukas said, “but people tell me I did. I remember I was a little afraid. The climbing was exhausting and I had a feeling I had bitten off more than I could chew. Maybe it was just a sensation of foreboding...”

When Lukas fell from the top of the mainmast on the Lady Washington, he hit the pin rail with his face and broke his cheekbone completely off below the eye. His brain hemorrhaged. His jaw split in five places, and eight of his vertebrae fractured. Seven broken ribs caused damage to his lungs and his left wrist fractured, resulting in nerve damage. His hands suffered burns, indicating he tried to save himself by grabbing onto the backstay during the fall. But his spinal cord was intact.

Surprisingly, that safety harness lanyard, although not saving him from the sixty-seven foot drop, may have still saved him from death by preventing his pelvis from hitting the deck. “I think it was very wise for JB to have ordered my lanyard cut, and to have me lowered to the deck because the movement of the ship caused my body to continue swinging, while it dangled in the air.” And JB made sure no one moved him once he was on deck.

Lukas is also grateful for the quick and heroic action of Nick, the sailor in the mast top, who tried to grab him. “I believe that he stopped me enough so that I survived. I think I owe my life to him.”

During the week following the accident, Lukas underwent surgery to repair his face and cheek, although he has no memory of it. He does remember someone asking, right away, for his emergency contact information and he recalls telling them there was a list in his wallet. They must have contacted his family, because his girlfriend arrived from Switzerland on the fourth day, so he was not completely alone in a foreign country, fighting to regain his life.

OHSU Hospital, Portland

His first real memories began about a week after the accident, when they released him from the intensive care unit into a regular hospital room. They wanted to get him up and moving, to aid in his recovery. With the same resolve it took to climb the mast, Lukas made his first wobbling walk, short at first. Each day, after every meal, he’d shuffle along the corridors, a little further each time, stretching his muscles, focused on recovery. As some feeling began to return to damaged nerves, the nerve-racking medical bureaucracy kicked into high gear. OHSU wanted confirmation the insurance would pay for “every little thing; contacting the US subsidiary of the insurance, who contacted the headquarters in France, who relayed the information to the Swiss insurer, who sent their answers back through the chain, all dealing with the nine hour time difference.”

The online model ship community heard of his accident and collected some money to help with his girlfriend’s expenses, which would not be covered by insurance.

He wanted to go home. His girl friend wanted him to go home. She began making phone calls and it took a great deal of planning, negotiating, coercing and perseverance to make it happen. No airline would allow him on board with brain and lung injuries. He and his girlfriend had to wait several days until he was off oxygen and underwent CAT scans, which determined he had no brain damage. An airline would agree to the transport and then cancel. This happened time and again. Another week went by while his girlfriend spent hours on the phone each day, only to have their hopes dashed with another cancel. Then she met with success, coordinating with insurance, airlines, ground transportation and medical personnel. Through her tireless efforts, two and a half weeks after the accident, he was airlifted on a Medicare plane from Portland to L.A. and then boarded a Swiss Airlines jet. A French physician waited to attend to all the medications during the flight and a gurney had been installed across eight seats in the back of the plane.

Swiss Airlines

In Switzerland, he remained in the hospital another two weeks until he could be transferred to a rehabilitation facility where he spent another seven weeks in physical and occupational therapy. He went back to work, at first for only ten percent of his day, but gradually increasing his time until he reached full time status one year after the accident. He continued physical therapy on an outpatient basis. Although his jaw healed, he currently wears braces because his teeth became misaligned.

Through the tedious recovery, Lukas has remained positive and stubbornly determined to overcome the difficulties. He has no intention of letting the fates have their way. He remains in charge of his destiny. Although there is still residual nerve damage, he has resumed his hobbies of scuba diving and parachuting.

“I guess I narrowly escaped complete paralysis,” he said. “I was lucky beyond imagination, with a whole bunch of guardian angels.”

Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain-Brian Baird

I would imagine the one hobby he would not want to resume would be sailing, but Lukas is not an ordinary man. The sea is in his blood. “If I believed in such things, I’d think I was a sailor in another life,” he said. He has the utmost respect for the Lady Washington and returned, with his girlfriend (now his wife), to crew for three weeks in the summer of 2008, going aloft once more, shaky at first, nervous, scared. He still loves sailing. He returned again at the end of 2008 for another three weeks, and hopes to come back again in 2010. For him returning to the Lady was important to his recovery. And sailing still remains vital to his happiness. “I didn’t want to be a ‘victim’, not for something as important to me as sailing,” he said. “I wanted to be a ‘survivor.’”

As I said in an earlier post, accidents happen in even the most efficient and careful businesses and organizations. But once the accident occurred, it was the calm, efficient, professional reaction of the captain and crew of the Lady Washington which was instrumental in getting Lukas the help he needed to affect an amazing and miraculous recovery. They did everything right. I have so much admiration and respect for them and their organization.

But it is the strong, fighting spirit of an incredible young man--the spirit of a sailor--who never gave up and never lost focus, and who still loves the Lady Washington, that I commend for being a hero. It is that man who has earned the right to wear the “Turk’s Head” bracelet.

Turk's Head Bracelet

With the Wind at His Back

Aloft

At Starbucks a few days ago something happened that made me sigh and sent my heart rate up one notch on the metronome. A man in brown slacks, a tan dress shirt, and a short, black overcoat, walked by and turned into hallway. A woman--just out of my range of vision—waited outside the women’s restroom, and I heard the man breath out an “Oh.” He tried handle to the men’s room. It turned and the door popped open a few inches. He pushed it wide and then swept his other arm from the direction of the waiting woman to the empty men’s room and smiled in an unsolicited gesture of gallantry. She must have turned down the generous offer for he mumbled out, “Are you sure?” She, again, must have declined, for he dipped his head, sent her a smile and with an “Okay,” slipped into the room and closed the door.

I find this type of gallantry appealing, especially from a man. This may be another one of my flaws, but if a woman had done that I would have thought she was particularly sweet, but it would not have made my heartbeat quicken. When the man came out, I hid behind my computer and watched him leave, my lips tilting up in a wistful smile.

Dave Hayden at Timothy Lake

I had the good fortune to meet a chivalrous gentleman not too long ago. His name is Dave Hayden. For those of you who live around the Portland metro area, you know of the Hayden Island Yacht Club. On a warm summer day, you can sit on the dock at the Island Café and watch the yachts glide by on their way to adventure. I asked Hayden if he hailed from the family upon which Hayden Island was named. A flicker of a smile flitted over his lips before he shook his head, but in my mind I’ve no doubt he’d one of them, as he carries the same classy magnetism and easy elegance of a man raised in the best social circumstances.

A few years ago, Hayden read an article about a couple who had spent two weeks aboard a tall ship, learning to haul in sheets and unfurl sails in the bawdy ocean breezes. It reached into his subconscious and bore into his brain like malware. Brains have no antivirus scanners. It slithered and wound its way until he found himself applying to board the Lady Washington for a two-week training course to become a “volunteer”.

He remembers his elation as he boarded, but he also remembers how foolish he felt. He knew nothing about sailing. He “was the worst landlubber” one could imagine. To make matters worse, he came aboard with another man who built models of tall ships and knew every sail, every halyard, and every brace. “But,” he said, “the captain and crew of the Lady Washington were great.” They really wanted to teach him and he really wanted to learn. It was a marriage of desire and opportunity.

Within a week he and the other landsman were ready to climb to the top of the mast—a sort of rite of passage for a sailor. But, the fates were against him. Not the capriciousness of weather, but of visitors. They had a full complement of passengers and Hayden was asked to stay ashore in order for the ship to remain within safety limits. He sighed. It was only a three hour passage, after all, and he had a whole week left to accomplish his feat.

They set off from the harbor and hoisted the mains’l, to the delight of the passengers, and disappeared over the horizon. Now, in modern times, one tends to forget that sailing on a tall ship is dangerous. One false move, one misplaced foot, one muscle spasm can have the same disastrous result as it might have had two hundred years ago. And on this day, it did.

His fellow landsmen fell from the rigging.

“I knew something was wrong when I saw the Lady returning early, her sails furled, but without the gaskets stowing them neatly in place,” he said. He looked past me at the wall while memories ignited within. His eyes returned to me. “And then I heard the sirens.”

As the diesel engine ripped through the water toward port, the thwap-thwap-thwap of a helicopter grew nearer. Paramedics and fire trucks screamed to a stop at the water’s edge. The ship glided up to the dock and crew swung from ropes across the expanse of water to the wooden platform. Ropes were thrown. Passengers stood silently. Gurneys and backboards and respirators waited. Crew wrapped lines from amidships around the cleat, belayed the stern, secured the bow.

“The ambulance took him to the helicopter and he was ‘life-flighted’ to OHSU. It was a harrowing time for the captain and crew. We were all transported to Astoria where we had to submit to drug testing.”

I nodded. A lot of business requires such testing, but I wondered if this were a maritime requirement.

“And we had to wait for the results before we were cleared to get underway a day or two later.” He looked at me quizzically. “You know, I’m glad I wasn’t there. Really, I am. He was my shipmate and we had gotten to be good friends. But, in some ways it separated me from the rest of the crew. I became an outcast, even worse than a lubber trying to fit in with able seamen.”

I knew what he meant. Experiencing trauma unites people. My first full-time job at Toys R Us saw twelve-hour-days and no days off in an effort to get the new store open in time for the Christmas rush. The employees were mostly young, hardworking people and friendly with each other. When I finally had a day off, a couple weeks after opening, a couple of blood thirsty gunmen held up the store, shot the security guard and made off with a bag of money from each of the ten cash registers. The criminals were caught, the guard recovered, but I always felt excluded from the inner circle after that.

It wasn’t as if the crew meant to make Hayden feel outside the camaraderie of shipmates, but not being there at the catastrophic event makes one sit outside the window and look in as the others close rank.

“It was really awful for them. It was traumatic,” he explained. They were short-handed and routine chores took more thought than usual. They needed help and he valiantly offered to stay an extra week. The Lady Washington agreed with a sigh of creaking wood. As is the case with shipboard trauma, life had to go on and the crew rallied. During that extra week, things got back to normal. The sailor who fell recovered. Hayden returned to his land job and the Lady Washington eventually sailed over the horizon to new ports.

Hayden hasn’t returned to the Lady Washington, although he could. But the life; the sailing, the sea, did its work during those weeks. It captured him and has not let go. He built a small sailboat and has sailed on his own. He is currently building a Navigator. He sent me a link, but I cannot download the picture. It is currently just the framework of the hull.

He has a great deal of pride and admiration for the captain and crew of the Lady Washington and it doesn’t surprise me. Accidents do happen, but once it did, the captain and crew did everything right to save the life of their crewman. That wouldn’t have been possible two hundred years ago. If not for their professionalism, their quick-thinking and their ability to do all that is necessary to bring the ship back in, the results may have been different.

Then Hayden did one more gallant thing, which sent my heart rocketing. He handed me his copy of the “Lady Washington Crew Training Manual.”

“Here, you may have this,” he said, and smiled. “For your research.”

I’m a pushover for gallant gentleman. I “friended” Hayden on facebook and “followed” both his wife and him on twitter. What is more, they’ve followed back. I feel so privileged. And a few days ago I asked him to send me a picture of himself for this blog, which he kindly did, with an embarrassed disclaimer. How sweet is that? I look forward to seeing both Hayden and his wife sometime soon, perhaps at the launching of the still unnamed Navigator he building (hint hint). I’ll bring the champagne.

Fair winds, Dave Hayden, and may you always have following seas.

Sea Adventures

The original Lady Washington was built in Massachusetts while it was still a British colony. The pretty little brig hauled freight up and down the colonial ports from 1750 until American Revolutionary War, when she became an American privateer. I can just imagine the nimble little brig clawing her way in and out of ports, delivering cargo in defiance of the British blockade, putting herself in constant danger. But she eluded British capture and in 1787, after the war, she won favor by an unprecedented trading voyage around Cape Horn. In 1788, she became the first American vessel to make landfall on the west coast of North America.

Her career included trade to Honolulu, Hong Kong and Japan. Lady Washington opened the black pearl and sandalwood trade between Hawaii and the Orient. Only 67 feet long on deck (112 feet overall) this little brig would have been just a speck on the vast blue ocean, but she managed to make a big name for herself.

In 1989 this new carefully researched and constructed Lady Washington celebrated her launch and calls Grays Harbor, Washington her home. She spends her time providing sail training for seamen (and seawomen?) and even spent a short time acting in a movie filmed in the Caribbean. She sails with a crew of 12, can carry up to 48 passengers and boasts two, three pounders, and two swivel guns.

Would she have made a stand and fought an enemy ship when she was a privateer? Heck no. She would have run for her life.

I visited her a couple years ago at the Rose Festival in Portland. Her crew cheerfully and knowledgeably answered all my dozens of questions. My thanks to the many people who make the Lady Washington possible and accessible.