Showers, Sheets and Sailing through Portland

Sailing through Portland, Oregon

For my birthday, my sister, Nina, gave me a sailing trip. Not just any sailing trip, but sailing on the Willamette River right through the heart of Portland. The kind of trip you see others taking on a hot, summer afternoon, when they glide past, sprawled on deck in bathing suits, jaunty little sun hats poised atop stylishly windblown hair, and sipping piña coladas with festive little umbrellas peeking over the rims. They are always smiling, without a care in the world.

That kind of trip.

We met for a Sunday brunch at the floating Newport Bay Restaurant, wedged between a boat-filled jetty at River Place and the I-5 bridge. My sister had brought Gore-Tex pants, jacket, hat and water boots. I glanced out the window. Something was amiss. Was that rain, coming down in sheets and spilling off the gutters of the restaurant?

I patted my pack. It contained a light jacket, and a wide-brimmed summer hat.

After the meal, we pressed against the glass doors and stared out at the dock. The rain eased until it was a fine mist, then stopped. We ambled outside and watched a 26 foot Hunter sailboat approach, its sails furled and the passengers huddled under tarps and jackets, their stringy, wet hair stuck to their heads under sagging hats.

After they disembarked, we boarded and sat on wet seat cushions in the cockpit. Within minutes, we shoved off, motoring out under the I-5's Marquam Bridge.

"Are we going to sail?" I asked Captain Shane St. Clair.

He glanced at the clouds breaking up overhead, and at the little ribbons hanging from the rigging.

"Well, I guess so," he smiled. "We'll set the jib, first, and see how that goes."

It was at that point he pressed Cort into the crew, assigning him the task of taking the helm, while he jumped up and unfurled the mainsail and checked the lines and sheets. Cort seemed perfectly happy to become a first-mate, however, and steered clear of any misfortune.

The sun came out and steam rose from the deck, and the squishy seat cushions. We raised the mains'l. Nina had arranged for a band to stand under the Burnside Bridge and play for us as we sailed past. She is so organized.

Burnside Bridge (with the little Bavarian Village tower)

The Burnside Bridge was designed by Joseph Strauss and built in 1926. His next bridge was the Lewis and Clark Bridge. After that, he designed a little bridge called the Golden Gate.

The Portland fire boat came out to greet us. I think Nina arranged this, too. They waved to us, and probably thought we were visiting celebrities.

Portland Fire boat

I was so busy doing the celebrity hand wave that I almost didn't see the Portland Spirit until it was on top of us.

Portland Spirit and Portland Fire

In the below picture you can see the Steel Bridge in the foreground. It may not be the most beautiful bridge, but it is one of the busiest. Across its spans run cars, buses, pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, railroad trains and light rail trains. Just beyond the Steel Bridge is the Hawthorn Bridge, and beyond that you can see the graceful arch of the Fremont bridge, the highest of the Portland bridges.

Steel Bridge, Hawthorn Bridge, Fremont Bridge

When we arrived back at the dock, and furled the sails, the sun was just about to be swallowed up by clouds. I expected to see newspaper reporters, longing to interview us, but they were curiously absent.

By the time we got back to our cars, it began to rain.

Tension and conflict on the high seas

Guest Blog by Author Linda Collison

HM Bark Endeavour replica.

Photo taken by John Hill

I’m packing my duffel to go sailing and feeling so conflicted about being at sea again.

Topaz is our sailboat, a 36-foot sloop moored at the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor in Hawaii. Bob and I have sailed her many thousands of blue water miles around the Hawaiian Islands; we’ve sailed to Bora-Bora and back. Oh, that sounds so romantic, I know. But as Samuel Johnson once said, “Being on a boat is like being in prison – with the chance of drowning” Or words to that effect.

I have a love/hate relationship with Topaz. With water. I am both attracted to the ocean and repelled by it, I find voyaging sometimes thrilling, sometimes tedious, and sometimes scary as hell. At sea I struggle with both claustrophobia and agoraphobia. To tell you the truth, I have an abiding fear of deep water and it is this fear, this underlying tension that fuels my writing.

Star-Crossed, my first published novel, was conceived in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean aboard HM Bark Endeavour, an Australian built replica of Captain James Cook’s famed vessel. The Endeavour was a floating time machine that transported me to the mid-18^th century during the three weeks I served as ordinary seaman, along with 54 other time travelers sailing from Vancouver to Hawaii. For three weeks we stood our watches, patched sails, braided reef points, scrubbed the deck and the dishes, climbed aloft and out on the footropes of the yards to make and furl sail, took our tricks at the helm. We lived by the striking of the ship’s bell, by the orders of our superior officers, and in the camaraderie of our mates.

Bob and I signed on together and, although we are married, we slept separately in hammocks strung from the deckhead 18’ apart, as per 18^th century British Navy regulation. And because my last name begins with a “C” and his begins with an “R” we weren’t even swinging in tandem, but were half a boat length apart. My billet was next to Joe, a former dentist from Southern California. We bumped elbows as we swung in our canvas hammocks, listening to the creaking and groaning of the living ship and the voices of those on watch above us..

At first going aloft was terrifying, but terror soon gave way to exhaustion. Then gradually we started to actually enjoy the process and by the time we reached Hawaii we were scampering gleefully, almost agilely, up the ratlines and we were familiar with the maze of hempen lines that were Endeavour’s rigging.

It was aboard ship on a night watch in the middle of the North Pacific, when the character Patricia showed herself to me and insisted I write her to life. When I got off the ship in Kona, Hawaii, Patricia came with me. For the next six years I researched the Georgian Navy and mid-18^th century British history, while writing Patricia’s story. Finding an agent was like finding a needle in a haystack, if you’ll excuse the cliché. It took nearly a year.

In 2006 Star-Crossed was published by Knopf! Now I was sailing with a bone in my teeth, baby! And the reviews were awesome. But Knopf didn’t want to continue the series, though I had written a bomb of a sequel. My agent didn’t think any other publisher would be interested in publishing the sequel to a book Knopf held the rights to. She lost interest, we parted ways. I took a break, published an article in Cruising World, started a new novel, set at sea.

But Patricia would not be forgotten. Nearly five years after the publication of Star-Crossed, I found a publisher. Or should I say my publisher found me – on Facebook – and Surgeon’s Mate; book two of the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventure Series was published by Fireship Press!

I’m writing the first draft of book three now; Patricia just won’t let me go. It’s never easy, writing down someone else’s life, reliving their fears and desires. She keeps pushing me to deeper water where there’s no land in sight. I’m still afraid of capsizing, of drowning, but that’s what drives me to write my way home.

Follow @lindacollison on twitter or click here to see her website.

Sailing to Rauguana Caye

Belize

We’ve stopped using the days of the week. Today is Pina Colada day. We don’t drink during the day. We could, if we wanted, but Captain Bruce won’t allow anyone who has been drinking to help crew. No one wants to miss out on anything having to do with sailing, so the alcohol stays in its bottle until we’re anchored for the night. But that doesn't stop us from planning the drink of the night. The blender is ready.

Today the seas are calm compared to the last two days. We haul up the main and set the genoa and head to Rauguana Caye, where we’ll be protected from more northerly winds. Black, boiling clouds line the horizon as we approach the caye.

“Prepare to get wet,” Bruce shouts. “Batten the hatches.”

The crew scatters, rushing below to check our cabin hatches and battening all the ones in the salon. The wind howls and rain pelts our decks. We furl the sails and the big diesel engine rumbles to life. Rauguana Caye is ahead and we glide into the shelter of the island and the reefs extending out on either side.

We’d heard from Moorings that most of the mooring buoys are not maintained, so we anchor near one and Bruce and Ryan jump in the dinghy and motor to the island. A short time later they return, cheerful and smiling. The mooring buoys at Rauguana are good. We raise the anchors and tie off to one, just as another boat snatches the other.

Some of the crew scrambles into the dinghy and races to the island, finding shells, a dog who digs up crabs, a cabana boy for Winnie, (who has talked about obtaining one for three months before the trip). I did not see him and I suspect he was the bartender at the little island bar, but just what makes up a cabana boy is so subjective.

Back at the catamaran, Dennis and Nelson lower themselves into the salty water for a swim. Moments later Nelson leaps from the water onto the deck, flapping like a fish. “Something touched my leg,” he pants.

I’m pretty sure it was a barracuda or a whale shark, or maybe a stingray. Nelson decides to stay on board and soon the whir of the blender signals the start of Pina Colada night.

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