Loki’s big day
Issue 29 : Mar/Apr 2003
We had survived the savage sea! The day before, we’d sailed across Georgia Strait for the first time, and we were feeling pretty feisty. We should have known better. Neptune wasn’t through with us yet.
As the gull flies, it’s 20-odd miles from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Newcastle Island Marine Park near Nanaimo. True, we’d almost been run down by a freighter. And true, it had taken us 12 hours, when most sailors made the trip in less than five. But now, as we swung at anchor in Eleuthera Soleil, our 24-foot, British-built Snapdragon bilge-keel sailboat, it was a new morning. We basked in the glow of . . . a passage well made. Ahem . . . maybe not well made . . . but we were alive, and that was a definite plus.
While Robert made breakfast, I rowed Loki, our 15-year-old Black Lab, to shore in the inflatable to explore Newcastle. All went well until we tried to return to the boat. We had a stiff southeast breeze in our teeth, and the water was choppy. Worse, the Nanaimo harbor was full of fast-moving sailboats, racing in and out among the anchored boats. The racers showed no regard for dinghies. Time after time, our inflatable was almost capsized as one after another of these wildly careening racers sheered past mere inches away. I got tossed back and forth in their wake and lost one of my oars. Then the current caught us and started to suck us out to sea. I flailed wildly with my one oar. “Robert!” I shrieked, waving desperately to get his attention. He looked up, saw me, waved casually, and went back to his cooking.
The racing sailboats knifed past far too close for comfort, the wind snatched my howls for help right off my lips — and Loki lurched from side to side of the dinghy, hunting wasps while I fought to keep us from capsizing.
Finally, Robert realized I wasn’t just kidding around; we really were in trouble. He started the engine and motored to save us . . . with breakfast still on the Origo stove in the cockpit and all the bedding snapping in the wind. But he couldn’t get too near, because of a reef, and had to circle at a distance, while I paddled madly with my one oar, trying to get to him. Finally, he got near enough to throw us a line. Before I could shout “No!” he tossed a rope to us.
Loki instantly leaped overboard, grabbed the rope, and — good retriever that she was — swam back to Robert with it. Meanwhile, I was drifting rapidly away, and Robert was being pushed toward the rocks. He couldn’t start the engine with Loki dog-paddling beside the boat. Finally, he was able to grab Loki’s collar and haul her aboard as she was going down for the third time. As her head and shoulders came through the lifelines, she spotted the pot of spaghetti. Her favorite! With her hind legs still dangling off the side of the boat, she dove right into the pasta, and started wolfing it down happily.
Robert, meanwhile, was trying to wrestle the boat away from the rocks and was unable to do anything about Loki scarfing our breakfast. He managed to toss me a line and slowly towed me behind the sailboat back to the anchorage while I sputtered and choked in the thick diesel smoke. We puttered over to the dock, Loki still feasting merrily on the pasta, which she had claimed as her own. We tied up next to a gleaming classic motor yacht, with all our flapping bedding, wet towels, my bloodshot eyes squinting out of my sooty face like a rat in a tar pit, our dog sucking spaghetti off the stove . . .
The owner of the yacht paused in polishing his brass and stared in horror at our floating dogpatch. He was a fellow I had gone to school with. His jaw dropped. “Sally?” he said.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
