Bryan wrote:

I've never experienced an absence of wind where I didn't have an auxilliary
(sp?), you know, a motor, to fall back on; I've only read of the scenario.

What is the longest dead calm you've experienced? Were you relaxed, you
know, calm, about it? How long did it take before it started to get to you,
if at all?

If not you, what is the longest dead calm our sailing author's have
experienced and lived to tell?



-The Crew of "The Tipsey": Two.-

Mouth of the Sturgeon River, Lake Nippising, Ontario, 30 years ago.

A 19 foot plywood bilge keeler, baggy sails, newlyweds, but for the
sake of a few years. A seagull outboard motor disregarded, a
wonderful week of sailing done, headed now for the last port of call
looking toward a hamburger supper near a familiar dock before the
week and soon, this weekend is done and then a return to Calandar
Bay tomorrow, and resumption of work on monday, at NORAD in Trenton.
Been nice all week then becalmed, with the river mouth in sight. Out
of ice.

Well after sailing all week, and lunchtime threatens, why not wait
for wind, and eat the remnants in the cooler for late brunch adrift?
But hold, is that a zephyr I feel on a hairy arm? Barely enough to
make a matchstick move beside the boat, but still, promise. Still
purists, the decision is made to sail, regardless, like the old
timers had to, before steam, an oath, OK?

"OK." says Mrs. Super Principals, Spouse to the Captain of Youthful
Principals, aboard the "S.V. Tipsey", in the Sturgeon's mouth.

Lunch. Stillness. Scraps. Thirst. Half a bottle of warm coke, one
ounce of rum, one warm beer, two cigarettes remain. The last of the
clean water went for breakfast coffee, caffeine and all. The porta
pottie is full. Courage.

Then, sail like a ghost toward Sturgeon Falls, an inch at a time,
back and forth, inching, tacking flabbily against a devilish tease
of wind, hinting, coming, going, never nearer, sunscreen all gone
now too, burning skin, wet T shirts and hats, Ontario heat, muggy
heat.

Time, rocking and ticking halyards in tune up before a concert,
forever tuning, tuning. Impatience, lazy seagulls, aspiring to
vulture careers, circling, squawking, ****ting, aggravating as
crackely candy wrappers at a movie, or a baby wailing in the smoking
balcony. No cigarettes left. No paddles with which to kill them, as
they come seeming sniffing, looking, smelling food and blood not yet
quite dead, scraps and sweat. Seeing their victims' slow decline
through thirst and suffering, patient, waiting, circling. *******s.
Old timers, veterans, paying the continuing price.

Tense smiles, salvation still beckons only a mile away, but too far
to swim. A vow to keep. Brooding Silence. The mood is getting ugly,
stubborn, frustrated.

Sunset. Immobility. The occasional wake as photographers zoom by,
damned papperazzi, close enough to take a picture of an odd couple
in the darkeling, against the setting sun's hellfire, haggard, sails
baggy, all at sea, getting desperate, now wavering? Never! The last
rationed beer spilled underfoot in it's cockpit shady spot, by a
stumble, a skip, a slip, a wake. Blame. Mutiny? We conspire to kill
powerboaters for diversion. Still, murder is our hearts now, and
freedom from this hell, dominated by principle over a childish oath,
a foolish mission, pointless, but not to be abandoned lightly.

Loyalty.

Principles, a vow. Acquiesecence. Patience. Suffering saints,
stained hearts. Dieting, now that rationing is ended, depleted,
without means to ration, fasting, famine, hunger, thirst. Mad,
crazing thirst and heat, and those damned gulls, circling, circling.

Drink the lake? Ewww!

"We will start the engine once we sail to a point between the red
and green entrance bouys." Remember your vow, your loyalty to
Captain, fellow crew, King, country, and holy mission?

"OK." She said, remember? Weary? Words given, words kept.

We are close enough for the mosquitos to have found us. They brought
their friends, the blackflies, and their little hitch hikers, the
no-see-ums. *******s! Bloodthirsty *******s! *******s everywhere!

We have no screens, only the companionway boards, closed forehatch,
mosquito coils, the heat, no air, no drink, no food. Nausea from
the insecticide fumes and wakes, wakes, wakes and their noise, and
the halyards' mad coded voices, urging murder, madly concerted now,
Wagnerian, blood stirring, mad, mad, mad for water, cool water.

Psycosis looms, our vows sacrosanct. Purgatory. Night. The anchor.
Sleep? The heat, the bugs, the wakes, as starships warp past. The
hurricane lantern, lighting an anchored prison ship.

The stink of bodies and the head, the festering seas, sewer to
Sturgeon falls, the moaning of thirsty sleep. Fitful, imprisoned, in
red hot irons. No sweat left. Swollen tongues, dreams, fitful,
memories dreamed: "Don't you listen to him, Dan, he's a devil, not
a man, as he spreads the burning sand with water. -Cool, -clear,
water-water." Startled! Awake again. Thirsty, trapped. Condemned?

Dawn, again. No wind, not one breath all night, and now, no grub,
no pudding, no duff. Nothing to drink. Itching. One pink peppermint
remains, to burn again the swollen, parched overhung tongues that
share it, lovers star crossed, allies, fellow stubborn victims,
fellow traitors, condemned together, we spy for weakness, seek out
heresey to use to condemn the other, to save ourselves.

"You want to give up? Start the engine?"

"Only if that's what you want."

Where do women get that attitude? Perhaps they are bad luck at sea,
as they say?

Then the breakdown, shameful, mercy, debased, dishonour? Then,
motor, grudging seagull putting up the river, powerboats zooming by.
One in particular, giant, fast, centre channel in a curved sewer
ditch, stereo blaring, waving, joyful, blind to suffering and
circumstance, ignorant fools! How I had wished to sail here. What if
he met another like himself, blind, coming the other way? But now,
a common enemy, a unity refound, goal in sight, nearer, nearer. A
monster wake, fitted perfectly to the damage seen on the boat houses
and rocks awash on shore as we pass, slowly, put-putting, putting.

Only a hour to the dock, washrooms, pop with ice, chips, hamburgers,
salvation, heavan!

Saturday shopping, beer store, then for home: showers, air
conditioning, ice cream, beer, TV. Only twenty years on the parade
square with rain and snow in November, remembrance days fly by, and
other duties too, to get to here.

A short becalming? Still, the longest. Too long. A survival story
for the kids, eventually, like the story of great grand dad in his
tin hat crash landing in the bomb shelter sump full of water, ass
full of shrapnel, chin strap tight, hat wedged tight in the sump,
underwater, a nearby bomb echo resounding, hanged upside down by the
chinstrap under water below great grandma's ankles in the mud, a
near drowning in the blitz. Comical now, just a little character
building now, memories of fun, then, in the good old days survived.

-Recalled aboard "The Tipsey Two, Too" once, and now again, yard
sailing at home, the house a part of a frozen winter flottilla in
formation with "The Bote Ouele", a bigger bilge keeler on the
trailer in the snow, thankful for the cool warmth, and water to
waste. The water of life. The book of living.

Terry K