Flight of the Tern

My family operates a shipyard in Victoria that specializes in refits of medium range luxury vessels ranging from cruisers to catamarans. Tern is a forty six foot luxury sailing vessel and we had just completed a major refit on her.

Tern is a single mast sloop with full cabin and full accommodations and first class all the way. We had just replaced the gas engine with a new six cylinder diesel and completely refurbished the interior. The teakwood and mahogany had all been redone by our finishing craftsmen . It had new carpet, cabinets and the exterior and bottom paint was all redone. The cabinets, mattresses and all the components including radio, radar and global positioning systems were put in new. It had a new fresh water converter and a new diesel fired furnace unit. The mainsail and the jib were both replaced along with the sheet winches and all the rope rigging. The shaft and prop were all refurbished and the boat had been in one of our dry docks for almost four months and was now ready to go. Nothing was spared to get the best into this boat. I had just done a shake down on it yesterday and it was in our marina now waiting to be picked up.

Tern belonged to the Harmon Pulp and Paper Company from Juneau Alaska and had been brought here last fall and left with us for the refit. The main reason for the meeting we were having today is that we had got a request from the President of Harmon paper who just happened to be an old buddy of my dad's. He wanted us to deliver the boat to Juneau and was a little fussy about who would sail it. He actually requested that it would be me that would deliver the boat and he asked if he could supply the crew made up of his daughter and her boyfriend and that they would come with me on the trip.

I grew up on the water and have an engineering degree as related to ship building and marine survey. I am one of the youngest members of the power squadron which is a marine safely organization and I'm trained in VHF digital radio, radar and navigation so I more then qualify to do this and have done this sort of thing on many occasions including running a catamaran to Hawaii two years ago. I also know the inside passage up the west coast to Juneau and it's not really a problem to me but the trip will take almost ten days and the question is whether I have the time. I am single with no ties so it would be only business commitments that would keep me from it.

My dad just asked me out right if I would do a favour for him and his old friend and just like that I was booked to go to Juneau. His daughter and her boyfriend would be arriving at the airport the next afternoon and I would be picking them up. I hoped that they knew a little bit about what they were doing. I was told that the daughter had spent a lot of time on the boat so she would probably have a bit of a clue. The boat really took a couple of people to sail it properly but we would be running on the diesel engine a lot of the time anyway when we were in the smaller areas of the inside passage. I hoped they would be of help and didn't really want to spend too much time training them.

The next afternoon I was at the airport to meet the incoming flight arriving from Chicago via Vancouver. I waited in the luggage area and had no description really of who I was picking up. Someone touched my arm and I turned and standing beside me was a very pretty blonde girl in her early to mid twenties with a red haired guy standing beside her. She asked "are you Bobby from Island Marine?"

I answered "yes and you must be Tracy Harmon." She smiled and I got my first good look at her. She had long blonde hair and was dressed casual. She was not much over five feet tall with a cute smile and just a touch of light freckles on her nose and to me she looked gorgeous and for some reason I knew at once I was going to like her.

"Yes I'm Tracy, pleased to meet you Bobby and this is Kevin." The guy came forward and we shook hands. I have a built in radar and for some reason I got bad vibes off him right from the beginning. Tracy seemed to be friendly and very cheerful. She was slim and very shapely with a bit of a tan so she had obviously spent some time outdoors. I was actually a bit concerned with the knowledge of my crew but we would wait and see. In the back of my mind I had the feeling that training Tracy might not be that hard to take. Anyway, we packed up their bags on a cart and took off back to the city and chatted about their trip here.

It was fairly late in the day so I took them to a hotel and made arrangements to meet with them for breakfast the next morning and we would go to the boat and spend the day outfitting it with food and the usual stuff that might not already be in the boat. I would fuel it and do a few last minute checks on it and later that day or the next morning we would leave and go north. The trip was about five hundred miles and I hoped to be able to do close to eighty miles on some days. We would not travel fast and hoped to be able to go under sail for a good portion of the trip. I also hoped that we would get some good weather with no storms and not a lot of rain.

I met them for breakfast the next morning and Tracy was dressed unbelievably cute. She had her hair in a long ponytail , was wearing a ball cap and a Chicago Bears jacket with low cut jeans. She looked like she wouldn't be afraid to get her hands dirty. As for the guy that was with her he was a different story. He made the mistake in the first hour of treating me like I was someone that was hired to perhaps carry his bags for him. I straightened him out on that and I saw Tracy smile at me when I told him and laughed, " the way this works is that I am the captain and unfortunately you will be the crew." I could tell he didn't care for that but the fact he didn't was not going to cause me many sleepless nights.

I looked after the final outfitting and fuelling of the boat and Tracy took on the job of taking inventory and filling the stores with food, bottled water etc. Tern had a good size freezer so we could take some frozen food and she seemed to know what to take as if she had done that before. I gave them a company pickup to use and they looked after the shopping. I was pleased to see the beer and the bottles of wine going aboard which meant it was not going to be a dry trip. I was happy to see there was beer instead of champagne and steak in the fridge instead of sushi and tofu and that told me a bit about her. The more I saw of Tracy the more I liked her and I could see she liked me and we were starting to get along great.

However in just the one day we been together it was easy to see that her and Kevin were not getting along that great. I noticed a number of times that she just ignored his whining and did her thing. There was little interaction between them like you would expect and he acted like he didn't really want to be there. I wondered if he was a bit jealous that Tracy obviously liked me. Since our little altercation he was sort of ignoring me and it wasn't hurting my feelings much

. I met them at their hotel that evening for dinner and I more or less laid out the plans for the trip. I explained about how at night we would tie up at public wharfs in marinas and as we got away from the populated areas we would anchor in sheltered areas over night. We could not risk the chance of travelling at night with the many reefs, islets and floating debris that was along that whole passage. Kevin seemed to be concerned about how long the trip was going to take. Tracy explained the Tern was not a fast boat and it was a long ways to where we were going.

The next morning we cast off from our company dock in Victoria and I pointed Tern's nose out into the Strait toward the San Juan islands and headed north through the Salt Spring Islands group. We hardly got out of site of Victoria before we encountered some swells due to an off shore wind the night before and within an hour we had Kevin over the side of the boat puking his guts out and Tracy was even more upset with him because she tried to get him to take sea sick pills before we left and he refused. I tried to not let her see me snickering but she saw me and rolled her eyes and smiled back. She seemed to be very comfortable with the boat and I noticed that when she stored the fenders and rolled the ties that she knew what she was doing and I was a bit impressed. She knew her way around Tern very well and as I had heard she had spent a lot of time on it. She took a turn on the wheel and handled it well. She knew what she was doing and learned and got used to the new instruments quickly. Meanwhile Kevin spent most of the day on a chair on deck. It was a gorgeous spring day and this first leg of the trip was going great and the new diesel was running perfect.

Tracy looked after making the lunch and we had sandwiches and some cut up fruit. Kevin of course didn't bother to join us. I tried to get him to do a stint at the wheel but the guy couldnt even stand up. By late afternoon we were a good forty five miles north of Victoria and I took a quick bearing and decided we would put in at Ladysmith which was a small coastal community for the night. It looked like this first day we were going to travel about sixty miles which was good. Kevin was starting to feel a bit better and when we got into Ladysmith and got tied down for the night he was not too bad and he ate some of the dinner we cooked on board that night.

It was a warm evening so we sat on the deck and drank some beer. It was more and more apparent to me that my crew was not getting along. I don't know what had been brewing with them before they came out here but they were no longer trying to hide the fact that things were not going good now. Tracy was spending a lot more time talking to me and I think the guy was getting a bit jealous. I'm an outdoors type over six feet tall, in good shape, fairly muscular with no fat and I have been told I'm not too hard to look at. I think I may have impressed Tracy a bit and I also think she liked the way I was treating her. I have found out that she is far from being a wimp like her boyfriend seems to be. I'm very impressed with her and beginning to like her more and more all the time. It got around to almost midnight and we decided it was time to get some sleep and get an early start the next morning. I picked up the marine forecast and tomorrow was sounding good

Tracy took the full sleeping cabin at the front and I took the bunk at the bottom of the stairs leading to the deck. I was watching to see where Kevin would fit in and smiled a little to myself as he set up by himself on one of the convertible bunks off the living area in the main room. Very interesting, but I considered him being with Tracy a terrible waste anyway. I had picked up bits and pieces from her that they were not a real long term item and were not engaged or anything. I was soon asleep and as usual the little rocking of the boat on its moorings just put me right out.

We got up the next morning at six and we were socked in with fog. We took our time and made a leisurely breakfast in the galley and by the time we finished the sun was out and was burning the fog off and around eight we backed out of the slip and headed for the south tip of Valdes Island and out into the Georgia Strait. By ten thirty we were well clear of land with a decent twenty knot south east breeze. Tracy took the wheel steered a heading of twenty degrees north and I got the winches uncovered and ran up the mainsail and watched the wind fill it as we took on a good starboard tack. I hit the switch and unwrapped the jib and caught the same wind and watched it billow out if front of us and then got Tracy to shut the engine down and our speed was sitting on fifteen knots and we were well under sail. I tuned the sails a bit checked chocks and just took up a seat beside Tracy and let her keep the helm for now. This was the first time Kevin had sailed and I'm not sure he liked the lack of action but at least today he wasn't sick.

The wind stayed up for the whole day and we ran into some rough water but Tern just knifed through the waves as we ran with the wind to our stern and made very good time. Tracy and I alternated at the helm and Kevin spent some time in the cabin reading. We had made good time this second day and would put into the marina at Little River a bit earlier then planned but that would be a good run for the second day.

We tied up and got things put away by seven thirty and I went for a walk along the docks and ran into some people I knew that we had done boat work for and chatted for a while. I was a bit tired so I slowly walked back to where we were tied up and as I got along side Tern I could hear Tracy and Kevin talking inside. Apparently he had wanted to go to his parents place in Connecticut and she talked him into as he put it, " this stupid boat ride up in the asshole of the world." I fought to control my urge to drag him out of there and drown him but instead walked away and went up the hill to a bar overlooking the marina and ordered a beer.

I went back to the wharf an hour later and found they were gone. I noticed all of Kevin's stuff was not there anymore. I didn't go to bed instead I sat in one of the soft captains chairs reading my book and eventually went to sleep in the chair.

I was awakened with Tracy shaking me and I almost jumped right up. It was after midnight and she was alone. She sat down and told me that Kevin had taken his stuff and caught the bus leaving for Vancouver where he would catch a flight home. She went on to tell me how they had not been getting along which I of course knew. She told how the last couple of days things with them just came to a head and last night was the end. She went on to say that she didn't know what to do and asked if I would want to try and get someone to run with me up to Juneau. I asked her "what's wrong with you staying with me and the two of us finishing the trip?"

Tracy seemed to perk up a bit but still answered with a question, "how do you think it is going to look for us to travel and live together on this boat for over a week?"

I asked "What do you think of the idea?" I went on "as far as us travelling together I think it would be fine and have no problem with it but its up to you."

"Okay," she said "I'm going to make us some tea and we can leave in the morning."

We sat up for a couple of hours and talked. She had just lost a boyfriend but she sounded almost relieved. We talked about my life and my work in the boating industry and about a few stories of trips and experiences I have had. I'm only four years older then her. She was twenty four and I'm twenty eight. She worked in the Chicago warehousing division of her fathers company as an accountant and would go back there when this holiday was over. She was very smart and impressive and I finally suggested she get to bed and we would talk over breakfast in the morning. We both went to bed and I was soon asleep.

We got up early and it was cool but the diesel furnace soon had it warm in the galley and it would be an hour or so before the sun would do any good outside. It looked like a nice day on the way . She had not changed her mind and was ready to go. I had studied the tide tables and estimated our time to Campbell River would be about noon. There would be a slack tide at two in the afternoon so if we got going now we could run into Seymour Narrows and beat the dangerous flood currents in that passage. We got our stuff together and got on our way and were soon out into the strait heading towards Quadra Island.

My timing was right and we ran through the narrows with hardly a ripple underneath us and we were now away from towns for a couple of days before we hit the northern tip of the island at Port Hardy and then we would be out in the open sea. We had to cross an area that was close to ninety miles across before we could duck back into the inside passage. Tracy and I were getting along fine and were actually starting to have some fun and I found she had an excellent sense of humour and was very interesting. We spent some time with me showing her how to steer the boat on auto pilot and ended up with my arms around her as she stood at the wheel.

We anchored and spent the night in a cove on the south edge of Port Hardy and it was now on the fifth day since we left Victoria and we would now be starting into the northern leg of the trip. We fuelled Tern up, topped off the fresh water tank that supplied the shower inside and replenished our groceries and beer. We were now ready to head out into the open ocean where we would be offshore for a couple of days. The marine forecast was good and we pushed off and headed out steering twenty five degrees north. I plotted a course that would take us to the inlet in a bit over thirty six hours under sail if the forecasted wind speed was close and we would be able to run almost direct with a good starboard tack as our wind from the south west would push us right on our course with out having to correct and compensate.

By noon we were well out and running about forty miles off shore on our course and I had noticed the barometer dropping and just noticed the clouds coming up in the west and it was not unusual for an afternoon squall to come up but I watched it closely. The marine weather forecast was now giving small craft warnings but it was not to worry and Tracy was at the helm and things were under control and then I began to notice the wind pickup up a bit and Tern started to really move out. I watched the clouds coming up fast to the west and the wind was getting stronger and the waves were now capping off at about five feet. I loosened off the jib and hit the winch and wound it in at the same time I got Tracy to fire the diesel. I unwrapped the knot in the sheet and hit the winch button and dropped the main sail and watched Tern come over onto an even keel and we were now running on the diesel engine but the wind had really picked up now and the rain was coming hard.

Tracy was soaked as she had been behind the wheel. I came back and got her to go below and I fastened my dead mans line and put up the convertible top that covered the helm area and it was dry again in there. I headed Tern into the wind that was now coming from the northwest. This would take us off shore but this long boat would cut these waves with little trouble and we could correct our course when this blew over.

The storm lasted all night and Tracy and I took turns on the helm. I got no sleep and I knew she got none as she spent most of her time keeping things together below. The boat was completely water proof from the rain and the furnace was working good so I knew she was warm below and I made her stay under there but I know she didn't sleep. Finally the storm eased off around three in the afternoon almost twenty four hours after it started and it became quite calm and the sun came out and warmed us a bit. But we were tired and had to get our bearings and get corrected in our course and found we had not strayed that far off. We were so tired she just stayed inside my arms in front of the wheel as we steered the boat together.

We were getting close to land and I intended to try and get into one of the inlets and find an anchorage before it got totally dark. We were now entering the inland passage and had completed the worse part of the open sea we would have to navigate. I went to the chart and found there was a bay with a good clay mud bottom just a few miles away and I headed for it. I steered Tern into the secluded cove and let her drift to a stop in about ten meters of water. I hit the anchor switch and dropped the anchor and let it hit then backed up and spooled out about forty meters of line and locked it and felt Tern suck down in the bow as the anchor dug in the mud. I shut the engine off checked out the boat for storm damage and all was okay and then went below.