Aqua Chautauqua Episode Seven.

The Sailing Ship Merlita displaces about 4.5 tonnes and is just over 24 feet at her waterline. With an eight foot beam, she is a spacious pocket cruiser, a double-ender sloop with a tight aft cabin behind the cockpit, a small galley and a spacious salon in her main cabin under the mast. With a diesel heating stove, and a canvas deck cover over her boom she can be quite snug in a harbor storm. You could easily live on her all winter long.

 

She also sails like a dream, points well, and can get up on her wings with a strong following breeze and the corresponding swell. She is blue water capable (you can sail her to Alaska, no problem) and has been kept-up like a little jewell since she her keel was laid in 1979 by Henderson shipyard in South California.

 

She is owned by the partnership of Captains Morris and Magid and it is my sea-breeze pleasure to be sitting beside the rudder on her aft deck, leaning into the seat cushions, manning the port jib sheet, learning to use a spiral cam cleat winch.

This is where I promptly fall asleep.

 

I dream of a freshening breeze out of the southwest and when I wake Captain Morris is beginning to set the running ginny. Becky L. is at the helm and Karen R. is on the starboard winch. Together we tack our way up the Trincomali Channel aided substantially by the swiftly running tide. Soon we will make the tight southeastern turn into Active Pass, a beam reach that turns us hard to starboard as we come up on the lee-side of a stone reef jutting into the pass. Soon we settle into irons, strike the sails, and ever so gently motor toward a mooring buoy in Miners Bay. We have made Mayne Island. Which was once called: S,KtaK.

 

If you have trouble pronouncing this you are a newcomer. Thanks for visiting. Go home soon.

 

As we have sailed south we are becoming dangerously close to western civilization. This is manifested by two obvious things.

 

Firstly: Instead of beautiful uninhabited rocky points jutting out into pristine bays, we begin to see steel and glass industrial summer homes, stuck to steep cliffs. These are modern seasonal houses thought up by modern architects, built by get-rich contractors and sold over and again by glossy realtors for a hefty percentage of the inflated price. Sure I’m being judgmental, but realistically do you think someone is going to be a productive and supportive member of the local year-round community and live in a house you can see clear through to the other side of the bay? Glass on steel on glass. Even on a weekend afternoon in July these houses seem empty. (and you would know because you can see straight through the walls) Or maybe these vacation residents are all out doing community volunteer work? Pulling weeds, mending fences at the primary school, painting the inside of the Agricultural Hall. I doubt the glass-house people are out doing this. But I would love to be proved wrong.

 

Secondly by land prices. Even in Canadian dollars they are huge. A little two bedroom cabin here (fixxerupper) will cost you north of 500k. A glass house on a rocky inlet? Millions, with an “s”. These prices eliminate most young families and community do-gooders. Just, say’in land speculators.

 

Better to just buy a boat if you want to throw away some money.

 

Even given such a bad investment, this little section of British Columbia is still heavily populated by boats. Great sailing, fantastic cruising. It is a mariner’s dream as far north as Quadra Island where the Strait of Georgia becomes a twisted tangle of narrow channels and the tides rip through like angry rivers. Up there even power boating can be a challenge. Free sailing (no motor) can be a nightmare.

 

But we are way south of that, near the US Border and Mayne Island promises to be a friendly and welcoming community.

 

I hook the mooring buoy on my first try and do no fall over board as the frisker pole catches my bad knee and I stumble along the deck rail. Sea legs I have not. In fact I’m glad to have any functioning legs at all. And let’s not even mention the knees.

We are gladly met by one of our host/producers who is driving an aluminum fishing skiff with a spacious weather cabin and benches in the aft enough to accommodate our entire sailing contingent of about eleven.

 

I say “about eleven” because I am convinced that there are Chautauquans on board our two vessels who never come ashore, just lazily lounging in the vee berth, reading detective novels, eating salt caramels, telling old stories of old tours among fantastical people of the olden times. Smerdyakov playing canasta with Barbara Warren, Rebo Flordigan sketching the profile of Faith Petric, Washboard Sid about to light up another doobie to share with Chef Chez Ray who is teaching his daughter Shine to make salmon burger casserole with polenta.

 

Ok, perhaps they are only ghosts and certainly it is their right and duty to haunt out ships and our memories. What kind of work ethic can you expect from a ghost? What kind of supernatural schlepping can you squeeze from the dearly deceased?

We have made Mayne Island and thus are three quarters of the way through the tour. I haven’t lost my mind yet, but merely misplaced it.

 

Bubble me this, Tom Noddy: What constitutes reality when you are a true Chautauquan?

 

“They went to sea in a Sieve, they did, in a sieve they went to sea…” He says.

 

And then, after his second sentence, I know we are going to be here for awhile.