So we’ve been living aboard for almost a year now.  We have been having so much fun; I have gotten way behind on posting personal sailing adventures.  I just recently posted the story of bringing home our first boat.  Before I blog anymore about our other trips since, I’m gonna throw out this story of bringing home our “second” boat.

It came about because Winter was approaching and Jake (6) was living in the aft cabin.  (Picture the trunk of a cold Ford Crown Vic.)  I wanted to keep this lifestyle up and we figured an upgrade in square footage and heating options was in order.  My buddy over at www.artofhookie.org told me about how there was a beautiful pinky schooner for sale in Seattle.  I was on a ferry an hour after I saw the advertisement.

Tom Colvin’s pinky design is arguably some of the finest lines ever drawn for a sailboat.  Ever. Her seakindly abilities were proven hundreds of years ago in the Northern Atlantic by Scandinavian fisherman.  And later in the 1800’s, they were raced to reach the cargo ships approaching the New England seaboard of America.  Their speed allowed them to be the first to deliver a pilot to help navigate the local ports.

s/v Siren was launched in 2008 after 16 years of construction. No expense was spared and the finest craftsman from every trade put hundreds of hours of love into her.  She has predominately been covered in canvas for her first 5 years of life in Lake Union.  Watching the Duck Dodge Races on Tuesdays and occasionally catching a sniff of the salt air waifing in from the Puget Sound; I bet she cried once or twice when no one was looking.

So, the trip to bring her up was a big one for me.  I had never sailed a schooner.  Or hoisted a gaff rig…or tried to dock a full keel boat…or managed more than 400 sqft of sail…or been at the command of 11 tons of steel.  But I was gonna learn today!

I caught a seaplane from the bay where we kept our current floating tiny home….

Gotta love the Beaver.

We squeezed between the Seattle skyscrapers.  I can hear the buzzing of the worker bees all around when I’m down there.  Coming in, I peered at eye level through the windows at the people in their cubicles.  No comment.

Brycen and Brenna rode along for one last trip as we negotiated the locks of Lake Union.

Brycen was already a veteran schooner sailor and had thought he had found the last boat he would ever own.  A family emergency forced the sell and he had to let her go.

The locks were cool.  It was a first for me also…

Once I had poached my sidetie at Shilshole for the night,  I stepped off for a view at what I had taken on.

So sexy.

Before sunrise, I made coffee and slinked away before anyone noticed me.  The marina was buzzing with fishing boats all around as I hit the Puget Sound.  They raced out at full throttle only to stop and fish a half a mile out. I ghosted by in a cloak of fog under the power of my modest 30hp diesel.  Clug, clug, clug, clug, clug.  My handy iPad provided much needed GPS guidance in these strange waters.

 

Finally, about 4 hours into the morning, I get enough wind to hoist the sails.

Passing Port Townsend marked my entrance in the Straight of Juan de Fuca.  At 100 miles long and about 15 miles wide it holds a particularly high ratio of sunken ships in its belly.

Over 150 vessels lying peacefully under my keel: a thought that never quite left me as I bided my way.

This marked my first crossing of this historic waterway.

I immediately felt her spring to life when a steady seven knots came across her beam.  This ship was on the move.

I was so busy having fun at hull speed, for the next twenty miles, I didn’t really have time to shoot many photos.  I even managed to hoist the giant gennaker!  At one point flying 1400 sq ft. of canvas.  What an experience!

Siren was in her element.

She’s not afraid to put her rail in the water.  Naturally, the winch handles slide right through the scuppers and hightail it to the seabed.

As she plugged along into the evening, this idea of a “ship” hit me hard.  Siren is built to high seas standards.  Her steel hull protrudes proudly a ten foot long bowsprit that dares any other vessel to cross her.  I felt like I could take out the ferry with this beast.  She her fine narrow profile she carries her self confidently under sail;  powering through the steep chop of the Strait.  All the while, she was speaking to me.

On this passage I came to a crossroad of past and present.   My mom’s dad, Robert L. Coker, had passed away the year prior.  Being out on the islands some 3000 miles away, I missed the memorial, but I never was one for funerals anyhow.  I called him Bob.  Always did.  Maybe because he always introduced himself to my friends like he was running for political office.  “Hi, I’m Bob Coker.”

Bob volunteered for the U.S. Naval Reserves during WWII.  He was such a beanpole like me, he had to leave the recruitment office midway through his entrance exam and consume 4 bananas and a 2 liter of RC Cola in order to make the weight requirement.  He believed in the good that some military time could do a young boy like me.  He said it makes you grateful and keeps you humble.

I was inspired enough to pursue the Armed Services at a very early age.  I did JROTC, ROTC, Marine Corp DEP, military college, EAA Young Eagles, flew with Chuck Yeager, was member of the Blue Angels fan club, had fighter pilots for heroes, toured submarine, battleships and aircraft carriers, puked during simple aerial acrobatics at Embry-Riddle, memorized Top Gun, etc.  And on the day, I was being shipped off to Marine Corps Boot Camp I was disqualified due to my past medical history.

My mom and I fought for a waiver for years.  But eventually, I fell back into my second passion: photography.  And here I am.

All this history, along with the passing of my grandfather, hit me out there.

For the first time since learning how to sailing over the last year, I felt a connection to Bob.  He has there with me that day.  He rode along with me, holding onto the steel rigging.  He heard my boots stomping around on the steel decks.  He felt the vibrations that happen when we hit top hull speed.  He was proud of me.  And I cried like a baby.  I called my Mom and we cried together.  I’m crying again as I write this.

Love you, Bob.  You can be my wingman anytime.

The next two hours got real serious.  Land was coming up fast and I had to squeeze through Cattle Pass to get home.  I had be spanked enough times in that area to know that you have to be on your toes through there.  The currents are funky and the wind was building.  It had started to build above 15 knots. Thats way too much wind for my giant gennaker to be up.  I loosened the mainsheet on the enormous mainsail as to not have her round up while I snuffed the gennaker in its sock.  But it didn’t do any good.

The waves stacked up high at the pass as their momentum across fifty miles of open water collided with the tight landmasses around.  I had to untie from my safety tether in order to climb out on the bowsprit to untie the bowline that I had secured the gennaker on with.  In hindsight, I realize that it was a crude way to manage my sails. The Juan de Fuca will eat a sailor for breakfast who isn’t a step ahead of the constant weather changes.

With a marlinspike in my teeth and one arm clutching the bowsprit for life, I freed the tack of the sail.  Rounded up now into the wind, her bowsprit normally ten feet off the water was touching the bottom of the troughs and taking my stomach for a huge ride as she leaped 15 feet higher every couple of seconds.  My knees kissed the water with every dip.

By the time, I got her back under control at the entrance of the pass, the damage was done.  I was seasick.  I puked over the downwind side so that Siren would not be tarnished by my putrid  inner gut acid stew.  I never had time to wipe the chunks from beard as I kept sailing her with all my might.

A schooner is for people who like the “sport” of sailing.  There is always stuff to do all over he deck.  With 16 pins in her pinrails, five sheets and two winches; I had a lot of new concepts to learn that day.  First off when you adjust the front sail the three behind it appreciate some adjustment also.  Even today, I will break a sweat getting all her lower sails flying.  Schooners not did not come about by the minds of lazy men.

I snapped a few selfies to try and capture my pathetic state after I got through the pass.  The August sun set for the next two hours as I got closer to my port.  At 11pm, I called my buddy to come help me dock this 50′ beast in complete darkness of a swirly Fisherman Bay. I had never tried to dock such a boat and this was no time for another personal challenge.

He fed me beer and enchiladas in his hot shower at midnight.  I don’t remember putting my head on the pillow of his firmly planted bed. I just remember it feeling extremely…stable.

The next day, we started moving aboard.

 

The story goes on you will see.

The interior was so nice and the boat was so new that we found ourselves feeling like we were living in a jewelry shop. Its a modern maritime museum of fine boat building.  Jake couldn’t act six and I didn’t feel comfortable even putting a tiny nail hole in its teak and mahogany.  We eventually moved back to our little 40 year old ketch and I have put this magnificent vessel back out on the market for her best chance at seeing the world.  Its what she was made for.  Equipped with a liferaft, water maker, EPIRB, radar, autopilot, and other no nonsense failsafes; she is in search of a real sailor who can brave anything that the mighty Pacific wants to throw at him or her.

It will always be the most incredible boat that I will ever have the pleasure of sailing.  Wherever she goes, she is always the most eye catching boat in the harbor and the envy of every sailor.

She is a brand new top shelf fleshed out sailor’s wet dream.