So three of us yahoos decided it was High Time to go over to Pt. Townsend on the Peninsula and attend the Wooden Boat Festival there, us being South End boat builders and all. We had a 12 foot Pelican sailboat, plenty sound enough for the shipping channels of the Straits, we figured, so provisioned with a box of donuts, we set off in the fog. We could hear the container ships booming past but couldn\u2019t see them — and worse, I\u2019m sure they couldn\u2019t see us either, even with radar. The Trident nuclear sub surfaced close by, way close enough to see, an evil black fish that no doubt hadn\u2019t picked us up as anything more than flotsam.<\/p>\n
By afternoon the sun had broken through and we found ourselves near the lighthouse of what we thought was Fort Worden, just outside Pt. Townsend, so we sailed south and came upon another lighthouse and now we realized we\u2019d mistaken our location so we continued sailing around Indian and Marrowstone Islands well into the afternoon and finally arrived at Pt. Townsend way late. With a return trip yet to come \u2026. And the fog threatening to descend again.<\/p>\n
We ditched the boat on the beach and hoofed into the marina. Whereupon we come upon a Pelican in the show, the homeliest boat moored up, so naturally I asked what the hell kind of duck is this thing you got berthed?? Which prompted a lively response from its proud owners and after they\u2019d settled down a bit, I asked what was it they liked about an ugly scow like this? The water was frothing at near boil but one of the sailorboys said, \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what’s great about a Pelican. It\u00a0can\u2019t be sunk!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCan\u2019t be sunk?\u201d I howled. \u201cCan\u2019t be sunk?? Really?\u201d And he proceeded to tell the tale of a Pelican that had capsized the last summer off the coast of Lummi Island in a storm and when help arrived, two men were rowing it while it was completely full of water! Captain Larry was practically dancing a jig on the dock pointing at me and smirking. \u201cThat was him! He flipped his boat up there last year. It\u2019s him. It\u2019s him!!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWill you pipe down a minute,\u201d I commanded, realizing my fun with these buccaneers was over and we were embarked on different seas of mirth. \u201cWhat color was the boat? Where exactly? How\u2019d they get to shore?\u201d To which they pretty accurately recounted my sad little nautical escape that previous summer and so I fessed up. \u201cBut,\u201d I said, \u201cwe basically sunk. We were completely under water. More flotation under the decks,\u201d I advised. \u201cAnd a motor that won\u2019t drag the transom down like mine did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, it\u2019s a small world apparently, and we might have stayed for some partying and sea shanties and late night sailor lies, but the fog had returned and we still had to head back out into the shipping lanes. We went to the marina store for supplies, ascertained we had $8 between all three of us and now, a Hard Decision needed to be made. Should we buy a navigational chart? A compass? Something to eat? $8 leaves not a whole lot of options.<\/p>\n
Being the Salty Dogs we were, we made the Hard Choice, the one a less experienced crew might eschew, the one not in the Sailor\u2019s Manual. We grabbed a 6 pack of beer and sailed into the sunset — well, if the fog hadn\u2019t blotted it out —three mariners moving darkly into wooden boat mythology, fearless as idiots in a dangerous dream, never to be seen in Pt. Townsend again. No doubt they recount that voyage yearly at the Festival. \u201cAye, the lads are out there still,\u201d they whisper in hushed voices around the beach campfires, \u201c sailing in the boat that cannot sink. God rest their souls\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So three of us yahoos decided it was High Time to go over to Pt. Townsend on the Peninsula and attend the Wooden Boat Festival there, us being South End boat builders and all. We had a 12 foot Pelican sailboat, plenty sound enough for the shipping channels of the Straits, we figured, so provisioned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[7514,7512,7513],"class_list":["post-19560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-nautical-skills","tag-pelican-sailboat","tag-port-townsend-wooden-boat-festival"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19561,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19560\/revisions\/19561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}