Escape from Aberdeen

Monday, October 15, 2007
1400 hours

"Then the whale went all the way to San Francisco," said the storyteller to the row of preschoolers in the aft cabin.

One little girl raised her hand. "One time I went to Fran Sancisco," she began, and the other children chimed in, "My gramma lives in Fran Sancisco!" "My dad went to Fran Sancisco!"

The storyteller hushed them, but it was too late. For those of us who were in the aft cabin during that storytime in Seattle, the city in question was ever after to be known as Fran Sancisco.

Today we played the song (you know the one) and we put flowers in our hair (Queen Anne's lace and red clover were all we could find in Aberdeen). We hugged each other and cheered. We are finally going to Fran Sancisco.

But the weather forecast is ominous. Twenty-foot following seas are predicted for Wednesday and Thursday, with some hefty headwinds to add to the chaos. Odds are good that we'll be ducking into Newport, Oregon to sit out this gale.

At least we'll be out of Aberdeen. Both boats have passed Coast Guard inspections and survived rainy days, frayed tempers, and plans gone awry. And there have been a couple of bright spots that made this interlude bearable. One was visits from a few good friends. Another was our proximity to the seaport office. It's been great to finally meet the people I've been working with via phone and e-mail for the last couple of months, and to sit down and hash out some of the details of the paperwork I do. Everything makes more sense, and I've helped contribute to the process as well.

Also, we repainted the anchor hawsepipes in the fo'c's'le and refinished the sole (floor) in the aft cabin, heads, and library. (Ah, you thought I was getting away from libraries, didn't you? The "library" on the Chieftain is a passageway with a wide seat and a single bookshelf.) While filling our boat with toxic fumes wasn't immediately a happy thing, it did result in us getting a room at a nearby hotel -- along with access to a pool and a hot tub. And that hot tub just made everything so much better.

So now we're sitting in Westport refueling. We'll shortly be on our way, racing the weather south. The captain is plotting out waypoints on the GPS with the watch leaders, and I'm sneaking a blog post on the ship's computer. (Turns out the whole charged-by-the-minute thing was a myth.) The suspense is palpable.