ERQM THE LOWER LEFT CORNER watch shifts, taking turns at the helm, bow and stem watch and radar if fog mandates. One night when we pull the twelve to four a m. watch Sarah and I join Ev, a watch mate from Israel, on a platform half way up the mainmast. While speaking o f constellations and myths of the sea we realize that none of us knows for sure what day it is. Time has collapsed as we are suspended in a void where stars dip into the sea in every direction with the rolling of the ship. On days three and four we have good wind as a routine of work, ephemeron stints of sleep and Jo's great meals, suck us ever deeper into the here and now. A shift on maintenance duty finds Rick and I sanding and varnishing a section of the foremast while nearby Sarah and her mother Ruth, who's also on our watch, enjoy their Cose mother/daughter bond while polishing the ship's bell. Later, while I'm sitting on the tiller housing savoring a few moments of quiet reflection, I spot the Captain emerging from the below decks companionway with a strange looking orange device in his hands. An alarm sounds as he darts for the port side gunwale and shouts "man overboard", heaving the electronic buoy over the side. The memory of a first day briefing by Jason snaps me to attention as I jump to my feet and extend an arm full length to point at the buoy rapidly drifting astem. It's absolutely critical that I keep my eyes locked on the receding buoy, for if this were a person and I lost visual contact for a split second the rolling sea could forever hide its victim. Without looking I know from the briefing that the rest of the crew is taking its cue from me. While two people scurry up the shrouds for a higher vantage point from which to keep sight of the buoy others assemble at their bracing stations to change the angle of the yardarms and sails in order to bring the ship around to recover the victim. At the same time still others are launching the ship’s boat, a zodiac, to complete the rescue. When, and only when, I see the zodiac crew retrieve the buoy do I know that I'm free to lower my ami and relax. If it were an actual person overboard someone would have thrown a life ring as soon as possible too, and had it happened at night a series of glowing snap sticks would have been tossed astem to create a luminescent trial back to the victim. The Captain nods his head at me and says, "good work". Since the zodiac is already in the water Anthony and Dougal take groups of six for a 360 degree trip around the ship. It's a great photo opportunity and chance to get a detached view o f die ship under sail. While I'm taking a turn at the helm Geoff inquires whether or not there might be a local radio station by which to warn inhabitants of Long Beach, Washington that we are approaching the shoreline to discharge a camion salute. When I give him KMUN's number he rings up the station on his cell phone and makes the announcement. Nevertheless, I'm certain startled residents think they are under attack by a ghost ship that has somehow pierced a time warp. What else could one think, confronted with such an apparition? But that's nothing compared to the raging sea battle that erupts when the Lady Washington engages us under full sail just outside Gray's Harbor. Gary, who thus far has been our faithful navigator, turns traitor by stealthily commanding his own ship via cell phone. The maneuvering is intense as both ships blast away with their cannons. Anthony, Dougal, Paul, Jordan, Richard and Dominique, a fine lot of sailing blokes, otherwise known as the scurvy curs, saved the day by not only scoring several direct blasts with our cannons, but also pelting our rivals with a barrage of water balloons launched from a giant slingshot of surgical tubing rigged up between the masts. And so the first leg of my voyage comes to an end; at play in the eighteenth century . Of Time And Place At Sea Eastern wisdom traditions have long taught that the only place and time is here and now. Despite the mildly schizoid personality of the H M Bark Endeavour, sailing on this "replica" brings the lesson deftly home. I say schizoid because the ship has multiple personalities. Of course there was the distinct personality of the original ship skippered by James Cook in the eighteenth century. But, the present ship has a dual personality. The general public when touring the ship will see the exterior, including the top deck and the first deck below. What they won't see is a "place" called the twentieth century. This is located on the second deck below, where the crew is privy to hot, though limited showers, nautical hand pumped heads - toilets —, locker rooms, a modem galley — ship’s kitchen, - and a dining area just large enough to accommodate the crew in rotating shifts. Aft of these amenities lies a pair of Murphy diesel engines which can be called upon when modem decorum refuses to sacrifice a virgin to the wind gods. Still further aft lies a generator powered freezer and cold storage unit necessary to maintain a well fed, scurvy free crew. Also hidden from public view is a tiny cabin, barely large enough for two people, fitted with satellite linked global positioning, navigation, communications, radar and computer equipment. These features are a distortion of time and place that would make the heads — the ones above their shoulders - of an eighteenth century crew spin with awe. At 7:30 a.m., an hour and a half into our deck watch, Sarah and I have long since finished our waltz, routine duties o f checking mooring lines, gangplank, food storage temperature gauges and bilge water depth, when we are startled by one more modem feature. The ship's public address system crackles to life emitting a voice that carries a twinkle in the eye and a jocular lilt. This is the way first mate Geoff awakens the crew and welcomes them to the first day of what is for many their first voyage on the Endeavour. As drowsy shipmates come on deck we compare details of sleep in the sardine configuration of hammocks. Some slept well, while others like me hadn't slept at all in anticipation of getting under way. Following a hardy breakfast we begin the daily morning task o f cleaning the ship. Some of the permanent crew hose down and scrub the weather deck while the rest of us, known as the voyage crew, assume a position on hands and knees to sweep, scrub and otherwise tidy the lower decks, heads, locker rooms and officers’ quarters. Every surface, be it horizontal or vertical, must be rendered spotless. Each watch is assigned an area of the ship and we are not relieved until Geoff completes a white glove inspection. Realizing that the ship is about the size of a normal house and occupied by a crew of fifty-six, you can appreciate the need for such detail. On deck Helen, our "captain o' top" for the mainmast, gives us instructions on handling and belaying -- securing -- the teeming lines that position the sails. She also schools us in the proper way to climb the shrouds — rope netting that runs up from the side of the ship to the mast - in order to step off onto the rat line slung below the yardarms so we can haul in or release the heavy canvas sails. At this point we are three stories above the deck, but at least the ship is still in calm water. One woman freezes up with fingers locked to the shroud and Helen has to gently coach her back down to the deck. It's eleven a.m. and a beautiful day by the time we release the gangplank and mooring lines to head down river. Unfortunately, there isn't any wind so the diesels are fired up to propel us over a seldom placid Columbia River Bar. Once out to sea we are mustered on deck to receive a weather report and daily briefing from Captain Chris Blake who has a sharp wit and sardonic sense of humor. The captain is a man of sleight build, but exudes authority when necessary. He also introduces Gary who will be our guest navigator on the four day run from Astoria to Westport, Washington located at Gray's Harbor. Gary is the Captain of the Lady Washington, a smaller sailing vessel making its summer home at Westport. The skill with which the three captains o* tops, Helen, Richard and Dominique, along with Geoff, second mate Jason, bosun Anthony, his mate Dougal, shipwright Paul and his mate Jordan begin to mold a functioning crew from a bunch of relative or absolute greenhorns is quite amazing. The sense of camaraderie among these folks and other members of the permanent crew including Wally the engineer, Jo the ship’s cook and medical officer, Katrin, Sally, Chris the ship’s steward and James the galley slave is contagious and fosters a vital team spirit. This isn't to say that neither I nor any o f the other voyage crew aren't prone to botch an order now and then. It's easy to act too slowly or too hastily or to just plain get confused with the daunting array of lines and sails. Nevertheless, it's exhilarating when everything happens just right and we see the result of your coordinated efforts. There is a lot of motoring the first couple of days of the voyage and we get a small sense of the frustration with which early sea explorers had to contend. The prevailing currents in these waters are southerly and if it weren't for the diesels we'd be as stymied in our efforts to go north as doubtless Captain Cook and the original Endeavour must often have been. However, wind does happen and when Endeavour is under full sail she is as magnificent as the Notre Dame cathedral would appear if cast adrift upon the sea. Her grace under sail belies the combined strenuous effort of the crew just as the ease of unassisted flight does in a dream. Sarah and I take turns on fore watch by sitting astride the bowsprit, and as it plunges and rises above the gray-green water we call out whale and shark sightings to our mates. Climbing to the yardarm of the mainmast top gallant — the highest sail — my mind is focused so intently that no trace of fear or anxiety could possibly intrude. Each foot and hand placement becomes a fleeting meditation on impermanence. It is only when Helen's voice directs eight of us perched on the yardarm rat line to let go and clap our hands that I become aware of a sense of place, poised as we are somewhere between the sea far below and the sky so close above. Throughout the night we rotate four hour sleep and VicroKia Swppiello Everything Flows By When people ask me where I live, I tell them Ilwaco, Washington. Usually they don't know where that is, even if they live in the Pacific Northwest. Then I say, "It's at the mouth of the Columbia River." I used to quickly explain where the mouth of the river is, shortcutting the inevitable "Is that near Vancouver?" "No, we're I(X) miles further down stream." "Oh, near Htxxl River?" etc. Now I wait while the person mentally stumbles through what little they know of Northwest geography or geography terminology , words like river mouth, headwaters, gorge, della, estuary , channel, slough, tributary; spit, wetlands, riparian zone, marsh. They get lost in words whose meaning they've never attached to a real place. I hang back, partly to figure out how much awareness of river geography exists in the general population and partly to let the person figure it out on their ow n. Perhaps if they truly learn where a river mouth is, what an estuary is, they won't blindly accept the idea, for example, of dredging the Columbia over channel an additional three feel from the mouth of the riverlOO miles upstream to Portland. The best effort lately was a fellow who said, "Is the mouth of the river the delta?" I responded, "Could be, depends on the river, but the Columbia has no delta; it's too deep and fast." The man traced in his mind the upstream course of the Columbia, through the gorge past Hood River, now famous for wind surfing but not yet invested with wind turbines, and kept going, turning north in a big bend into Washington, then further on toward Canada. Having mistaken the mouth for the headwaters, he realized his error because he knew I lived in Washington, not British Columbia. We visualized the river tracking past the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and noted the irony that this is one of the last remaining sections of free- flowing river and salmon runs in that area are still pretty plentiful —but as one humonst mentioned, probably radioactive. The thing about living at the mouth of the river is that everything that happens to the river goes by your front door, either literally or figuratively. The salmon go up, and the smolLs come down. The ships go in and out. The tide, too, influences the river all the way beyond Portland. The only thing that comes one way on the river is what we dump in it upstream, whether radioactive wastes seeping from Hanford into the acquifer and hence to the river, or PCBs, or dioxin from the paper mills, or cow manure from every trickle that trips to the river, or sewage effluent, or bait boxes, fish guts, and Styrofoam cups, or log txxims broken apart by storms, or picnic tables and plastic buckets set loose by spring floods, it all eventually goes down river, past us, and out to sea, unless we're able to snag it from shore or a convenient boat. Most of it we don't want to bring ashore and hope the great ocean will somehow absorb and take care of it, dilute it, if not cleanse it. Without meaning to, we're like the faithful Hindu of India who believe their great river, the Ganges, will cleaase everything. Water punfies...to the best of its ability. Wc take that lor granted even though if we look beneath the calm, glassy surface, we know better. Anything can be overwhelmed, even this great river. It's time to step back from our usual way of doing things, our modus operandi of the last 100 years. We can start with the obvious and easy, what some would call "picking the low hanging fruit." An example would be not doing any more destruction of the river as a natural system, not blasting and dredging the river deeper. At the next level would be repairing some of the damage, for example by removing the four lower Snake River dams, allowing the salmon to reach a vast area of relatively untouched habitat in central Idaho. No flood control or irrigation and only 4 per cent of our electric supply would be impacted, and I suspect the fish would return to Idaho like urbanites snapping up homes in a suburban subdivision. Like every thing else that goes up and down the river, those Idaho salmon will swim right past us here at the mouth of the river. I remind myself that any thing that happens to the river, impacts me, and some of it might as well be good. Bob Rice's Grande Endeavour will continue next month. C annon B each O utdoor W ear We Carry Clothing that makes you feel great! Patagonia Teva Woolrich Kara Gramicci & More Lotsa Good Stuff On Sale 239 N. Hemlock, Cannon Beach Open Daily, 11-5 436-2832 Victoria Stoppiello is a writer living in Ilwaco, at the lower left corner of Washington stale. f — . The older 1 grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. H. L. Mencken finely selected women ’$ fo/clotfiinq 6 Cannon Beach (503) 436-1572 Portland (503) 239-4605 work hard dress easy M«xmAnit0» O ex C A onst,-,, wjj dditions G eneral C ontracting Q uality C onstruction R emodel L evel - S tabilize Cell: 440-0278 P O. Box 2577 ' Fax: 717-0389 O Gearhart. OR 97138 O 738-7563 C C B # 114007 urmun wet ocìobek W« b > r