Sounding Off by Brooke

Sounds of winter in the city are brittle today: shovels scraping, sirens, plows and salters in tandem, that piercing wind through the eaves, cracking ice, the clank of steam in the radiators. 

I think about the sounds on the boat, about Moana Leaka and Gina Flow-La Frigida; about the groaning of the anchor rode and the slap-happy dinghy when she is tendered.  

Sounds tell you when something might be wrong, so you learn the sounds that are okay, even when they pipe up in the middle of the night. That’s why we've named some of them:  Gina Flow la Frigida is the Fridge pump, and Moana Leaka is the Freshwater Pump. The automatic bilge pump is the Pumpy-Dumpy - the sound of it must be noted and checked. The air conditioner/heater is Blofelt (sic - actually, sic on all of the above).

Once, a dozen years ago, on the Gulf Coast of Florida and unaccustomed to marine life, I was at anchor with my parents, somewhere around Cayo Costa, Captiva, and in the middle of the night from my sleeping position in the V-berth, it sounded as though a Kraken with titanium teeth was chewing the hull apart.

My quiet night near Captiva Pass

I sweated and stared, and even went up on deck - but once there, heard nothing but the soft wash of the tide and the twinkling of the stars.  I learned the next morning that the horrible scraping I'd heard was simply the water/hull amplification of a sound caused by whelks and starfish feeding on the barnacles encrusting the hull under the waterline.

Starfish feeding on barnacles

When Adrian and I were in St. Augustine, in early 2007, there was a snapping and crackling in our slip at the marina, as if the boat’s electrical system were electrocuting itself.  It reminded me of the night of the Kraken, so I wasn't terribly worried, but went to the dock master for confirmation. He said it wasn't critters feeding, but was the water current washing over the bulky barnacles under the dock and that when the tide shifted, the sound would diminish. He said that he’d once come across a sailboat-owner who had removed everything: cleared the engine room, lazarette, lockers, master cabin, v-berth, galley and heads, piling everything on the dock, trying to find the wire that was shorting.

There’s another alarming sound when you are in the V-berth: if there’s wind at night, the flag on the anchor pulpit will snap and rattle and the vibrations amplify, sounding like the chains of Marley’s Ghost in the teak-lined drum of your berth.  “Marley’s” alarm can let you know, at anchor, that the wind has picked up and that it might be a good idea to check your swing.

The bow flag, personified.

Sounds heard on the bridge as we spin gently at anchor in Kitsilano Bay (not the west coast bay, but the little freshwater one near Pointe au Baril) on August 20th, 2013:  the buzz of a small outboard at full speed; the tap of the chili--pepper lights against the canvas of the bimini; a whistle of wind through the blocks on the boom; I hear Adrian closing pantry panels below; I hear birds, of course, and wish I could identify them, and the long whine of a cicada and the sound the wind-gusts make in the channels of my ears, and the wind in the leaves and needles on the trees on shore. There is the sound of the water pouring from the output through-hull for the fridge pump…Gina Flow-La-Frigida.  I hear the rustle of a plastic bag too, and know that means bread is about to be buttered for lunch.

After much rain there may be a brushing sound. That would be the plastic bailing pail, afloat and scraping the sides of the canvas covered dinghy that sits on chocks above the master cabin. 

In my memory, it is now mid-September and the boat is moored at Sound Boat Works in Parry Sound. It is evening.  Adrian is in Toronto and Hattie has now been missing for half an hour. Hattie is not a traditional cat, she doesn't meow: she squeaks and sometimes she makes a sound like, “meep”.  

And now, with her missing, everything sounds like Hattie…tree frogs, the buzz from the high pressure sodium lamps on the poles overhead; mysterious drips from the nearest tin roof (it hasn't rained today), and strange sloshes in the water; the groans and occasional whining of the hinges on the floating docks -everything sounds like Hattie. I stand as high as I can on the boat’s bridge and listen hard but there are too many noises, the squeaks of rubber fenders, the mewling of mooring lines against cleats.

A large power-boat zooms by which means several minutes of intense thunder as its wake smashes all of the boats in their slips and the rusted iron hinges on all the dock segments clash as if in battle and, as the wake subsides, still the dock links sigh and rub each other’s shoulders in fatigue.

There are a surprising amount of bird calls after dark.

There’s the hourly train with its seven piercing wails and its torture of the high bridge over the Seguin Rapids. The Lac Megantic disaster happened three months before and I wonder how many times a day the townspeople below still think of all who perished there, whenever they hear that whistle.

There’s a lap-lapping and a splash, seemingly out of nowhere. One small sailboat, KayCee is bouncing and her hull makes a slapping sound at the slightest ripple. A fish jumps.

I have searched all around the boat works, crawled on hands and knees under the fuel dock and peered in the sheds, then I check back on the boat, then head out again, retrace my steps. I call Toronto.

Adrian’s calm voice purrs on the phone, soothes my anxiety, says she’s probably nearby watching me, and that I've likely passed her several times in my search.  He tells me to stop worrying, to take a break, but I can’t.  I keep thinking that I hear her. Hattie - timid squeaky Hattie, with her Stan Laurel parted hair, and her Mongol eyes and I envision her stuck in a 10 inch pipe under the loose rock of the breakwater, unable to turn around, or in a crevice, disoriented, not knowing where the boat is and getting her pooh-bear body stuck between a rock and a hard place. 

Back on the boat again and there’s another splash nearby. I look into the murky water at the stern of the boat, just below the swim platform. There’s something white down there.  But it can’t be Hattie, can it? There’s not enough white and anyway she wouldn't sink like a stone and stay there. She’d float after she drowned, wouldn't she? I picture a feline Ophelia, her white fur spread wide on the surface and undulating just underneath; leaves and burdocks in her fur…and rosemary "for remembrance"….

Hattie, afloat in her own muff.

Forward of the starboard bow there is a cluster of lily pads. In the moonlight, they too, look white. Gina Flow-la-Frigida comes on and outside I hear her pouring out of her thru-hull on the port side.

“Shhh!” I say out loud, but Gina carries on, cruelly oblivious. Out on the deck she sounds like a man; a great peeing down from a distance. Then a truck rumbles down the road. There are mostly pickups here. It is impossible to listen through all this noise.

I make rounds again with two flashlights, one trained on me so that Hattie can see me and the other searching the immeasurable caves, corners and holes but in this dark I can’t see the boat even from 20 yards away because the big orange crane is in the way. It’s only when I get past the second set of its massive limbs that I can see, below the dangling chains and hook from the sky, the lamplight from the salon and the little, white, moonlit face with the Stan Laurel hair peeking out from aft deck.

Hattie, as Stan Laurel.

A Winter Post, by Brooke

A Winter Post, by Brooke 

It is only the end of the first week of February, 2014, and in Toronto we've already had record days of extreme cold weather alerts; it was a dark and frozen Christmas, even indoors, for tens of thousands of people as ice brought down hydro lines in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick; and then, the week after, many communities in Newfoundland also went dark. The idea of that kind of cold on the Atlantic coast makes me think of Alden Nowlan’s poem, 

Canadian January Night:

Ice storm: the hill

a pyramid of black crystal

down which the cars

slide like phosphorescent beetles

while I, walking backwards in obedience

to the wind, am possessed

of the fearful knowledge

my compatriots share

but almost never utter:

this is a country

where a man can die

simply from being

caught outside

The Toronto shoreline, Christmas, 20013

It’s the kind of weather that makes the present mind balk and the imagination wander.  

The memories of boating clamber over one another to be revisited. 

Here they come, folding over themselves, in no particular order…

The cove is as calm as glass. It’s 2007 and we’re at anchor on the Pungo River in North Carolina, and two Dutch looking boats arrived 30 minutes ago. Dutch, because they resemble wooden shoes—one with a green hull and five portholes, the other white and an unpatriotic Danish blue with four portholes (I would learn later that these boats were Krogens). After setting anchor, the five-holed Captain went in his dinghy to the other boat, and picked up the blue and white couple. Now they are all back at the green five-holed boat and they are playing some kind of Sousa-like oompa-poompa music.  

Adrian has been casting his fishing line, with a variety of lures but, so far, no bites. I wonder if there are any fish down there, as the water is dark brown. It has a tannic quality to it—tea coloured, and it will give our bow a moustache.

Now the music is soft, the water is still. The sun is an inch from the trees at the end of the bay, and it looks as though the gods--with sticky fingers and a glue pot--have piled up the cloud banks at one end of the sky, and this whole heavenly tray is about to tilt.

                                                                         *****  

Up on the bridge, traversing Pamlico or Albemarle Sound, there is nothing to stop the imagination. Out on the open water, it just goes and goes and goes.  And it doesn't necessarily want to come back, which may or may not be a problem, I guess we’ll see.

We're following the Dismal Swamp route, instead of the Virginia Cut. 

It is a slow route, but particularly on the Pasquotank River—below the straightaway “ditch”— it is a beautiful meander. Meander, because you don’t want to disturb the arms’ reach shoreline with your wake; slow because there are other boats ahead—the other captains familiar with the route, knowing that such and such a speed will get them from this bridge opening to that lock opening, to the next lock and the next bridge….Meander, because the smell of wild honeysuckle, the sight of a water snake, even the laid back North Carolina chatter on the vhf, is intoxicating.  I am at the helm, my bare feet perched on the old teak wheel, taking us around each bend with nothing but the gentle pressure of the toes on my left foot, then the toes of my right foot....
No one is south bound.

The name, Pasquotank, comes from the Algonquian Indian word pasketanki, which allegedly means "where the current of the stream divides or forks".  I say allegedly, because there’s a kind of a First Nations’ joke that whenever the white guy asks what this or that means, the translation will be “Meeting Place”. What does Toronto mean in Ojibway? “Meeting Place”; what does “Mississauga” mean? “Meeting Place”.

Lore has it that Robert Frost came to the Dismal Swamp, in a depression over a lost romance, wanting to kill himself.  He walked into a local inn and met the friendly folk therein, then set off into the swamp and in an epiphany, was inspired to write The Road Not Taken.

After a wait in the rain at a railway bridge, we are anchored now in Norfolk at what is called Hospital point.  It is noisy and full of American Navy ships, 

Noisy Norfolk Harbour

but after a long and winding day, we are at peace.

At peace.

We took the Dismal Swamp instead of the Virginia Cut, and that has made all the difference.

                                                                         *****

It is early June, 2013. We are anchored southeast of the Christian Island ferry dock, in Southern Georgian Bay, Ontario. We’re in the Island’s lee of a NW wind but it is still tiring. Can’t get too close to the shore as there is a stone shelf of 1 to 2 foot depth that skirts the land, and it extends about twenty feet out. We’re keeping a weather eye out, especially on the shifting wind—because although we’re not exposed to the open lake, we’re not confident that with a shift and swing, our short scope will save us from a bash against the stones.  Our hope was that we could make the run down to Thornbury to visit friends tomorrow, but it doesn’t look good. It would be too exposed in this weather for a trawler voyage--tough even for a sailboat, but much too bouncy for us.

On the way here, south from our anchorage in Sandy Inlet, at Hope Island, the waves were more than a metre and traveling faster than we were and I stood on the bow and felt the following waves roll under us. Memory is sensory, and this sensation took my mind much further back, to the Uxbridge Fair and the horse I had as a teenager. He had such an easy rolling canter. In the Fair, each rider was to carry a glass of water and then walk, trot and canter. I don’t know how we managed through the trotting stage, but we didn’t spill a drop.  Then we had to carry an egg on a spoon. I think we skipped the trotting stage entirely which might have caused this comeuppance:  Shamrock was smooth and gorgeous in his loping canter and then Shirley Griffin’s Pinto pony leaned his bum into us and I spilled our egg.  

It’s a joyful and sensual time, early in the season, rediscovering the body’s sea balance amid the power of both the Great Lake’s roll and the twin engine’s rumble, as the waves surge underneath.

                                                                             

                                                                          *****

Life on board is life outside.

Now we are anchored at Bone Island. We pulled on our dive booties and fins and swam like dolphins to the stone point. We left our fins on the rock and explored the area, walking in the water as well as on land, in our booties. Dive booties are a great way to get around, as they are soled with thick rubber so you can’t feel any sharpness from the stones.  Everywhere there is poo from the Canada Geese and the booties are protection from that as well.

Huxley the cat is dogged in the way she follows us around. In the mid-winter city she travels from the office chair to the living room chair to the pillow beside my head or Adrian’s; on the boat, she comes up to the bridge when we are underway, or lies on the canvas-covered dinghy on its chocks. We've come to certain understandings—one of which is that she likes her chair protected, and waits, often impatiently (meow. meow...MEOW), for it to be turned away from the sun, and with its back against the wind.  If you concentrate and mind-meld, she can sometimes be directed to a different chair—a better chair— like today when I told her the chair in the bow was preferable.

Yes indeed, life is simple aboard the Mary Mary.

We spend a good deal of time just looking out at trees and rocks and birds, and I wonder whether, during those times, there are any actual thoughts in my head. I can’t say with confidence that there are.