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Sunday 16 February 2014

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.

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