tacorajim
2009-03-21 22:29:21
By Jim Shannon
Our fourth winter living aboard from San Pedro to Pelican was finally over. The old 60-foot
As I stepped from boat to float to ponder this project, something caught my eye. The troller across from mine was rolling some, yet the harbor was flat as steel. Looking up, I couldn’t believe what I thought I saw. Perched on the crosstree astraddle the mast of the
Climbed THAT RIGGING? The rusty old stays had that look they do when prickly strands can eat your hands. My first reaction was to holler up to come down and let me change that mast light. But afraid any distraction might break his concentration, I froze, hoping he wouldn’t see me. Soon he slithered gradually down the wobbly, mossy rungs. Grip after grip with each knobby fist and muscled forearm, he lowered himself past the blaying pins onto the caprail.
It was awkward scolding Oso Pete, implying apologetically that he’s too old to be up there. His blue eyes twinkled beneath white wiry eyebrows. This baby-like toothless smile broadened. It looked like I’d embarrassed him. Then he lowered his head and confessed he went up there and forgot to take the new bulb with him. He thanked me for offering to go back up, but said he still liked to climb. I couldn’t bear to watch, didn’t know CPR, so I strolled up the ramp.
Many years later and two borders south (or is Ilwaco east?), I told this story to my friend Bob on the
Bob then filled me in on the rest of Oso Pete’s summer. Pete took the
The Forest Service rangers maintained a closed-in shelter around this concrete basin of two pools heated naturally to about 105 degrees. I rarely lasted an hour when I was there. Who knows when Pete had enough of this steamy sulfur, but when he did he dressed and headed down the rocky path to launch his skiff.
Beyond the slanting shadows of towering firs, Pete could see
Thirty summers later I took my little
This lazy afternoon, when about all you could catch was a sunburn, a tweety-bird landed forward. It flitted from fore-stay to cleat and back again checking out the fo’c’sle skylight. Little miss canary seemed curious, and was welcome to ride along. I remembered trolling salmon in the 60's having one come aboard now and then off Point Arena not so far offshore, or off the Channel Islands jigging Bonita in November. But always within an hour birdie either flew away, or rolled over dead. A theory among old salts was that these were land birds. And when one got old or ill, it followed its instinct offshore to find its final resting place. But this little bird flew off to the west, reappeared a short while later, then turned belly up on the skylight reminding me what Bob told me about Oso Pete’s last voyage.
Rather than pay winter moorage in Pelican again, Pete anchored on the outside of Chichagof. You are unlikely, even in your youth, to survive a winter of freezing southeasters without visits from a boat or float plane. Had he been twenty years younger his IFQs might have funded him a cabin instead of a cozy berth in the Sitka Pioneer Home. But they found him inside the hot springs on the concrete deck beside the pool, face up. His eyes were wide open, staring aloft at bare wooden trusses. No masts. No manilla halyards swinging in the breeze. No rusty cable stays.