Impossibly long pieces of white washed lumber struts and beams become toothpick size in scale considering the cavernous interior of the 107 year old Balfour Dock Building. This is what remains of what was once a mile long wood structure built to store wheat waiting to be loaded into the square rig sailing ships that once sailed in and out of Tacoma’s Commencement Bay. Today it is home to the Foss Seaport working Waterfront Maritime Museum and is the home to our ocean rowboat, the James Robert Hanssen. Today was June 10, or four years ago to the date that we left New York Harbor for England and an appropriate days for Greg and I to finish some of the last minute work on our boat before our training cruise out of our upcoming La Push next week. This will be the first time Adam and Rick have been on a rowboat in the ocean… and the first time I have been in this rowboat back at sea. In spite of the antique boats and nautical paraphernalia that surrounds us at the museum I find it hard to imagine myself back in the ocean on this boat while its strapped to a trailer on a level concrete floor.
Each time I go out to the sea I become nervous the week or so before as I once again imagine what its like to row on the ocean. I know logically and from personal experience that the boat is capable, seaworthy and safe. I know we have an EPIRB, and backups of VHF, GPS and survival suits for the crew. Yet logic has nothing to do with my concern. In my imagination the sea remains a divine place of gods and monsters under whose power we must submit. Even with the advances of meteorological science, weather buoys, and all the reports we have access to there be one part of me that still considers the possibility that the rules of nature might somehow cease to apply and the wet world that will surround us will surprise me. I assume it will and prepare for it and choose to save my prayers for when preparation is done.
After five or so hours on the boat we leave satisfied with its condition. Save for the 400lbs of ballast sand and water to be filled up at La Push there is little to do but pack and even much of that had already been done. Greg and I put up our tools and headed out to “Rock the Dock,” a dive bar across the parking lot. We raise a glass of blond lager to June 10 and noted the appropriateness of working on the boat. I wonder how December 3, 2011, our next race date, will imprint itself upon me.