Living On The Hook
Now Playing: Two Harbors. September 11, 2004
I'm anchored off the little island town that I was married in for the second time at the age of forty. I was my intended's fourth try at marriage.

She had moved aboard months before and took to boating life very well. Her first sail, sitting on the bow with both legs sticking out through the bow rail, clutching the forestay, screaming with joy every time the waves leaped up to splash her feet, oblivious to the slight danger of the 18 knot wind sail, told me she was the girl for me. After a year or so of such continued enthusiasm for our lifestyle I felt this even more.

We had moored the boat on the other side of this isthmus and rented a room at the historic Banning House, Room 7, one of the two bungalows on the hillside overlooking Cat Harbor. We could keep an eye the boat from there through the large window of the room. I had proposed to her on the boat before we took the room.

We planned a simple wedding months later in the courtyard of the Banning House. We got rooms for each of our mothers with an adjoining patio overlooking the harbor where they compared our childhoods with each other.

Their ride over on the Catalina Express boat was pretty magical, with a lightning storm, galloping dolphins and Flying Fish.

We sailed the boat over with our comedic budding actor, John who impersonated every sailing character from film and TV he could think of. With his dark blue captain's cap on and behind the wheel in a good beam breeze he was more than a little inspired to give his renditions of characters from Moby Dick, Popeye to Humphrey Bogart. John ultimately ended up as one of the hundreds of destitute people on the tanker screaming for water in the film, "Waterworld".

I had arranged for him and my best friend and best man, Rick (who the night before the wedding warned me to not marry this woman) to sleep in one of the camping tee-pees available for rent overlooking the beach. We thought it was a cute idea and both guys were game for a bit of open sky. On inspection we found the tents were crawling with earwigs. No problem for Rick who is an avid High Sierra camper. Little Johnny squeamish about sleeping with bugs wandered around town all night and ultimately that the door to the Harbor Reef Restaurant was unlocked and so he found a booth to sleep on.

My son and his girlfriend were attending and were sleeping on our boat. That was the extent of our wedding party.

Doug, a world cruiser who had left his boat in Panama and had flown back to LA to work for the Harbor Patrol at the Isthmus for the summer, married us the next day. We had followed his sailing adventures in one of the local sailing rags. From him moving his wife and two kids out of the house and onto a 31-foot sloop to their first year of cruising through Mexican we learned the joys and pitfalls of a couple living together on a small boat.

At this point, Captain Doug was on his own. The kids had gone off to school, and the wife had left the boat and him for a more conventional life ashore. Cruising is responsible for the break up for a lot of relationships that just don't meet the tests required of living in a confined space. It probably is also responsible for bringing together those of a like mind who are ready for adventure.

Doug married us with the authority of his pastorship in the Universal Life Church. I think you used to be able get the license through mail order for ten bucks. But, Doug had spiritual and wise things to say and we had our own vows to exchange.
Those vows were valid for twelve years. People change. Goals change. The past is always there for you to savor. The future is always unfolding.

A few days ago I pulled back into this harbor with a large school of dolphins passing under the boat. And in the middle of the night I awoke and saw flashes of lightning and counted, "one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three". Then I hear the thunder rumble from somewhere on the east end of the island. "Three miles away".

I lay there in between intervals of flashing and thunder and thought about the above account of the wedding and the magic of the electrical storm at that time.

I get up in the dark with just the anchor light glowing from the backstay, unplug the antenna to the TV that's clamped onto the rigging and unplug the computers from the electrical system and fall back in bed. The thunder moves off into the distance. I fall back to sleep.


Noel Diotte
coverunner@tmo.blackberry.net
310 376-7057