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Mom's
This is a magnet I bought on Friday Harbor Island, one of the San Juan Islands. I know my friend Diane will remember when I bought it. She wanted to kill me that day. Read the story on the right. A not-so instant reply Now, of course, I can't remember who it was who wanted to know where to buy the shirt! Still Upset about the election? Other people have apparently had the same idea. Opinionated? WHAT I'M READING That's it for today!
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HAVING A WHALE OF A TIME 7 January 2001 For many years I’d wanted to go whale watching. There is something so absolutely breathtakingly magnificent about those creatures. I’d watched all the National Geographic specials, and seen special videotapes, but I wanted the real thing. In 1994, I found myself with some money and some time and I decided to go and visit my friend Diane (the same Diane Peggy and I visited in Seattle this summer). She was less enthusiastic about the idea of a whale watching adventure, but ever the gracious hostess, she agreed to accompany me, especially when I insisted on paying for everything. We took a ferry boat from Seattle to Friday Harbor Island from where our trip would start. We arrived at Friday Harbor with time to spare, so we stopped at a coffee shop and had lunch. In retrospect, this was a Very Bad Idea. Then off to the boat. It was a small vessel with only 30 of us on board. I admit that there were times during the four hour trip when I found myself humming the theme to Gilligan’s Island. Also, the average weight of the passengers qualified this for a Weight Watcher cruise. One after another roly poly person lumbered on board. There was a couple from Hawaii who chain smoked for 4 hours. There was a lesbian couple. The only physically fit ones in the group came prepared with several layers of watertight outer garments (they obviously knew something). Our "purser" for the trip was a weatherbeaten woman named Jean, who lives on a boat at the harbor and whose dog was there to bark us off as we headed out to sea. For awhile things were fine. The weather was gloomy, but we had warm clothes and the naturalist gave us the tour of the various islands we were passing. As we headed into the Straits of San Juan de Fuca, the water became rough. Very rough. The boat ploughed ahead as water washed over the bow and we dipped and rode the swells like an amusement park ride. Despite the fact that I am not an amusement park ride person, I just loved it. I stood by the door which blocked the wind from the covered deck and watched the spray flying up into the deck and marveled at how glad I was that I was not the least bit seasick, which I feared I would become. Diane huddled, wrapped in her coat, miserable and wet, looking, as she describes it, like a Russian peasant woman. At last we cleared the straits and were into more open seas...calmer waters...whale territory, where they had received reports of "positive sightings" earlier. Suddenly straight ahead was a fin. Then around us we began to find members of the "J-pod" popping up here and there...a fluke here, a fin there. At one point a group of about 5 whales popped up, seemingly out of nowhere. It was wonderful. I was out on the deck at the bow, trying to take photos (though the whales seemed to disappear as quickly as they appeared). After years of wanting to do this, I was actually here. I was also suddenly seasick. Though I had ridden out the big waves without a single problem, this bobbing about in the open sea was doing strange things to my stomach. I was determined I was NOT going to be sick and swallowed hard to keep lunch from coming up. Then suddenly lunch had a mind of its own and I "chummed the whales." I was mortified. I decided to go sit down, as we had passed through the pod anyway. I stumbled back to the stern, where I could still watch whales. The captain was going to try to turn the boat around to go back to the pod, but when he realized that most of the people on board were sick (including the naturalist), he decided it was better to push on. One poor woman was white as a sheet of paper and spent the rest of the trip holding her head. Another woman was more a bilious green. Diane looked even more miserable. The smokers continued to smoke. The smoke was making me more sick. I was trying very hard not to vomit again and decided that what I really needed to do was to urinate, so I staggered to the "head." When I got inside I realized several things at once: there was no paper of any kind; I was not the first person to be sick on this cruise, and that no matter how much I needed to urinate, I was not sitting on that seat. But that was soon a moot point anyway since by this time I decided to commit myself to ridding myself of the rest of my lunch. And so I did. All over the toilet, the floor, my new jacket, and everything else. It was truly glorious to behold (and came with urinary stress incontinence as well, which made it even more fun). By now my stomach was empty and I started to feel much better. We headed back to the Straits of San Juan de Fuca and what I had considered rough seas before were child’s play. I had moved into the small cabin to get warm and motioned for Diane to join me. She left our purses outside and came in to warm up. Suddenly we looked out the deck where she’d been sitting and huge waves were washing over the deck, drenching my purse, her purse and my sweater, and sending everyone else to the other side of the deck. The water kept washing over the boat in huge waves and the captain seemed to have quite a fight on his hands. The purser was holding on for dear life, as were we all. The water just kept coming and coming and there was no way out except to ride through it. For the first time in my life I understood how one could drown in plain sight of land. The purser passed out dramamine, the naturalist was wearing seasick patches, and everyone who hadn’t been sick before, was getting sick now (except the guy standing next to me munching a Snickers bar, and the two chain smokers). Finally we limped back to port. Jean passed out free postcards (I thought we should have gotten "I survived!" buttons) and we all made our way back to the dock and back into Friday Harbor. Diane and I agreed that we’d always wanted to go on a whale watch...and we didn’t want to do that ever again. We found out later that we had been the last boat to leave the harbor before it was closed because the waters were considered unsafe. Swell. |
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Some pictures from this
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Created 1/7/00 by Bev Sykes |
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