4- Wednesday, January 14, 1987 - North Shore News yr om ae i 3 WY involved, toc THE VISIT by former Washington State Trooper Michael Buck- ® strictly personal ® ingham, reported Jan, 1] was also sponsored by West Vancouver Police, along with the North Van- couver RCMP and ICBC. * Park Royilt Nprt we 922-4814). WENT sailing the other day. The nice thing about sailing in the winter is that there is hardly anyone out there, compared to summer. In summer, English Bay and Howe Sound are salty steeplechase fields, with every kind of craft you can imagine zipping this way, floundering that. You really do have to keep your ears peeled. When I think back on it, Ecan’t believe the number of times I’ve almost got creamed out there. They say that water sports are the deadliest form of recreational ac- tivity. Believe it! I don't really go out there for recreation, of course. I go out for a reverse ion charge coupled with a tiny bit of adventure. Too much adventure is almost worse than not enough, although not quite. It was an airbrush-smudged day with just a trace of gold in the mist at the bottom end of the Strait, toward Victoria, As we came out of Fisherman’s Cove, a light southwesterly told us to head north up Howe Sound. It’s funny how, on a boat, sur- rounded by two kinds of nothingness, gunbarrel grey below, ash grey above, there is a tendency to put one’s back to the vast voids, and concentrate on small real ob- jects at hand, like the compass, as if too much focus on the scale of things out there all around would make you dizzy. Maybe that’s why, after chatting away with somebody and sipping on a Heineken for a while, 1 look- ed up surprised to realize we had reached the mouth of Horseshoe Bay already. I wasn't at the helm, you unders- tand. The auto-pilot was. The wind, I noticed, had died. The sails were luffing. There were sharp smacking sounds as loose canvasses yanked on the sheets like horses tearing at their bits. What was that sound | heard? A low distant mutter. Well, of course, it was a B.C. ferry coming in froin Nanaimo. * The skipper had been concen- trating on the cliff-face ahead, preparing to come about and tack out toward Gibsons, so naturally ! drew his attention to the still- distant ferry, Watching a B.C. ferry moving through the water is like observing a two-headed push-me/pull-you kind of mechanical Moby Dick, and, geé, do those monsters hump along! Our skipper knew the ferry routes pretty much by heart, and figured we were out of the path of the oncoming behemoth, so he wasn't exactly panic-stricken or anything like that. Nor was he panic-stricken when the Bowen Island ferry launched itself like the immense water spider it is, from the Horseshoe Bay terminal, and about that time, the ferry from Gibsons hoved into view across the Sound, giving us a rather more complicated set of navigational options to consider. Sill no panic, you understand, or even any real tension. Just a minor buzz of it. The trouble with coming about when there's no wind is that even the most graceful and responsive of sailing vessels can only move like a turtle with her flippers tied. With three ferries converging on your approximate position, there’s always a moment when your cyes graze the saltchuck, and you try to remember how long it is before hypothermia sets in. An hour, [ believe, at this time of year. Oh well, pass the Heinie and spin the wheel, I say! The noise of a ferry or two or three at sea level makes me think of nothing so much as what the buffalo herds must have sounded ‘PLUS 1 PLUS 2 PERFORMANCE SPECIALISTS ET MAGS $4995 * * Selected Sizes 60 SERIES RADIALS Sb g 95 * e * SELECTED SIZES “SW YOKOHAMA SNOW RADIAL CLEAROUT PRICES on Remaining Inventory like when you put your ear to the prairie ground a century or more ago. It’s a thing yor Sel, even without dipping your head in the water, almost as much as you hear its throaty grumble, Feeling a bit like passengers on a slow-motion comet trying to thread its way between the sped-up orbits of several gas-giant planets, we glided — maybe tip-toed is a better word — out toward the open Sound. The ferries stoughed around us, the jumbo from Nanaimo passing so close that I could hear the an- nouncements over the PA system and could easily make out in- dividual faces among the handful of hardy people on the top deck. No big deal. We didn’t even get honked at. It was just that for a few minutes I imagined | knew what a groundhog must feel like trying to cross a highway with semi- trailers drifting by. In no time at all, the ferries were all heading away from us, we had come out of the lee of the penin- sula and got a bit of wind in our sails, and were actually up to a cou- ple of knots. The buzz faded, although not completely. It never does until you are back tied up to the dock. It was not that doom had loomed in any serious fashion. It was just that the idea of it had reared its head for a couple of minutes. WILLIAM GRIFFIN COMMUNITY CENTFE 851 West Queens Road, North Vancouver 986-2255 CHILDREN’S GYMNASTICS DIAPER GYM & SWIM 1-3 YRS. TUESDAYS 2:15 p.m. 45 MINUTES GYM TIME, % HR. 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