Notes from a First Mate in Training

Editor’s note: We have not heard from Corky Parker in a while, other than that she had headed off to Mexico for some of the winter. Yesterday we got a note from her. This time she’s in Alaska. Thought we would share it with you. Hopefully we’ll have more on her adventures along the Alaskan coast.

I just helped dock a 100-ton, 72-foot steel T-Boat. Just saying that, and hearing from the skipper that it went perfectly got me all excited, almost downright confident, certainly relieved. It always feels good, whatever the boat, to be tied up at the dock, safe and sound. But this vessel is a whole new kettle of fish from the sailboats I’ve been crewing on. It’s just the two of us handling this thing, amidst a swirl of currents and eddies as we pulled in. So I almost skip down the dock when we’re all done and he suggests we just eat in town — if anything is even open on a Sunday night in Petersburg in March.  So, I’m happy to spring for the burritos. And very happy we tied up six minutes before the little Mexican place closed.

There’s so much to be happy about these days, I don’t know where to start. I spent much of the last couple of them driving this beautiful boat for its pre-season shakedown cruise. But this isn’t a fishing boat gearing up. This is a research vessel, it will be filled with scientists or students, from spring through the fall, not fish. It will head out for different expeditions all over the state, studying glaciers, whales, wolves, walruses, bears, birds, and whatever else needs monitoring and exploring.   With a life-long love of chasing horizons and adventures, in my childhood daydreams, I would’ve been, not the explorer per se, but the sidekick.  I’ve always assumed I’d have been Magellan’s navigator more than Magellan, and Sacajawea for sure.  But I knew, even as a kid, I’d have signed up for the trip. And here I am…looking at being a part of Exploring.

I am here on a sort of mutual get-to-know “internship” I guess. To see if this boat and its mission is the fit I want it to be, and of course, if I can live up to its rather unique first mate job description. The term T-boat refers to its design to transport people and this boat sleeps 8 guests and 2 crew. So, the first mate’s job here includes all kinds of “extra” tasks like making folks comfortable, editing the correspondence to schools and programs, managing the galley, provisioning, and group cooking. Weirdly, wonderfully, all things I’ve done, on land, in the Caribbean are needed here, 4,000 miles away, at sea. It’s good to feel solidly competent and relevant after getting shaky about tying knots and so much else.

 Along with exploring the unknown, I’ve had this ongoing, overarching goal to find and somehow weave life on the water into my single older 60s woman’s self. That’s not always easy or at least not always normal. But over these many years, I’ve figured out that what’s normal and necessary for me, isn’t necessarily normal for others.  I’m glad I also learned not to care.  So, in addition to casting my fate, I learned to toss my pride to the wind and posted my interest and availability on everywhere I could find — from online sailing chat groups, crewing, boating-based dating sites, and in Port Townsend, just by telling everyone I met.   I think they call it “putting it out to the universe”.  It’s worked for me. Especially when I’m relentless.

Last year a friend visiting for the Wooden Boat Festival asked if I wasn’t somewhat obsessed by it all. The nerve it struck hurt. I was indeed determined and dedicated to finding — at the very least — time and trips on the water; someday maybe, a partner who wanted the same. Much like my observant friend had, and like most of my friends do. I’ve tried living without a boat, but the view from my house is wide, with too many boats heading north for me to pine over longingly.  I don’t like being envious of others. And at my age, I don’t have time to wait around for things to land in my lap.  And so, I go out on trips with friends, friends of friends, or potential friends that qualify.

I’m getting pretty used to crewing with different approaches. Each skipper has their unique approach; varying levels of help they want, and their own style for communicating it. I’m comfortable helping more, or less, depending. I don’t take occasional barking personally  Over a month ago I crewed on a sailboat off the Pacific coast of central Mexico for two weeks with two other guys I barely knew. Last summer I crewed in Northern BC for a week, with a complete stranger. In the two years prior, I sailed up the Eastern Seaboard, and around Maine with a dear friend. All these were wonderful, but this… This is different. It’s daunting. It offers me so much of what I’ve been looking for, and it’s just where I’ve wanted to be for so, so long; where I always dream the boats pointed north are headed, Southeast Alaska.

 I lived in Alaska for most of my twenties. I started my career, (in public radio) there; met my first husband, had my first child, and made many of my still closest friends there. I’ve explored Glacier Bay in a Zodiac — way before cruise ships, I’ve rafted some of its wildest rivers, fished, crabbed, clammed, hiked, and camped at any opportunity; even managed the Alaska Wilderness Guide Association for a while. When I moved to Seattle it was on a once-a-year winter ferry, with a six-month-old baby, (who will grow up to fish, and then pilot these waters) a husband, and a husky in a pick-up truck.  Since then, I’ve traveled back on a summer ferry with kids and grandkids. Whenever I could, I’d go back to visit, show films, launch books, or just surround myself with the wild beauty and love I’ve always found there. I know which side of the plane to sit on going north and south because my face will be turned to the window the whole way up and back. I could never get over the magic mix of the land and water.  My fantasy about it has lingered, steadily in the background of my dreams.

And now, I’m literally living a dream. My dream. I’m driving her. and I may be doing a lot more if all goes well. Driving this beautiful boat through the very waters I’ve dreamt of for so long.  Navigation is probably my strongest nautical skill, and maybe spotting things, like lobster pots in Maine, longlines in Mexico; whales wherever I’m lucky enough to be. Yesterday it was spotting and driving along porpoises and past small icebergs; staying calm — but very happy when a grey whale sort of popped up just off our port side.

So, daunting be damned. I want to be up to this challenge.  But Jesus. Along with wanting me to learn to call the dinghies “shore boats”, he wants me to learn how to help get them from the top deck into the water by crane. I knew part of my job would be getting folks from the big boat to shore in them. Heck, before my kids demanded to do it themselves, I used to take them to shore in dinghies, no problem.  No biggie. But suddenly I see these outboards are at least four times larger than anything I’ve ever operated. Ugh. So much for feigning much maritime confidence.

Soon he’s telling me it would be a very good idea for me to get comfortable using a gun considering how we will be in such heavy bear country.  Guess my recent intensive wilderness and maritime course isn’t enough. Sheesh. It’s all a bit much. but it all makes sense too.  Like this morning, after laughing at some of my anecdotes over breakfast he “suggests” that I write today, while we are still anchored in the cove.  He writes himself, and he knows I do. He’s read my book and saw that a lot of my former innkeeping skills would be relevant to the boat’s needs. The captain has gone below to his study to write himself for a couple of hours. I’m not quite under orders or quite under duress, but like his other suggestions, it’s a good idea. And the truth is, between having nothing else to do, no excuses, and his encouragement… it’s a perfect time.

Yesterday we walked and sat quietly on the edge of a moraine for a long time looking out over the lower tier of land that stretched out to the inlet. We could see the boat, a little more than a speck, slowly turning in the current, like a horse tied to its post, waiting for us, patiently. The shadows were getting just long enough to highlight everything.  It’s dramatic enough for me that 10 years ago there was a glacier right where we’re sitting. Everything here — the spongy, bristly, lichens that carpet the odd mud/clay-like soil (I’m sure there’s a proper word just one more thing that I don’t know), the miniature, like 6-inch to 3-foot, alders, and Sitka spruce popping up are all brand new. The very earth here is brand new.

There, in that wild, but still, almost silent setting, I thought about John Muir, and how this land wasn’t exposed when he wandered in these very parts in 1879. Somehow the preciousness of both the history and the future of this place, and the fact that I could sit upon it was almost overwhelming.

When I mention this to the skipper, he gave me a new challenge of writing about it all; balancing the beauty and the personal, maybe tell the story of how I got here. For the past week here, I’ve been leery of even posting photos, I am too aware of their beauty.  I don’t want to cause anyone, to be jealous of my good fortune.

But then I remember the wise words of a friend, “It takes a lot of work to get this lucky” and I get back to both writing and learning my knots, all the more difficult with fingers crossed.

All photos by the author.