Silverwind looked salty when compared
to the vacation boats that jammed the big-city marinas and yacht
clubs. It was loaded with the trappings of wilderness cruising:
sheepskin on all the stays at the spars to protect the sails;
dinghy and gas can lashed to the deck; netting on all the lifelines;
canvas wind and spray breaks around the cockpit; solar panels;
wind vane; a heavy-duty canvas and plastic windshield known as
a dodger; a foldaway bimini top; and two diesel generators. The
list of extras was formidable. After buying the Silverwind, Sam
had spent another $250,000 preparing her to cruise.
There was nothing to this sailing
on the so-called Inside Passage from Alaska to Victoria in summer
except rocks and currents, intimidating to the uninitiated. The
rocks made holes in boats and the currents from time to time made
swirling holes in the water, aptly named whirlpools, and even
more frightening, rolling waves called overfalls, created by the
force of water meeting water at great speed in a narrow passage.
A severe overfall could swallow a yacht in seconds sometimes swamping
and sinking it, other times pounding it into slivers on the rocks.
The tides sluice the salt water in
from the Pacific Ocean through the Queen Charlotte Straits behind
Vancouver Island and between the smaller islands and up into the
inlets, bays, and estuaries. Wherever the land constricts the
flow of tidal water, the current races. In a few places the water
moves like a white-water river, and boats dare not cross it during
the tidal surge.
The spring tide was ebbing and the
sea was tugging Silverwind toward Devil’s Gate, where the
current on occasion reached a solid seventeen knots, one knot
faster even than the infamous Nakwakto Rapids at the mouth of
Seymour Inlet to the north and at least two knots faster than
the Skookumchuck to the south. Last Sam heard, the Skookumchuck
had killed sixteen people, and Devil’s Gate was way ahead
of that, having eaten ten in one summer when a large yacht wandered
down her throat and slit its belly on the rocks.
On one occasion Sam had seen a Devil’s
Gate whirlpool pull down a telephone-pole-sized log, then free
it, to burst to the surface three hundred yards down current with
such force that it shot for the sky like a breaching whale.
