Moon Venus and maybe Mercury
The wind was still strong down the Strait in the breaking dawn. Our early start on the slack tide helped make the turn Chatham Point. The oncoming gust made the ride just as lively, but the light of day changes everything. Tim took first watch and kept close to shore to lessen the drag of the head wind. We persevered onward trusting the topography around the strait to afford us protection from the lumpy waters.
There are places on the Johnstone Strait where the current is squeezed between peninsulas jutting out from the Canadian Mainland and others where the water is stuffed among islands only to fall out the other side in its unrelenting pursuit of the moon and sun. The earth turns and the sea rushes to and fro in answer to the invisible lover’s call we know as gravity. It is on this slosh AVANTI rides westward, now faster with the ebb then slower with the flood.
Forward is what we want. The surface of the water is but the bottom of the sky. It is here we move at the grace of the nature world. Even the air is subject to the love of gravity and falls down the slopping mountains in williwaws to either help us or halt us in our progress forward.
Keep the water out and the boat will float, let the water in, the boat will sink. Oh how grateful I become for the simple laws of gravity keeping the water in its place and sky in its place and me right in between, right where I belong. It is a good thing to know where I belong.
