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THE NIGHT WE NEARLY DIED

Based Upon A True Story By Christian Benjamin Seaborn

© 2024 Christian Benjamin Seaborn

CHAPTER ONE
“You’re not going anywhere,” my dad said, as he tied the rope - that he had thread through the loops of my jeans and through the life-jacket– to the base of Circe’s large wooden wheel.

Was I scared? Well, yeah. Being but fifteen-years-old and never had been in conditions like this. And yet with my dad’s skills honed by fifty-two years of experience (he had started learning sailing when he had been five-years-old in his dad’s Seaborn Shipyards), I had every confidence that we would survive this. But scared? Absolutely.
My fifty-seven-year-old dad, one of the most experienced and respected sailors in the Pacific Northwest, had hailed from a long line of Seattle yachtsmen. He had raced the 62’ Circe for decades. Not only all over the Pacific Northwest and western Canada, but from its home base in Seattle all the way to Hawaii. As we faced a cyclone storm capable of killing us, my dad was not a novice at this.

Having every confidence, we would survive this did, however, not make me any less scared.
My own Circe escapades had been somewhat limited. My first outing on Circe had been when I was eight-years-old. Unlike my normal-sized now seventeen-year-old brother, Charles, I had always been small for my age. At the age of eight, I had been about the size of a five-year-old. As a fifteen-year-old, I was 4’9” tall. A scrappy 4’9” but still small. With an over protective mother who herself was scared to death of sailing because she could not swim, my every move on our family’s famous racing yacht was always under her watchful eyes.

Even though I had over fourteen outings on the Circe, for the most part I had been denied the opportunity to participate in actually sailing. Until now. Now this was different. Very different. There were eleven of us on this outing to hell (well to Victoria, British Columbia) and now, out of sheer necessity, it was all hands both on and below deck as my dad, through seventy-mile an hour winds, gave out orders in order for us to come through this alive.

My dad had no intention of losing either the four members of his family or our very close friends, Doug, Bill, Edie and Elna, along with Elna’s friend, Jack, Charles’s friend, Steve, and my buddy, Joey. Of the eleven of us, only Jack and Joey had never been aboard Circe before. Everybody but Jack knew and respected that when dad gave a command it should just be followed without argument and without discussion. Jack was a wildcard. A dangerous wildcard from the moment we had pulled out from Circe’s berth at the Marina Mart on Seattle’s Lake Union that Thursday night, March 25, 1971.
There can be only one captain on a boat. Any boat. Whether a fifteen-footer or, as in the case of Circe, a sixty-two-footer with its sixty-foot-tall mast. This was dad’s boat. He had helped build her in 1932 when he had been eighteen-years-old and a high school senior.

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He had sailed her, he had commanded her in the treacherous waters of Puget Sound, the Straits of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean. My mother respected his knowledge and she had ingrained it into my brother and me that when it came to being on the Circe, dad was the boss.

Our sailing friends, Doug, Bill, Edie and Elna knew this. Seventeen-year-old Steve knew this. Even Joey, at fifteen and never having been onboard a boat in his life, grasped this. Jack, however, was a problem. From the moment he had stepped onboard Circe he had been bragging about how experienced a yachtsman he was.

My dad, a native of Seattle and longtime member of the Seattle Yacht Club, had crewed with the best-of-the-best yachtsmen of the Pacific Northwest. He knew them all. And they knew him. And respected him. My dad had never heard of Jack before. From the get-go he confided in my mother that this guy might be a problem. Still, Jack was Elna’s current love and so dad was going to tolerate it. But only to a point. That point was about to be reached.

It was about two o’clock in the morning.

We were some where just due south of where the huge and lonely expanse of the Puget Sound waters meets the even wilder Straits of Juan de Fuca. We were lucky (if one can call it that) that we had still been in the semi-protected area of the Olympic Peninsula when we were suddenly in the middle of a cyclone. Many years later my dad confided in me that as he recalled that night if we had been caught in the more open seas of the Straits, he doubted we would have survived.
It was beyond raining.

As Circe rocked wildly (like a toy boat in a bathtub), her jib and mainsails frantically flapped in the howling winds.
My dad expertly and swiftly ran a second sheet (a rope) from the base of the built-in sturdy compass firmly attached to the wheel. The other end he wrapped and secured to one of the spokes of the large wooden wheel. The only way I was going to be separated from the wheel was if the whole boat went under.

“This will help you keep the wheel from too much motion,” dad said, his customary pipe in his mouth. “Your brother, Steve (referring to Charles’s friend), Bill and I need to get the sails down before we lose them and possibly the mast with them.”
Bill was behind me at the port winch. When the jib sail would come crashing down onto the deck (and it would come crashing down, my dad assured all of us), Bill needed to keep the jib line out of the water.
It was way beyond windy.

The look in my eyes must have signaled terror to my dad. Swiftly, he turned to see what I saw coming behind him. A huge thirty-foot solid wall of dark, black water was seconds from smashing into Circe’s starboard (right) side.

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Instinctively (because that’s what parents do), my dad tried to shield me. Did little good. Both of us getting drenched.

“You okay?” dad asked.

“Of course,” I replied.

“Why,” he said with a smile, “do I even ask?” Perhaps recalling what had happened on my first Circe outing when I had been eight.

He started up out of the cockpit then turned back to me.

With his big, sturdy hands he took me by the top of my yellowish orange life jacket.

“Do your best, Chris,” he said. “Just try to keep us forward to the waves. If we get hit broad-sided, we could be in huge trouble.”

“But Circe can’t roll over. Not entirely,” I said. Remembering how my late Uncle Ben, dad’s identical twin and the designer of the Circe forty years earlier, had intentionally put enough weight in the keel to make it physically impossible for the yacht to flip.

“True,” dad replied. “But if we take on enough water, we can sink. Now hang on and do your best. I’ve got to get the sails down. Bill. You ready?”

“Ready, captain,” Bill replied.

“Hang on. If the sheet is out of control, just let the damn thing go,” dad said. “Better it is in the water than you.”

Sinking. That was not a thought I had thought of. Then I saw flashes of lightning not far off. My second thought was a lightning strike on an all wooden yacht could like set us on fire. Thoughts of sinking and burning (or burning and sinking) quickly disappeared into the reality of another gigantic wall of water approaching. It was hard. Taking every ounce of strength, I could muster to nudge the wheel starboard so the water would intentionally hit us over the bow. Or at least, as dad had instructed, not hit us broadside.

I looked over my shoulder back at Bill.

Doug, down below struggling with the engine, and Bill, both sporting beards and mustaches, almost could have passed for twins had it not been for Doug’s glasses and that Doug was about ten years older than twenty-seven-year-old Bill.
Both had sailed aboard Circe before, albeit never together. Dad trusted Doug because everything Doug knew about sailing he had learned from dad. Dad trusted Bill because Bill owned his own sailboat. A thirty-footer. Dad trusted both of them primarily because they were neither stupid nor arrogant about their sailing capabilities.

“You’ll be fine there, Master Seaborn,” Bill said to me with a smile. “It’s just a little wind.”

A little wind my ass. I knew he knew better. I knew he knew I knew better.

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“Besides,” Bill added, “if you go flying anywhere I will catch you.”

Although I knew Bill meant well, I did not find it particularly comforting. If, I thought, Bill is busy catching me, who would be catching him?

It was March 26, 1971 and we, the 11 of us aboard Circe, were alone in a rare Pacific Northwest cyclone with sustained winds boarding on hurricane levels. A storm which had seemingly come out of nowhere in the Olympic Peninsula of northern Washington State.

It had all begun innocently enough at Christmas. Three months earlier.

Our mother had always treated me and my brother to some big Christmas present each year. Well within reason. This Christmas we would be testing her bounds as to what she considered within reason.

After all the exciting sailing stories that we had grown up hearing about in terms of the Circe, Charles, then sixteen, and me, age fourteen came up with this idea that we wanted a real sailing outing. Not the one day out on Lake Washington type of a thing that we had been doing each year. But like a trip.

Charles and I knew if we tried to do an “us” (Charles and me) against “them” (mom and dad), we’d lose. So first we went to dad. Starting with something outrageous like let’s go to Hawaii.

“Boys,” dad said, “I raced her to Hawaii when I was like twenty-nine years old. Your old dad is just that. Old.”

He was, however, excited about the concept of taking his sons out on a real sailing trip.

“Would going to Canada meet your desires of going someplace?” dad asked.

Canada immediately took hold in both Charles’s and my heads. We had never been outside of the United States. Plus, dad pointed out with some excitement, part of the route we would take was a part of the famed Swiftsure Race. Run by the Canadian Royal Victoria Yacht Club, the Circe had many times been in the Swifsture. We knew, of course, we were not actually going to be in a sailing race, but the idea that we would even be sailing a part of the Swiftsure course was in itself exciting.

“It is,” dad said, “some of the best sailing on this side of the continent.”

Charles and I were sold. Dad was onboard. All that was left was mom.

“Absolutely not,” mom said.

It wasn’t that she did not trust dad’s judgement when it came to sailing. She knew that was his domain and that he was a recognized expert at it. She just was scared to death of sailing. More so with the thought of being out on the massive Puget Sound where land might not be seen for hours. (As if she thought just the sight of land could save her.)

Defeated, Charles and I headed to our rooms.

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“Come here,” dad said, having me follow him to Charles’s bedroom on the second floor of our three-story, 17-room home in southeast Portland. With the three of us inside my brother’s bedroom, dad closed the door.

(Built in 1906, the house was not only our home but was also our family business. Garden Manor, Weddings & Receptions where we held weddings, receptions and other parties for as many as 300 guests at a time. Doing as many as three of four of these big parties on any one Saturday and two or three more on the next day, Sunday. Our weekends were very busy about five months out of the year.

While we all worked the business, this was pretty much mom’s domain. When we are on Circe, mom deferred to dad’s knowledge and expertise. When we would be at home, at Garden Manor, the roles would be reversed. Mom was the boss of the business.

My parents were both intelligent people. They both knew and appreciated that in a business there can only be one boss and on a boat, there can only be one captain. Between their love and respect for each other, they never tried to be in charge or take charge in the other’s domain.

It was a great learning experience for my brother and me. Watching how they worked with each other whether in Portland (mom’s in charge) or in Seattle (dad’s in charge).)

“Boys,” dad said, having sat us down. “I’ve been married to your mother for eighteen years. I know the difference between when she means “no”, as in forget it, versus “no”, I need to mull this over. I’d stake my marriage on it that this is the second. Leave it alone. Christmas is still two weeks away.”

There was anything for my brother and me to do except follow dad’s advice, and leave it alone. It had been just that. Advice. Both mom and dad had two basic concepts in trying to raise two sons. Especially as we had reached our teenaged years. One, lead by example. Two, not to be dictatorial.

When dad had said “Leave it alone” he had said it as though he was just giving somebody, anybody a piece of advice. Not (as some parents might do it) a stern “do as I say and leave it alone”. Not at all. Not even close. Just advice to his two teenaged sons.

By Christmas morning there had been no further talk of sailing to Canada. Charles and I had followed dad’s advice and said nothing. Mom had said nothing. But she was about to.

As usual, we started out in the living room of our home in southeast Portland. A morning fire in the fireplace as we sipped our hot chocolates.

“Well, let’s start with the stockings,” mom said.

We had this set of four unique Christmas stockings that my Aunt Adele (mom’s older sister) had made from a pattern she had found in the Good Housekeeping magazine. Initially, just after Charles had been born, Aunt Adele had made the matching dark green velvet stockings. By the time I had arrived two years later, Aunt Adele had lost the pattern and tried

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making mine from scratch. Not only was it smaller, the foot was pointing in the opposite direction from the rest of the family. Each of our names were individually stitched into the top of each stocking.

Dutifully, Charles passed out the four stockings. As he handed me mine, I noticed an envelope sticking out. Charles had a similar one in his stocking.

Our mother had been a lawyer by profession. She had creative ideas, but being creative, per se, was not one of her strong suits. Still, being as creative as she could, she no doubt had enjoyed putting together what we were about to read.

Charles and I simultaneously opened the matching envelopes.

Mom had made each of us what appeared to be tickets. Travel tickets. As if from a travel agency. Albeit a make-believe travel agency yet with a very real offer. They both read the same, except for the names. I read mine to myself:

“This ticket entitles the bearer, Christian Benjamin Seaborn, to a round-trip excursion starting from Seattle, Washington and going to Victoria, British Columbia aboard the racing yacht, Circe. Your all expense paid trip will depart from the Marina Mart in Seattle, Washington on the evening of March 25, 1971 to coincide with your spring vacation. Bon Voyage. P.S. Each ticket holder is entitled to bring one guest of their choosing.”

A little corny? Maybe. But two happier teenagers there could not have been.