THE NIGHT WE NEARLY DIED

Based Upon A True Story By Christian Benjamin Seaborn

© 2024 Christian Benjamin Seaborn

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1
CHAPTER FIVE
“Chris, take the helm,” dad said.

The little Seattle Yacht Club flag emblem at the top of the mast was neither a real flag but a solid object and had a real purpose other than being a decorative element.

While raising the mainsail, one wanted to keep the boat directly into the wind. Wind hitting either side of the sail as it is being hoisted would only make it more difficult to raise.

Using the slant of the “flag” of the Seattle Yacht Club emblem atop the mast lined up with the top of the boom and you are heading directly into the wind. And that was what I was looking for and to keep steady while dad and Charles raised the mainsail followed by the jib. And then we were sailing.

We had been sailing for over an hour in about seventeen mile per hour winds (or 14.7 knots). It was great sailing until we edged higher up in the Olympic Peninsula. It all changed so abruptly.

Charles had been on deck at the helm. Steve was with him. Joey and I were in the living room. A fire going in the gas fireplace. After dad had inherited Circe from Ray in 1965 he and mom had mounted the ship’s clock above the fireplace. The clock had been Ray’s wedding gift to dad and mom in 1952.

Mom, dad, Elna, Jack and Edie were all in the dining quarters. Drinking coffees and talking. “Holy shit,” was the first thing I heard. It was Charles on deck.

It all happened so fast. So suddenly.

Circe had been moving along. Dad knew she had picked up some speed. He could “feel” it. Not enough to be concerned about, although he knew mom did not like moving at what she considered racing speeds. (Although she really did not know what that meant. She had never been out on Circe in a race.) Dad had intended on telling the crew to let the sails out a bit. Just to keep mom calm.

There was all of a few seconds between my brother hollering “holy shit” and everything changing.

Circe’s bow suddenly went up and came crashing down. Those who had not been holding onto their mugs of coffee first watched the cups skid one way on the table and then the other way.

Dad had tremendous seafaring balance. (Like when he had walked on the deck on a thirty-degree angle to retrieve me in 1965.) But the unexpectedness of this had caught him, and all of us, off-guard. The hot coffee in his mug that had been in his hand was now all over him.

“What in the…,” dad said with hot coffee on him as Edie, who had been standing next to dad, fell to the ground.

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“Are you okay, Edie?” he asked, standing and helping her to her feet.

“Dad! Dad!” Charles hollered from deck. “Dad! Get up here!”

“Go, John. Go,” Edie directed as mom and Elna tended to her.

“I’ve got things under control here,” Jack said.

That thought kind of scared dad but he did not have the time to give it further thought as he swiftly moved from the middle cabin to the aft, living room, cabin.

Joey and I had both violently been thrown to the floor.

“Are you boys okay?” dad asked, although not stopping as he made his way to the ladder. Getting on deck was his number one priority.

“We’re okay,” I said. Not really sure.

Dad no sooner had one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder than the next wave hit. This time he was better prepared. More by instinct than knowing yet what was going on.

As Circe lurched hard, dad looked back through the cabin as he clung to the ladder.

“Hang on everybody! Hang on! Chris. Shut the fireplace off. Now.”

I shut it off. I did not need to be told of the danger of a fire on a wooden boat that was out of control.

“Cling.”

Pause.

“Cling.”

The ship’s clock bell chime went off. Twice. Signaling it was two in the morning. A decade earlier, when I had been five and the ship’s clock had hung in our real living room in Portland, I would wait for the chimes of the clock as I would drift off to sleep. Then, those chimes had been comforting. Now there was no comfort from them.

“What’s going on up here, Charles?” dad asked, facing Charles.

Charles’s black eyes beneath his wet black hair were wide open. Staring in disbelief.

Dad, still standing on the ladder, turned his upper body around.

“Holy crap,” he said and scrambled up out of the cabin and into the cockpit.

Dad grabbed the wheel from Charles and using all of his strength spun it starboard as hard and as fast as he could.

Then he reached out with his right hand and grabbed my brother by his left arm. Dad could see Steve on the floor of the cockpit behind Charles.

3
“Steve! Steve! Are you okay?” dad said.

“I’m okay, Mr. Seaborn. Lost my footing.”

“Well, hang on,” dad ordered.

The three of them looked back up just as a thirty-five-foot wall of black Puget Sound water hung in the dark sky over Circe’s starboard bow.

“HANG ON!” dad screamed again. Hoping that us below deck would get the message.

Being the captain of a boat comes with numerous responsibilities. Overall, the safety of the boat and the people aboard. Assigning duties to the people aboard. On a big yacht, like Circe, knowing where all the people onboard are. Then there is the sailing. And then there is the huge issue if a huge issue, like a storm, comes upon you.

With dad at the helm, he struggled to keep Circe heading into the waves. The concept, however, was not to go directly into the waves since the direction of the waves would be directly into the wind. And if trying to sail directly into the wind you wind up in irons, as they say, where the sails are of no use.

And fighting mighty Mother Nature, you do not have the same element of control over the helm.

The wave hit and before the next one would come, dad was on the move.

“Take the wheel, Charles,” dad said. “You and Steve (who was now on his feet) together take the wheel.”

As dad went back down into the cabin he was, in his head, doing a head count. Charles and Steve at the helm. Joey and me in the living room. Mom, Edie, Elna and Jack in the mid cabin. That left, in dad’s head, two unaccounted for. Where were Bill and Doug?

Coming down into the living room, dad found that Jack had joined me and Joey.

“You guys,” dad said to the three of us, “get the portholes closed. And then you, Chris, get a life-jacket on. I have a mission for you.”

Dad continued into the mid cabin as Joey and I climbed up on opposite bunks to close and secure the portholes.

“Let me help you there, sonny.”

Suddenly my worst nightmare thus far in this was about to happen.

Jack, the expert sailor (in his mind) was stumbling towards me from the opposite side of the aft cabin. With each wave – and two-hundred-and-fifty-pound Jack wobbling toward little under one hundred pound me – I was seeing my young life flash before my eyes.

It was as if it was a segment from a movie in slow motion as I heard Jack say: “Let me help you there, sonny.”

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The last thing I remember screaming out was: “NOOOOOO” in the seconds before Jack fell directly on me. Flattening me like a pancake.

As I was struggling to get out from underneath Jack, dad rushed back in followed by Doug, Bill and mom. Doug and Bill had been on deck at the bow when they had seen the first wave approaching. They had been hurrying down the front hatch into the galley just at the moment when coffee had been going all over dad and Edie had taken a dive to the floor.
 

As Circe rocked and swayed with the clanging of the halyards and the sound of the wind never letting up, dad still was amazingly holding physically steady while the rest of us were grabbing onto anything to stay steady. In his hands dad had four life-jackets.

He tossed one to Bill.

“I’ll be okay without one, John,” Bill said.

“Please, Bill,” dad said. “Just put it on. I know you are experienced but we don’t have time for this discussion. Not now.”

Bill did as instructed and donned the life-jacket.

“Okay,” dad continued. “Doug, you get in the engine room and make that damn engine work.”

As magnificent as Circe was, the engine had been like a curse from the day it had been put in her. Sometimes (like when we left Seattle) starting with no problem. Other times, being a problem child. By profession, Doug was both a mechanic and a truck driver. That was his special contribution to this endeavor. Make the damn engine work.

“Nora, come here.”

Dad led her over to the ship-to-shore radio and turned it on.

“Push here to speak. You’ll say Mayday. Mayday. Twice. Then release the button for at least five to ten seconds. If no response, try again. Just keep this up.”

Under her breath, not wanting to alarm anybody, mom asked: “John, are we in trouble here?”

He took he by her shoulders. Kissed her and said: “Mayday. Mayday. If anybody responds send…send…”

The only two candidates were Joey and Jack.

“Send Joey up on deck to let me know.”

“What do you want us to do, John?” Edie and Elna asked in the doorway between the two cabins.

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“Make sure anything lose is somehow battened down. In a storm like this anything lose can become a projectile. There are latches on all the drawers. Elna knows. Make sure those are all latched closed.”

“What do you want me to do?” Jack asked.

Dad no longer had the time, interest or stomach for this.

“I don’t know, Jack. Try staying out of everybody’s way.”

Edie and Elna had their marching orders and swung into action locking things down.

Bill headed up to deck and dad finally turned to me.

“As for you, my best little friend, come on. I’ve got a task for you.”

He tossed me one of the three yellowish-orange life jackets he was still carrying which I quickly put over my head and fastened.

“Good boy. Up you go.”

I scurried up on deck. Greeted by rain and wind the likes of which I had never experienced before or since.

“Don’t let him get hurt, John,” I heard mom say.

“Nora, honey. This is not the time for anymore babying him. Yes, he’s small. But, yes, he’s fifteen-years-old and I need his help. I need everybody’s help.”

Then he leaned into her.

“Well, except Jack’s help. Now Mayday. Mayday.”

Then to everybody within ear shot he added: “Nobody on deck without a life jacket.”

It did not go unnoticed to anybody still in the cabin – mom, Doug, Joey, Elna, Edie and even Jack – that dad was not wearing a life-jacket.