THE NIGHT WE NEARLY DIED

Based Upon A True Story By Christian Benjamin Seaborn

© 2024 Christian Benjamin Seaborn​

 

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CHAPTER THREE
That night we were invited to the home of Dr. Jim and Elna Galbraith. Dr. Jim, as were would be instructed to call him, and Elna had been sailing aboard Circe, with their daughter, Kathy, for years. Long before mom and dad ever met. Years later, Dr. Jim and Elna would divorce. Hence how Elna wound up on our 1971 trip with Jack. But that night in 1965 we, that is the four Seaborns, were with the three Galbraiths. Enjoying a dinner in their home which looked out over Seattle’s massive Lake Washington. Kathy, at twelve-years-old, was a couple of years older than Charles.

As we were finishing dinner, Dr, Jim stood up and raised his glass.

“I would like to propose a toast. To Ray. Perhaps, not including a few of us here tonight, one of the best sailing captains ever. Certainly, one of the best friends ever.”

“To Ray,” the four adults said, Elna, dad and mom also lifting their wine glasses in the air in the toast.

“And now I have an idea,” Dr. Jim continued. “We should take the Circe out sailing. Tomorrow. In honor of Ray.”

Six of the seven people at the table all became instantly excited at the idea. Especially the three children. But one, mom, could not have been less thrilled. Going on board Circe, safely tied up at her dock, had been enough yachting for her for one trip. She launched into one reason after another why not to do this.

(She had been a practicing attorney for twenty-years. She knew how to come up with arguments.)

“The boys are still too young,” mom first started.

“Nora,” dad said, “you know that’s a bit ridiculous. Charles is a strapping ten and Chris is eight. Ben (referring to his brother) and I were sailing when we were five.”

“Yes. But you and Ben were brought up in the Seaborn Shipyards. The boys have never been on a boat, any boat, until today.”

“They’ve got to start sometime,” Dr. Jim piped in. “They’re Seaborns. It’s in their blood, Nora. What do you want to do? Wait until they’re thirty?”

“That sounds about right,” mom said under her breath.

Dad knew what this was really about. Her fears. Still, we were also his sons.

“Honey,” dad said, “you know I would never let anything happen to the boys.”

Mom could not argue with that. So, she, as a good lawyer, changed tactics.

“A crew,” she said. “You certainly cannot get a crew together in one night.”

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“I’ll bet,” Dr. Jim said, “Jack (referring to my dad who, amongst his Seattle sailing friends was known as Jack instead of John) can make three phone calls and have a crew together in minutes. Nobody would turn down a chance of sailing on Circe.”

Mom shot Dr. Jim a glance like if to say please sit down and shut up. Of course, she couldn’t. We were guests in their house. So, she tried yet another tactic. (I never saw her practice law but clearly this was her thinking on her feet, albeit sitting down at the Galbraiths’ dinner table.)

It would be her last shot to shooting down this sailing outing that Dr. Jim had proposed.

“The weather,” she said. “It’s already raining outside.”

It was true. Rain had been hitting the big dining room picture window which overlooked Lake Washington all through dinner.

“What a shame,” mom went on, not wanting to come off as the bad guy. “If only the weather was better. It would have been so much fun.”

“Oh, I heard it’s supposed to clear up tomorrow,” Elna said cheerfully, with a smile on her face.

Oh my gosh, mom likely thought to herself. Will they not just shut up?

“Please mom. Please,” Charles and I started to pipe in which only also encouraged Kathy to join in our pleading chorus.

I suspect (although I really do not remember) that Charles and I were possibly a bit jealous of Kathy. She was but a few years older than us and yet we knew that she had been out sailing before on Circe. Here it was, our family’s famous racing yacht, and we had not even stepped foot on her until today. Now here was our golden chance. My brother and I were not going to cave in easily on this one.

Mom looked around the table at the six faces looking back at her. She took a sip of her coffee.

I suspect everybody at that table knew that if mom absolutely refused then this was not going to happen.

“I guess,” she said with trepidation in her voice that I think everybody (except dad) missed, “I am out voted on this one. Okay. Put it together, John. Tomorrow we will go sailing.”

For the next hour, while our parents reminisced over coffee about their memories of Ray, Charles and I played around with Kathy.

“Can we spend the night on Circe?” I asked half-asleep from the backseat of our Buick car as we pulled away from the Galbraiths’ home.

“No,” mom said. “We have a perfectly good motel room that your dad and I have already paid the night for. You’ll get to see a lot of Circe tomorrow.”

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As I drifted off to sleep I heard my dad say to mom in the front seat, “You really are a good sport about this, Nora, dear.”

“I’m a lawyer, John. I know when I’ve lost the case.”

“It will be fun,” dad said. “You’ll see.”

“Just promise me this, John. We won’t go really fast. You won’t make her lean too far over on her side.”

“Heeling, Nora. You know it’s called heeling.”

“Heeling. Whatever. Just not too much of it. I know how you and Jim can be when you get together aboard your boat.”

“Our boat, Nora. Our boat. Mine, yours and, now, the boys. I have so waited for this day. To bring Charles and Chris onboard. I only wish Ray was still here to do this with us.”

“John, you know that was never going to happen. Ray was terrified of little children. Especially around boats. Ray would have had to live another ten years, until Charles was twenty and Chris was eighteen.”

“I know. I know,” dad said. “Still, I wish he could have met them. His grandsons, as it were. And that they could have met him.”

The next day, Sunday, we checked out of the motel that was near the base of the Space Needle. We could literally come out of the motel and look up at the bottom side of the six hundred- and five-feet tall Space Needle.

Mom had had mixed feelings about making this trip to Seattle at all. Not because she had not been fond of Ray. She had. But Charles and I had never been to a funeral before. Granted, because we had never met Ray, my brother and I did not have any emotional attachment to dad’s stepfather so, in that sense, there was no sense of loss. Not to me and my brother.

Still, funerals are, by their nature, not happy family events.

My dad making the trip from Portland to Seattle went without question. He adored Ray. And mom wanted to be there too. So, we went. The four of us.

Mimi (dad’s mother who never wanted any of us to call her grandmother) had made all the arrangements for the funeral. Even though she and Ray had been separated for years, they never actually divorced. As the widow, she made all the funeral arrangements. Mom didn’t realize that Mimi had planned on an open casket. All the more disturbing, so mom thought, for her two young sons to see our first dead person.

In truth, he looked very peaceful. Just like as if he was asleep.
Still, mom thought the whole thing would remain upsetting to me and my brother. To take our minds off of the funeral, mom had thought it would be fun to take us up in the Space Needle for lunch after the ten am Saturday funeral. I still vividly remember the green ice

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cream sherbet that was in the shape of the Space Needle after we had our sandwiches in the slowly revolving restaurant.
Then in the gift shop at the base of the Space Needle mom had bought Charles and me each wooden models of the Space Needle to put together. She also bought each of us a pen that had images of the Space Needle in the pens with images of the elevators that would float up and down as we would move the pens around.

Mom had been right. All of our Space Needle activities had taken Charles’s and my thoughts off of the funeral. But even the fun of the Space Needle had quickly been wiped away when mom had said:

“Come on, boys. Put on your coats. We’re going for a ride.”

“Where?” Charles had asked, looking up from the motel floor where he was trying to glue the wooden needle of his Space Needle to the top of the model.

Mom exchanged a smile with dad, who was sitting on the bed.

“Your father and I thought we should drive over to the marina and take a look in on Circe. Do you guys want to go?”

She knew darn well we would want to go and she had no intention of leaving her eight and ten-year-old sons alone in a Seattle motel room.

Charles and I could not have been on our feet faster. Could not have had our jackets on faster. Could not have been out the motel door faster.

“I guess,” dad said, “they are excited to see the Circe."

“Are you surprised?” mom asked, shutting the motel door as she and dad joined us in the car.

Between the Space Needle lunch, the fun of building the wooden models, the pens, seeing and going on the Circe, then the dinner with Dr. Jim, Elna and Kathy and now going sailing (really going sailing), if mom had any worries about her young sons being traumatized by our first funeral, she need not have worried. She (and dad) had done an excellent effort in making our first trip to Seattle an overall happy experience in what was likely, for them, not a happy moment.

Now, Sunday mid-morning, we were back at the Marina Mart for our first sailing outing ever. Contrary to what Elna may (or may not) have heard about the weather, it was overcast with a light drizzle. But mom had said we would go sailing and so sailing we would go.

Much to her dismay, however, dad and Dr. Jim had big plans. While mom had thought it would be out on the “safer” waters of Lake Washington, we were going out on the Sound, Puget Sound, for Charles’s and my first outing.
Going through the locks was the start of our experience. Experience and education. As dad explained to us how the water levels were different between Lake Union and Puget Sound.

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Once out on the Sound, the men, Dr. Jim and the two other invited men, began by raising the mainsail and then the jib. With dad at the helm, suddenly we were sailing. Really sailing.

Years earlier, when I had been like six and Charles was eight, mom, knowing that one day this was going to happen, had bought these two matching toy sailboats. One for each of us. For toys that were about 18” long, with semi real working parts. You could raise and lower the sails (which were, for some reason, yellow colored) on them and with some water and a little wind, you could actually make them sail.

Mom had made it an afternoon family picnic at Portland’s famously huge Washington Park at the center of which was a large fountain. The fountain was large enough for kids to wade in or, in the case of the two young Seaborn brothers, to sail their little Circes (as Charles and I called our toy boats).

Mom was a big believer in educational toys. Using the toy sailboats, she had dad teach their sons all about the basic parts of a boat. The nautical names. We learned the basics. Port was left. Starboard was right. Stern was the rear. Bow was the front. A rope (the toy boats had strings) was a sheet. Patiently, dad showed us how to “catch the wind” in the sails.

With Charles holding on to his toy boat, its little cloth sails raised, dad was kneeling behind my brother and sort of over his shoulder holding Charles’s hands as I stood by patiently waiting for my turn.

“Now, first boys,” dad said to both of us, “a good captain must determine which direction the wind is coming from.”

“We’re not captains,” Charles said.

With a smile and a wink to mom, dad said, “Oh my, yes you are. You are the owners of these boats. That makes you the captains.”

“They’re just toys, dad,” Charles said.

“Just toys?” dad replied. “Oh, maybe. If you want to just play with them in the bathtub or out here at the fountain. Or, maybe, they can teach you how to be sailors. How to be captains. That was how your Uncle Ben and I learned how to be sailors. How to be captains. Our dad started us with a little toy boat. So which way is it? Toy boat or be a captain?”

“I want to be a captain,” Charles said with a firmness.

“And what about you, Chris?” dad asked.

I paused. Running my hand over the toy boat that my dad was explaining could be more, so much more, than just a toy.

 

“Chris?” dad repeated.
“I know. I know. I’m thinking. Okay. I guess I want to be a captain, too,” I said.

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“You boys listen to your father,” mom said to us. “And you,” to my dad, “be patient. They are just little boys.”

“I’m always patient,” our father replied.

“So, the first thing the captains must do,” dad said, “is determine which direction the wind is coming from.”

And then, for me, of that whole afternoon – all those afternoons ago – came the real start of understanding how smart my dad really was. Not so much by what he said, but rather the look, the knowing look on his face. In his eyes. I don’t think my brother, with his back to our dad who was leaning over Charles, could have caught it. But I did.

After he had said: “So, the first thing the captains must do is determine which direction the wind is coming from,” he looked upward and away. I thought he could not be looking for the wind. Wind is invisible. But that was exactly what he was doing. He was looking at the movement of the trees.

“Captains,” dad said, “we’ve got a wind blowing at six miles per hour coming out of the southeast. Do you feel it?”

Gently, he turned both Charles’s and my heads to perfectly match the direction of his head. He wanted us to feel exactly what he was feeling.

“I do,” I said.

“In order to get our boats across this great big ocean,” dad said, referring to the fountain. Which made Charles and me laugh. “We need the wind to come across the boats from the side and back.”

With dad guiding Charles’s hands, they put his boat on the water. The little sails were ruffling about.

“The wind over the side of the boat. And from the back,” dad said as he slightly shifted the position of Charles’s boat.

It was as if by magic.

The two little sails instantly became full.

“It wants to go,” Charles said with excitement.

“Well, let it,” dad responded.

Charles released his boat and it sailed.

“Wow,” my brother said, running to the other side of the fountain to retrieve his boat.

“My turn. My turn,” I said.

Dad repeated the whole learning process with me.

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Afterwards the four of us sat on the blanket mom had brought and spread out eating her fried chicken and potato salad. (Nobody made potato salad like Nora Seaborn.)

“You never told me that your dad taught you and Ben how to sail using a toy boat,” mom said to dad while Charles and I were going over the parts of the boat we had just learned.

“It was a long time ago, Nora. But, yes. It wasn’t anything sophisticated like these toy boats are. Dad was always good with wood. He just whittled a little boat out from a piece of wood. But it was enough to teach Ben and me, in our matching little sailor outfits, how to be sailors.”

Dad picked up my little boat and looked at it like from different angles.

“Amazing,” dad said. “I find it amazing. If Ben had lived a few more years, my brother would have found it fascinating.”

My Uncle Ben Seaborn was, by all counts, a brilliant designer and a brilliant mathematician, He had designed the Circe when he and dad had been seventeen-year-olds. He went on to get an Engineering Degree at the University of Washington. As an engineer, he worked for both Boeing Aircraft and the Federal Government. During World War II he was one of a handful of government designers for the Liberty Ships which helped win WW II.

As a nautical designer, after Circe he designed some two dozen other sailing boats. Nothing as magnificent as the Circe but still many of his designs can be found sailing today. But none, bar none, as two designs that will forever be associated with the name of Benjamin C. Seaborn. The Circe and the Thunderbird.

Sadly, very sadly, my brilliant Uncle Ben, whom I had never met, died at the age of forty-five in January of 1960. Believing he had achieved nothing in his life. How mistaken he was.

It was in that fountain on that sunny summer Portland afternoon where Charles and I learned how to sail from one of the best skippers in the Pacific Northwest who, by luck of the draw, happened to be our father.

It was my parents at their best. Dad the experienced sailor and mom the one making it possible. My parents working together. At their best.

Now we were aboard Circe for our first time in 1965 experiencing the real deal.

We were sailing at about 12 knots or, roughly, 13.8 miles-per-hour. Circe was heeled way over on its port side, the port railing in the water. There was a mist hanging in the air.

That was about when mom, trying to be a good sport (and trying to take her mind off of the whole thing) suggested a group photo in Circe’s cockpit on this our first outing. Dad was going to take the picture. There were the three Galbraiths. There were the two other couples. There was mom and Charles.

Everybody was ready for the picture when suddenly mom screamed out: “Where is Chris? Where in the hell is Chris?”

I was not there.

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“Where is my son?” mom shouted at dad.

Dad realized this was a worse than a whoops moment. And likely said the wrong thing.

“I’m sure he’s fine, Nora. If he fell overboard, we would have heard a splash.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better, John? Find my child. Now.”

While the bulk of the group were hunting through the cabin for me, my dad had a different notion. A scary, unsettling notion.
“I thought I’d find you here, you little rascal.”

I had gone exploring. Some fifty-five feet forward. The mist surrounding Circe had made it impossible for anybody to see me hanging on to the starboard railing that was way up out of the water. Oblivious to the concept of like falling off, I was having the time of my life.

“Do me a favor, son,” dad said calmly. “Don’t let go of the railing.”

With Puget Sound’s depth ranging from 450 to 960 feet deep, March temperatures hovering around 47 degrees and that his dad had fallen off a yacht on the Sound in 1924 and died, dad was well aware of the dangers that I had flirted with.

Afraid he might alarm me, he slowly approached me. I was amazed how he could walk on a slanted angle. Not holding on to anything. His usual pipe in his mouth and wearing his Seattle Yacht Club hat.

He got within an arm’s length and grabbed me.

There was no anger. No sense of scolding.

“Do you like sailing?” he asked, holding on to me as we both looked forward with the power of Circe flying us through the mist and the deep waters of Puget Sound.

“This is the best,” I said.

“I’m glad. It’s been my whole life, son. And now, it is yours.”

For a few more seconds we were just there. Enjoying a moment in time that could not have, intentionally, been created.
“But it might never happen again if I don’t get you back to your mother.”

I was equally amazed at how he picked me up in his arms and without holding on to anything walked us back to the cockpit.
As for mom…

“You,” she said to me, “are in big trouble. You will stay right here, with me, in the cockpit until we are back to dry land.”