Chapter Twelve / BOYS, MEET THE CIRCE

 

Jim Galbraith and his wife, Elna, had been friends with John, Ben and Ray for years before Nora was even in the picture, much less Charles and me. For over thirty years, Ray had raced the Circe, not just all over the Pacific Northwest, but also on the famous Trans-Pac Race from southern California to Hawaii. One of the most well known races is the Swiftsure. Hosted by the Victoria Yacht Club in British Columbia, Canada, Circe had won the race her first time in it back in the 1930s. There were also a number of smaller yet still elite races hosted by the Seattle Yacht Club that Circe had been in, usually either winning or placing in the top three spots. Dr. Jim (as we knew him by, as he was a real medical doctor) had crewed aboard Circe many times over the years, both on races and for pleasure outings.

 

After our lunch at the Space Needle, John had called Dr. Jim just to check in and say hello. Dr. Jim and his wife had graciously invited us to their beautiful home for dinner that evening. Before that, however, there was about to be one of the biggest thrills of Charles’s and my young lives.

 

“I was thinking,” Nora had said to John while Charles and I had been building our Space Needle models, “that maybe we should run over to the Marina, just to check in on the Circe.”

 

Nora had taken Mimi’s threat seriously of wrangling the boat away from its new rightful owner, John. She did not want to leave Seattle without at least checking in on the boat. With Ben having designed her, Ray having financed her construction and now John set to inherit her, she was, in a true sense of the word, a member of the family. One checks in on family members, don’t they?

 

Kids have a tendency to have good hearing, especially when it is something they want to hear. Charles and I were no different. Just hearing the boat’s name mentioned had our little, young ears perked up. Of course, Charles and I thought it was a grand idea.

 

“Now listen to me, boys,” Nora had said, turning from the front seat of the car to Charles and me in the middle seat as John pulled the car into the parking lot of the Marina Mart, “I know you guys are excited about seeing the boat.”

 

“Do we get to go on her?” I had asked with much excitement.

 

“Of course we get to go on,” Charles said to his brother’s seemingly stupid question. “We are not just going to stand there and look at her. Are we?” Charles added the last for Nora’s benefit just to make sure we really were going to go on her.

 

“Now if you both do not simmer down and listen to me, you will both stay in the car while your father and I go down to the boat.”

 

When kids want something bad enough, threats work wonders. Now, today, of course I know now that she would not have left us alone in the car. At the time, however, she had our immediate, full and undivided attention as John pulled the car into a parking spot close to the blue closed and locked door of the Marina.

 

“A marina,” Nora continued, “is not a playground. It can be very dangerous. You could slip off the dock and go into the water. You will both hold my hands as we go down the dock.”

 

John got out of the car first. It was a bit weird. Of course, he had come down to this marina and the Circe hundreds of times in a thirty-three year period and yet he stopped and just looked at the marina as if it were some how a new experience for him too, just as it was for us. I guess, now with Ray gone, in a way it was a new experience for him as well. I remember feeling sad for him.

 

With Nora also out of the car, Charles and I both piled out of the left side, figuring that since dad was in charge we should be close to wherever he was.

 

“Now you listen to everything dad says,” Charles said quietly to me. “I am not spending the afternoon in the car because of you.”

 

From his pocket, John pulled out a set of keys that was separate from his car and Bel-Air keys. Special keys, they were for a very special boat for two very special, in the eyes of both of our parents, boys who were about to have their lives changed in a quite special way.

 

With the door opened and John leading the way, Nora clutched Charles by her left hand and me with her right hand. She was clutching us so hard; I could no longer feel any circulation in my left hand.

 

We walked straight down about eighty feet of dock. Directly in front of us was a huge wooden locker directly blocking our view of the Circe. Just the top of her mast was still visible. We made a right and then an immediate left and then (for both of us) magic.

 

Rocking silently back and forth in her slip was our boat. (Well, the family’s boat.) It had to be best, the most beautiful sight I had thus far ever seen. It was a true work of art that our famous Uncle Ben, Ray and our father had labored to create from scratch.

 

“Wow!” I uttered again, my famous word for anything that ever amazed me.

 

“She’s so big.”

 

“She is sixty-three feet big,” Nora said, knowing that Charles and I both knew this. It is one thing just to hear the term sixty-three feet growing up. It was another thing to see all sixty-three of those sixty-three feet.

 

“You’ll have to pull the boat to the dock, John,” Nora said.

 

Still clutching us tightly, she had the three of us positioned dead center of the dock as John hopped on to the boat, over her small railing and the two feet of water separating her from the dock.

 

Having gone to the bowline at the front of the boat, John pulled the boat within a foot of the dock. I remember thinking how strong my father must have been to pull that big boat to the dock. He then came back and undid the opening in the railing.

 

“Who is first?” he said.

 

“Oh, John,” Nora said, “It is still too far away. Bring her closer.”

Clearly, Nora wanted no space whatsoever between the dock and the Circe. This was not possible. There was a large half a wooden wall that went about a hundred feet high into the air.

 

“Now, Nora,” John said, probably having gone through this routine with her thirteen years earlier, her last time aboard the Circe, when she and John had been dating, “you know I cannot do that. I’ll have the mast in the wall.”

 

Not pleased but resigned to the reality, Nora said that Charles should go first.

 

“I can get do it myself,” Charles said, wanting to be the big, older brother.

 

“Like hell you will,” Nora said. “You’ll let your father get you on board.”

 

“Okay,” Charles said a bit sullen. “But you need to let go of my hand, mom.”

Nora was still holding Charles’s hand so tightly it had turned white.

 

“This will go faster, Nora, if you’ll let go of him. I can’t bring all three of you on at the same time.”

 

Charles and I both giggled, finding the image of him trying to bring all of us on at the same time funny. Reluctantly, very reluctantly, Nora released Charles’s hand. With his two strong arms, from decades of racing this boat, John picked Charles up under his arms and brought him on the boat. I then followed.

 

“Now you boys both sit your rear ends right down in the middle of the boat,” Nora said.

 

By now, Circe had drifted out a bit again from the dock. Before Nora could even say anything, John had pulled her close again.

 

“Give me your hand, Nora, and just jump.”

 

What happened next had my brother and me in stitches. Nora was doing this little shuffle dance back and forth between her two feet, neither foot moving so much as an inch towards the boat. Then she stopped, shifting her purse from one arm to the other and then back to the arm it had started with.

 

“Oh, for crying out loud, Nora. Give me your damn purse,” John said, not angrily, just flustered with her dancing and shuffling routine.

 

She inched just far enough so that John could take the purse that he handed off to Charles. The purse safely on board, Nora resumed her dance shuffle.

 

Now John was not getting mad, certainly not the type of mad that we would be scared of, but he was getting tired with this nonsense, as he saw it to be.

 

“Nora, dear,” he tried to say with a little force yet patience, “by the time you get on board we will have missed our dinner with Jim and Elna.”

 

Now Charles and I were just howling with laughter, a reaction that our mother did not find the least bit amusing.

 

“Stop it, guys,” John said to us. “It has been a long time since your mother has been on the boat.”

 

After a few more minutes, during which Nora muttered something about not being rushed, she was – finally – aboard.

 

“There. No problem,” she said, with false confidence. Never mind that it had taken ten seconds total to get my brother and me on board and like ten minutes to get her on.