I did take a spin in the kayak—with Dad calling out stuff like “Don’t dig your blade in so deep!”—and after awhile I got pretty okay at it. A nervous kind of okay.
The next day, on Highway 5 driving north toward the “great Northwest” (as Dad calls it), Dad told me a little more about Bella Bella, and the whole trip. He said we’d be getting on the ferry in Port Hardy at around sunset, because that was when the ferry stopped on its way north from the city of Vancouver.
“So why don’t we just get on it in Vancouver?” I asked.
“This way’s quicker,” Dad said. “And cheaper. Driving’s fast up the coast of Vancouver Island. And I think you’re gonna love Bella Bella, and all those tiny islands up there. I’ve never been, but I Googled photos of the area, and read a book about the native seagoing cultures up there. It will be a real adventure, kiddo.”
It sounded okay, but I said, “I still don’t see why we couldn’t just go rafting again, or river kayaking, like you promised.”
Dad shook his head. “I never promised, ” he said. He made a deep sigh, and kept driving, eyes straight forward, gripping the steering wheel with both hands.
So I picked up my book, and started reading again. An awesome novel called Peak, about a fourteen-year-old boy—just a year older than me—who climbs Mt. Everest. It made me feel like my adventure was lesser. And yet great at the same time. As we flew by the snowy peak of Mt. Shasta, not long before crossing into Oregon, I thought of each wave crest at sea as a peak, white on top, ranging into the future.
Three long days later—and a couple hours after embarking on our boat ride from Port Hardy on the north coast of Vancouver Island—the stars above the bulkhead swayed as the ferry rolled through the deep swells, north toward Alaska.
But we weren’t going to Alaska; we’d be lowered in our kayaks at midnight, off the old island village of Bella Bella, part of British Columbia, and then go island hopping.
Ashland, Crater Lake, Portland, Mt. Hood flashed by. Seattle and the Space Needle. Next we crossed the border into Canada. The glass skyscrapers of Vancouver gleamed in the sun, with awesome mountains behind them. But we didn’t have time to sightsee—we had a boat to catch. We arrived in the quaint town of Horseshoe Bay just in time to make the short ferry ride to Vancouver Island.
Today, all day, we’d been driving fast up the length of the huge island to Port Hardy. Tall tree-covered mountains on our left, the west, and the blue sea dotted with tiny tree-covered islands on our right, east. Beyond the islands was a line of impressive peaks along the west coast of North America.
We’d embarked on the ferry at sunset, bald eagles standing in the tall trees on shore, silhouetted against the sky.
Once aboard, I was blown away by the scenery and the sea life. Dolphins danced off the prow of the ferry as it cut through Queen Charlotte Sound. To the east, we watched the big jagged mountains of the mainland slide by, reddened by the low sun. Then on the left—or port side (as Roger called it)—we searched for killer whales till the sun sank like a blazing ship in the ocean.
“You look green, Aaron,” Roger the Rogue said. “Keep your eyes on the horizon. That’ll help settle your stomach.” As I’d learned last year, he’d once been a river rat on the Rogue River, though I think most of his “roguish” days were behind him. What he did still have was a swashbuckling air, a twinkle in his eye, and a wealth of advice.
I was sitting on the hardwood deck. Roger’s daughter, Lisa, stood beside me. It was totally awesome seeing her again. She was still taller than me—but barely. And she looked more drop-dead gorgeous than ever.
But right now cold salt spray hit my face. The horizon was just an invisible line where the bright stars faded into the blackness of the Pacific Ocean. Following Roger’s advice, I tried to hold my gaze on it.
It didn’t help.
Seasickness churned in my belly along with the butterflies of anxiety. Except for my crash course in Bodega Bay, I’d never kayaked before. And I was still a little leery about taking another trip with Cassidy. In fact, despite a cautious but growing friendship at the end of our last trip, I kind of dreaded it.
“If you’re gonna spew, dude,” Cassidy said, “do it downwind.” He grinned.
Yeah. Good ole Cassidy. I knew he meant well, but he could be hard to take.
He was barely seventeen but seemed much older, having been to sea many times. In fact, he’d worked with his dad, Wild Man Willie, on a fishing boat off the coast of Alaska the summer before (with a new tattoo of a sea anchor on his shoulder to prove it). With a stomach like steel and a tongue like a razor, Cassidy was someone you’d never forget.
For one thing, he was unpredictable—sometimes in good ways, more often in scary ways. On our white-water rafting trip over spring break last year, he’d bombed me and Lisa with cliff-top rocks, practically drowned me in the Green River, almost caused a rattlesnake to bite Lisa, and was nasty and threatening to my dad.
But, in the end, he had saved Dad’s life. In fact, I owed my father’s life to him. He had proven himself a hero. And because of that, Dad and Lisa trusted him. So did I.
To a degree.
Though I was in debt to him and had a begrudging respect for him, I was still wary.
“You’ll find your sea legs in no time, mate,” Roger said, putting on his old-timey sea jargony voice. I rolled my eyes. He could get a little corny with his pirate act, but he was a good guy. A great guy.
“He’s right,” said Dad. “You’ll be an ‘old salt’ by the end of this trip.”
Old salt? “An able-bodied seaman,” he said, when I gave him a puzzled look.
Roger and my dad went way back, as did Willie—to their army days in Iraq and Desert Storm. But both men couldn’t be more different from Dad.
For one thing, like me—though we lived near the sea—Dad was a landlubber next to them and Cassidy. And even Lisa.
Lisa had gone sea kayaking many times. And at thirteen, she was probably the prettiest tomboy to ever sail the seven seas.
I tried to stand up, held on to the rail for a second, and slowly lowered myself back down on the deck. Lisa squatted behind me and gripped me around my chest. Her touch sent a thrill through my body.
“Upsy-daisy,” she said. With her help I stood up, lurched with the roll of the ship, and grasped the deck rail.
“Listen up, you scallywags!” bawled Willie, borrowing a word from Roger’s pirate lingo. A powerfully built man, Willie could belt out orders that made your hair stand at attention. “We’ve got forty-five minutes to get belowdecks, gather our gear, and rig up our kayaks for off-loading,” he called out as he took off his floppy Aussie-style hat and gave my backside a whack.
“You okay, kiddo?” Dad asked. He had bony hands and a body like a broken crate—all bones and awkward angles. Sometimes he was a talker, but these were the first three words he’d spoken to me all evening.
“I’m good,” I lied.
I said, “Later,” to Lisa, then I led the way, swaying and staggering, belowdecks to our pile of gear, which would be our “tools of survival” for the next ten days.
Those were Dad’s words.
As on our river trip through Desolation Canyon, most of our gear was stuffed into watertight rubber dry bags. I slipped my arm through the strap of one and hoisted it onto my back. I sighed, realizing we’d each have to make two or three trips lugging our loads to the staging area on the second deck.
Roger had sold us his old sea kayak on our way north (we met up in Grants Pass, Oregon). Now three long, sleek, double sea kayaks were stacked on deck like stiff, polished crocodiles in the glow of the yellow storm light. Four grizzled deckhands peered at our growing pile of stuff with growing alarm.
Having been up since 3:00 AM, we were well beyond tired. Now it was almost midnight, and the sound of the sea slapping the hull reverberated in my bones as if I were in a submarine awaiting a depth charge from above.
Since it was impossible in Bella Bella to off-load kayaks from the ferry directly to the wharf—no real harbor there, not for seagoing ferries, anyway—our kayaks had to be lowered into the sea by lines and a winch.
With us in them! A drop of about twenty-five feet, maybe more.
“Buckle your seat belts,” Cassidy said to me and Dad, as he and his dad, Willie, squeezed into their fully loaded eighteen-foot kayak.
The deckhands slipped two slings beneath it—one fore and one aft of their cockpits. The winch engine revved, the boom creaked, and Willie and Cassidy were lifted over the deck rail and slowly lowered into the sea.
In the starlight, the kayak and its occupants were just silhouettes.
Sick silhouettes! Scary and almost majestic.
Soon they were followed by Lisa and her dad.
Now it was our turn. As I climbed into the forward cockpit, I started to sweat in the cold sea air. I looked down. Big mistake. The water was choppy and the ferry was swaying and our kayak was swinging.
Once again, the winch engine revved, the boom creaked, and up we went. The deckhands carefully swung us out-board, slowly, and we swung there, dangling, holding our breath, clenching the sides of our cockpits.
And it looked like a very long ways down. I tightened my life jacket. I squeezed my eyes shut. Then I opened them again. They felt like they were bulging in their sockets.
I felt like throwing up. I took a deep breath and held it again. My fingernails dug into the sides of our kayak as we were slowly lowered toward the cauldron below.
Suddenly, the line attached to the forward sling snapped with a loud PING!
We started to plummet. My stomach flew into my mouth. I heard the scream of a gull—but it was coming from me.