[Part 1 of “How Ner­ka Got Her Sea Legs Back” can be viewed here.]

“Uh-oh,” Joel said. “Hang on!”

We surged into a sea of white­caps, as clear­ly delin­eat­ed from the calm water behind as if a line was drawn between the two. I braced myself and grabbed the depth sounder. Not antic­i­pat­ing any weath­er, we hadn’t secured it in place. With every lurch, the heavy, expen­sive piece of equip­ment tried to waltz across the console.

Joel twist­ed the wood­en wheel. “It’s always hard­er to steer in a fol­low­ing sea. Damn, we’re so light!” With no fish and lit­tle fuel, the waves tossed us around like a tetherball.

Anoth­er deep shud­der echoed through the boat, vibra­tions puls­ing through our feet. My face tight­ened. The dread­ed uniden­ti­fied noise at sea: Fisherman’s Botox.

An all-too-com­mon expres­sion on boats. 2007

“Here – you dri­ve, I’ve got to go take a look.”

I took the wheel as he opened the hatch in our floor, grabbed his head­phones, and dropped down to the engine room.  The Jimmy’s roar flood­ed the cab­in as I strug­gled to main­tain our course. Turn one degree too far port, and we swung wild­ly to the left; crank it hard to bring her back, and we veered straight for Fidal­go Island on our star­board. A bipo­lar blend of mut­tered curs­es and autopi­lot nos­tal­gia snuck by my gri­mac­ing lips.

Joel hoist­ed him­self up from the engine room. “I don’t know, dude. I looked at every­thing, greased every­thing, and I can’t see any­thing that would be caus­ing that vibration.”

On cue, the Ner­ka shivered.

“Could we have got­ten some­thing in the prop?” He voiced the fear we’d been sit­ting on.

“I haven’t seen any crab pots, no crap in the water.”

“Okay… You go back to watch, and I’ll try revers­ing, see if any­thing comes loose.”

As I made my way back to the cock­pit, indi­go waves stretched up along­side us, smack­ing each oth­er in aquat­ic applause. I peered over the stern rail as Joel gunned us back. Prop wash kicked up, but no errant shots of line emerged.

There was noth­ing to do but keep going. Still over three hours out from Belling­ham Bay, I won­dered how bad­ly we were dam­ag­ing some inte­gral ele­ment — the shaft, the align­ment, the main engine. Too tense to read, we stared out the front win­dows. A pair of mar­bled mur­relets popped up along­side our port bow, pad­dling mer­ri­ly for a moment before reg­is­ter­ing the feath­er­less behe­moth (to a small div­ing bird, that is) bear­ing down on them. Oh, to be able to dive away from scary stuff and sur­face in the clear, I thought, as they plunged back down.

Mur­relets, hump­backs… Anoth­er uni­verse beneath us. 2007

“At least we’re almost out of the rip.” The clear demar­ca­tion that had greet­ed us sig­ni­fied our approach­ing exit.

Joel was­n’t con­vinced. “It’s looked like we’re get­ting clos­er for a while now.”

“No, real­ly – we’re just four swells away. Three…Two…” I count­ed as we pitched and heaved our way to the flat water. “Whew. Well, that sucked.”

The rolling had stopped, but with the tide run­ning against us, we’d hit a wall. “Oh my god, are you seri­ous?” Joel stared at the speed. “We’re going 2.4 knots!”  At that rate, we’d be lucky to trudge into Belling­ham by bedtime.

Joel called Joe, our elec­tri­cian, who diag­nosed our autopi­lot issue over the phone: Wired into a break­er too small to sup­port it.  Hope­ful, Joel hand­ed the wheel over and dis­ap­peared into the fo’c’sle to switch it to a spare 15 amp spot. When he came up and pushed the pow­er but­ton, we held our breath.  It clicked on… and stayed on.

“Woo-hoo!” We trad­ed high-fives, relieved to be free of hand-steering’s drudgery.

The fist of anx­i­ety began to loosen.  The shud­der­ing seemed to have resolved itself, no appear­ances for the next few hours.  The tide backed off and we made a more respectable 6.6 knots. Ner­ka chugged forth, fol­low­ing the curve of Chuck­anut Dri­ve as Belling­ham Bay came into sight.

After squeez­ing free of Port Townsend’s tights stalls 7 hours ear­li­er, Squalicum Harbor’s vast com­mer­cial berths sprawled before us.  “Yep – no wind, nice day, a port tie in a wide-open stall… Con­di­tions are per­fect for a clas­sic Joel dock­ing dis­as­ter,” Joel joked.

Not so. Cap’n J exe­cut­ed a per­fect maneu­ver, slid­ing the Ner­ka right along­side the fin­ger as if he’d nev­er left the helm this win­ter. When I jumped off and secured the bow line, a white-haired gen­tle­man lean­ing on a walk­er appeared, a beam­ing woman behind him. Joel’s par­ents had been enjoy­ing a walk along the har­bor when they’d seen us pulling in. They’d rushed to greet their old boat – part of their fam­i­ly his­to­ry that pre­dat­ed even their children.

Nes­tled among her big­ger dock­mates, 2010

The next day, Matt of North­west Diesel came down to check out our main engine. “Did you know one of the bolts in your engine mount is loose?” he asked. Sud­den­ly, the cor­re­la­tion between our shud­der­ing and the chop­py weath­er was clear.

In the past sev­er­al days, our maid­en voy­age anx­i­ety has become less insis­tent in our remem­brances, as all bad boat expe­ri­ences seem to do. Fish­er­men have supreme selec­tive mem­o­ry: We can endure a sea­son full of fruit­less search­es for fish, steady South­east­er­lies and boat mal­func­tions, yet months lat­er, will only remem­ber the awe­some sun­sets, whale shows, and the big ones that didn’t get away.  Per­haps that’s the gift of hav­ing a life you love.