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In March of 1973, we picked up our new custom-built sailboat in Newport Beach and sailed south on our first-ever family voyage.
The forty-five-foot boat’s name was Serenity, but Dad immediately renamed her, though he told us there were “old sea legends” of bad luck if a boat’s name was changed. He added in a teasing and playful way, “I spit in the face of sailing folklore.” The new name, Aegir, meant “lord of the stormy seas” in Norwegian.
Leaving Newport Beach harbor, we motored past the south jetty and headed into the open ocean. Toward shore, I saw surfers as black dots on their boards waiting for the next swell. Dad put up the main sail, hoisted the front sail up, and turned off the engine. The relative silence was beautiful with only the sound of water sloshing onto the sides of the boat. The salty ocean air carried the scent of fish and seaweed. The wind was light, the ocean flat and sparkling under the late morning sun.
It was chilly and I wore a pair of Levi’s 501 Button Fly jeans, a T-shirt, and a blue windbreaker. Everybody but Dad was dressed in pants. He wore his favorite pair of cut-offs and a T-shirt.
“Leslie, grab that line there and pull it,” Dad said from the captain’s chair, pointing with his finger to a rope near him.
I jumped up from where I was sitting on the main cabin and pointed, “This rope?”
“On a boat, it’s called a line not a rope, and when it’s attached to a sail it’s called a sheet.”
“Well, that’s confusing,” I said.
“Just pull the sheet so the sail quits flapping.”
I did and looked up at the sail.
“The forward sail is called the genoa,” Dad said.
The genoa stopped flapping and filled with wind as soon as I tightened the sheet. “Good job!” he said. “See how that works?”
I nodded. The boat moved through the water, leaning over ever so slightly.
Mom sat next to Dad with a yellow scarf around her black hair and a puffy blue ski jacket on. She smiled when I looked at her. I hoped she was having a good time. My sisters, Monica and Karen, sat comfortably atop the main cabin. Monica first held onto the railing, and then laid down. Karen looked at ease and happy, her cute little smile showing crooked teeth, her shoulder-length brown hair blowing in the wind. She stared forward as I did, watching the boat cut her way to sea. The gentle forward motion felt natural to me. I liked the expanse of calm water in front of us. In a strange way it reminded me of the large view of the valley on our ranch: open and empty.
Dad, with a great big smile, yelled something in Norwegian to the sky or ocean. Then he added in English, “I’m home! We’re sailing our very own boat. Our next big voyage will be to Tahiti, right?”
It was fun to see Dad so happy. He wore his floppy brown leather hat from the ranch to protect his bald head from getting sunburned, and the same blue wrap-around reflective sunglasses he wore on the ski slope. He looked comfortable at the helm. “Who’s making sandwiches?” he asked.
Mom jumped up. “Who else is hungry?”
“I’ll have a sandwich,” I said, and Monica and Karen each asked for one, too. Mom went below deck but in a few minutes was back looking green and ready to heave. Her mouth curled as she said, “I’m going to throw up.”
Dad yelled, “Not that side! Go to the low side.”
Mom rushed to the low side, hanging on as she walked. She leaned over the side and threw up. I peeked around the edge of the cabin where I sat soaking up the sun.
“I don’t feel well either,” Monica said. She stood up and joined Mom on the low side of the boat to throw up. Dad shook his head slightly and smiled at me in an “I can’t believe this” smile. I looked at Karen.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said.
I went below and made sandwiches for Dad, Karen, and me while Mom and Monica endured the rest of the trip huddled together near the low side. We arrived in Oceanside five hours later and docked Aegir in her new home on T-dock, slip 14.
***
After that maiden voyage, our whole focus in life changed to learning about the cruising world. We had traded living on the ranch—a three-bedroom house on sixty-three acres—for life aboard a forty-five-foot boat, and I felt the reduction in space immediately. The boat’s interior felt like the inside of the fifteen-foot trailer on the ranch.
Aegir had berths for eight, but nobody wanted to sleep in the main cabin where the galley, navigation station, and eating areas were. Mom and Dad settled into the aft cabin—the master bedroom—which had two individual bunks separated by a closet, a little bench to sit on, plus its own “head” (toilet) with a sink.
Monica, Karen, and I all shared the forward cabin which Dad liked to call by its official name just to trip us up. “You girls take the foc’s’le. There should be plenty of room for the three of you,” Dad said.
The berth had a large trapezoid-shaped cushion, so we slept head to foot and sometimes got kicked in the face in the middle of the night. We knew better than to complain, so we made the best of it.
On the boat, there was nowhere to go for privacy. I missed my special place on the ranch where I went to get away from everybody, but found a new secret spot off of the boat at the end of the rock jetty on the nearby beach.
Dad enrolled me in sixth grade and Karen in fourth grade at San Rafael Elementary near the front gate of Camp Pendleton for the last few months of the school year. Monica had to go to seventh grade by herself at Jefferson Junior High. Working on the boat, finding a job, and getting us all settled living aboard the boat on T-dock occupied Dad’s time and diverted his sometimes overbearing attention away from us.
***
Mom found work at Tri-City Hospital, but after several months she discovered that boating life, like pioneer living on the ranch, was not for her. Constantly sea sick, even on the dock, she couldn’t stand the dampness, the smell of fish, the gusting wind at sunset, or the lack of privacy aboard the boat. They divorced when I was seven, but had tried several times to reconcile. Their latest reconciliation wasn’t going well—she and Dad fought constantly. Finally, Mom packed her bags and went back home to Canada. She said she was going to visit Grandma and would be back later. Although we exchanged letters and spoke on the phone occasionally, we didn’t see her again for sixteen months.
After Mom left, the fighting stopped and peace prevailed on the boat. Dad laughed and made friends with other boaters in the harbor, meeting them for margaritas in the evening. Relieved, I began to relax into our new lifestyle.
Life on T-dock was unique. We had a special permit from the Harbor Master to live aboard Aegir, and during that first summer we explored the harbor, becoming affectionately known by the shop owners and other boaters as the “three harbor rats from T-dock.” We played at the beach, learning to surf. We took turns cooking dinner at night because when Dad got home from working on other boats around the harbor he was hungry. Monica, Karen, and I worked on Aegir, sanding and oiling the teak railings, and learned to sail on an eight-foot sabot Dad purchased for us. Our homework was easy—Dad said: “Go sailing! Go two at a time. Sail around the harbor. Your job is learning to sail.”
We took turns and sometimes all three squeezed into the sabot for fun. We rammed a few docks, flipped the sabot a couple times, and eventually learned to follow other sailors in the harbor and mimic their position and heading. The lessons we got from Dad, along with our hands-on training, had us entering the Yacht Club sabot races before the summer’s end.
***
As the only live-aboards on T-dock, or anywhere close by, we had the dock to ourselves Monday through Friday during the school year. We each wore a key on a string around our necks, which opened the boat-owner’s bathroom and laundry, and the T-dock gate. During the week we didn’t have to share the laundry facilities or boat-owner’s bathrooms with anybody else. On the weekends it was a different story. We had to wait in line to take a shower because there were so many people visiting their boats for the weekend.
Oceanside Harbor was U-shaped and T-dock was the closest dock to the beach, only a city block away. Between the beach and T-dock were the four-story Marina del Mar condominiums, which cast a large shadow over us in the afternoon and evening. In my twelve-year-old mind, the harbor, with its hundreds of boats, was huge. But one day when we got supplies at San Diego Harbor, I understood why Dad had settled on small, quaint Oceanside. He could never keep track of us in such a huge place as San Diego Harbor with its thousands of boats.
Past the dive shop, near the lighthouse—a three-minute walk away—was a cluster of restaurants and shops. La Beaner’s, the Mexican bar and restaurant, was a favorite of Dad’s, along with the “greasy spoon” coffee shop and The Dolphin Cafe. I loved The Candy Kitchen, where the manager, Forest, gave us free pieces of candy. We girls liked eating at Harbor Fish and Chips, watching the fishermen unload their catches from the commercial fishing boats docked right in front. There was a clothing store called Ye Olde Hawaiian Hut where we ogled formal dresses and puka shell necklaces.
Dad was happy the first six months, finding work on other boats in the harbor to earn money, and customizing our boat to go cruising around the world. He took classes at the Yacht Club on seamanship, navigation, and piloting, coming home at night and teaching us some of the lessons he’d learned. Dad’s bald head became familiar and around the harbor they called us “Mr. Clean and the girls on T-dock.”