Lorelie & I didn’t meet Stan on the deck of a sail boat. We met Mary & Stan in Beaver Valley, located on the eastern slopes of the Cascades where each of us owned a vacation cabin. Didn’t take long before we discovered each had a history with sailboats and had experienced sailing adventures that filled hours of conversation over breakfast coffee, eggs and hash browns. Was it written in the stars that eventually Stan and I would find ourselves hoisting the sails on Freyja for a “ONCE IN A LIFETIME SAIL”?
Ah, there we are, Stan & I, about to set sail on a sunny spring morning from Mystery Bay on Marrowstone Island to Port Gardner Bay and Everett. How we happened to make this sail on a 1938 twenty-four foot sloop, Freyja, needs a preface.
Freyja sailed into Lorelie’s and my life in 1969. After a few decades we sold her thinking we needed a bigger boat. That didn’t work. One morning, the phone rang. “Is this Tim Olson?” “Yes.” “I’m Marty and did you own a sloop named Freyja?” “Yes.” “Well, I just bought her and I’m doing some research on her past.” “How is she?” “I bought her partially sunk down on the Lake Union Canal.” “Where is she now?” “I have her tied to a dock with a pump going to keep her afloat at my Boat Shop. I’m a shipwright.” The next Tuesday, Karl, Michelle, Lorelie and I are reminiscing about the good times, . . Karl leans over the table, “Would Marty sell her back to us?”
What began in March, 2009 concludes with Freyja’s relaunching in April 2011. Someone needed to deliver Freyja to her new home in Everett.
Yup, you guessed it. Stan and I would have a “ONCE IN A LIFETIME SAIL”!
See me pointing? Marty gave me directions for motoring safely out of Mystery Bay at low water. I, however, will soon be aground and waving to a passing fisherman to give us a tow off the bay’s bottom.
Towed free of the bottom, I engaged the engine in gear before Stan had the tow line aboard.
“What?”
“The tow line is wrapped around the prop!”
I stripped, dove under the boat and unwrapped the tow line from the prop. I didn’t have the strength to come aboard. The boat’s ladder was in Everett.
Stan, always ready in time of need, lifted me on board.
Hoist the sails! Trim the sails!
Underway at hull speed with a northwest breeze filling the sails. What could be better than this? Well, this. A fifty foot ketch, south of Freyja and under bare poles motored towards Port Townsend. After passing Freyja and some distance away, the ketch turned about and bored down on us. What could possibly be the matter? Closer and closer, the skipper hailed Freyja, “HEY!” “What is it?” “Do you know how beautiful you are?” Stan responded, “Why yes, yes we do! Thanks!”
The ketch turned about and disappeared toward the straits.
At the southern end of Whidbey Island we turned around Possession Pt. We headed north in choppy seas driven by a northerly breeze with Everett in the distance.
Stan, I and new owner/skipper Karl made a list of what remained to be done to make Freyja “sail ready” for future adventures.
Karl checked below to make certain everything was ship shape before leaving Freyja to rest in her new berth.
Lorelie and I close this special birthday memory with the Irish traditional blessing:
“May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sunshine always warm your face, the rain fall soft upon your fields, and until we meet again may God hold you in the palm of his hand.”
To view Stan’s previous sailing post, – click here
Well told
Thanks, Tim. I see and talk to Marty and Tina, the restorer of Freya, often. We often marvel at our connections and the boats in our lives that seem to tie us all together.
Such fun reminiscing.