This article first appeared in the November 2017 edition of Freshwater News.  And it proves, unequivocally, that sailors aren’t totally crazy.  But we are sometimes pretty soggy…

And so the rainy sailing season starts.

It was inevitable.  Unless I could convince my ever-patient wife to sell everything and move our boat and all earthly possessions down to… I don’t know…Cabo San Lucas, we were going to have to come to terms with the fact that one of the longest stretches of sunny weather I can remember in the Pacific Northwest (and there aren’t really that many to forget) would come to an end.  Which of course meant that any sailing I might get to squeeze in from here on out would probably be done in a set of foulies.

It’s kind of a way of life for most of us ragboaters anyway, and truth be told, it’s also kind of a badge of honor.  Heck, anyone can stand in a warm, cozy wheelhouse with a nice cup of hot coffee when the weather takes a turn for the wetter.  It takes a real yachtsman (and you could substitute “yachtsman” for any number of more pejorative descriptions right there) to stand dripping wet in an open cockpit, liquid sunshine smacking into the port side of your face, while you sip a delicious cup of nice, cold Cup O’ Noodles® accompanied by a few obligatory soggy Saltines®.  And there’s your bumper sticker:  “Real yachtsmen do it in the rain.”

My initiation into this waterlogged fraternity, at least the first time I can seriously remember, occurred when I was 13 or 14 years old, sailing somewhere up in the Canadian Gulf Islands.  We were on a month-long family sail north from Seattle, through the San Juan Islands, and then further north to Desolation Sound (for the record, so named by Captain Vancouver for the intemperate weather his expedition experienced there).  Anyway, somewhere north of the 49^th parallel, we’d made plans to meet up with some family friends, all of whom eschewed the notion of heavy weather boating, instead opting for the more comfortable climates of several rather spectacular powerboats.  They’d passed us as we all made our way across the Strait of Georgia in a pretty good downpour, my younger sister and I working the cockpit in our yellow foul weather gear, probably gulping down hot chocolates as fast as my mother could make them.

By the time we made our destination, our friends had already been there for a few hours and, taking pity on me and my sister, had offered us a place to dry off while they mentioned how cold we must be for having spent the day in decent winds and a virtual downpour.  To our parents’ pride (and probably surprise as well), we both said something about it not being too bad out there, and that we’d actually had fun along the way.  I’m not sure if our friends believed us or if we even believed ourselves, but it doesn’t much matter.  We’d developed our first layer of wet weather scar tissue, effectively increasing the number of calendar days per year we could sail, even if it meant effectively decreasing our level of common sense.

In the forty-plus years since that first really good wet weather sail, there’ve been a lot of days spent in the rain, although a few, for whatever reason, stand out.  There was one day passage from the Des Moines Marina north to Liberty Bay in Poulsbo, Washington aboard my parents’ Catalina 34, Hellcat.  I was the only one who stayed topside for that whole delightful trip through Rich Passage and on north through Port Orchard, while my folks stayed below with my then-girlfriend, explaining to her that, “it really isn’t always like this.”  We made Poulsbo, got Hellcat anchored, and then I enjoyed the euphoric pride of counting myself a Pacific Northwest sailor yet again, while drying out and sipping a nice, warm hot-buttered rum, my girlfriend staring at me out of the corner of her eye like I was an even bigger idiot than she suspected.  She didn’t stay my girlfriend for long.

Or the advanced training course I took years ago (also ironically out of the Des Moines Marina) where we decided it would be a good idea to sail in a heavy wind / rain storm to Gig Harbor as part of our multi-day training.  The sense of this I’m not sure, but the beer and pizza at the Tides Tavern was particularly good after THAT one.

The 2017 Swiftsure wasn’t technically a rain event, since we were just in heavy fog for half the race, but we were dripping wet enough that it could have been easily mistaken for rain sailing.  And I can’t really count getting clipped by Tropical Storm Iselle down in the Sea of Cortez, since even though it was coming down in sheets of rain, it was still a WARM rain, so no one was all that uncomfortable.  Nevertheless, finding a safe harbor in San Evaristo was a welcome relief.

And maybe that’s it, or at least part of it: that euphoric feeling post-rain sail, when you’re sitting in the cockpit, protected underneath the bimini, or down below in a warm cabin, enjoying a hot toddie or a cold beer, secure in the knowledge that not everyone has the will or desire to go out in all kinds of weather.  Or something like that.

That doesn’t mean we’re still not crazy, by the way.  It just means that, from time to time, we’re willing to do it in the rain.