Happy Birthday, Papa!

My father turned 86 on Monday and, as each day knowing and loving him passes, I regret that I missed the first 26 years of his life due to his not having met my mother yet.
He came over and down from Port Ludlow, his new haunt that I adore, to spend a few days lunching, erranding, dining with friends before he swung by La Conner to look at a boat he's interested in purchasing for gunkholing (def from Wikipedia for non boaters: Gunkholing is a boating term referring to a type of cruising in shallow or shoal water, meandering from place to place, spending the nights in coves.) It is great fun kicking boat tires with him and imagining yourself puttering about with polish and caulking. When I was little, up until the time I was married with children of my own, dad and I would spend most Saturdays at local marinas peeking in the portholes of vessels for sale. Rain or shine, didn't matter to us. There were always ducks on the docks and fish to watch, rain ripples on the water to occupy me while dad went off to find the yacht broker. And there were often keys to retrieve from beneath a finger pier where they had slipped from my pocket whilst I was throwing one leg or the other over the lifeline (Lifeline - A line or wire (often vinyl coated) all around the boat, held up with stanchions, to prevent falling overboard) to clamber on board full of expectation as to what would be found below deck. Usually it was a bilge in need of pumping and a dark V berth that I knew would be mine for slumber should he choose this boat over the others. Once dad and I sailed from Maui to San Francisco in a 47' Sparkman Stephens cutter sloop with a few other people and he and I had the midnight to 4 AM watch. The sea was astonishingly black as was the sky, indistinguishable from one another except for knowing that the moon was supposed to remain over your head and the menacing but compelling glow that passed by the hull in a long, momentarily endless slide was a phosphorous absorbing Man O War jellyfish and that was supposed to stay under the boat. It was highly disorienting, those watches, the only artificial light for a million miles being the red bloom from the binnacle radiating out against the night. More than once, dad left the helm to me to reassure himself that there was not a mariachi band on the bow. Seriously, it is easy to imagine sailors loosing their grip when immersed so deeply in a cocoon of such undelvable darkness. During one watch, I went forward to haul on some sheet (Sheet - The line used to let out or trim in a sail) to do something saily, and as always I dutifully hooked, unhooked and rehooked to the lifeline the tether from my lifebelt lest I fall overboard and be left forever communing with the watery blackness. At 4 AM, when Peter, my father's dear friend and owner of the boat, came to relieve us I remember him unclipping my tether from the lifeline, handing it to me and remarking, "So Sydney, do you think tonight you might want to actually attach the tether to your lifebelt?" Yeah, I thought I might. I'm such a sailor!
Anyway, here is a photo of my father, my son in law, Arnie and my oldest daughter, Courtney, out to dinner on dad's birthday. Dad and Arnie were discussing Charlemagne for some reason that I never caught. When's the last time you had a good discussion about Charlemagne over a glass of Australian syrah?

Happy birthday, Papa. We all adore you! xoxo