Acknowledgments
Running out to the grounds during the night in a storm is never fun. But when a passenger breaks into the wheelhouse screaming someone has fallen overboard, the sheer terror that shoots through you is mind numbing. I could hardly breathe as I raced from stateroom to stateroom searching for the missing passenger. The moment I knew he was no longer on board, a part of me shriveled up and died.
This all-too-real life experience, how it happened, and what happened next was the inspirational seed from which this novel was created. From there, each of you must decide for yourself what is real and what is fiction.
To the individuals who recognize themselves within these pages, I’ve done my best to represent you with the highest respect and to the depth you’ve each influenced my life. Throughout our lives, it’s the people we love, those who love us, and those who don’t, who make us who we are. This book is dedicated to each and every one of you.
Grateful acknowledgment is given:
To my mother and father, to my grandmother and grandfather, who in their own unique way, taught me to love the outdoors, to love being on the water, and most importantly, to cherish and respect all living things, small and great, both above and below the waterline.
To my crew at the time, now Captains Zachary Story and Brian Fay, for your loyalty, friendship and bravery. To Larry Edwards and Lloyd Wolf for taking me under your wings and making sure we did it right. To Captains Buzz Brizendine, owner/operator of the Prowler; Alan Fay, owner/operator of the Pronto; and Frank LoPreste, owner/operator of the Royal Polaris, for your willingness to work with a rookie operator, on a six-pac no less, so green it wasn’t even funny. You never knew it at the time, but the few words of encouragement you sent my direction over the radio meant the world to me.
To my dear friends Tom and Gracie Rogers, Dave and Hallie Pfeiffer, Clete Takahashi and Joani Dickenson for your invaluable insights into the storylines and characters and for your honesty, critiques and suggestions, without which this book wouldn’t be what it is. Thank you for your support, encouragement and love. To Danny Dickenson, Steve DeGroote, Andrew Matthewson and Jim Magnuson, without whose unique and extraordinary skills, craftsmanship and knowledge of boats, the Vintage would never have been restored to where she is today.
To Julie Metz/Monica Gurevich for Julie Metz Ltd., for your creative vision and cover design. To Crystal Patriarche, BookSparksPR, for your ideas and insight. To Jean Denning for your endless efforts and patience editing and converting the book for this edition; you were the angel this book was waiting for.
And to my incredible wife, Kimberly, I owe you everything. You were there in the beginning, throughout the storms, and will be until the day I die. Your patience and unconditional passion are living testament to what love is all about. I love you with all that I am, and ever will be. You are my guiding light.
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
Chapter 1
Seattle, Washington
The storm slammed into the coast just before dawn, exactly as the late night news predicted. It whipped down the inside passages east of Vancouver Island, providing a taste of what life was going to be like for the next six months—cold, wet and miserable.
Every year around the autumnal equinox, the weather in the Northwest turns. It’s a part of life. Locals know it’s coming, and there’s no reason to complain about it, but they always do, as they have since the beginning of time.
Preparing for another Seattle winter, Karyn and I were winterizing the boat when old man Wilson shuffled by, the splintering wooden docks creaking under his weight. He stopped and eyeballed what we were doing. Being neighborly, Karyn asked if he needed any help with his boat.
“Don’t need no help. Can take care of her myself,” he snapped back defiantly, nodding toward his floating pile of crap a couple of slips down from ours. “Been taking care of her my whole life. Certainly don’t need no help from the likes of you.”
“Just offering was all,” Karyn answered softly.
He grunted in return. I’d ducked behind the opposite side of the wheelhouse as I saw him approaching, and was watching them through the salon windows. There was a glimmer of a smile in Karyn’s eyes as she assured him she didn’t mean any offense. How she had the patience to deal with him the way she did was beyond me. I couldn’t stand the crotchety old prick.
“Yeah, well, you’d better be sure and do that right,” Wilson said, looking at the braided mooring line Karyn was holding. “It’s going to be a bitch of a winter, and I don’t want to deal with your boat breaking loose, banging up against my lady there,” he added, jerking his stiff neck and cap-covered head toward his boat. “A real bitch of a winter,” he mumbled to himself, turning and continuing down the dock. “I can feel it in my bones.”
No doubt he could, I thought to myself as Karyn turned, flashing that incredible smile of hers. She knew full well how the old man would respond before she even asked if he needed help. He was as cantankerous as they come. Older than dirt and mean as hell. Couldn’t blame him for being so pissed off, though. He’d been living on the water since the day he was born, one of a dying breed being forced out by the nouveau riche who had recently discovered houseboat living along Seattle’s ancient waterfront. Didn’t matter to Wilson that I’d been born right here, on board this very boat. As far as he was concerned, anyone under one hundred was scum.
What used to be a shantytown of makeshift craft, most of which, like Wilson’s, were seemingly kept afloat by only their dock lines, were being run off by multilevel, built-to-the-hilt, wall-to-wall floating condos. They were nothing more than tasteless pieces of architecture that wouldn’t last an hour outside the protected waters of the harbor. With deck-to-ceiling glass, tile roofs, recessed lighting and spiral staircases, master suites and fake fireplaces, the condos boasted heads with built-in Jacuzzis, heated floors and tanning beds. Seattle’s new houseboats were anything but boats; the new generations of occupants were anything but boat people. But together they were the new floating armada of Seattle’s waterfront. Karyn and I resented them as much as the old man did.
Like old man Wilson, my dad was born and raised on the waterfront. Married to the eldest daughter of one of the most successful seafood processors on the coast, he’d spent his life fishing a deep-water trawler, working the Bering Sea until an Arctic storm took his life.
After he died, Mom and I moved off the boat and went to live with Grandpa and Grandma in the big house up on the hill overlooking the harbor. Mom never set foot on the boat again. The following day, Grandpa picked me up after school in the old truck and drove me down to the plant. He put me to work cleaning up the guts behind the cutters at the cannery.
“You earn your keep, boy,” Grandpa said. “There