Awoke to fog and light rain. The weather forecast said strong southwest winds tomorrow. We had no protection whatsoever from the southwest, so we decided to move down to Portsmouth, about twenty miles farther south, where there's a large, well-protected harbor.
We motored all the way against a light headwind. Had to use the radar most of the day to see where we were going, but by the time we approached Portsmouth Harbor, most of the fog had lifted, and we had two or three miles of visibility. The GPS and the autopilot did a good job of getting us there.
We dropped anchor in Pepperrell Cove around three o'clock. A few minutes later, a small motorboat with a middle-aged man and a teenaged girl in it pulled up a few feet away. I was in the cockpit, and I heard the man saying something about "Roy's Royaks", so I looked out and said something in reply. Roy came up from the main cabin and poked his head out, too. Turned out the man was Randall Gibson, who had known Roy many years ago, in the early days of Royaks. The girl was his daughter, Natasha. Randall had purchased ten Royaks, four of which he used on the research boat, Heraclitus, that he had built.
Of course, we invited them aboard, showed them the Jofian, and chatted a while. Then Randall offered us a tour of the harbor in his motorboat. We eagerly accepted, little knowing what we were getting into. This is quite a large harbor, and Randall took us from one end of it to the other, pointing out places of interest. There's a large Navy base here, and a huge Naval prison that is no longer in use and looks like a grand hotel.
The rain had pretty much stopped, but the air was cool and the water cold, so Roy and I wore jackets, which turned out to be wise. Most of the time, Randall drove at a moderate speed, but every once in a while, he cranked it up and went ninety-to-nothing. We were hanging on for dear life and blamming up and down on the hard wooden seats. Once, he went through another powerboat's wake at a right angle, and a wall of water came over the bow and soaked us to the skin. Roy and I were afraid the boat would fill with water and sink, but it didn't. Randall dropped his half-frozen daughter off at their dock and then took us back to the Jofian. We were very glad to get inside, dry off, and change clothes. What an introduction to Portsmouth!
We had planned on going to a grocery store, but we no sooner were back on the boat than the rain started coming down again. We had had enough wet for one day, so we decided to stay on the boat and eat sardines for supper.
Roy got out his Royak album and found a letter Randall had written to him in 1976. This brought back a lot of memories, and Roy began remembering Randall a lot more clearly.
No comments:
Post a Comment