I have asked myself this question since that day, in June, of 1975—was it a miracle? Kathy and I launched our sailboat, Iota, an eighteen foot, ferro-cement, gaff rig canoe yawl that we had spent two years building in an old tannery in Seattle. We gleaned many of the construction materials, excluding the steel and cement, some yellow cedar and hardware, from the dumpsters around Lake Union including Doc Freeman’s for slightly used sandpaper and the Ballard ship yard’s dumpsters.
We believed if we needed something, we would find it, and, generally, we did. The main mast, an abandoned salmon trolling pole, was floating in Lake Union. It was black and moldy, too long and too thick, but I carried it home to the tannery, hewed, sawed, and planed it to size. Hatches and the back of the cabin trunk I fashioned out of mahogany from Japanese motorcycle crates. Cushions and mattress we filled with layers of carpet underlayment. Their fabric, that Kathy sewed into a patchwork pattern, came from a furniture factory dumpster, as did the oak for the bulwarks and cap rail. There were many more examples too numerous to mention here.
While welding up the armature that formed the shape of the hull, I welded in a seeing eye in the bow, to be eventually covered in steel mesh and cement, not to be seen after the boat was finished. In a way, it was a prayer. We both felt safer with it there.
Launching day arrived. Using a borrowed trailer and pickup truck, we brought her to the launching site. The designer, Jay, was there along with many people who had helped us along the way. With the boat lifted out of its cradle, Kathy broke a champagne bottle on the bow’s stainless fitting and proclaimed, “I christen thee Iota.” It was a name we had chosen, both as a joke, because of its small size, and a prayer because an iota is a small undividable particle. A cheer rose from the throats of our friends on the dock and Iota was lowered into the water. Those friends then helped me set the main mast in place.
Finished with attaching the sails, tying on the reef points, and performing other preparations, we finally set sail. A few days after experimenting with piloting and sailing our new boat, we pointed our bow toward Alaska. As we crossed Juan de Fuca Straits, we planned our first stop to be the San Juan Islands.
The weather was sunny, with a good steady breeze from the north. The sails were close hauled, pointing as high into the wind as possible as we approached Smith Island, still a distant way-point. I had the watch. Sitting in the cockpit and leaning against the back of the cabin, instead of keeping an eye on where we were going, I was admiring the wake Iota was leaving; straight and even. She was sailing herself, with no need for me to touch the wheel to correct her course, the result of the design having a “working” keel, similar to early work boats like the Friendship Sloop. Kathy was below, brewing coffee on the tiny wood range I had welded out of scrap steel. The moment was perfect.
As if for no reason, a super strong gust from the west hit our port side. It caused Iota to heel to the starboard and point up into the gust. I whirled around in surprise to see a huge log floating only inches from the hull. We were on a direct course to hit it. Suddenly, a gust of wind flatly hit the sails. Almost instantly, the wind veered again back out of the north. Iota fell off to the right, then sailed around the log and resumed her previous course. Kathy popped open the hatch.
“What happened?”
“We just about hit a huge boom log. Iota sailed around it,” I cried. “She did it without my help!”
I told her the whole truth while we sat in the cockpit, drank coffee and discussed what happened. Chastened for my inattention, I kept an alert eye on where we were going after that, a lesson indelibly learned.
A meteorologist would tell you that willowas, a name given gusts of wind “out of nowhere,” are not uncommon and that any proper sailboat, in the same situation, would react as Iota had. Given the circumstances, it was all explainable scientifically. For Kathy and me, however, it was a miracle.
This brings me to ask: what constitutes a miracle? Does a miracle have to have a supernatural occurrence? Something that is unexplainable except for obvious divine interference? Maybe, what happened to us to save our lives and our newly launched boat, was a miracle? Personally, I go for that explanation. I choose to believe that real miracles happen every day and may not be recognized as such. That whatever heavenly force utilized the laws of nature to save Kathy and me, it was the One, Divine, Infinite Being some of us call God, whose laws of nature made that miracle.
What do you think?
