Icewine Tales

Class and Mortality

A lot of things come together when someone says no to something you are passionate about.  This made me feel great, although it was a bit of tough train of thought and the kindness of a stranger that helped me help me pull it all together.

It could have been a bad experience.  I had sent Dr. David Suzuki an invitation to join a film project of mine, ‘humbly Seeking Sochi’ for the episode on Agios Efstratios, a tiny Greek Island of about 400 people that has managed to become pretty well self-sustaining by investing in solar, wind, and energy conservation methods.

Instead, Dr. Suzuki said,

“Needless to say, I am honoured to receive your request.  I’m afraid though that at my age, the idea of being involved in a filming project is not what I am interested in, exotic though the location will be.  I would suggest that you might consider either of my daughters, Severn and Sarika, who have both been involved with me on the Nature of Things and are infinitely more photogenic. 

“Thanks for asking me. 

David Suzuki”

The idea that one of my heroes might decline because of his age startled me.  I read it as an honest admission to me, a stranger, but it got me remembering a couple of points in my life that reminded me of my advance on mortality.

The greatest of stories are told in the smallest of moments and there are no great shipwrecks (although I’ve survived one) or no great wars (it missed me by a couple of weeks) in the great revelation Suzuki reminded me of.

I was about forty when I moved into a high-rise apartment.  I unpacked, set up the answering machine, and promptly left for a week.  When I came back, I punched the button on the answering machine.

There were no messages, and it played my welcome greeting, “Hi I’m not here right now…”

My blood ran cold.  How did my father’s voice get on that machine?  Did he call in and in a technologically challenged moment succeed in hacking the machine and getting into the welcome message?  I wanted to call him and ask, or accuse, or ask in such a way that I could accuse him if he couldn’t come up with the right words.

I played it again.  I played it again.

The next day I played it again and then did something wise.  I forgot about calling my father with wild accusations.  I recorded over the welcome message.

Then I played it.  My first thought was that the ‘damned clever fellow’ had done it again.

In a blinding flash of the obvious, I realized that I was becoming my father.  Indeed, I already had become.  My voice was his voice when played back.

In the early days of planning the ‘humbly Seeks Sochi’ trip, I was chatting with my dad.

I’m sure that it was a rambling enthusiasm of unorganized thoughts, probably the second best time of the project other than actually sailing from Athens to Sochi.   There were no realities at the time.  I didn’t know I would be against three knot currents through the Dardanelles, or that I would have such a problem in planning Odessa until my Moscow friend said something totally innocuous that would become the Odessa theme, or that the whole project would involve such detailed logistics and planning.  Dreams are wonderful!

I said to him, “Dad, why don’t you join us for a week’s sailing somewhere.  We’ll work it out somehow and I’d love to share this with you. “

I wasn’t prepared for his answer, “Son, in two years, I’ll be 80 and I’m not sure I’ll be up to it. “

Dad and the dogz in the hood

My father lives on a steep hillside on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.  In an astounding metaphor for life, he spends many of his days building retaining walls and plotting ways to defy what gravity schemes to bring down the hill.  He is in far better shape than I am and he is usually more successful at defying the gravity immediately around him than I feel I have been.

His cold logic disturbed me.  There is no changing it.  He has counted the years, ignored the numbers and learned to enjoy his Sisyphean task.  I am left disturbed but envious.

I told the first story to an acquaintance and after I had finished, he looked into his soup and said quietly “And I looked down and saw my father’s hands… “    I confess that it took me a little while to understand it and then I was humbled.

Contact VinoCanada for Export of Icewines and Canadian Wine Exports at www.vinocanada.com

Many years ago, before I got involved with Icewine or even fine wines, I did other foolish things.

Today, my friend Sue asked me if I could swim because her young son was playing at the waters edge near us.  I said yes, but then this whole story came flooding back into my memory.

I sailed out past the breakwater to begin a long downwind ride across Lake Ontario. All morning, the weather stations had been reporting West winds at 30 to 40 knots and up to 3 meter waves. This was playtime for Humbly, my 24′ Shark sailboat. We had been out many times in these conditions and Humbly always surfed along downwind under main and storm jib at exhilarating speeds ahead of the crests.

For about an hour Humbly went faster that she had ever gone before. She surfed down 3 meter waves, and in the gusts the pressures turned into humming in the hull and vibration on the tiller. There was tremendous pressure on the mast and rigging.  The rudder was kicking up a rooster tail.

At about 4:00 we were between 6 and 8 miles from the South shore.

The mother of all waves picked Humbly up, turned her sideways and heeled her almost 90 degrees. It bumped the bottom of the boat and boosted me off balance off of the seat. I felt like a volleyball set up for a spike. The wave broke over the cockpit and slammed me over the leeward coaming. Somewhere in the tremendous rush of water I took my left hand off the tiller and the next thing I remember is hanging in the water on the port side reaching up and over the transom grasping the tiller with my right hand.

Then the boat tilted to windward and I lot my grip and went underwater.

When I came back to the surface the boat had righted herself and rounded up into the wind with her stern about six feet away. I swam for it and lunged for the motor but missed it by just six inches and went under water again. I had missed my only chance.

Rage waved over me and I screamed, “You dumb country fuck!” The rage passed almost immediately.  Humbly sailed away towards the South shore.

I started to think. I was alone. I was wearing a farmer John wetsuit bottoms and a Mustang floater coat. Inside the left sleeve pocket were three small aerial flares. There was a whistle, two small flashlights, and $2.75 in change in the side pockets. I was barefoot.

The floater coat and wetsuit kept me buoyant so I thought that my biggest danger was hypothermia and I hooked up the beavertail attached to the floater coat to try to reduce heat loss from my crotch

I could see the far shore when the larger waves lifted me and even though the boat was still only a few hundred feet away I started cheering her on. Humbly was headed south on her drunken course. I imagined that when she hit the rocks along the shoreline there would be a movie style explosion with flame and smoke that would attract attention and help.

Until then, my choices were to either curl up and float to conserve heat, or to swim towards shore.

I decided to swim. I still had two flares. My fragile game plan was to swim towards the shore. When Humbly’s sails disappeared I would know that Humbly had hit the shore. The search would start and then I could fire off the last two flares and then rescuers would come out and get me. Simple!

First I had to learn now to swim. Other than swimming back to my windsurfer after a fall, I had not been swimming for over twenty years. The floater coat kept my head above water but would not allow a normal swim stroke, and the neoprene wetsuit bottoms kept trying to flip my legs up and put my face in the water. I found that the best compromise was in a combination of breast stroke and pedal kick which kept me moving forward very slowly and somewhat upright.

I stroked slowly and watched my boat get smaller. I tried to remember more on survival. I don’t think I’ve ever thought so much about anything.

The next couple of hours became a series of stroke, stroke, watch Humbly stagger towards shore, stroke, try and remember anything to do with survival, stroke, sputter, and stroke. The boat moved further away but the shoreline did not seem any closer. I was drifting East in mountainous waves and swimming South.

After about an hour I noticed a seagull floating effortlessly above me. It struck me that this was not fair and I yelled to the gull, “Hey, gull! Go and tell them where I am and I’ll give you a fish.” He floated there for a minute and then wafted away. I told myself that he could see that I had no fish.

The sun sank lower to the West and I realized for the first time that I would be out there after dark. I could still see Humbly in the distance and it was alarming how far the boat was going and how small the sails were getting while the shore didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

The sun went down and I started getting cold.

Every little while I had the urge to speed up and a couple of times I tried to swim faster but this never lasted when I realized that slower was better. This was difficult.  I have always had trouble pacing myself in anything I have ever done but this time there was no choice. Now that it was completely dark waves were sneaking up from behind and clobbering me, leaving me sputtering and indignant.

A blue flashing light caught my eye off to the left. I waited for the next wave to pick me up for another look and saw the light on top of a large yellow vessel with a black hull floating about a hundred yards away to the southeast. I saw it again and reached for the flares in the sleeve pocket of my floater coat. It seemed to take forever to very carefully get the flares out of the pocket and out of the plastic bag, put one back in the bag, replace the bag in the sleeve pocket, unscrew the end of the flare, point the business end up, and pull the chain. I had never fired flares before and was scared witless that I might drop either one. The flare arced up, over and doused downwind. I was both disappointed at how quickly the light show was over. I waited a few long seconds.

Suddenly the boat accelerated to the West. They had not seen me! As fast as I could I pulled out the other flare and fired it in an arc in front of the boat. It did not reach the boat, but it did arc nicely and doused off its starboard quarter. I kept watching the boat’s direction. No change…no change…no change. The boat kept on going and disappeared to the West. I yelled; I screamed; I called it names and cursed its wake.

When I calmed down I realized that I was upset that I now had a long way to swim. I decided that I was still going to make it swimming, but I didn’t want to. I wanted a ride. “OK self, you have no more flares and there is a blind madman in a forty foot rescue boat driving up and down the shoreline at high speed. Just my luck he’ll come back and nail me in the head.”

I settled down into a slow routine of stroking and started to daydream.

Strokes.  More strokes. More strokes. More strokes.

I tried body surfing and caught a few waves that turned into exciting and long rides, but I realized that they were not free rides because they took so much energy.

Things were going well enough. “What can possibly go wrong?” I could hit a cold patch in the lake. I could run into a current where a stream empties into the lake just in front of me. I could get hit by a bugs-in-teeth rescue boat driver. I worried about getting ashore. I didn’t want to be bashed against the rocks along the shore by these huge waves.

More slow strokes. I was getting close!

I was about twenty yards from the breakwater when the panic set in. I was now close enough to the rocks to use them as reference points and I didn’t seem to be getting any closer. How could I come this far to get pushed away from the rocks by a current! I ran out of breath and rested, collected my wits, and went back to the slow stroke, stroke, game plan that had been successful for so long. A few minutes later a wave picked me up and deposited me gently on a large flat rock.

I considered it a last gift from the Lake.

Contact VinoCanada for Export of Icewines and Canadian Wine Exports at www.vinocanada.com