I’m writing this tonight from the settee of Indiscretion’s wheelhouse — one hell of a place to put down words. It’s just past twilight now, and I’ve turned on the red courtesy lights that provide just enough glow to see my surroundings, but not enough to spoil vision while voyaging at night. Ahead of me lie the helm chair, the ship’s wheel and the wrap-around pilothouse windows that look out over the bow and Quartermaster Marina.
From my perch, I can take in a wide swath of the lighted marina as it shifts from the gusting north wind that buffets the stern and starboard quarter, twisting and turning the boat so that the view is endlessly moving, as are all the other boats ahead and around me. A loose halyard slaps on a sailboat’s mast off to starboard. Waves lap along the hull. Indiscretion’s dock lines creak and groan from the pressure of the wind, the sounds softened from the heavy insulation of Nordhavn construction. The slapping halyard somehow beats in time with the rhythm of the country music playing on the radio.
When I was ten, my new step-dad took me out on a commercial fishing boat, the Nushagak, which had a roughshod version of this pilothouse. Wires dangled from above the helm and giant charts covered the navigation station — more like Hemingway’s Pilar than this modern trawler. I remember a feeling of complete enthrallment aboard her, the unique smells aboard a fishing boat, the steady vibration of the engine felt through my feet, the swells making my movement unsure, and the dawning recognition that we could point her bow further offshore, chugging along inside that windowed world, and leave the world of land life astern.
On the hundreds of nights we spent on sailboats, we stayed belowdecks on the hook or at dock. But in a trawler, the promise of adventure tugs at you day and night from the beckoning pilothouse windows. It would be so easy (and comfortable!) to slip the dock lines and go. Or stay and plot out the next passage or port, while taking in the beautiful surroundings, and dreaming of more distant ports.
In all my years of sailing, I rarely felt the same sense of belonging as I do on Indiscretion, particularly here in the wheelhouse, like coming home and discovering an unfound door of childhood dreams.