Omens - June, 2021

I’m not really the superstitious type, but when I lived with my (usually pragmatic) grandmother for 2 years, she unapologetically read me Jean Dixon’s Leo Horoscope entry every day from the Chicago Tribune before I left for school. She claimed that doing so “made you think” and “encourages introspection.” She was always eager to interpret what my horoscope meant for me, and usually it seemed like it was telling me that I ought to study harder and quit spending so much time with that Lori girl.

I will confess to occasionally “having a bad feeling” about something, but during the post-mortem after the wailing and gnashing of teeth subsides, I’m usually able to piece together the tiny cues that my subconscious had somehow assembled into a proto-opinion. I’ve done enough of those exercises over the years to convince myself that my “premonitions” always have a basis in normal (albeit faint) perception rather than psychic abilities or ESP.

The dictionary says an omen is a prophetic sign, or phenomenon supposed to portend good or evil. This whole business with the boat has been strangely full of omens – so far disconcertingly positive ones. The first glimpse we had of the Perseverance was early in COVID when we were all sitting around daydreaming of happy stuff to take our minds off of dread and death. Lori told Davi to “find us a good boat with a nice galley.” I added that it should be something seaworthy enough to handle the great lakes. Davi’s keyboard clattered for a few minutes, we heard “found it,” and next thing we know, we’re looking a photo of a pretty 49-foot blue steel trawler kicking up a neat bow wave in Escanaba, Michigan. Davi immediately proclaimed it “the perfect Yooper Yacht” (according to my Grandpa Arvid, a life-long boater, this would rhyme with “Super Ratchet”). Omen.

As we were negotiating with the sellers and brokers and full of trepidation, we got to the point where we really needed to decide whether to plunk down a sizeable deposit. Our hearts were telling us to do it while our brains were screaming in protest. A few days earlier during a meeting with our accountant, he threatened to quit on us and made no attempt to hide his utter contempt for our fiscal irresponsibility when we mentioned the possibility of “a boat.” That night, the required entertainment was watching a beautifully engineered robot make an autonomous landing on Mars. Its name, of course, was Perseverance. When it gloriously stuck the landing and the NASA geeks started bawling in happiness, we just looked at each other. I said “now we’ve gotta do it.” And Lori said “we’re so screwed.” And Davi said “Dibs on naming the dinghy – it’s gotta be “Ingenuity,” to mimic the Martian helicopter strapped to the Perseverance’s belly. Omen.

When the Ness boys hauled the Perseverance out of their shed for the last time and put it in the harbor, it was flying an old stars and stripes from the mast. It was pretty faded and has since been retired and a replacement ordered. As we were moving onboard and opening lockers, Davi discovered a full kit of signal flags and a 3’ long rainbow trout windsock. Davi has always loved colorful things, his favorite childhood stuffed animal was a giant multi-colored Python that he got one Christmas and promptly named “rainbow.” The trout was quickly hoisted from the mast, though flags will be appropriately reconfigured once they’ve all arrived. Omen.

The first day we had Davi with us in Escanaba, we went out for supplies during some intense thunder showers. As we were heading back, Lori and Davi exclaimed at the intense and low arc rainbow, one end of which was clearly right at the Escanaba harbor. Omen.

One of Lori’s first tasks during move-in was to review the 4 drafting cabinet flat files filled with the charts collected over the 20+ years of trips that Roy Ness had taken with his family. To Lori’s great satisfaction, she found instance after instance of maps, notes and trip planners of nearly every route and destination that we’ve talked about doing, from the “Great Loop” (Chicago-Mobile-Florida-NYC-Albany-Detroit-Chicago) to the Mississippi, to Lake Superior. Everything we’ve ever wanted to do, this boat has either already done it, or was well prepared to do before Roy ran out of time. Omen.

We’ve now spent 9 days living and sleeping onboard the Perseverance. We have taken it out into open water 5 times without incident. We have at a minimum identified and operated every system on the boat save the anchor and capstan without injury (ok, one little blood blister on my left index finger). Every system on the boat works and works well (but for a few plumbing issues still being resolved). As a team and in good conditions, Lori and I can dock and handle the boat with reasonable competence. I’m thinking I’ll stick with the omens we’ve seen thus far, they’re working for me. Grandma can keep her horoscope readings.

Note 1: For the record, my grandmother often threatened to haunt us if we failed to do certain things in accordance with her wishes. Also, she was a self-professed witch, a claim that Lori sort of nervously laughed off, until that day when Grandma Louise identified through visual observation from about 10 paces distance that Lori was pregnant, a few days before Lori knew it herself from “scientific methods.” We had told NO ONE that we were even trying. Yeah, … spooky.