Ferry Vashon

The image of the old Vashon, gliding around the point into the slip in Anacortes  is as sharp in my mind as if it were last week.



Recently we found an interesting book to sell in our Fremont Market pop-up shop.   Images of America FERRIES OF PUGET SOUND - Steven J. Pirkens (soft cover, very good).  Fun book.  Interesting history, great photographs. 

The page devoted the  ferry Vashon,  pulled my mind back to the summer of 55. Justin and me in the back seat, mom holding Annah on her lap, dad at the wheel of the 49 Pontiac, headed west out of Walla Walla, hottest day anyone in our family could ever remember, destination Friday Harbor, heart of the cool coastal island country. 

The image of the old Vashon, gliding around the point into the slip in Anacortes  is as sharp in my mind as if it were last week.  Dad's heart skipped a beat when he saw the old boat.  Saying something about recalling the ferry from childhood days, we drove down the ramp into the car deck as if it were a holy shrine. 

Dad grew up on Vashon Island a hundred miles to the south, in Puget Sound country.  Bedtime stories for us kids had always been yarns  spun from his memories of  childhood days on the island. Stories that painted images in our minds of an almost magical time and place that had been his childhood world.  That evening in the Vashon I felt a palpable link to that world that remains with me even now.

Getting out into Rosario, the ferry began to roll.  It may have been a low swell coming up the channel from the south, or she may have just taken a few rolls in the tide rips that always form along the rout of that crossing.  I remember sitting on wood slat benches,  in a large common room at one end of the deck house, looking across to the windows on the south side of the boat, seeing water and sky in long steady rolls.

The old boat rattled and creaked.  To say an old wood vessel creaks as it rolls is easy enough, but as is the case with all story telling, one relies on the listener's shared experience to complete the picture.  Ferry boats have been made from steel for a long time now, and many folks may never have heard the unique set of sounds that echo through the interior of large wooden vessels as they pitch and roll in the open water.

Think of grannies rocking chair, creak crack as the old lady whiles away a lazy summer afternoon on the veranda.  Multiply that by countless planks and timbers fastened together with nails, drifts, and bolts from which the ferry is constructed.  As the boat moves in the swells each tightly fit joint moves against its neighbor ever so slightly creating its own wood on wood creaking sound.  A sound that has gone the way of the old boats, retired at the end of long careers; replaced with newer vessels made from steel that do not sing the same songs.   

Around the corner into Lopez Sound we went out on deck to have a better look at a fleet of small boats that appeared to be drifting with the tide.  Dad asked one of the ferry crew about the boats, and we were told they were fish boats.  Dad then asked if they were fishing or waiting.  They were waiting.  To which dad commented to no one in particular that fishing seemed to involve a lot of waiting.

Next day a sport fishing trip had been planned.   Dad's friend Rodger telling his wife Alametia as we walked out the door not to get anything out for dinner, we were coming home with fish.  I thought it a bit optimistic, but we did have fish for dinner that evening.

The boat in which we went out would make a great display item at the Center for Wooden Boats.  Eighteen or twenty feet in length, plank on sawn frame, flat bottom with transom stern. Open boat, steered with a lever fit into the right side about midships, connected to a tiller and rudder at the stern with quarter inch twist chain.  Inboard power, single cylinder air cooled, Brigs and Stratton style motor; start with a short segment of braided cord wrapped around the shaft collar.  Driving a small shaft, propeller wheel churning the water just under the stern.  Putted along at what seemed like a good clip, but not the bump bounce splash of a planing hull.  

Coming down the steep path and ramp to the float, just to the south of the ferry dock in Friday Harbor, my eyes delighted to see one of the gill net boats we had seen the evening before over in Lopez Sound tied up nearby.   Looking in a window to the galley I glimpsed the wonders of the fisherman's world.  A half bottle of whiskey stood on the galley table next to a pack of playing cards, probably a cribbage board.  The gloomy little room reminded me of the kids fort we had up in the rafters of an old barn back at home, safe from the prying eyes of  anyone's mother or teacher. 

These things, strong drink and card games, along with many other ordinary parts of life were strictly forbidden in the religious sect to which our family belonged.  On hot evening in the little yellow lit church hall where my father made his living, I listened to the cars on the street outside, imagining how wonderful those peoples lives must be, freely driving around town while I had to sweat it out at yet another prayer meeting.  The scene inside that boat galley painted an exotic image of that freedom.  Likely played a large part in my determination to get a boat of my own in later life.


Back in Walla Walla I remember feeling empty and alone.  Sitting half way up the stairs in the house, safest place from the terrors of a late summer sheet lighting storm, family yucking it up over strawberry rhubarb pie in the kitchen.  Dreams of deep green water surging around creosote pilings in the moist salt breeze swirling through my head.