The Boat Fairies

[HenryC]

I may have posted this tale here before, I don't recall.  But I'm curious, have any of you guys heard the sirens sweetly singing?


I flew down to Long Beach and took the ferry to Catalina to pick up my ship, an Express 37 that had just participated in the San Francisco-Catalina race. I was on the delivery crew that was to sail her back to her home port in Santa Cruz. It was a pretty uneventful sail, most of it under power since the winds were against us. About half-way home, the skipper decided to put in at Morro Bay for supplies and fuel, and a hot bath!

I had the midwatch at the helm, everyone else was asleep except the Captain, who had gotten up to call ahead and check conditions at the entrance to Morro Bay. There is a shallow bar at the harbor entrance there that can be extremely dangerous when the seas approach from certain directions. Lots of fishing boats and yachts had been lost in the breaking surf there. I was at the helm, alternating my gaze from the dimly glowing compass binnacle to the flash of the lighthouse marking the harbor entrance miles ahead. We were under power, sails furled, and the sea was flat and smooth, the sky overcast. I was struggling to stay awake by drinking stale thermos coffee and chain smoking cigarettes.

The music seemed to come from nowhere, a men’s choir singing the most beautiful song I had ever heard. It was something like a Gregorian chant, yet different, but there was no mistaking its power or its beauty. I have never heard music that wonderful ever, before or since. At first I wondered why the skipper would want to wake up the crew by playing a tape at this ungodly hour, the ghostly choir was so loud, surely everyone below was up by now. But no, the skipper was on deck, puttering about, and there was no sign of light or life from the cabin. And the skipper seemed to pay no notice to the music. I looked around, perhaps there was another boat nearby playing its stereo too loud. No, we were alone. But the bold voices went on, loud and breathtakingly beautiful. I never wanted it to stop.

And then, just as suddenly, the spooky music faded gradually to merge with the rumble of the diesel, the gurgle of the water, the slapping of the halyards against the mast. In a moment it was gone, and soon even the memory of the melody vanished, as does a dream. The skipper offered to relieve me at the helm, and I went below and crashed, wondering just what I had heard. An auditory hallucination, of course, provoked by fatigue and the monotonous rocking of the boat, the throbbing of the engine, and concentration on the glow of the compass and the flash of the lighthouse. I was reminded of the old Cream tune, Tales of Brave Ulysses… “How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing…”.

By the time I awoke the next morning we were tied up and the crew was getting ready to go out for a proper, hot sit-down breakfast. I brought up the little episode of the previous night and my shipmates were ready with answers, there was even a West Coast sailor’s term for it, “The boat fairies”. Fatigue and cold and monotonous watches led to self-hypnosis. It was not uncommon for yachtsmen, particularly solo sailors, to see and hear all sorts of creepy things out on the water. Everyone had a story.

Maybe. I took a stroll after breakfast to the quaint little town of Morro Bay. I found a monument there to sailors that had been lost on the harbor entrance bar when the big Pacific rollers hit it just right. Written down were the names of the mariners who had drowned there; by their names, I could see sometimes whole families at a time had perished. I paused for a moment and silently payed my respects.