Except he had an excuse. He chartered ships for ARCO and ran Pier E, their Long Beach tanker dock. It was his job to know who was sailing in and out of port. Obviously ship words were my family's dinner-table staple.
David and I have
no such excuse, and therefore we blame mere fascination. So charmed are we by the boats that pass before us, we keep our two strongest pairs of binoculars on the living room window ledge, along with maps of the islands and straits, AND our laptops so we can log onto marinetraffic.com to check out the names, destinations, and vital statistics or every commercial boat or ship that passes before us through Rosario Straits. Talk about addictive. 
But it became poignant the last couple of days because my son Nicolas, who has been sailing as Chief Mate aboard the Green Cove, was in Vancouver, BC, on Saturday, on his final leg to Long Beach. We could see the ship on marinetraffic, but we never saw his ship because, aside from the fact that he left Vancouver to Portland at 22:00, he sailed down Haro Strait, and not Rosario.
Alas.
But at least he'll be home on Thursday. He's been gone since mid-December, and has sailed from the Middle East, through Asia, and homeward down the Pacific Coast.
And, as a final note, it continually fascinates me that my father's two grandsons both became mariners. In most families, this would be no big deal. In our family, everyone's adopted, so it's not the gene-code at work. Maybe it's because we're all somehow just like my dad. (Nope, not in every way!!!)
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