Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. ~Anonymous

I happened to read this quote the day I needed to calculate the slack tide for Gillard Passage and the Yuculta Rapids. It would require some mental effort to thumb through Ports and Passages, the mariner’s Bible, to find the information I was looking for and this quote felt like a nudge to get started. The book contains charts showing the exact time of day for the shift in tides and currents, the maximum high and low tide, the strength of the current and most importantly, slack tide – the time when it’s safe to pass through narrows and otherwise gnarly currents. Unfortunately, specific areas are often buried in secondary charts and require adjusting the data based on high slack or low slack to get the accurate time of day that slack actually occurs. This is not rocket science but it does feel a bit like work. My resistance to cracking open the manual and doing the calculations reminded me of a book I read called, “The Science of Fear.” The book discusses how we process information – both intuitively and cognitively. Intuitive processing is almost instantaneous, that gut feeling we get about a situation, but it is not always reliable while cognitive processing, on the other hand, is analytical taking both time and effort that can seem laborious. The author suggests that most of us prefer to be mentally lazy, and I am no exception to this generalization.

Of course there is a time and place for an intuitive response, but when boating in the Northwest, particularly beyond Desolation Sound, mental focus and alertness are required. Unlike sailing in the Caribbean where the winds blow consistently, the tidal change is almost non-existent, and easy anchoring is usually guaranteed in the soft, flat, sandy floor of the warm ocean, further north of the equator the waters present many challenges, chief among them whirlpools and rapids. Many tales abound of skippers who risked running the rapids only to find themselves washed up on the rocky shore, or thrown from the cockpit, or for one unlucky seventy foot vessel at the Yuculta Rapids, completely capsized up-side-down in the swirling waters. The currents and undertow are deceptively strong, so forceful that Hake, small fish about four inches long, get pushed up from the bottom of the ocean floor so quickly their lungs over expand, like a scuba diver ascending too quickly, and they lay belly up on the surface of the boiling water, a feast for the hovering bald eagles. During slack tide the same stretch of waterway can be as flat as glass hiding the raw power that lurks within its calm appearance. It can feel a bit daunting to attempt navigating the passages along the Canadian coast, but the untouched beauty it holds is worth the mental fortitude and effort. If one is willing to respect the conditions of the ocean and not be a mental loafer she will open her heart and reveal her secret wonder.