Song of the (Modern) Ancient Mariner

Galveston Daily News -- Dec. 12, 1984

By MAX RIZLEY, Jr..

THE DOCKS -- I've wangled myself another boat ride, and it's got my wanderlust up again.

This time, I'm aboard the Saga Siglar, one of the more unusual boats to call at these shores. She's a 54-foot replica of a Viking cargo ship, the state of the art in 1000 A.D.

She's heeling to port as her single square sail strains against its lines under a stiff north breeze, but the 12 tons of rock ballast in her hold carry her smoothly through the chop on the Galveston Channel, instead of letting her bounce over it. The sun is brilliant, the sky is blue, the air tangy with the crisp-apple taste of a seaside winter's day.

There isn't a better time to be on the water.

I'm on assignment, I've got to remember that. There's a bunch of people from NASA and the Hasselblad Camera company aboard; I have to take pictures and gather impressions of the cruise. NASA and the Vikings, tomorrow meets yesterday, passing the torch, that sort of stuff.

But it's hard to keep assignments on the brain when that brain is out to sea

I never get anything accomplished when my work takes me aboard ship. The gentle roll and pitch of a deck underfoot, orders barked and lines hauled, and the seaport scenery of weatherbeaten piers and travelworn steamships are thieves of reason and responsibility.

Under their spell, work is a bothersome interruption. The body may report to the office every day, but the brain has cut the mooring lines and sailed off on voyages of its own.

I know that for about a week, until the mind is safely back in port, I will make a fool of myself.

Find me one morning on a street corner where I can see the superstructure of a banana boat looming above the warehouses, and go about your business. When you come back that afternoon, there I'll still be, staring at a pea-coated figure smoking a cigarette on the ship's bridge wing, wondering who he is, where he's from, where he's going, what he does, and why can't I go?

At home, I'll bawl "Drunken Sailor" and "High Barbaree" in the shower over and over and over until the neighbors pound on the walls and beg for any other tune. At work, I'll pepper my speech with Stabboards and Looards and Hard Aports until everyone gets seasick.

Don't ask for an explanation; there is none. Some people are attracted to the sea through family tradition. But my father is from the Great Plains and harvested wheat during his summer vacations. My mother goes pale and makes me shut up whenever I start to tell her about how you leap from dock to deck without falling into the water. So far as I know, there's not even a cabin boy in the back of the family Bible.

I suppose if going to sea were really my business -- if I spent months at a time aboard ship, with nothing to do but chip paint and stare at the endless, gray-green horizon -- the salt water would quickly corrode the gleam of the dream.

Just now, the Saga Siglar is swinging nearly into the wind. The sail has been momentarily released from its bonds, and is flapping noisily overhead like the wing of a great prehistoric bird as the crew scrambles over the cabin roof after it, switching it from one side of the mast to the other. Captain RagnarThorseth puts his weight against the resisting tiller, squinting a bit as the cold wind bites into his face.

He and his seven-member crew are going to leave Galveston next week for Florida, then through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific, eventually winding up back home in Norway after sailing their queer little craft around the world. How I wish I could go, too!

Is it so bad to want to see exotic sights, taste new foods, hear strange languages and music? I've always wanted to see the Southern Cross, watch a Samoan sunset.

But then I remember the camera around my neck, and the blank spot that will be in tomorrow's paper if I don't get back to the office. There's film to develop, copy to write. There's groceries to buy, too -- plants to water, dogs to feed, clothes to wash, and all the little mundane details of real life -- a life that is, I'm afraid, inextricably tied to the shore.

At least, for now.

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