Sophie, Dog Overboard : The Incredible True Adventures of the Castaway Dog (10 page)

Sophie took to boating with characteristic grace and seemed to complete the Griffith's vision of those empty-nesting days, paving their way towards retirement. “She never minded what she was doing, as long as she was with us,” Dave says, though they could tell that being
on the boat was one of Sophie's favorite activities. She'd radiate pure joy.

The Griffiths took a lot of trips in the second half of 2008, having spent the previous years getting their sea legs. One weekend, at the end of September 2008 when Bridget was home, the Griffiths were blessed with perfect boating weather. Dave had been watching the weather for the days leading up to Bridget's arrival and he liked what he was seeing. For a large percentage of the year, Mackay experiences prevailing southeasterly winds that are often more than ten to twelve knots, making boat trips more rugged than Jan liked, given her struggle with motion sickness. The winds make the water choppy and frothy and are very changeable, meaning a perfect day can quickly turn into a risky day. On rough days on the water, Jan spent a lot of her time following the advice given to people with motion sickness, hydrating and sitting very still with her hands clasped, looking steadfastly into the horizon.

When the weather reports start predicting decent five-knot winds, Mackay families like the Griffiths start preparing for glorious weekends out on the water. On the Friday before Bridget arrived, Jan and Dave ran around town buying bait for fishing and groceries for a barbecue, and Sophie was swept up in the giddiness of the activity around her, now that she was no longer afraid she was going to be left behind.

On the Saturday morning, the family, Sophie included, panting and tail wagging on Bridget's lap in
the back seat, drove down to the marina at first light to get out on the water as quickly as possible and not waste a second of the fantastic conditions. As Dave drove the boat out of the marina, Bridget, Jan, and Sophie perched on the flybridge. On that day, the horizon was the rich blue of a child's drawing and the spray created by
Honey May
's motoring through the water was a delicate spritz, rather than the soaking, eye-stinging gusts it can be on rougher days. With Bridget on board they were able to get Sophie up to the flybridge. Dave and Bridget heaved her up the ladder as she submitted herself, ears back and eyes drooping, then once she was up there trotting around so happy to be included.

“Let's go fishing, Sophie Tucker!” Bridget sang, and ruffled Sophie around the head. They moored just outside Refuge Bay at Scawfell, alongside a handful of other boats with the same idea. They set up fishing lines and fussed about, ready to lounge in wait for a few bites. Dave looked over to see a couple of his work colleagues on a nearby boat and they all waved and yelled, “What a day, hey?”

“Mate, beautiful.”

Sophie was sitting at the kitchen doorway, the end of her tail thumping on the step and her ears perking up and then down.

Because of the tightness of
Honey May
's outdoor space, Sophie was relegated to the kitchen doorway when the family was fishing. From there she would watch, wagging and sniffing like mad when fish were pulled in over the edge. She loved the smell and the
excitement as Bridget or Jan reeled in a frenzied coral trout or red throat emperor. If there was space, she'd venture out to approach a captured fish on the deck, moving her nose forward stealthily as if she were hunting a bird, but knowing this was not hers for the taking. “She never got under our feet, she knew to keep her distance, but she'd very politely come forward for a sniff,” says Jan, proudly. “And if the fish flapped around, she'd take a step back. It was just adorable.”

The pup couldn't always contain herself, though, and this day there were three lines on the go and one of them always had a fish on it. It was perfect fishing weather indeed and Jan and Bridget were getting girly, yelling with delight when every twenty minutes their lines tugged in their hands.

Dave spent most of his time keeping buckets out of the way and untangling Jan's line after she pulled in yet another 3-feet-long coral trout. Dave kept a watch over Bridget's lines as she pulled in fish after fish, with the occasional near-miss of a tug on the line as she daydreamed for a second. All the while Sophie looked on in rapture.

“We were fishing on handlines,” Bridget remembers. “Mom pulled in a fish and Sophie just had to come out to look at it.” As the pup trotted on to the deck, she got those paws all tangled in the fishing line. “Dad's swearing his brains off,” says Bridget, “Then I caught a fish and so there was another one coming in and Sophie was so excited.”

For Dave, though, the chaos was too much. “Get inside,” he growled at the dog.

Sophie's ears perked up, then immediately dropped. She looked at Dave and over at Bridget's catch, flapping on the deck. But no amount of head cocking or sad eyes was going to sway Dave, the way it had when he'd found her on the leather armchair, promoting herself from the rug all those months ago. So Sophie went inside and plonked in a corner, sulking with her head between her front paws.

Her sulk didn't last long, though. As soon as Bridget was done fishing, she came inside and picked Sophie up, nuzzling her nose into the dog's chest, then putting her down so Sophie could go sniff the remnants of the fishing mission.

She might have been assigned to the sidelines of the fun that day but the Griffiths made up for it later, throwing her chunks of the barbecued coral trout that they ate with salad and bread while sitting around under the setting sun. The next morning it was fish again for breakfast, this time served with a fried egg. Sophie was in her element.

O
tober twenty-fifth, the day they lost Sophie, is still almost too painful for the Griffith family to recall, but it began as just another morning in paradise. It was a Saturday, magical and sunny with yellow-bellied sunbirds singing in the Griffiths' backyard, and Sophie waking Dave with a nudge of her I-need-to-go-out cold nose. Weather conditions for Saturday and Sunday were looking superb and the Griffiths had a lovely weekend planned.

Just a few weeks after Bridget's visit, Jan and Dave, still high on the perfection of that last bountiful fishing trip, were going to venture back over to Scawfell, where they hoped to meet their friends Denise and Ian Thomason who would be out there after a fishing competition.

Jan and Dave often took the tender over to the island to explore up the shore and meander around the bright coral under the trees and rocks that line the beach. They could be on the beach for hours and see not a living thing other than the island's scurrying lizards and crabs in the sand and stunning cormorants flying overhead. Jan, especially, could spend hours nosing about the beach, picking up shells and inspecting tracks or patterns in the sand or leafy ground that could be this or that insect. She's forever hoping to find a big shell intact, such as a bayliss or a trumpet shell, the kind found in Hawaii that locals blow into. It's a fanciful hope—Jan hasn't found one yet. She gets a little teased by the rest of the family as a consequence, who poke fun at her “hippie” side.

At around eight, after morning coffee at Oscar's, Jan, Dave and Sophie Griffith once again emerged through the members-only gate of Mackay Marina, dressed in crisp summer outfits, Jan looking glamorous as usual in one of her big sunhats, and rolled the cooler down the ramp towards
Honey May
. In a scene that was becoming more and more familiar to Jan and Dave's marina neighbors, Sophie bounded towards the two-story boat with her tongue flapping out. She leaped onto the deck and wriggled her hindquarters as Dave drew ropes in from the shore and Jan buzzed about packing the kitchen and assisting Dave as he steered
Honey May
out of the marina and beyond the headlands.

This time, Jan and Sophie stayed down on the front
deck as Dave drove the boat up on the flybridge—there was no Bridget or Luke to hoist her up and Sophie always seemed a little happier on the lower deck anyway, as it was calmer and less wet. Jan had her deck chair out and sat in it with her feet firmly on the ground, looking out to the horizon and the islands ahead of them. She dangled a hand down to pat Sophie, who was sitting beside her gaping out at the world ahead. The dog sniffed madly at the air for all those salty smells that were becoming more familiar, but clearly no less exciting, every time she came out on
Honey May
.

They had been motoring along for almost an hour when
Honey May
moved past lovely St. Bees and Keswick islands, which were stealing the limelight while their baby cousin Aspatria jutted out of the water, comparatively more like a rock growing trees than a lush paradise.

Dave climbed down the ladder and made his way over to Jan and Sophie. “Ready for a drive?” Dave asked his wife. “I'll stay down here, just gotta check on a few things. You'll be right on your own, won't you?”

Jan nodded as Dave bent down to Sophie who was standing now and looking up at him eagerly.

“Wanna check on the engine with me, Tuck?” he said, grabbing her head in both hands and rubbing her ears.

Jan climbed the ladder to the flybridge as Dave started moving about on deck with a very happy Sophie, who was panting and ready for the next onboard activity. Jan sat on the swivel stool to man the boat. She looked at
the GPS system as it tracked
Honey May
's way around Aspatria. She knew that pretty soon she'd see Scawfell across seven nautical miles of ocean and they'd be less than an hour away from mooring for a day of fun.

She peered over to the east of Aspatria to try to make out Hesket Rock, just off Aspatria's shore and only sometimes poking out above sea level. This spot always made her nervous. Dave had drummed into her that this was a danger zone. The water got confused, swirling and boiling as it maneuverd its way around Hesket, which could only be seen at low tide. “Lots of boats come to grief here,” Dave had told her. It was directly on the route northeast, straight out of Mackay to Scawfell. Dave knew to put a waypoint on the GPS so that
Honey May
steered at least half a mile around the rock to avoid the water's most tormented patch. Still, it was always a wobbly part of the trip and Jan readied herself.

Down on the main deck, Dave pulled at ropes and moved in and out of the saloon as a contented Sophie followed him around, standing patiently in wait as he fiddled and tweaked, wagging her tail every few seconds. She had all the time in the world. Dave went over to the engine compartment at the bottom of the ladder to the flybridge, opened it up and crouched down, his head under the floorboards. Sophie placed herself beside him, snout raised. She sniffed the warm air, then the briny-oily-smelling space beneath the floor, then Dave's legs and feet, her nose occasionally tickling him as he made sure everything was in working order.

Overhead, though, things were changing—and not for the better. Jan was watching the light of the day dimming as clouds moved in. She noticed that the number of white caps—the frothy borders of waves—was increasing on the horizon. As Aspatria got closer and St. Bees and Keswick farther and farther in their rear vision, Jan slowed the boat as Dave had instructed her to do near Hesket. She switched the steering from autopilot to manual so she was able to navigate through the passage herself, moving the wheel as if she were driving a car. She could feel the swivel of the wheel a touch stronger in her hands, adding a string of tension to her control.

The sound of the engine always got a little louder when moving through this narrow passage, as it seemed to ricochet between the boat and Aspatria's rocky caverns. Though
Honey May
was moving quite calmly, the bow began to bounce. The ripples of the ocean turned into mini waves that splashed the clear plastic sheeting over the flybridge. The growl of the boat's wake grew louder as the engine worked a little harder to pull through the swirl. The boat was fishtailing ever so slightly. The wheel felt a little heavier than Jan was comfortable with. The clouds were looming even more than they had just moments ago, and looking a bit ominous.

“Dave,” she called down the steps. Dave continued his fiddling while Sophie's ears pricked at the sound of Jan's voice. “I think you might need to help me up here.”

“One minute,” said Dave. He glanced up at Sophie
who was looking at him inquisitively, as if to say,
Yes, Dave? What are we going to do now?

“Tuck, you stay here, girl. I'll just be a minute,” Dave said, stroking her under the chin and soliciting a happy grunt. The pup's head was tilted as he made his way up to Jan on the flybridge level.

Dave toggled switches, pressed a button or two and looked out at the water. He hurried back down to Sophie who was standing at the foot of the stairs, panting and looking up with eager eyes. While they didn't like to pander to Sophie's neediness—the Griffiths' creed being that dogs weren't babies and that they needed their independence—they hated to be apart from her as much as she hated to be apart from them.

On this October morning, Dave realized he had one more adjustment to make and so he climbed the stairs again. “Stay there, Tuck,” he said and walked across the deck of the flybridge to the steering wheel, leaving Sophie just at the bottom of the ladder. Dave made sure that everything was in manual and Jan was comfortable with the direction. The sun had given way to an overcast day that the weather report hadn't predicted. The wind had come up and there seemed to be a few more ripples in the water beneath them, but
Honey May
was still running smoothly.