CANYON FERRY -- John Jones is the first to spy the approaching wind. He turns his head in time to see it roil across the water, stirring the lake's surface. The gust creates a different texture, drawing a line upon the surface between calm and turbulent.

For a few brief moments, it's as if we're held in an artist's cartoon, caught between scenes of action. The next few minutes will test our captain's skills at the rudder and the quick response of his crew.

"A puff -- a puff!" Jones cries. "And it's coming quick!"

Behind the boat, the rolling waves lap around the rudder. The newly raised sails luff and the setting sun lights the water with a million diamonds.

The tip of our mast dances this way and that across the sky, shifting above the subtle rocking of the boat. The "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" comes to mind, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge professing, "We stuck, nor drift nor motion; as idle as a painted ship upon the painted ocean."

His gray beard flashing in the light, captain Laurie Simms turns to examine the approaching wind. It moves like a ghost behind him, invisible and quiet, less the wake it stirs on the water.

Simms intends to catch the wind and ride it to the channel. Beating the other boats to the rock on the western edge of Cemetery Island is essential. But the Misty, a 27-foot Ericsson with big sails and an experienced crew, is hanging tough and running close behind.

Three minutes earlier, in fact, the Misty -- captained by Don Profota and his first mate Kim Stephens -- had come so close to the Ebenezer that her bow actually crossed our stern, nearly clipping Simms in the ear. For a moment, the anchor mounted upon the Misty's railing loomed like a harpoon, large and dangerous in the sun.

But this, our veteran captain shrugs, is racing. Members of the True North Sailing Club at Canyon Ferry Reservoir don't mind a little close competition. Captains and their crews push their boats and test their skills in the so-called "Fun Race," held each month at Yacht Basin Marina.

This day will be no different.

The race started 10 minutes earlier with the single blast of a horn. Now, with the boats well beyond the no-wake buoy and the channel approaching fast, Simms orders his crew into action.

Jones grabs the halyard and pulls tension into the mainsail. D.J. Jones works above, clearing the headsail from the spreader 12 feet up the towering mast. The rest of the crew prepares to duck under the sail when it swings around, which it does with the force of an alligator's tail.

The Ebenezer responds quickly to the adjustments. It scoots across the water, sails arranged in a wing-on-wing configuration, which Simms has chosen for the conditions. The vessel runs with the wind, pushing through the channel to the leeward side of Cemetery Island -- a barren little knoll named for its collection of graves and headstones.

If ever there was a bad omen, this might be it. It would happen here within site of the cemetery on the hill. But just as the Misty makes the turn, followed by the Svea, the Wind Runner, and 40 Winks -- the latter a 25-foot Catalina -- Simms grabs the rudder and prepares to set a tack back into the wind.

"Watch your fingers," he shouts over the clang of rigging and the whistle of wind through the sheets. "And watch your head. Here we go! Hold on!"

The Ebenezer falls at an impossible angle and the bow splashes around. Behind the ship, the horizon shifts sharply. The headsail crackles, and the boom, a silver sledgehammer capable of knocking a person out cold, swings about.

Grinning, his face shaded by his skipper's hat, Simms prepares to jibe. He sets a new course back across the lake and delegates his crew to riding the portside rail. It stands high above the water as the vessel heals in the wind. The downside becomes flush with the lake. The base of the rails are nearly submerged, the water coursing deep and blue beyond.

"We've got some good wind," Simms says. "Now this is sailing."

Held in the clutches of the wind, the Ebenezer leans at a 35-degree angle. Behind our boat, the Misty is still running second, but she's drifting away, bobbing heavily in the waves and falling sharply in the stiff puffs coming from the northwest.

It's impossible to know what Profota might be thinking at this moment, what course of action he might be calling for. But on the Ebenezer, a calm and collective mood prevails. Simms grips the rudder. The 30-knot winds don't bother him. He has seen them before and says they separate the day sailors from the determined.

"The waves were so steep you'd go over one and through the next one," he says, recounting his years sailing in Australia. "There'd be this sheet of green water coming over the front of the boat. I had three people sitting beside me holding the boat down. They were soaked, but I wasn't."

He says "wasn't" with a matter of pride before spotting the competition boat, which represents the last turn of the race. Simms positions his crew and maneuvers the rudder, then performs a dizzying 360-degree spin upon the water. The boat responds like a child's top upon a concrete sidewalk.

This, our captain explains, is a penalty for intercepting the Misty earlier in the race. That is, if Profota decides to protest Simms' course of action, which he won't. Therefore, Simms decides, the 360-degree spin isn't really a penalty but rather, just something he wanted to do.

"He just beat me to a certain mark," Profota would later say. "It was fair and square. He beat me."

The buoy marking the finish line stands within site. It bobs red and white upon the water 200 yards off the bow. The barbecue at Yacht Basin puts up a thin white smoke. Cold beer and hard lemonade wait at the cooler.

Suddenly, the wind dies back and the sails fall slack. But Simms is a confident skipper. When he says, "Put on the music," Jones knows exactly what he's talking about. The crewmember goes below deck and flips on the radio, blasting the theme to "Pirates of the Caribbean."

If the Ebenezer were a pirate ship, then it's only lacking the black flag and fearsome cannons. If Simms were Blackbeard the pirate, then he and his crew have run away with the booty, leaving the other ships drifting far behind, their deck mates shaking their fists and vowing revenge.

"That boat is a whole lot faster," Profota says of the Ebenezer. "We're generally the last of all the boats. It was a good race and a lot of wind."

When Berry Bowles, captain of 40 Winks, reaches the shore, docks his Catalina at the slip and makes his way to the deck where hamburgers and sweets abound, he considers the 28-minute race with a smile.

He's had better days at the helm. But rarely has he seen better wind.

"We failed coming back," he explains. "We got too low. We couldn't hit our mark."

"We were second until we figured out we were 50 yards low," adds crewmember Terry Stevenson. "The course correction kind of messed us up."

Reporter Martin Kidston: 447-4086 or mkidston@helenair.com