Volume: 2
Tartarus's flying bridge.
Like buildings, dreams and this narrative, Tartarus was multi-storied. The flying bridge, yet another nautical misnomer as it wasn't a bridge nor did it fly, was on the third floor which was the top floor. It was the roof of the second floor and had benches along each side, aligned parallel to the direction of the boat so that the sitter could look over the opposite side, far into the distance and daydream. The flying bridge was sheltered from the sun by a biminy top, essentially a square, table umbrella or horizontal sail, that had to be folded down in high wind or high boat speed to prevent it from shredding. This biminy was the target of the cormorants, gulls and honking geese when the boat sat at the False Creek Yacht Club.
There was a small windshield at the forward end of the third floor that almost protected the dashboard and a helming station. The helming station had a wheel, throttles, switches and navigation instruments that duplicated the setup directly below it, on the second floor. One accessed the flying bridge by climbing through a hatch via a small ladder on the second floor, roughly in the middle of the boat. There were no elevators to the third floor.