Middle Aged Misadventure (2) What I didn’t realize was the velocity at which the storm was heading directly towards me. At first it was of little concern, but with each passing moment I could see and feel the clouds and humidity overtaking us. The clouds kept getting darker over my left shoulder and consuming more and more of the once brilliant blue summer sky. I told “M” we should hurry home now since the breeze beginning to pick up as well. All the better to get us home quickly I was thinking. This should be fun! The waves began to swell to two or three feet (I would guess) and choppy as hell. I wondered if a large boat had passed by while I was on the phone or studying the sky, in order to make such a wake. It didn’t take me long to realize the storm was to blame. The sea was reacting to the fast approaching storm and, man oh man; it was really gaining on us. The clouds were getting very dark and swirling amongst themselves like they were as confused as I surely was becoming. There were streaks of lightening to the south and to the west but nothing too threatening quite yet. I tried to gauge my distance form shore and calculated I was only a quarter of the way back. I called Jackie again to tell her I was racing a storm but wasn’t too sure if I could win the race. At first, she seemed as calm as me and she told me to hurry home and be careful, but I could hear the uneasiness in her tone, that way she has of letting me know she was really worried without actually saying so. After 32 year of being married to someone, a lot of things go without saying. Not in a mood to ramble about my situation, I ended the conversation by telling her how excited this adventure had been and I was heading home as fast I could. Exciting just isn’t descriptive enough a word when relating the next several minutes. As the power and force of the wind grew with every passing minute, and the ocean swelled and heaved wave after growing wave at me and “M’, we began experiencing the fastest sail we’d ever made. The mainsail was pushed by the wind almost perpendicular to her hull by now, a dead run we sailors call it. This is when the sail and wind are just right, coming from the back of the boat towards the front, sailing with the wind, to get the boat moving it’s fastest. I leaned back and out over the water on the starboard side of “M” (hiking) to counter balance the tendency of the gusty wind to push the boat over from the sail downward. That’s what I was supposed to do to get her sailing even faster. I turned the rudder hard into the wind to gain as much power as I could from my little Miss “M”. It was exhilarating! We were flying like never before! I was high in the air looking down across the deck and into the ocean as just the tiniest sliver of her port side was gliding across the tops of the waves. I would experiment a little with “letting off the gas” and “putting the petal back to the metal”, so to speak, and we were having an absolute blast. At one point I heard a constant humming sound that I thought was helicopter. I looked to the angry, swirling skies, but no chopper. I looked all around my boat to see if something had come loose and was vibrating in the violent winds. Still nothing, and yet the humming continued. Later that evening while recanting this story to Herb, owner of the E.B. Café, he asked me if I had heard any humming. When I told him I had, he said it was the sound of the rudder vibrating from the stress of being pushed to its max against the force of the sea, a phenomenon experienced only by those who stretch a boat to that limit. Am I a real sailor or what? In retrospect however, I must admit that one of the only reasons I am even alive and able to write this story today, is because Mother Nature was willing to only teach me a lesson that fateful evening. She had no intention of sending me to Davey Jones’s locker. Had she chosen to do me in for good, she would’ve simply had the wind come from a different direction. I was very fortunate that the wind from the storm was blowing directly at my intended port of refuge next to the Best Western Hotel, my original starting point. I now honestly believe I would’ve been drowned or stranded somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico had nature decided to blow me otherwise. Thankfully, the winds were taking me straight to home, even though I didn’t appreciate the favor at the time. Did I say this was fun? Wow, what a buzz, what a surge of adrenaline! And “M” was proving to be quite the athlete I knew she would be. She took all the storm could throw at her. We were now being slammed from wave to wave. The white-capped waves were now in the 4 to 6 foot range in my opinion. The water was breaching over the bow and up over the combing, from both sides and from the stern. The tops of the waves were shooting into the air as the water pounded into the sides of the boat, my back, and my face. The wind was becoming stronger and more violent by the minute. I was thoroughly soaked by now and doing everything I could physically do to keep us headed towards shore and staying afloat. The ride had now become a serious challenge to stay upright and moving. I had every ounce of my strength going to my arms, all the way down to my fingertips. The wind was trying to push the sail past perpendicular and topple us over. Capsize is a term I try not to use since it has such a negative connotation, but that is exactly what would happen if I didn’t firmly hold onto things. My right arm was fully extended and my wrists and fingers were straining now to hold the mainsheet steady by only the knot at its end. My left arm was fully extended now too, straining to hold the tiller and rudder in the most advantageous heading to keep us up on edge without capsizing. There was no such thing now as being on an even keel; it just wasn’t going to happen in this wind and ocean. If only I could take a breather. The fun was really beginning to wear off now, since I still had several hundred yards to the pier and then about a quarter mile past that to the spot on the beach where I started. “M” and me were close to our end. We just couldn’t last like this much longer (again see definition of middle age in paragraph number 2). But what else could we do? We couldn’t just give up and call it a day? I would try to hold on just a few more minutes until we were in shallow enough water to walk her rest of the way. When I could steal a glimpse toward land, I could see people on the pier and even a few along the beach. But even the slightest decrease in paying undivided attention to sailing, would cause the boat to recklessly steer away left and right in the steady wind. It was best not to look, and just keep my mind focused on getting back. Sensing that I was probably not going to parish at sea, Mother Nature decided it would be funny to throw a nasty inconvenience my way. As I got closer to the beach, the hotels, and the condos lining the shore, she decided to toss the winds at me from every direction, swirling and gusting, further confusing me far beyond my very limited experience. It only took a few gusts from one side to the other to flip me and “M” on our asses and into the drink. “M” was now totally capsized and her mast and sail was floating on top of the waves facing away from me. I was under water for just a moment and came to the top facing into a huge wave and the fierce wind. As I turned away form the storm, I saw “M” floating rapidly away form me. I swam towards my little girl, maybe ten to fifteen stokes in all before I caught up to her. I grabbed at her dagger board and hoisted my upper arms onto it. I had tipped “M” before to practice this maneuver that is intended to right a capsized vessel. You want to do this fairly quickly before the mast sinks further and sail fill with water and point straight to the bottom. This is called turtleing. It becomes much more difficult to right a capsized boat that has turtled, especially when the mast sticks into the sand and muck at the bottom of the ocean. I knew I should react quickly and I did exactly as I had practiced. My boat gave in to my downward pressure as I lifted myself higher onto the dagger board, and she began to tip back to the upright position, in a slow but steady motion back to being afloat. It was a superior achievement for a novice sailor to pull this boat back afloat under these extreme conditions, if I may say so myself. I pulled myself up and back into the cockpit, maybe a little dazed now, but somewhat satisfied that I had survived this challenge cool headedly and with courage. I was impressed with myself but not willing to pat my back just yet. I still had another hundred yards to go to the closest shore. As I regained my faculties, I noticed the crowd at the end of the pier again. It was windy and dark with lightening all around now, but still not a drop of rain. So the people from the beach, the pier, and the Beach Pierside Grill seemed to be gathering to see if I was going to make safely back home. Or at least it seemed that way to me with all those eyes pointed directly at me. The wind was now pushing the mainsail out so far that I could not reach the rope to trim it (the mainsheet) back in. But as luck would have it, the boat was being pushed in a favorable direction, once again directly towards my destination. All I had to do was steer a little and soon I would be home on land. But again and again, the winds weren gusting form port to starboard, stem to stern, and after only crippling our way about 50 yards or so, over we went again! This time I was pissed. We were so close to the beach and I was being humiliated by this storm in front of a crowd of strangers. I tried to right the boat again, and actually had her upright for a few seconds. I tried to reach into the cockpit to get my life jacket because quite frankly, I was getting really tired (I was thinking now I should’ve had it on all along). I had barely been able to right the boat the second time, my strength just wasn’t enough if I had to do it again. But as I lifted myself over the bow, a gust knocked us both back over. Capsized again, becoming short of breath, and for the first time I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it back safely. That’s when I heard the boy. He was about ten or eleven years old, tanned dark with bleached white tips to his short but spiked up hair. I could see him at the end of the pier, a mere 30 feet or so from “M” and me. I remember he had a shell necklace and looked like one of the local skateboarders who hand out at the pier as I heard him yell to me, “Hang in there dude, I’ll get you some help!” Should I acknowledge to the boy and others that I needed some help after having made it this far? No way, not now! I should get this over with and get myself out of this situation. I can do it! I tried again to pull the dagger board down and right the boat, but she just wasn’t responding. The waves were pounding over and over again into the bottom of the hull. I noticed small little flecks of fiberglass peeling off around the slot where the dagger board slides through the hull, the pieces drifting off into the waves. There weren’t that many fiberglass flecks to worry about now, but maybe this is where all that water had been leaking into the cockpit since the first time I sailed the little lady? Clinging to the bottom of my boat by the dagger board, I laid my head sideways on top of the ocean and rested a short moment. Out of the corner of my vision, I thought I saw figure waving his arms to me from the beach? It was JR! I wanted to tell him I wasn’t sure if I needed help or not. Any kind of feeble gesture at this point might be read as a desperate plea and I didn’t want to alarm him any further. So I decided once again to take charge and get myself in. I pulled down as hard as I could on the dagger board. I felt a little give, a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel! There was hope! I pulled higher and higher up the board but my trunks were beginning to slip down along my backside. To hell with vanity I thought to myself! This won’t be the first time I’ve shown my ass to strangers and probably won’t be the last. I had to get this boat afloat, and I had to do it now! As she slowly started to give way, I mustered up my last ounce of energy and lunged over the top and grabbed the inner ridge of the cockpit. I had a good hold now with this higher position; my full weight dangling over the side of the boat was doing the trick. “M” eased back up onto the top of the water, ready to rock and roll. But I was done for now, still clinging to her side by one arm. That’s when I glanced up to see JR swimming towards me. Even from 20 or thirty yards away I could see the determination in his eyes, doing a life guard swim with his head completely out of the water. I was suddenly calmed and comforted, glad that he was so close. The Calvary was on its way to save the day. My boat and me were going to make it home safe and sound at last. As I swam half-heartedly now towards my son, I felt my toes barely tough the sand bar, I was in shallow water now, just off the end of the pier. I also knew the tide was out and it was only a few more feet until I could walk. I tried to communicate to JR for him to wait for me. I didn’t want him to risk his own safety any further when I was so close, but he kept right on swimming. At precisely the same time I set my feet solidly on the bottom of the ocean, JR did the same and reached to cling onto the boat on the opposite side. It was a joyous moment for me and I hope for him too, even though we didn’t have time or energy to celebrate. There was still some work to do. We didn’t really speak at all, or I cannot remember if we did. I do remember asking him to help me walk her in from this point. I then reached into the cubby hole and pulled out my life vest. I slipped it on, fastened it up all the way, and made my way to the beach. Actually, I was walking by myself now in water up to my waist. I remember thinking to myself it’s probably a little late for the life vest, but better than never. A cook and a friend of JR’s named Angel met him about half way in and helped him walk “M” and a little fish that was swimming around in her cockpit, back to safety on the beach. They beat me to shore by a few minutes. I was exhausted and sort of staggering my way behind my rescuers. Funny thing is, it was fairly calm now. I don’t remember the wind as it had been out on the sea. The heavy waves had subsided. And yet there still wasn’t a drop of rain. The sky was still cloudy and dark, and the lightening was out over the Gulf, but there was a certain calmness now, no more sense of urgency. The crisis was over. Mother Nature had made her point. My misadventure was all but complete. As I walked ashore and hugged JR and thanked for coming to my rescue, I saw Jackie up by the Pier Peddler. I wanted to hug her too, now more than ever. I needed to show her I was okay and back to safety. I knew she was worried to death about me, because after all, that is her job and she does it well. I made way to her through the sand, up the wooden ramp, and into her arms. She was as warm and accepting as always. She was safe, just like me. We felt it in each other. You see, Jackie isn’t just worried about me when I do foolish or dangerous things like this (yeah, not the first time for a trick like this except this time it was in a boat). She feels unsafe for us, our conjoined lives as a unit and a team. When I am in danger, so is she; so are we. I love her so much for that. Well, to make this story just a little longer, I pushed my boat, my darling little Devine Miss “M” onto her trailer and back to her storage spot under JR’s cottage. I quickly showered and changed into dry clothes and headed back to Times Square at the beach. I stopped in for another quick hug and to once again remind Jackie know I had survived. Then I headed over to Herb’s E.B. (Eternal Brat) Café to have myself a few one dollar draft beers. My brother Kevin was there and we spent about an hour woofing down about five beers while I told of my misadventure. Jackie and Herb eventually came to join us and I got to tell the story over to them. That’s when Herb told me of the humming rudder, and that’s when I first realized the significance of what I had done with “M”. We had created and completed an adventure; we’d seen and done something daring that we set out to do. We had stretched the limits of our normal capabilities then pushed the envelope to the point where we were sailing as fast as we could possible sail. We heeled to the point where I was fully hiked out over the side and still looking forward and down into the ocean on the opposite side. I got goose bumps again as I recalled the day. I’m getting them now as I write it all down. I have stayed off my boat for a few days now. Besides, the weather has been crappy and I wouldn’t have been able to sail anyway. I’m not afraid to once again make way on my little sailboat. As a matter of fact, I can’t wait to get her back out into the Gulf. But I have learned a few valuable lessons about sailing and respecting the intensity of Florida weather. I’ve learned to always wear a life jacket. And I’ve learned a whole lot about myself. I know for sure now I could’ve been a pirate in another time, if it weren’t for all that raping and pillaging stuff. And I now know the high seas are where I will take future refuge form the every day stress and turmoil of being a middle aged businessman. Or maybe, I’ll just take another nap.
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Copyright © 2005 Ryan Michaels |