travel: June 2008 Archives

The weekend began on Friday the 13th, as we raced out of the house to meet my in-laws at the dock in Falmouth, Maine.  As co-owners of a nice 30-something-foot sailing vessel, they sail every other weekend out of Falmouth.  My father in law has been sailing his whole life, and is an excellent sailor - a fact that was proven out of necessity on this particular trip.  So many things went wrong on a small scale that it actually did become funny.  Once the bruises heal completely, we'll all laugh at this, I'm certain of that.

The highlights of the trip include: 

Other than those small mishaps (all of which were easily remedied) the weekend was perfect: nice weather all day Saturday, good conversation, good food, and excellent ice cream at the Booth Bay Ice Cream Factory. Looking back, there was much more good to the weekend than bad.  Honestly.  

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, here are the two biggies, omitted from the above list for dramatic purposes.  You can read on at this point, or simply watch "On Golden Pond" while listening to the song "Poop Ship Destroyer" by Ween. This is what happened:

Coming into Booth Bay harbor, the sun is shining, and all is well.  It is a beautiful day. I am sitting at the rear of the cockpit, watching the depth gauge (not really watching, just kind of zoned out and staring in its general direction).  My wife is to my right, and my Mother-in-law is at the helm.  My Father-in-law, the only one of us with any sailing experience, is standing at the front of the cockpit, facing backwards, reading from the nav charts to his wife.  I want to preface the following by saying that no one was doing anything wrong in any way.  In fact, as we were approaching the red buoy, which was to our right, Dad--in-law was reciting the "Red Right Returning" rule (which I love, as a fan of alliteration). Ever sailor knows that rule, even me, and I've only been a boat three times in my whole life. I'm hearing all of this, but not really paying attention.  The sun is out, and its so nice, and the gauge reads 38 feet. ... 30 feet. ... 25 ... 18 ...

I snap out of it just in time to yell "ten feet!" as the gauge dives to '10', and then the following happened all at once:

At this point, my father-in-law goes ass-over-tea-kettle backwards down into the hold.  My wife successfully dives to her knees, although much faster than she intended, and shuts off the engine.  Somehow I get a charlie horse on my right calf (still not sure how that happened).  Seconds later, we're all converging to see if my Dad-in-law is still alive.  It's quite a drop down there, with strategically placed things like counter-tops to break one's fall "skull-cracking" style.  Like some super-hero, he comes bounding back up almost as fast as he went down, and ignoring pleas of "are you all right?" he takes charge and gets everyone moving to free the boat.  The "respect-o-meter" went up a notch or two at that moment.  His arm was clearly broken, his hand was cut and bruised, and who knows what else was broken, sprained, or otherwise hurt. He was in the dinghy faster than Flash Gordon, and I was hoisting out the anchor.  He sped back to deep water, dropped the anchor, and we winched ourselves back off of the rock.  This was an amazing reaction: fast and clear thinking amidst what could have been a disaster.  As it turns out, the arm was not broken (though very bruised), and the boat did not sink.  The speedometer stopped working, but was okay after a reboot.  There was no sign of serious damage at all.  My wife barked up her knees good, and my calf had that inexplicable bump, but all said and done, we we're very lucky.  (note: for the sailors out there, there is a red buoy near Booth Bay that you should keep on your left while returning.  The various vessels that came out to help us all claim to have run aground there at some point themselves, so I feel I should point it out).

We celebrated our survival, and helped to calm adrenaline-aggravated nerves, by eating a large dinner of steak tips, shrimp, grilled cheese sandwiches, and hot soup.  There was some rum, too, but not excessive amounts. We unwound, finished the feast with Chocloate-Lover's Ice Cream from the Booth Bay Ice Cream Factory (which I recommend!), and then went to bed.  Of course, with all that food and drink, there were many trips to the head before saying good-night, and a few trips in the wee-hours of the evening as well. The worst was behind us.

... In fact, the worst was literally behind us.  It was in our dinghy, which was tied up to the port side, just under the overflow jets for the head unit.  And the head unit was full. All night, as we did out feast-induced business, we were pumping poop into the dinghy.

I woke up blessed: as a writer, I am now able to honestly use the words "poop" and "dinghy" in the same sentence.  Our sore-armed captain ended up being the foreman in a sewage removal exercise early on Sunday morning.  That was Father's Day, by the way. Happy Poop-Dinghy Father's Day!

So, a weekend sail turned out okay - major death and disaster was avoided, and we were lucky enough to have a weekend that we will always look back upon with a grin and a giggle.