The Island That Was Not There
by Al Hughes
February 1970 From Boston snows we reached Antigua too late for LIAT’s connecting flight to St. Lucia. I was alone on a pool recliner that afternoon, flat on my back wearing nothing but a bathing suit; eyes closed to the tropic sun: hearing a slight shuffle of feet. Opening one eye, I gazed upon the cheapest bikini I had ever seen, hovering over me. It had to be cheap, because there was almost no cloth to admire. In haste, I opened the other eye to behold the marvelous sight. She might have been 21. Mind you, I was barely 29, recently married. The gloriously female vision spoke. “You’re in the Air Force, aren’t you?”
Cautious of my marital status I responded, “I, too, am almost naked; how do you so conclude?”
Pointing under the recliner and my less than glorious male frame, she said, “My daddy makes those shoes for the Air Force.” I quickly recalculated to sixteen – jail bait! We separated with a mutual laugh.
Sorry, I digressed. We sailed the pink catamaran Con Amour up the west coast of St. Lucia, pausing at a beach near the north point. Skipper Ed Bond gently bumped the sand in three and a half feet; we set the hook on shore. The glare off the sand was intense, but the tree line was near (actually the dead palmetto line, there being no palms nearby.) Fifty yards inland on flat terrain, seeking shade, I was walking on several inches of dead palmetto leaf trash over sand. It was awful hot, and oddly, the sand seemed unyielding, rock hard. Scratching away the leaves and sand with a sandal, there was concrete! Looking up, in a straight line a mile or more to the east and for the width of a runway, there were no palms at all, just dead leaves. On our return to St Lucia a week later, we learned B-17’s, B-29’s and sub hunters had flown from there to protect our southern flanks. Tough duty, eh?
Mid-afternoon, we set sail for Martinique. On clearing St Lucia, the trades came on full force in the passage and 45 foot Con Amour leaped ahead on a close reach to an estimated eight knots. (At sea on Con Amour, we navigated by dead reckoning between solar noon sights. GPS was not yet available. Speed was estimated by timing a wood chip drop, bow to stern. It worked fairly well!)
Darkness was surreal that night with a deep cloud deck. We were sailing in a black void with no horizon, orientation limited to phosphorescence beneath the hull. Over time, the psychological effect was foreboding. I stayed on wheel all night, sailing solely by compass while skipper Ed went below repeatedly, to fuss with and recheck the charts. Finally, he said, “Heave to. We should be seeing Martinique lights reflecting off the clouds.” But there was nothing there! Just a black void all ‘round us. We sat there in pitch blackness and thundering silence for three hours; seeing nothing but the compass light, hearing nothing, second guessing our speed calculations, wondering about our drift compensation. Course had been offset east to account for westward wind and current drift. Where is Martinique? Where are we?
At the first hint of dawn, (just less black); dead to the east, blacker than black a half mile away was massive ship rock. Considering the sea drift in that area, we had to have stopped, hove to in pitch blackness with the rock close aboard, right by us! In another fifteen minutes, we could make the outline of Martinique’s south shore. Ten minutes more sailing, we would have been among the rocks below the cliffs! Finally at port, we learned Martinique had an island wide power outage that black night.
by Al Hughes
February 1970 From Boston snows we reached Antigua too late for LIAT’s connecting flight to St. Lucia. I was alone on a pool recliner that afternoon, flat on my back wearing nothing but a bathing suit; eyes closed to the tropic sun: hearing a slight shuffle of feet. Opening one eye, I gazed upon the cheapest bikini I had ever seen, hovering over me. It had to be cheap, because there was almost no cloth to admire. In haste, I opened the other eye to behold the marvelous sight. She might have been 21. Mind you, I was barely 29, recently married. The gloriously female vision spoke. “You’re in the Air Force, aren’t you?”
Cautious of my marital status I responded, “I, too, am almost naked; how do you so conclude?”
Pointing under the recliner and my less than glorious male frame, she said, “My daddy makes those shoes for the Air Force.” I quickly recalculated to sixteen – jail bait! We separated with a mutual laugh.
Sorry, I digressed. We sailed the pink catamaran Con Amour up the west coast of St. Lucia, pausing at a beach near the north point. Skipper Ed Bond gently bumped the sand in three and a half feet; we set the hook on shore. The glare off the sand was intense, but the tree line was near (actually the dead palmetto line, there being no palms nearby.) Fifty yards inland on flat terrain, seeking shade, I was walking on several inches of dead palmetto leaf trash over sand. It was awful hot, and oddly, the sand seemed unyielding, rock hard. Scratching away the leaves and sand with a sandal, there was concrete! Looking up, in a straight line a mile or more to the east and for the width of a runway, there were no palms at all, just dead leaves. On our return to St Lucia a week later, we learned B-17’s, B-29’s and sub hunters had flown from there to protect our southern flanks. Tough duty, eh?
Mid-afternoon, we set sail for Martinique. On clearing St Lucia, the trades came on full force in the passage and 45 foot Con Amour leaped ahead on a close reach to an estimated eight knots. (At sea on Con Amour, we navigated by dead reckoning between solar noon sights. GPS was not yet available. Speed was estimated by timing a wood chip drop, bow to stern. It worked fairly well!)
Darkness was surreal that night with a deep cloud deck. We were sailing in a black void with no horizon, orientation limited to phosphorescence beneath the hull. Over time, the psychological effect was foreboding. I stayed on wheel all night, sailing solely by compass while skipper Ed went below repeatedly, to fuss with and recheck the charts. Finally, he said, “Heave to. We should be seeing Martinique lights reflecting off the clouds.” But there was nothing there! Just a black void all ‘round us. We sat there in pitch blackness and thundering silence for three hours; seeing nothing but the compass light, hearing nothing, second guessing our speed calculations, wondering about our drift compensation. Course had been offset east to account for westward wind and current drift. Where is Martinique? Where are we?
At the first hint of dawn, (just less black); dead to the east, blacker than black a half mile away was massive ship rock. Considering the sea drift in that area, we had to have stopped, hove to in pitch blackness with the rock close aboard, right by us! In another fifteen minutes, we could make the outline of Martinique’s south shore. Ten minutes more sailing, we would have been among the rocks below the cliffs! Finally at port, we learned Martinique had an island wide power outage that black night.
LADY LUCK
by Albert E. Hughes
Dec. 20, 2014
We were close inshore at Marsh Harbor’s Conch Restaurant under the glare of a single light bulb which hung from the roof corner nearest the dock. The conch supper at sunset was a delight- accompanied by drinks and comradely laughter on the patio, but now the night seemed to stretch endlessly in the tropic heat. The mosquitos above the forward hatch screen buzzed Tora, Tora! Tora! in relentless attack while I lay sweating, drowsing on the left V berth. Sometime after midnight I was jolted completely awake by shouts and feet thumping the dock boards in haste, running past our bow and out toward the far end of the dock.
That single, narrow finger dock stuck out 30 yards or so onto the Grand Bahama bank, hosting a few boats in side slips closer in, the remainder of the narrow dock, without side slips, reaching out into the gloom of night fog. There was room out there in deeper water for a larger vessel to dock alongside. Faintly, I still could hear the men at the sea end, but they were speaking a Bahamian dialect that I could not follow. Then another ran by us, then a fourth, shouting in the same dialect. Then it got quiet, really quiet, with only the gentle slap of wavelets tapping the bow under my berth. Curiosity and the desire for a cooling breeze got the better of me.
I struggled up through the hatch, reattached the screen and stepped over the bow rail onto the dock. It was pretty dark out there at the end, well away from that glaring light bulb, with fog drifting across, growing thicker with each step. I could see the slightest shadow outline of a person leaning on the last piling to seaward. But four men had run out there! Where were the other three? No telling what I was getting myself into, so I approached with deliberate caution.
There was a middle aged woman there, holding on to that last piling like a long lost friend. She spoke to me with a slight slur. “He deserved it,” she said; “He deserved every bit of it.” I followed her gaze to my right and down to the aft deck of their small cabin cruiser lying alongside. The four Bahamians were down there, struggling to center a corpulent, middle aged man on a filthy, blood soaked 4’x 6’ rug. The object of their struggle has fallen drunk, face down, very out cold. The woman assured me once again that he deserved “it”, every bit of it.
I chose to keep her company. A fifth person down there would just be in the way. Finally, the quartet lifted their bloody load to the dock. Regaining their footing, they lifted the corpus laden rug and began a slow, foggy procession up the dock to a waiting ambulance, with me bringing up the rear. The woman stayed, hugging her friend the dock piling, but as we processed toward land, I heard her whisper one more time, “He deserved it, he deserved every bit of it.”
I never learned what “it” was that he did, but she? After he passed out face down on the deck, she found the butcher knife in the galley drawer, carved off his right buttock, and chummed the Bahamian waters.
A lucky mon ‘e was, I say. Aye, ‘e was a lucky mon. Wha’ if ‘e lay on ‘is back, I say. Wha’ then, matey, Eh? Wha’ then?
by Albert E. Hughes
Dec. 20, 2014
We were close inshore at Marsh Harbor’s Conch Restaurant under the glare of a single light bulb which hung from the roof corner nearest the dock. The conch supper at sunset was a delight- accompanied by drinks and comradely laughter on the patio, but now the night seemed to stretch endlessly in the tropic heat. The mosquitos above the forward hatch screen buzzed Tora, Tora! Tora! in relentless attack while I lay sweating, drowsing on the left V berth. Sometime after midnight I was jolted completely awake by shouts and feet thumping the dock boards in haste, running past our bow and out toward the far end of the dock.
That single, narrow finger dock stuck out 30 yards or so onto the Grand Bahama bank, hosting a few boats in side slips closer in, the remainder of the narrow dock, without side slips, reaching out into the gloom of night fog. There was room out there in deeper water for a larger vessel to dock alongside. Faintly, I still could hear the men at the sea end, but they were speaking a Bahamian dialect that I could not follow. Then another ran by us, then a fourth, shouting in the same dialect. Then it got quiet, really quiet, with only the gentle slap of wavelets tapping the bow under my berth. Curiosity and the desire for a cooling breeze got the better of me.
I struggled up through the hatch, reattached the screen and stepped over the bow rail onto the dock. It was pretty dark out there at the end, well away from that glaring light bulb, with fog drifting across, growing thicker with each step. I could see the slightest shadow outline of a person leaning on the last piling to seaward. But four men had run out there! Where were the other three? No telling what I was getting myself into, so I approached with deliberate caution.
There was a middle aged woman there, holding on to that last piling like a long lost friend. She spoke to me with a slight slur. “He deserved it,” she said; “He deserved every bit of it.” I followed her gaze to my right and down to the aft deck of their small cabin cruiser lying alongside. The four Bahamians were down there, struggling to center a corpulent, middle aged man on a filthy, blood soaked 4’x 6’ rug. The object of their struggle has fallen drunk, face down, very out cold. The woman assured me once again that he deserved “it”, every bit of it.
I chose to keep her company. A fifth person down there would just be in the way. Finally, the quartet lifted their bloody load to the dock. Regaining their footing, they lifted the corpus laden rug and began a slow, foggy procession up the dock to a waiting ambulance, with me bringing up the rear. The woman stayed, hugging her friend the dock piling, but as we processed toward land, I heard her whisper one more time, “He deserved it, he deserved every bit of it.”
I never learned what “it” was that he did, but she? After he passed out face down on the deck, she found the butcher knife in the galley drawer, carved off his right buttock, and chummed the Bahamian waters.
A lucky mon ‘e was, I say. Aye, ‘e was a lucky mon. Wha’ if ‘e lay on ‘is back, I say. Wha’ then, matey, Eh? Wha’ then?
Paradox Proposal-the Narrow Gate to Spirit
- By Albert E. Hughes
- 3/26/2013
- Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
Enter through the narrow gate; . for the gate is narrow. that leads to life, and there are few who find it (Mat 7:13,14).
Jesus was using a metaphor the Judeans would have understood. He also used the metaphor "the eye of the needle" in the same way. There was a gate in the wall of Jerusalem just so narrow; camels had to be unloaded of their baggage to squeeze through and enter the city. So metaphorically, let's unload today's excess baggage and enter the city: The City of God, the world of Spirit.
Jesus often protested the excess legal "-isms" of the Pharisees, which distorted their religion.
Today's excess baggage can be much worse. We are plagued with a quartet of insidious philosophical "-isms" which, taken together, tend to eliminate religion altogether! In the previous article, "Paradigm Pondering-Why They Don't Believe" we unloaded two philosophical paradigms (subconscious, habitual thought patterns that trap the unaware): materialism and positivism.
Now we must unload the third: rationalism, the theory that reason is, in itself, a source of knowledge superior to and independent of sense perception, i.e., you can think your way to truth about religion, about God.
It makes sense to apply logic; to examine evidence, to think and to reason; thus and so is true about the physical world. With observable and repeatable evidence, first we "understand" the physical world and then "believe" what we understand to be true. Perhaps we are too used to this sequence: to understand, then believe.
But in the attempt to understand, then believe in God and a Spiritual world, we try to understand a Person or Persons, not some "thing"! We try to understand unseen Rational Beings. (Person: a rational being: perfectly subsistent, master of its own acts, and incommunicable. A Catholic Dictionary, Donald Attwater, ed.)
God, angels, demons, your deceased mother-in-law; all fit that definition. But can you understand a person you don't believe in or trust; or perceive to exist?
If we first try to think our way to an understanding of God so that we can believe in Him, (that old, familiar sequence: understand, then believe, that we use for knowledge of the physical world) we probably won't find Anyone. I am routinely perplexed by my own spouse. How will I think my way to an understanding of God, the Infinite One? Logic and reason are necessary, but not sufficient! Just how logical is our reasoning, anyway? "You can think your way to the truth?!"
"You cannot plumb the depths of the human heart or understand the workings of the human mind; how do you expect to search out God, who made all these things, and find out his mind or comprehend his thought? Let us call upon Him to help us, and he will hear our voice, if it pleases Him." (Judith 8: 12, 14, 17 NRSV)
Judith not only gives her leadership a tongue lashing, she gives us a hint!
Knowledge, wisdom and understanding come from the "mouth" of God. Saint John calls Jesus "the Word" of God; different terminology, same idea. (Judith preceded Jesus by many a moon, John followed.) But we often take the position "Because I don't understand, I can't believe." That is a classic dilemma! "Been there, done that," says the author. "I tried that for thirty years. It doesn't work!"
Saint Anselm (1033-1109) explains, "Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this too, I believe, that unless I first believe, I shall not understand." That is the narrow gate of today's culture; that is the paradox proposal; to believe first, even if bereft of understanding.
To begin to understand beyond written knowledge about God; i.e. to know God, you first must believe (or at least pretend to believe and act like it, in the author's experience; see Paradise Commander chapter VI, wherein the author progressed by pretending faith. That turned out to be sufficient as a starting place.)
Consider this. If you asked for and received the best possible single piece of evidence regarding the existence of a personal, communicating God, what would it be? How about relationship? Would that be sufficient to remove doubt? Surely, an active relationship is the best evidence of all! So go direct.
Obtain the relationship that is offered; not just ideas or concepts about God, but relationship with Him! Study helps, but ultimately, understanding flows from God through relationship, not only or first from our own mental gymnastics! Christian Scripture even tells us how to gain that relationship. We have a road map. "So I say unto you, ask and it will be given you, search, and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened." ( Lk 11: 9,10 NRSV)
"Ask and it will be given.." Have you ever? Asked, that is. Belief (faith) cannot be grasped at; true faith- relationship- begins and grows out of a gift asked for. So ask for it!
The (then) agnostic author asked at mid- winter just south of Fairbanks, Alaska, even in unbelief; in the Caribbean, five years later he began to pretend faith, tongue in cheek! Relationship in a flood of confirming miracles followed; immediately! At the beginning, sincere prayer expressing desire for the truth seems to be required and sufficient, even if in pretense steeped in doubt!
It is as Saint Anselm proposed, ".I believe, that I might understand." Knowledge, wisdom and understanding take years of living in relationship with God and other Christian travelers (it's about relationship with them, too!) The gift is promised! Give it a shot! Pray! Ask! A relationship with God can develop over time, if you persevere and if you are vigilant!
And personally, I would recommend that you maintain vigilance and perseverance within the Roman Catholic Church, the only two thousand year old church founded by Christ and His Apostles in the flesh and totally true to their teachings. That is where He sent me!
"To know and not to do, is not yet to know."
Near the end of his life, famous research psychologist Carl Jung, PhD was asked if he believed in God. With a mischievous grin he said, "No!" Pausing for effect he then said, "I don't believe in Him, I know Him." That is relationship!
Lt Col Hughes, USAF (Ret), M.S., M.M., Certificated in Spiritual Direction, is the author of Paradise Commander, available at Amazon.com. "Paradox Proposal-the Narrow Gate to Spirit" follows "Paradigm Pondering-Why They Don't Believe". The way of vigilant perseverance will be explored in the next article, "Obey is a Four Letter Word", coming soon.
Here is a recent email LtCol Hughes sent to Goodbooks Media:
It was a dark and stormy night.... No it wasn't, it was near noon , the fog had lifted and we were in a shop on the Galveston Strand; a shop that specializes in Caribbean stuff. A western looking gentleman- a total stranger- looked me right in the eye from 25 feet away. " Have you written a book?" he asks.
I said, " What makes you think so?"
"You look like it," he said.
"Well, as a matter of fact, blah, blah, blah." We had the most interesting conversation and he bought a copy of Paradise commander right off me.
As we walked on down the street, the light lit. There are several tourist shops in this very block that might like to sell my book. I dropped off a copy with a young clerk at "The Admiralty" , The Texas Cowgirl; (an obvious, but not advertised catholic store), and, upon returning to Hotel Galvez- their gift shop. All three are interested in stocking Paradise Commander and will let me know in due time.
The last was the most interesting and promising. They already have a military experience book for sale ( Captain XXX and the Mexican Gunboats) and the sales clerk (a short, dumpy, very peasant gal) turned out to be the wife of the financial guru for the Navy seal teams for some years. They are both retired and she works there for boredom prevention. Galveston is full of interesting folks, including a crew chief for the SR-71 (mach three recon bird.)
How bout all that in one day?! Al
AL’S BLUE WATER RULES
(This is the first installment of a set of blue water rules learned the hard way.)
You may have seen pink elephants once or twice in your young life, and there is the movie “The Pink Submarine”, a hilarious spoof on WWII movies; but have you ever seen a 45 foot, cutter rigged pink cruising catamaran? Ed Bond, a Boeing engineer at Seattle, designed and built Con Amour in his back yard. Transferred to New Orleans, later to Cape Canaveral for the Apollo program, he sailed ‘er from Seattle, through the Panama Canal and back to the states. Eighteen year old Jeannie McCaffery, foster daughter of Ed and Marilyn Bond, sailed as crew; surviving a knock down (mast in the water), righting in 60 foot waves off the coast of Oregon. In New Orleans, they survived a hurricane at dock.
In June of ’67 Jeannie and I set out on the Con Amour as crew from Diamond 99 Marina, Melbourne, Florida; bound to the Caribbean. The plan was to sail the Intracoastal Waterway south to Palm Beach inlet where we would take our departure to the east.
A moonless night fell on the Intracoastal as we motored in calm airs. Ed assigned us crew duties on two hour shifts; Marilyn and a young teenage boy on his first boat ride took the first shift from 10pm. Jeannie and I would take the midnight shift. We went below to rest (separate staterooms, thank you. We were courting, not married.) Going below, I noticed the next buoy light flashing red, no more than a mile away.
I rolled right into the rack, cloths on, for a short rest. As I began to drift off I heard and felt, right beneath me, the unmistakable sound and vibration of fiberglass plowing sand. Everyone raced on deck, blinded by that flashing red light, now standing still just four yards off our starboard quarter. Marilyn was still at the wheel; still staring straight ahead in utter confusion.
Known to be miserable living aboard, totally disinterested in piloting or anything nautical, lost in her own thoughts, Marilyn had taken the wheel in the dark without reference to the chart and had become fixated on that flashing light. Whether on a motorcycle or a boat, it is a known fact that you are likely to hit anything you stare at. She almost did, and when the channel turned sharp left, she did not. With the dawn, Ed and I went over the side with an eight foot 2x6, carried just for this purpose; wedged Con Amour straight back off the sand with the help of passing wake from a couple of big power boats. (Could not lay an anchor straight back. Channel was way too deep and no dingy.)
RULE #1: Skippers! Stay aware of your crew capabilities and mental state at all times. Never assign anyone a task they are not competent and/or focused to fulfill.
RULE #2: Always have a plan and the necessary equipment on board to get off the bottom without external assistance. In general, it is best to back out the way you came to grief. You have already plowed that ground.
(In the next installment we will take our departure and beat east to San Juan, P.R.)
AL’S BLUE WATER RULES, #3, 4 and 5
We took our departure due east at the Palm Beach sea buoy, aboard the pink catamaran Con Amour; the Gulf Stream at three knots would lift us clear of the Bahama bank. Navigation was dead reckoning between noon sights, taken with a Plath sextant. We estimated San Juan in seven to ten sailing days.
The first two days were a whole sail breeze, a close reach in gentle two to three foot seas. (After the Intracoastal grounding, Marilyn was restricted to daylight watches!) Around noon the second day, Marilyn stepped forward with the galley bucket and took a garbage shower.) Clearing the northern Bahamas, the fetch increased dramatically and we soon were on a hard beat in four foot seas. (Well named! Going to windward in seas starts like a fun fight with hard pillows, but becomes unending tedium in short order.)
We also needed to gain southing; soon close hauled as we encountered south east trade winds. Then pinching! We were on a fixed six week schedule to Antigua and back, and with no deep keel we were doing well to the east, but not so much south. Ed, the skipper, began to fret and about the fourth day while resting in my bunk, I suddenly heard the diesel fire up. Ed had decided to help nature a bit. This he continued to do as needed to get the required southing. Meanwhile: pound, pound, pound into increasing seas.
We were barely able to get south enough to see the north light at Grand Turk at sunset; that night the seas calmed. About 3am at the helm, motor sailing, I was watching the sea plankton glow when I started hearing voices, faint murmurs coming from the waters, like quiet conversations heard across the room, not quite distinct. The mind does amazing things in quiet solitude. It expects to hear voices, creates what it expects.
Finally, we were north of Puerto Rico, about 50 miles, on the morning of the tenth day, expecting soon to turn south. It was nearly calm. We noticed behind us a large power cruiser coming up fast. He roared up to us, cut power, drifted alongside of us, a little longer than our 45 feet and the skipper leaned out from the upper cockpit. He yelled, “WHICH WAY TO PUERTO RICO?!” We pointed and he roared off to the south.
We turned south that afternoon in a dead calm and motored to San Juan. A quarter mile off the harbor entrance, Ed ran out of fuel. There we sat utterly becalmed. Which was bad enough, but around 6pm a Navy squadron of four destroyers and an attack submarine, out playing hide and seek all day, pulled up behind us a quarter mile and shut down. We had the harbor blocked! After another hour or so, the Coast Guard sent out a small boat and they towed us into the harbor most ingloriously to the nearest fuel dock.
RULE # 3: Check first and throw garbage with your back to the wind.
RULE # 4: Expect voices at night after a week of blue water sailing. Do not listen to them! Enjoy the light show, instead.
RULE # 5: (Sail by existing conditions, not by the calendar. Schedule pressures lead to dumb mistakes, like running out of fuel. (The Navy did not appreciate their little enforced rest stop just outside San Juan harbor.)
AL’S BLUE WATER RULES, # 6, 7 and 8
We rested a day and two nights at San Juan, then sailed east, mostly on a beat again, but in light airs. Ed still was depending on the diesel in light airs to move us along, topping off at Saint Croix. He wasn’t going to be caught with an empty tank again. Half way to Antigua, on a beautiful day, Ed announced that we were out of time. He and I both had to get home, back to work without fail and Antigua was still two days away. I was at the helm. JIBE-O! We turned to port, the main boom (well named if you ever got hit by one!) swept the deck and we settled down to a comfortable broad reach for Saint Thomas, sans diesel noise and smell. We sailed into Charlotte Amalie harbor the next day.
RULE #6: Don’t anchor in a sea plane landing zone! Do I really need to explain?
Safely at dock, we wandered down to the end to check out a strange sight. It was John Rushing’s Sea Egg. Purported to be a sailboat, it was 9’ 6” long, painted gray and true to its name shaped like an egg with a mast and rudder. John was soon located and invited to dinner aboard the Con Amour. He was newly arrived from Plymouth, England and was attempting a circumnavigation record in the smallest boat ever. He regaled us with tales of a shoving match with a mama whale who mistook the Sea Egg for one of her young. He wanted to go west, mama wanted him to join her on a more southerly tack.
And there was the time he was becalmed, dropped his hat in the water. He reached down to pick it up and found his hand to be on the back of a shark that was somewhat larger than Sea Egg. He quickly decided the shark needed the hat more than he.
(A few months after we returned to Florida a tiny news article in Yachting Mag reported that John had cleared the Panama Canal bound for Hawaii and was never seen again.) If there is a rule about this, it must be:
RULE #7: Don’t go to sea in a boat smaller than what you’re swimming with!
After a couple of days we pressed on to the west, arriving off shore from San Juan after dark. We had to find the green, three second flasher buoy marking the harbor entrance. Hard to do on a pitch black night with blinding by city lights. Ed was at the helm, I was on the bow. Eventually Ed found the light and I, squinting through all the background lights, confirmed: three seconds flash, green low on the water. We turned in and made a run for the harbor. Things were going swimmingly well until I spotted surf in the faint gloom. “BEACH DEAD AHEAD!” I yelled. Indeed, we were no more than 50 yards off the beach, likely closer.
We did a snap U turn (not nautical terminology, I admit) and returned to deep water. Looking back, that light still was there, three seconds flashing green. But now I also could discern that it was amongst some buildings. Jose’s Bar and Grill? We will never know. But we did find the harbor marker, just a quarter mile further west.
RULE #8: Stand off! Don’t enter unfamiliar harbors before first light.
AL’S BLUE WATER RULES, # 9, 10 and 11
We hung around San Juan a bit too long. Now we had to hustle and Ed was determined to stop at San Salvador, where Columbus first landed. The trip was uneventful; we arrived at the southeast shore of San Sal, anchored close in and waded to the beach. Sure enough, there is a bronze plaque there making the historic claim. If the claim is accurate, no sailor, Chris included, would hang around very long. That beach is to windward. I have my doubts.
After a few minutes we waded back aboard, sailed around and anchored in the lee of the island. Ed went ashore to the little village and came back quickly. Locals warned him of the horde of mosquitoes that would rise out of the swamp behind the village. Since we were in a hurry, we decided to leave just before sunset.
RULE # 9: Always check local knowledge before settling in at remote islands.
Once clear of the island we found a strong wind and eight foot seas on the stern. We really started hauling b---, if you know what I mean. Soon, I could feel the stern lifting and found we were beginning to surf down the waves. Con Amour was no surf board, but she began to surf down the wave fronts anyway. Lots of fun and dangerous as all get out! This went on for a couple of hours ‘till it got too dark to see the next wave ahead of us. We began to slow the boat and soon the evening breeze began to moderate as well. We continued west, north past the Bahamas Grand Bank and across the Gulf Stream.
RULE # 10: Never go so fast as to stick the bow in the wave dead ahead. You, too, quickly can be dead. When the bow hits and stops, the stern keeps going. It is called a pitch pole. Sailboats perform poorly upside down in the air!
Arriving a mile and a half off the Florida shore just after sundown, it became evident in short order that we were north of St Augustine, not at Cape Canaveral harbor. Tired as all get out, we opted for the St John’s River at Jacksonville, tying to an unoccupied commercial dock (which was newly creosoted, yuk!) around 2am. After two hours of R&R, we headed back to sea. Short of the sea buoy and in the dark well before dawn, a tug crossed port to starboard ahead of us. We gave him what we thought was plenty of room and continued, planning to turn south at the sea buoy. We passed behind the tug by maybe 100 feet. I was on the bow, Ed at the helm. Watching the tug, I turned my attention ahead. “CABLE DEAD AHEAD!” I yelled. Ed started his snap U turn reminiscent of the beach encounter at San Juan. I looked to the left and saw a dimly lit kerosene lantern sitting above me on the bow of a high riding empty barge. Towed by that tug on a long cable, that rusty, almost invisible barge missed us by just a few feet. Easily, it would have rolled us under that high riding bow and the tug crew would not even have noticed!
RULE # 11: Particularly at night, stay well away from tugs, especially off their stern. They often tow rather than push at sea.
AL’S BLUE WATER RULES, # 12, 13 and 14
The Caribbean voyage of the pink catamaran Con Amour ended without further incident; she entered Port Canaveral and sailed down the Indian River to Diamond 99.
We have three more rules to go. Rule 12 was developed during my first voyage to Grand Bahama aboard Jabberwocky, my 27 foot Bristol. Friend Bob Wilfong and I were sailing close inshore near Palm Beach at a moonless Oh dark thirty. Noticing a bright, unblinking orange light to seaward we decided to sail over and check it out. Halfway over, we spotted a fast moving set of running lights. We soon discerned a small Coast Guard boat which rumbled up alongside. The man at the helm said we did not want to go there. The manned 50 caliber machine gun on his bow was convincing.
After we returned to Diamond 99 Marina a couple of weeks later, I found out that that orange light signified a submarine parked on the surface, probably with a problem.
Rule # 12: Don’t mess around with unblinking orange lights at sea.
I was standing on a dock at Cocoa Fla. when I formulated rule 13. I spotted a Pivar 35 or 38 trimaran a hundred yards out on the Indian River heading into the same dock. It was obvious where he was headed so I drifted over to offer help with the lines. When he was 50 yards out, I began to back away. Pivar’s were wickedly fast on flat water and this one was only beginning to slow down. At 30 yards the middle aged man (husband) on the bow, holding a mooring line, started yelling at his wife who was at the helm. By the time she deciphered the message and turned the wheel, it was too late. At a good six knots, that Pivar climbed up on the dock and stopped, all in a second and a half!
Rule # 13: Approach docks or any other unmoving object just above minimum steerage. Boats don’t have brakes and what if you miss a shift?
My last rule is a killer. I don’t mean funny; I mean the dead kind of being killed. This one occurred several years later with Jabberwocky II, a 28 foot Bristol. We left Annapolis in the afternoon, turned south on the Baltimore channel. Soon dark, we were sailing along on a broad reach in gentle airs, maybe five knots. Again, Bob Wilfong was with me at the tiller; family was safely asleep below. Around two am I began to feel a little queasy. Not exactly sick, but as if something was wrong. The feeling was getting stronger. Finally, I thought I heard something, turned to look back.
There was a bow light above me at 45 degrees, and a rolling wave coming up our stern. Between the two, I was staring at the bow of a ship! There was no time to discuss the subject. I reached over, shoved the tiller into Bob’s stomach, and we left the channel as a wall of steel slid by us. We got back into the channel right behind her churning props, tips barely breaking the surface. Watching those props depart, I understood: they were transmitting their sound below the threshold of hearing, through the water and the hull of my boat was acting like a speaker at maybe 12 cps. Couldn’t hear it but I was feeling it. I had a radar reflector, but nobody was watching the scope up there.
Rule #14: Check your six often! This can happen at sea as well.
(This is the first installment of a set of blue water rules learned the hard way.)
You may have seen pink elephants once or twice in your young life, and there is the movie “The Pink Submarine”, a hilarious spoof on WWII movies; but have you ever seen a 45 foot, cutter rigged pink cruising catamaran? Ed Bond, a Boeing engineer at Seattle, designed and built Con Amour in his back yard. Transferred to New Orleans, later to Cape Canaveral for the Apollo program, he sailed ‘er from Seattle, through the Panama Canal and back to the states. Eighteen year old Jeannie McCaffery, foster daughter of Ed and Marilyn Bond, sailed as crew; surviving a knock down (mast in the water), righting in 60 foot waves off the coast of Oregon. In New Orleans, they survived a hurricane at dock.
In June of ’67 Jeannie and I set out on the Con Amour as crew from Diamond 99 Marina, Melbourne, Florida; bound to the Caribbean. The plan was to sail the Intracoastal Waterway south to Palm Beach inlet where we would take our departure to the east.
A moonless night fell on the Intracoastal as we motored in calm airs. Ed assigned us crew duties on two hour shifts; Marilyn and a young teenage boy on his first boat ride took the first shift from 10pm. Jeannie and I would take the midnight shift. We went below to rest (separate staterooms, thank you. We were courting, not married.) Going below, I noticed the next buoy light flashing red, no more than a mile away.
I rolled right into the rack, cloths on, for a short rest. As I began to drift off I heard and felt, right beneath me, the unmistakable sound and vibration of fiberglass plowing sand. Everyone raced on deck, blinded by that flashing red light, now standing still just four yards off our starboard quarter. Marilyn was still at the wheel; still staring straight ahead in utter confusion.
Known to be miserable living aboard, totally disinterested in piloting or anything nautical, lost in her own thoughts, Marilyn had taken the wheel in the dark without reference to the chart and had become fixated on that flashing light. Whether on a motorcycle or a boat, it is a known fact that you are likely to hit anything you stare at. She almost did, and when the channel turned sharp left, she did not. With the dawn, Ed and I went over the side with an eight foot 2x6, carried just for this purpose; wedged Con Amour straight back off the sand with the help of passing wake from a couple of big power boats. (Could not lay an anchor straight back. Channel was way too deep and no dingy.)
RULE #1: Skippers! Stay aware of your crew capabilities and mental state at all times. Never assign anyone a task they are not competent and/or focused to fulfill.
RULE #2: Always have a plan and the necessary equipment on board to get off the bottom without external assistance. In general, it is best to back out the way you came to grief. You have already plowed that ground.
(In the next installment we will take our departure and beat east to San Juan, P.R.)
AL’S BLUE WATER RULES, #3, 4 and 5
We took our departure due east at the Palm Beach sea buoy, aboard the pink catamaran Con Amour; the Gulf Stream at three knots would lift us clear of the Bahama bank. Navigation was dead reckoning between noon sights, taken with a Plath sextant. We estimated San Juan in seven to ten sailing days.
The first two days were a whole sail breeze, a close reach in gentle two to three foot seas. (After the Intracoastal grounding, Marilyn was restricted to daylight watches!) Around noon the second day, Marilyn stepped forward with the galley bucket and took a garbage shower.) Clearing the northern Bahamas, the fetch increased dramatically and we soon were on a hard beat in four foot seas. (Well named! Going to windward in seas starts like a fun fight with hard pillows, but becomes unending tedium in short order.)
We also needed to gain southing; soon close hauled as we encountered south east trade winds. Then pinching! We were on a fixed six week schedule to Antigua and back, and with no deep keel we were doing well to the east, but not so much south. Ed, the skipper, began to fret and about the fourth day while resting in my bunk, I suddenly heard the diesel fire up. Ed had decided to help nature a bit. This he continued to do as needed to get the required southing. Meanwhile: pound, pound, pound into increasing seas.
We were barely able to get south enough to see the north light at Grand Turk at sunset; that night the seas calmed. About 3am at the helm, motor sailing, I was watching the sea plankton glow when I started hearing voices, faint murmurs coming from the waters, like quiet conversations heard across the room, not quite distinct. The mind does amazing things in quiet solitude. It expects to hear voices, creates what it expects.
Finally, we were north of Puerto Rico, about 50 miles, on the morning of the tenth day, expecting soon to turn south. It was nearly calm. We noticed behind us a large power cruiser coming up fast. He roared up to us, cut power, drifted alongside of us, a little longer than our 45 feet and the skipper leaned out from the upper cockpit. He yelled, “WHICH WAY TO PUERTO RICO?!” We pointed and he roared off to the south.
We turned south that afternoon in a dead calm and motored to San Juan. A quarter mile off the harbor entrance, Ed ran out of fuel. There we sat utterly becalmed. Which was bad enough, but around 6pm a Navy squadron of four destroyers and an attack submarine, out playing hide and seek all day, pulled up behind us a quarter mile and shut down. We had the harbor blocked! After another hour or so, the Coast Guard sent out a small boat and they towed us into the harbor most ingloriously to the nearest fuel dock.
RULE # 3: Check first and throw garbage with your back to the wind.
RULE # 4: Expect voices at night after a week of blue water sailing. Do not listen to them! Enjoy the light show, instead.
RULE # 5: (Sail by existing conditions, not by the calendar. Schedule pressures lead to dumb mistakes, like running out of fuel. (The Navy did not appreciate their little enforced rest stop just outside San Juan harbor.)
AL’S BLUE WATER RULES, # 6, 7 and 8
We rested a day and two nights at San Juan, then sailed east, mostly on a beat again, but in light airs. Ed still was depending on the diesel in light airs to move us along, topping off at Saint Croix. He wasn’t going to be caught with an empty tank again. Half way to Antigua, on a beautiful day, Ed announced that we were out of time. He and I both had to get home, back to work without fail and Antigua was still two days away. I was at the helm. JIBE-O! We turned to port, the main boom (well named if you ever got hit by one!) swept the deck and we settled down to a comfortable broad reach for Saint Thomas, sans diesel noise and smell. We sailed into Charlotte Amalie harbor the next day.
RULE #6: Don’t anchor in a sea plane landing zone! Do I really need to explain?
Safely at dock, we wandered down to the end to check out a strange sight. It was John Rushing’s Sea Egg. Purported to be a sailboat, it was 9’ 6” long, painted gray and true to its name shaped like an egg with a mast and rudder. John was soon located and invited to dinner aboard the Con Amour. He was newly arrived from Plymouth, England and was attempting a circumnavigation record in the smallest boat ever. He regaled us with tales of a shoving match with a mama whale who mistook the Sea Egg for one of her young. He wanted to go west, mama wanted him to join her on a more southerly tack.
And there was the time he was becalmed, dropped his hat in the water. He reached down to pick it up and found his hand to be on the back of a shark that was somewhat larger than Sea Egg. He quickly decided the shark needed the hat more than he.
(A few months after we returned to Florida a tiny news article in Yachting Mag reported that John had cleared the Panama Canal bound for Hawaii and was never seen again.) If there is a rule about this, it must be:
RULE #7: Don’t go to sea in a boat smaller than what you’re swimming with!
After a couple of days we pressed on to the west, arriving off shore from San Juan after dark. We had to find the green, three second flasher buoy marking the harbor entrance. Hard to do on a pitch black night with blinding by city lights. Ed was at the helm, I was on the bow. Eventually Ed found the light and I, squinting through all the background lights, confirmed: three seconds flash, green low on the water. We turned in and made a run for the harbor. Things were going swimmingly well until I spotted surf in the faint gloom. “BEACH DEAD AHEAD!” I yelled. Indeed, we were no more than 50 yards off the beach, likely closer.
We did a snap U turn (not nautical terminology, I admit) and returned to deep water. Looking back, that light still was there, three seconds flashing green. But now I also could discern that it was amongst some buildings. Jose’s Bar and Grill? We will never know. But we did find the harbor marker, just a quarter mile further west.
RULE #8: Stand off! Don’t enter unfamiliar harbors before first light.
AL’S BLUE WATER RULES, # 9, 10 and 11
We hung around San Juan a bit too long. Now we had to hustle and Ed was determined to stop at San Salvador, where Columbus first landed. The trip was uneventful; we arrived at the southeast shore of San Sal, anchored close in and waded to the beach. Sure enough, there is a bronze plaque there making the historic claim. If the claim is accurate, no sailor, Chris included, would hang around very long. That beach is to windward. I have my doubts.
After a few minutes we waded back aboard, sailed around and anchored in the lee of the island. Ed went ashore to the little village and came back quickly. Locals warned him of the horde of mosquitoes that would rise out of the swamp behind the village. Since we were in a hurry, we decided to leave just before sunset.
RULE # 9: Always check local knowledge before settling in at remote islands.
Once clear of the island we found a strong wind and eight foot seas on the stern. We really started hauling b---, if you know what I mean. Soon, I could feel the stern lifting and found we were beginning to surf down the waves. Con Amour was no surf board, but she began to surf down the wave fronts anyway. Lots of fun and dangerous as all get out! This went on for a couple of hours ‘till it got too dark to see the next wave ahead of us. We began to slow the boat and soon the evening breeze began to moderate as well. We continued west, north past the Bahamas Grand Bank and across the Gulf Stream.
RULE # 10: Never go so fast as to stick the bow in the wave dead ahead. You, too, quickly can be dead. When the bow hits and stops, the stern keeps going. It is called a pitch pole. Sailboats perform poorly upside down in the air!
Arriving a mile and a half off the Florida shore just after sundown, it became evident in short order that we were north of St Augustine, not at Cape Canaveral harbor. Tired as all get out, we opted for the St John’s River at Jacksonville, tying to an unoccupied commercial dock (which was newly creosoted, yuk!) around 2am. After two hours of R&R, we headed back to sea. Short of the sea buoy and in the dark well before dawn, a tug crossed port to starboard ahead of us. We gave him what we thought was plenty of room and continued, planning to turn south at the sea buoy. We passed behind the tug by maybe 100 feet. I was on the bow, Ed at the helm. Watching the tug, I turned my attention ahead. “CABLE DEAD AHEAD!” I yelled. Ed started his snap U turn reminiscent of the beach encounter at San Juan. I looked to the left and saw a dimly lit kerosene lantern sitting above me on the bow of a high riding empty barge. Towed by that tug on a long cable, that rusty, almost invisible barge missed us by just a few feet. Easily, it would have rolled us under that high riding bow and the tug crew would not even have noticed!
RULE # 11: Particularly at night, stay well away from tugs, especially off their stern. They often tow rather than push at sea.
AL’S BLUE WATER RULES, # 12, 13 and 14
The Caribbean voyage of the pink catamaran Con Amour ended without further incident; she entered Port Canaveral and sailed down the Indian River to Diamond 99.
We have three more rules to go. Rule 12 was developed during my first voyage to Grand Bahama aboard Jabberwocky, my 27 foot Bristol. Friend Bob Wilfong and I were sailing close inshore near Palm Beach at a moonless Oh dark thirty. Noticing a bright, unblinking orange light to seaward we decided to sail over and check it out. Halfway over, we spotted a fast moving set of running lights. We soon discerned a small Coast Guard boat which rumbled up alongside. The man at the helm said we did not want to go there. The manned 50 caliber machine gun on his bow was convincing.
After we returned to Diamond 99 Marina a couple of weeks later, I found out that that orange light signified a submarine parked on the surface, probably with a problem.
Rule # 12: Don’t mess around with unblinking orange lights at sea.
I was standing on a dock at Cocoa Fla. when I formulated rule 13. I spotted a Pivar 35 or 38 trimaran a hundred yards out on the Indian River heading into the same dock. It was obvious where he was headed so I drifted over to offer help with the lines. When he was 50 yards out, I began to back away. Pivar’s were wickedly fast on flat water and this one was only beginning to slow down. At 30 yards the middle aged man (husband) on the bow, holding a mooring line, started yelling at his wife who was at the helm. By the time she deciphered the message and turned the wheel, it was too late. At a good six knots, that Pivar climbed up on the dock and stopped, all in a second and a half!
Rule # 13: Approach docks or any other unmoving object just above minimum steerage. Boats don’t have brakes and what if you miss a shift?
My last rule is a killer. I don’t mean funny; I mean the dead kind of being killed. This one occurred several years later with Jabberwocky II, a 28 foot Bristol. We left Annapolis in the afternoon, turned south on the Baltimore channel. Soon dark, we were sailing along on a broad reach in gentle airs, maybe five knots. Again, Bob Wilfong was with me at the tiller; family was safely asleep below. Around two am I began to feel a little queasy. Not exactly sick, but as if something was wrong. The feeling was getting stronger. Finally, I thought I heard something, turned to look back.
There was a bow light above me at 45 degrees, and a rolling wave coming up our stern. Between the two, I was staring at the bow of a ship! There was no time to discuss the subject. I reached over, shoved the tiller into Bob’s stomach, and we left the channel as a wall of steel slid by us. We got back into the channel right behind her churning props, tips barely breaking the surface. Watching those props depart, I understood: they were transmitting their sound below the threshold of hearing, through the water and the hull of my boat was acting like a speaker at maybe 12 cps. Couldn’t hear it but I was feeling it. I had a radar reflector, but nobody was watching the scope up there.
Rule #14: Check your six often! This can happen at sea as well.