Non Fiction
Fog Index Factor: 4.95
6,260 Words Precisely
Copyrighted 1993 truth-or-consequences
Published in Great Lakes Boating

ROUGH BAR

Part One

Copyright 1993 truth-or-consequences

 

It was a scuddy day. Cold, black gobs of cloud hung from the bottom of the overcast, swept along like balloons against a ceiling, rolling and tumbling toward a north easterly course. Sudden puffs of wind fell out of nowhere and hit the cheeks, betraying the unpredictability of the approaching front. Dirt swirled in the gutters along Charter Boat Row down at the docks; a single drop of rain fell-- then no more. The exhilarating smell of lightning hung on clammy puffs of air. 'Twas not a day for ships or ducks..

A greasy old buggar had been working on a dilapidated little plywood cruiser. Seemed he'd been working on that scow for a hundred years. There couldn't possibly have been that many things wrong with her-- twenty seven feet of boat can only conceal so many mechanical malfunctions. Perhaps for that crusty old man the fun was not in the fixing, but in the fiddling.

I usually nodded politely as I passed his slip, on my way to the car after checking the lines and pumps of the company tug. Sometimes he looked up. Sometimes he nodded. Sometimes he ignored me altogether, and merely continued his assault on the English language from down in the grimy bowls of that misbegotten small craft.

But sometimes....

Sometimes-- like this time, he popped out on deck and leapt spritely to the dock to block my way, and to grill me for long, painful minutes about the mysterious mechanical goings on inside a flat-head six-- hours, really, unless I became downright rude and walked away.

I cursed myself-- I should have anticipated this. I should have quickened my pace six fathoms back-- that would have put me past his slip before he had time to disembark and to cut off my escape. But now there was only one hope-- to make a run for it and knock the old man down if he got in my way....

"Howdy, Shorty." I said noncommitally. I almost said "How's the boat--" But caught myself in the nick of time. That had been too close--

"Hiya." He said in that nervous way he had when he knew a body wasn't overly anxious to talk to him. Spasmodically he lurched more into my path, so I couldn't even rudely brush past him. I remember thinking, "My God-- he must have practiced that maneuver for years. He was so deft."

"Say, uh....... I got a little trouble here." He motioned toward that rag-a-muffin boat. Close up it was worse than I'd thought. Shorty clenched a short, non-filter Camel; it looked more like a joint. I didn't know they even sold them anymore. His greasy fingers pinched it, held it tight against yellow teeth and he took a drag that would have choked a Rhinoceros. I remember wondering if some folks just couldn't afford a razor... He talked as the smoke fell out of his mouth, hacking all the while.

"Yea, uh, I was wondering-- could you turn 'er over for me? I think I got 'er all taken care of-- just gotta crank 'er up." He was already heading for the boat, motioning and showing me where the key was. Unconsciously I took a step towards him and a gleam in his eye told me he knew his hook had set.

"I gotta hold some wires here-- you just go ahead and crank 'er for me when I say." His head disappeared in the "engine room". I sighed silently, then stepped aboard and up to the exposed control console. Let's get this over with quickly, I thought.

A tangled tuft of greasy hair showed briefly, "Hey-- I sure appreciate this. Really. I sure appreciate all the help you give me. Okay-- let 'er fly!"

"You ready Shorty?"

"Yea! Let 'er fly!"

Arrr...rrr...rr----

"Aaaaaaahhhhhrrrrgggggg!"

A wisp of smoke drifted up from the control panel. Shorty emerged shaking one hand-- a charred, twisted length of wire in the other.

"Wrong wire." He said matter of factly, though he always seemed to tremble. "Just a minute here--" And he rummaged through a water-soaked cardboard box of junk and tidbits. Snatching some tiny piece of unidentifiable something he shot back to the engine and promptly announced,

"Let 'er fly!"

"--Your fingers, Shorty," I thought, and hit the button with no remorse.

Arrr...rrr...rrr...rrr...rrr...rrr...rrrrrrrrr.......rrrrrrrrrrrrrr-clik clik clik clik----

"Sounds like a dead battery Shorty." I smugly offered my brilliance in such matters. If the battery was dead, I could depart.

"Yea. Okay. I got another." He grunted once or twice hooking it up-- My God he was fast.

"Let 'er fly!" He said.

The engine sputtered, coughed, revved to life. From the stinking bowels of that scalawag ship an acid stench arose. The exhaust billowed thick black smoke-- that changed to grey, then to white, then to blue. There was a rattling, a clank-- a vibration, then a backfire and a screaching that sent the startled seagulls within fifty yards yelping to flight. That each revolution of that engine perpetuated even one more.....was a miracle.

Shorty emerged positively radiant. He slapped the dash and exclaimed what a fine ship she was-- You'd think he'd just given birth. He took her throttle then, and commenced to jerking her in and out of gear as if to show me what she was really capable of. He slammed her hard to forward, then rammed the throttle home. The boat lurched against sun-bleached, fraying lines, then held tight to the float, nearly knocking me down. Smoke billowed about the dock and several fishermen from up the dock looked to see what kind of catastrophe was going on down there-- I was frankly embarrassed to be aboard that offensive little craft.

"She's got a lot of power, this little girl.." Shouted Shorty above the clamor. "--Seaworthy, too."

I smiled, and when Shorty's hand left the throttle for an instant mine shot forward and pulled her back to idle. I didn't think the motor-mounts could take much more. Shorty's head jerked around as if he'd been shot through the heart-- then he saw my hand on the throttle and gave me a quick scowl. I hadn't wanted to be aboard when she blew up, I thought in my own defense. Let me get a few meters down the dock, at least.

"Got to go, Shorty." I said. "She sure does purr. Good luck."

I had been trying to be decent about it all-- 'she sure does purr', and all of that. But that was my fatal mistake, for Shorty then insisted that I "see her in action".

I dodged and weaved. Shorty persisted. "Just a quick turn around the marina," he said-- "Just lemme show you how she moves through the water-- I may want to sell her some day....." And his voice trailed off as though I'd been offered his first born at half price and it was a reverent instant in time--

Shorty slipped her lines, backed out of the slip, smashed her to forward gear and one hundred percent, and we were off.

She actually did have a little poop. I was accustomed to long weeks at the wheel of a tug that only crawled tractor-like over the swells and the contrast was startling..

We roared off around the breakwall and out into the wide mouth of Grays Harbor. Shorty held that throttle to the stop so tightly he must have surely stretched the control cable. He was going to show me her very, very best. I cocked an ear this way and that, trying to ascertain exactly which unnatural sound was going to be our undoing first. I moved aft of the box that covered the engine, and as I did so my feet nearly vibrated off my legs. I looked down to a hole in the floorboards through which I could see the tail of the reduction gear as it quivered smartly in tiny circles-- there were no motor mounts there at all, but only rusted brackets that had long since parted. Water was pouring through the stuffing box and spiralling outward 360 degrees from the shaft flange. I moved through it like a kid through a sprinkler, aft, to a rotted vinyl settee fastened haphazardly along the transom. I sat down and watched Shorty wrestle that wheel, throwing us into hard banks, this way and that...showing me "what she could do".

I put my arm up along the transom deck and tried to relax and to tell myself I'd yet live through it. The breakwall grew smaller and smaller astern-- I'd known Shorty had planned a longer ride, but.... And it was rather exhilarating to be doing twenty knots, leaping gaily over the little wavelets. I leaned back and found myself almost enjoying the cruise, and idly fingering a bit of cloth that protruded from somewhere...just fingering it...twirling a small shred of material around my thumb....thinking I might want to buy a fast boat someday. Not Shorty's boat-- but some other fast boat. A man could sure cover some country in a fast boat. My mind wandered....idled along trying to think cheery things... The small bit of cloth moved away from my finger somehow....couldn't quite...feel it. I probed unconsciously for it-- it had to be somewhere... I found my index finger tracing a small, round hole in the deck. The hole went down, and down. The cloth had been right there, yet--

I sat up suddenly and looked squarely into that hole. It was the fuel tank filler. It had been plugged with a greasy rag, and my absent-minded fondling had shoved it down the tank. I stared at that stupid hole for twenty five seconds after realizing what I'd done. Then I heard the engine sputter.

Shorty jerked the throttle like he was pumping water....right up until the engine wheezed and fell silent altogether. He glanced at me, embarrassed, and headed below to the "engine room". But I caught him short, and showed him the hole.

My honesty was rewarded with a heavy scowl this time, as if to inquire what kind of seaman I really was.... I apologized more heartily than perhaps was appropriate-- then Shorty intolerantly fetched a rusty length of clothes hangar that had been bent and fashioned for that very task months or years before, and we commenced to the trying, irritating, frustrating, maddening, tedious and rather unsuccessful business of trying to catch that rag.

We'd not been long at that endeavor when I began to be annoyed by the motion of the boat. Crashing noises were beginning to emerge from the cabin, and miscellaneous tools and empty beer bottles were rolling back and forth around my feet with alarming force. I glanced up to see the brilliant white gnashing teeth of the Grays Harbor bar, gleaming against the blackest, most foreboding sky I have ever seen. My eye flicked upward to the horizon to see a jagged spectre of lightning charge the ocean two miles out. I looked apprehensively back toward port, and swallowed hard to see it shrinking, far away over an endless geography of sharp, building seas. The storm was mounting to its awesome fury. We were being swept out on the ebb tide like a bug going down the commode--

And the bar was rough.

There wasn't a boat on the ocean. Even the Kamakazi commercial crabbers had run in for this blow. I thought of an anchor first.

Shorty didn't carry one.

I thought of the radio-- at least he had a C.B.! I dialed channel 9 and called in the blind.. Shorty all the while regarded me indignantly, and fished harder for that rag.

A "REACT" station answered up in a professional reply and took our position. A few minutes later the Coast Guard came directly on-frequency and advised they'd send a boat "forthwith". And at that I relaxed. We'd had a bit of a fright-- but the situation had been handled early on, and properly. Even if Shorty's loathsome little boat sunk at that very moment, I was sure I could tread water 'till "the boys" got there. Sheesh. How did I get into such predicaments anyway? Well this was the last time. Well this was certainly the very last time..

We rocked and rolled and swore and fished for that rag. It passed the time until the Coast Guard found us. The engine started once or twice, only to die again from the clogged fuel line. And thirty minutes later there was no sign of the Coast Guard. Another glance to seaward affirmed the immediacy of our plight. In four minutes we'd enter the breakers on the bar..

Shorty wasn't talking much. He just moved nervously about, fidgeting with this, fiddling with that. I set about to make the mostly open boat as seaworthy as she could get. Asking about bilge pumps, Shorty showed me a small garden hose device, designed to be powered by an electric drill-- dockside, of course. And there was a cracked plastic bucket and a coffee can. But the floorboards were secured permanently to the stringers, and the boat would be ponderously heavy with water before we could get the cans to it.

Shorty went and sat inside the tiny cabin, dejected. I suggested it might be safer out on deck, where he could at least get away if the boat capsized. For a moment he looked as though he hadn't heard-- then he moved deliberately outside and took a place near the wheel.

We speculated on our odds for a few moments...what would likely happen first-- capsizing or sinking. I looked up once to see Shorty dawning a life jacket, and snugging it down tight. I inquired of any others aboard-- Shorty shook his head and clutched the one he wore even tighter. There was a seat cushion that would supposedly float. I placed it where I might be able to get ahold of it quickly. I thought of trying to find some scraps of line with which to somehow tie the cushion to my body so that it wouldn't be lost in whatever mayhem was to follow, but felt I'd almost rather go down with that miserable little ship than to allow her to reduce me to looking so utterly ridiculous--

The seas became more violent as we were swept onto the shallows of the bar. The huge ocean combers were breaking from jetty to jetty, all the way across. As we grew nearer we began to hear their peculiar hiss as the crests raced and tumbled down their faces. Sometimes hard gusts picked their tops off and sent them flying. I wondered how many breakers we'd survive. I estimated two to four. I wondered how plain old water could be formed to look so ugly and mean. When the boat gave out, we'd live a little while in 39 F. water. But the waves would beat us under, and exhaustion would come very quickly. I wondered if Shorty would survive after all. I doubted it. He was old; if nothing else his heart would go. For a fleeting instant it seemed such a waste that he should die of coronary failure but remain afloat with the life jacket, while I drowned with still a strong heart for lack of one. I wondered if it'd be possible to keep myself up, holding onto Shorty's body-- dead OR alive. I begrudged him that life jacket-- but it WAS his boat. I'd take my lumps. Then we were in the breakers..

We rode over the first one with little ill effect. I was surprised at how little water she made-- the second, however, made up the difference. A tiny chunk of the top of that wave curled right over the gun'ales and slopped into the boat with such force that it smashed one of Shorty's empty beer bottles which had been lolligagging back and forth-that hunk of ocean must have been two hundred gallons in size. We knew what was to be done and that there was nothing but to do it. We threw the engine cover back, dropped to our knees, and began scooping water from around the engine, wherever the cans would fit.

Straightaway the side of Shorty's plastic bucket broke off, and he was reduced to bailing barely a quart at a time.

I felt us rise up...and up...and still up with a huge, smoking sea beneath us. The sound-- the look of it alone was terrifying. The ascension was almost exhilarating....like a carnival ride. But the seething crests blew water over the rails at an alarming rate. Then I didn't even look up-- just bailed and hoped and tried to keep myself in such a position there on the floorboards that when she went over on her top I would remember which way to swim to get out from underneath her. Every time she lay up on her beams I held a large breath, ready, but continued to bail.

The huge storm seas came and came and we bailed into oblivion.. That obnoxious little boat rolled and broached and spun and pitched. On the tops of the breakers the wind screamed and shrieked-- but in the bottoms the air was dead and it was almost quiet but for the hissing of the seas far overhead.

When a crest passed under us and she fell into the trough my stomach went into my throat; we were nearly weightless. And then another would thrust us upward like we were rocket propelled. And I found it impossible to believe that we had stayed afloat.

Supplies were sloshing to and fro in the cabin. The portable head floated on its side and smashed against the little galley stove and the bulkhead. It was like the inside of a washing machine. Her head was heavy; she had a pronounced list, and that caused her to take water all the more. The seas were somewhat uniform in their onslaught, coming simply as waves.....huge, whistling waves. It was not a "haystack" kind of seaway, else we would not have made it. The total length of the bar condition was made up of perhaps thirty seas. They were olling, exchanging and replacing one another, but the actual curlers resided in the area of one mile.

When the little vessel was so low and sluggish I thought she could not endure two more seas, they began to slacken. Less water came aboard, and after some minutes we even gained against it. I looked up to see the crashing chaos that was the bar, to leeward, and to windward naught but a black, ugly, chilling ocean. We'd crossed that bar and were well offshore.

The curtain of night began to draw itself down upon us.. The wind howled through our tiny wire stays.. The sea moved and writhed as though she had some sinister power beyond the wind. I felt the most peculiar despair...beyond hopelessness...a separation from humanity. I felt the need to reach out to the tiny lights so far across that ragged horizon, to tell them we were "here"...cold and lost in the dark...come fetch us home...

The seaway offshore was still rough. Had we encountered such seas immediately upon putting out from a port, we would have quickly darted back to safety thinking no vessel could ever live in such a state. But after the bar.....these pithy thirty footers were welcome and reassuring.

We bailed a little, talked less. The thought of the Coast Guard boat was some consolation-- not alot. As captain of a rescue tug, I'd had innumerable encounters with Coast Guard resources-- many, disappointing. Still we held on to that uncertain thread of hope.

The ebb current carried us far offshore, to a point where its influence began to wane and that of the wind began to win over. We drifted northward a mile or two, away from that emptying river; that eased the seas somewhat, though the storm showed every indication of increasing in strength. The seas became longer and with a greater period, yet they increased again in height.

I sprang upon the notion that the rough seas may have loosed that rag in the fuel tank, putting it in such a position that we could finally snag it out. Shorty fetched a flashlight and I went to work with the clothes hangar. But Shorty was convinced that if he held the flashlight too close to the fuel tank filler it would explode the boat. I argued, reasoned, tried to explain that the bulb was sealed, and that no actual spark could escape it to ignite the fumes-- besides it was blowing thirty five knots-- the fumes weren't hanging around. But Shorty couldn't see the logic of it, and I was left to fish in the dark for that ridiculous rag.

I did manage to snag it once or twice. ---Couldn't catch it up, but I realized it was only intermittently covering the fuel pick-up line in the bottom of the tank. I told Shorty to "Let 'er fly!" He did so, and the engine caught, coughed, and sputtered to life. And at that instant so did our hopes.

Shorty motioned me to the wheel, and I gladly accepted. I engaged forward gear and set off to have another look at that bar. If we'd made it across outbound with no steerage, perhaps we'd make it inbound with an engine and a rudder.

Somehow, she was a markedly less seaworthy boat underweigh than lying dead in the water. I fought her wheel as she sheered and tried to broach on the face of every following sea. Her screw was small and designed to turn fast-- she needed huge applications of power and rudder, stop to stop, to control her. We moved gingerly along, creeping, playing every sea to make her go a direction we wanted. The wind increased and as we neared the bar the seas became steeper and more menacing. A quick check of the current table showed that we were approaching maximum ebb in an hour and a half. Seas would become positively evil in that time. There would be no hope of crossing the bar for at least three hours, and if the storm became much worse, perhaps not even then. Hopelessness settled back into my thinking.. I recall wondering if this was finally it.

Suddenly Shorty stood up and shouted over the wind, "The Coast Guard-- there they are!"

I jerked my head, and sure enough, our savior was busting out through those towering seas, hell bent for leather. My God. Our Coast Guard. I felt the same pride and lump in my throat a military man feels when he snaps to attention to the call of the "Star Spangled Banner". I could have kissed that crew-- squarely on the mouth.

But after a few moments Shorty asked innocuously, "Where're they headed?"

I looked. Where were they headed..? Oh-- slightly off course, I thought. Never to worry.. I switched on the C.B. and called the REACT station again. Thank God we hadn't drifted out of range. They answered up loud and clear-- I advised: "Have the cutter alter course thirty degrees to THEIR port, will you?"

"Roger," came back. "Understand, you want the Coast Guard vessel to change course thirty degrees to THEIR port, is that correct?"

"That's a roger," I replied, thankful that we hadn't been subjected to some Abbot and Costello routine of lefts and right, ports and starboards and WHOSE and WHATs..

Watching the cutter, there was an appropriate delay in action-- I envisioned the orders being relayed to the station, then to the searching cutter. I could almost hear their transmissions go out through the night.

Then the cutter altered his course-- thirty degrees to MY port, and went romping off into the murk.

I grabbed the mike to issue a new course; my finger tightened on the key-- and with a start I realized the engine was silent. We were about to broach and capsize. Throwing down the mike, I hit the starter button--

RRrrrrr--- click click click click click...

I snatched the mike to relay the message that we were indeed in serious trouble now.... But as I keyed up, the little light in the meter box pulsed, then went out. The whole ship was dead.

Shorty scrambled below to wrestle with his mizmaze of wires. I grabbed a rail to steady myself against the now vicious lurches of the tiny boat. And I watched dumbfounded as the flashing blue light of the cutter disappeared over the horizon in a frenzy of spray and busting seas, not to be seen again, that night.

For another hour we bobbed and rolled; we were thrown against every sharp point of the inside of that boat. We bailed-- though we scarcely knew why we bothered. I thought of knocking Shorty alongside the head and bloody well taking that life jacket. He was a smallish man. I could have done it. But honestly, it was a passing fancy.

The ebb grew stronger and pushed us once more beyond its influence. We drifted north again, until we could no longer see the lights of Westport. I could hear Shorty retching in that stinking little cuddy cabin. I chuckled. Then one solid laugh slipped out. Shorty stopped retching for a moment to listen; then resumed.

Finally he announced, "Let 'er fly".

Bloody well yes, I thought. Let what fly?

"Let 'er fly!" he repeated.

Oh--! I hit the starter..

Rrrr...rrr...rrr...rrrrr.....rrrrrrr.......rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr--

He'd hooked the two batteries together to give the system twenty four volts, but it still wasn't enough to turn the engine fast enough to start it. Quickly Shorty produced a hand crank. The engine was of such displacement that it could not be cranked by muscle alone, but with the help of the batteries....

"Let 'er fly!"

I did so.

Shorty cranked until I thought his arms would fly off...but it was enough to spin her, and she once again coughed hesitantly to life. Shorty darted outside again, now fully apprehensive of being trapped in that little cabin when we capsized.

By now the water was far over the floorboards. The flywheel and crankshaft pulleys were submerged, and they threw sea water around the inside of that cuddy cabin like the inside of a car wash. As it fell upon the distributor cap and wires, it caused the engine to miss and cut out. Shorty dashed below and scooped some floating blankets out of the brine, and fashioned them like small tents over the moving parts of the engine. As he did so the highly conductive salt water passed the engine spark straight into Shorty's frail figure-- he yelped like a dog every time he got a full-strength charge. I couldn't help but smile-Perhaps the little son of a bitch would be electrocuted entirely, and I'd yet get my hands on that life jacket. I increased the throttle so slightly...

A thought came into my head-- my hand shot forth and grabbed the radio's mike. I keyed it and had it almost to my mouth....its tiny light flickered, flashed brightly, then went out. Twenty four volts had proved too much, and the radio was dead for all time..

I tried to maintain a course that would minimize the seas coming aboard, and Shorty bailed like a demon. The water slowly fell back to a level even with the floorboards, and the tiny ship began to answer the helm in a more predictable way.

Shorty went aft and fiddled with that clothes hangar and the rag, but it was pitch dark, and he was merely groping. When the engine began to wheeze and to starve out, Shorty would rattle his hangar frantically around the inside of the tank, and it usually seemed to knock the rag away from the fuel intake. The engine would rev to life and we'd say our "thanks" one more time.

I motored gently into the seas for awhile, and we discussed our options.

One thing was certain; the engine would quit again. It might run an hour or a minute. But inevitably it was doomed. The generator had failed at some time during the adventure, and there was only enough spark in the batteries to power the ignition for a short time. Or the rag would again plug the fuel line, and we would not be able to remove it. When the engine failed, we would drift or capsize. Assuming the latter, the game would be over. But assuming we drifted...considering the prevailing wind we would eventually blow onto the rocks along the rugged, deadly northern coast. There would be no question of survival.

The only possible course of action was to GO-- somewhere, anywhere, while we still could go. If we motored farther off shore, then we still may capsize when the engine died. If we tried to run in through the surf to the beach, we would certainly capsize and may be pounded to death in the breakers. If we tried to cross the bar, we were in worse trouble yet. It seemed utterly hopeless, and I began to ponder not the "if" of anything, but only the method of my demise.

Shorty was on his hands and knees cursing and bailing when it came to me. It was insanely ingenious-- but daring, perhaps, enough to work. At least we'd be close ashore and they wouldn't have to look far for the bodies!

I altered course a hundred and twenty degrees, so that we ran along almost in the trough. The little boat bucked and leaped over those great, black, invisible monsters. I nursed her, but pushed her too. With a good speed of five knots, I also had steerage.

We ran south of the long, submerged south jetty, then turned and ran straight in for that shallow sandy beach. Almost immediately the breakers began to build and to break and curl. We continued on; if the engine quit from there in, we would capsize instantly.

The plan was simple: From the beach at Point Chehalis on the south shore of the entrance to Grays Harbor an exposed rock jetty extends almost a mile outward, thence a submerged jetty extends another mile to sea. The submerged jetty is close to the surface in places, deeper in other places, depending upon how far any section of it has, over the years, sunk into the silty bottom. Heavier swells break across the submerged jetty, and sometimes right over the exposed jetty as well. The worst of the bar phenomenon is contained in an area between the seaward tip of the submerged jetty, and Point Chehalis. My plan was to ride a big one, and ram the boat onto the rocks at the seaward end of the exposed jetty. From there we would crawl ashore to Westport. It seemed our only hope.

As we drove along the south side of the submerged jetty the line of break over the submerged rocks was incomprehensible. Our tiny vessel barely lived in the froth and surf that ran headlong and unobstructed to the beach-- but the seas fifty yards to leeward shown like a thousand waterfalls through the gloom of night. The engine sputtered, coughed, ran and wheezed again. Shorty stayed faithfully at the job of chasing that rag around the inside of the tank. We could show no lights for fear of draining what remained of the batteries. No one would even know a boat was in trouble out past the breakwall.

With every meter closer to the beach, the surf became heavier, steeper, taller, until finally we realized that we could not distinguish the exposed jetty from the sunken section-- it was all a line of spume and spray and disaster. The whole of it was swept by every sea, and we could not find any exposed rocks to ram her onto.

I deliberated only a minute. The engine was sputtering, we were full of water and so heavy that she might turn over at any second despite my continual bursts of power and work at the wheel. I turned hard a'port and, watching my chance, let a huge hissing wave lift us up from astern. At just the right instant I rammed full throttle, and we began a sickening slide towards that impenetrable wall of broken white seas. Shorty raised himself up from the settee when he heard the change in power. He looked sickly over the bow, then settled back down and held steady to his task, worrying that rag. I said my goodbyes, and we entered the white water that crashed over the jetty.

Instantly the bow fell into a black hole to which there seemed no bottom. A wave loomed up and in another half instant we were slammed into the back of the sea ahead. The windshield and much of the day-roof was knocked off and hit me across the face and chest. I fell back onto Shorty under hundreds of gallons of water.

I recall the violent motions of the boat as we were swatted over the jetty on the back of that wave. All the while we struggled to untangle ourselves from wreckage and to push the windshield and part of the cabin aside, then I lunged for the wheel. But it was far too late-- we were already through, and ahead lay only calmer water between ourselves and our port.

The vessel lay over on her side leaving half a foot of freeboard. I stepped to the low side with the coffee can to start throwing water over the side-- but my weight pushed the gun'wale under. I jerked back to the high side, and she reluctantly came back. Part of the bow decking was actually under, and for a moment I believed she was going down, bow first. The engine still ran, though I could see a white, foamy substance like shaving cream emerging from the oil breather cap-- she was churning up salt water and motor oil in her crank case.

I left the throttle at full power, though she barely made any headway at all against a still strong ebb along the inside of the south jetty. The current pulled her hard, trying to drag us back into the spillway-like chaos of the jetty. Seas continued to smash all the way across.

We held a course parallel to the jetty, a hundred yards to the north, but chunks of ocean hit us even there.

We moved along at a snail's pace, aware that even if the engine quit there, we would be swept back across the bar or the jetty in a matter of minutes. We nursed her, cursed her, baby'ed her and prayed for her-- that engine wheezed and clanked and spit, showing no oil pressure at all on the gauge. She missed and sputtered....almost to a stop-- but a few frantic jerks of the throttle always brought her back. And an hour later we limped broken and beaten into Shorty's little slip.

Shorty lovingly made her fast. The engine died when the throttle was pulled back to idle. We stepped off onto the dock to regard her: a smoking, steaming, creaking, miserable old hobo of a boat-- But Shorty's eyes reflected only love and gratitude. --While mine were too red from brine and oily bilge water and strain and fatigue....to show anything at all.

I'd been twenty years at sea, through three hundred rescue missions in the North Pacific. I'd served aboard sailing freighters, camp tenders in the winters of the Georgia Straits; I'd skippered long-liners off the Oregon coast and purse seiners through Washington's storms...gillnetters through Juan De Fuca's westerlies, and a troller through a seismic turbulence that claimed fourteen boats all within my view.

But never had I been through such a night.

Two days later I walked down that long, familiar float to check the lines of my own sturdy ship. Halfway there Shorty stepped out from his finger pier to block my way... My stomach tightened. I stiffened and walked on faster, resolute. But Shorty's manner was odd-- lifeless, somehow.

As I came abreast his slip I noticed an oily scum on the water where his boat had been. I didn't have to look down into the muddy grey water. I knew his ship was down there, broken and defeated by the storm.

I turned and went back up the dock to the phone.

Two hours later my crew showed up, and three hours after that Shorty's boat sat proudly in dry dock. There he could fiddle with her to his heart's content...in safety, for the rest of his days, for he should have never been allowed at sea in the first place.


And that's just what Shorty did..

Copyright © 1982-2009 truth-or-consequences.Com, All Rights Reserved