I just came here to say cherish every moment you have with your dad. He sounds like a good one. Mine has been gone for over 46 years.
I just came here to say cherish every moment you have with your dad. He sounds like a good one. Mine has been gone for over 46 years.
Ovid_and_Flem said:In reply to Apis Mellifera :
By all means don't worry about brevity. Post your multi page account. I'm sure you can see by the response to your truncated version, many would enjoy the full meal deal.
You asked for it:
My Dad has always been a force to be reckoned with. He is wise, has integrity, grew up poor, worked hard and became very successful. He always has the right answer and along with his brother, my uncle, a former bush pilot and missionary in South America, he has a large catalogue of true adventure stories spanning over 70 years that are akin to those of Indiana Jones. When these two get together, they’re either reliving past episodes or creating new ones. There have been many near-death episodes, too many to document here and most unbelievable unless you knew my Dad. He always gets up, dusts off, and keeps going. Well, one time when he was about 60 he was run over by a fully loaded hay wagon; up his leg, over the length of his spine, and across his face. He got right up after that one too and drove himself home, but, worried that his loving wife might feel weird about living in the house if he died there that night from some internal damage, he decided to go see an ER doctor. Seriously, that was the only reason he cited for going to the hospital. “I don’t understand it”, the doctor said, “but you’re fine. Your guardian angel sure must have taken a beating though.” Each jaw-dropping tale is just another chapter in his heroic story book and, when relevant, random excerpts will be shared with friends and family for years to come. Each telling will be just as riveting as the last to those of us who have heard them a hundred times or were there to see the events. First-time listeners are left stunned and skeptical at the outrageousness and fantastical nature of most of his tales, but then a witness will corroborate the story, often adding additional, sometimes more outlandish detail that Dad had simply forgotten or saw as too mundane to mention. Many times I was right beside him for the adventure and always in awe of not only how we found ourselves in such a dicey situation, but that we always survived and could laugh about it later because he knew what to do.
He grew up in a time where real American adventure was still possible, whereas I grew up later when, as HST wrote, that wave had crested and started to recede, revealing restrictions, regulations, and dull uniformity, conformity, and compliance. Still, I worked with what life had to offer and managed at least an echo of my Dad’s glory. As we’ve both aged and now I have kids and his journey has left him a little physically threadbare and a lot grey, I’ve noticed that he’s started to defer to my “wisdom” in joint projects, but last week, though by no means a life or death situation, I learned that I’m not there yet and still my Dad’s son.
One thing we enjoy doing together is sailing. Perhaps my earliest memory is sailing with my parents and sister on Murrells Inlet. I was born in southern, Coastal NC and lived in several places between Wilmington and Myrtle Beach and we’ve sailed all over the place. We still make an annual trip to Oak Island and this year marks the 59th year there for us as a family. When I was young, Dad had a classic Lightning and then a horrible little boat that only qualifies as a sailboat because it had a mast and a triangle of nylon. In my late teens and early 20s he had an 18’ Sol Cat catamaran. He even tried to sail a canoe on the lakes of WV at one point. When he retired 10 or 15 years ago he upgraded to a 44’ CSY and winters on it off the coast of Florida. So it had been a while since we had something small like a beach cat. I bought a Hobie 16 last year with the hopes of getting in a few years of sailing with my kids before my knees and back completely crumble. I was a little concerned with Dad’s ability to manage a beach launch since it is a two-man process and you can get hammered if the surf is rough. I also knew if there was a sailboat, he’d be on it and it would be pointless to question him.
We decided to make use of the boat ramp at the marina on the back of the island and sail down the intracoastal waterway, around to the ocean and then up the beach to our beach house on the coast. This would mean sailing nearly dead into the wind for most of the way down. My older son went with us and it was his first time on a sailboat. He was pretty excited by the small waves and light wind in the inlet. It’s hard to describe open ocean sailing in moderate wind on a small boat, but I knew he’d either be loving it or completely terrified.
Close hauled and barely sailing, we eventually made it down to the inlet and could see open ocean, but were in irons at the turning point for nearly two hours. The wake from passing boats and the incoming current through the narrow channel meant we’d be fighting for every inch forward and more than likely would be pushed backward and taking a walk in the oyster beds… and we did more than once. Finally, the wind picked up, we turned and made it out. Dad was at the tiller and we were moving. I consulted NOAA later and they reported 18 knot winds with gusts to 21. Not bad. I think, frustrated from having to work so hard to get out, he was really having a time broad reaching up the beach to the house, getting the time back that the fickle winds had taken from us. It was like the clock turned back a quarter century. However, I felt like we were going fast enough for this untested boat. Neither of us had ever even sailed a Hobie, let alone one near the ragged edge. Dad suggested later that we were only at 50% of what the boat could handle and no where near full volume. That’s my Dad: either off or full blast and not satisfied with anything in between. “We should probably put these life jackets on,” he’d told me earlier, just as we were set to start our run out the channel. I’d watched videos of Hobies pitchpoling and was closely watching the leeward hull nearly buried and the windward side skimming the tops of the waves, which were easily rolling at 6 feet. I moved back and held on. Dad’s eyes were narrowed against the salt spray and wind. He was looking toward the horizon and smiling. In retrospect, it was probably a little too much for my 9 year old son, but he did well. Dad called for him to move up to the upper side with us and then he shouted, “Pull in the jib!” “You want more power?!”, I shouted back through the wind, not sure if I heard correctly or understood what he meant since we were already moving up the beach pretty quick. “Yes, more!” So I pulled it in and there was a surge in speed and the shrouds started to hum. Not the singing of rudder hum, but the low frequency vibration of metal and fiberglass slicing through wind and water. I have no idea how fast we were going, but it was fast. We covered the first mile in what felt like seconds. Then there was a loud pop and the mast broke off. The windward shroud, one of three 1/8th inch stainless wires that support the mast, broke at the bottom thimble and the 26 ½ foot mast fell into the water, dragging the sails and remaining standing rigging down with it.
I guess I never considered the possibility of being dismasted. Someone nearly drowning, maybe. Dad having a heart attack, possibly. Capsizing, getting rope burns the full width of my legs from my butt to ankles, very likely to happen… again. Like Mike Tyson said of his boxing foes, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” I hadn’t even considered this happening much less planned for it. It took several dazed seconds to realize that we were floundering a ½ to ¾ of a mile off the coast with waves so big you couldn’t stand up and with no means of propulsion. I felt no fear though and had no doubt that we would be fine. Dad was there and he can fix anything.
I could see people on the beach, tiny specs moving slowly up the beach or down, aimlessly walking along the shore like you do at the beach. One of them probably saw the colorful sail and then noticed it missing an instant later. Maybe from shore they could see the sparkle of setting sunlight as it glistened on what had to be no more than a sliver of our saltwater slicked hulls, occasionally visible between the waves. Maybe they’d recognize the problem of having a sailless sailboat that far out. Maybe they’d notice the two guys in blue lifejackets desperately fighting the sea to reclaim their mast and sails and a boy in a red life jacket on his first sailboat ride quietly watching them, thinking “This is how sailboats work?”
We managed to pull the tangle of wires, sail, and mast up to the boat and lashed it parallel to the hulls. With effort, we freed the main sail from the luff track and piled both the main and jib up on the trampoline. Dad tried to hold a bit of jib up in the wind, but the waves wouldn’t allow it. I took over the controls and had enough forward motion to turn the boat toward shore. From there I just tried to surf the waves in. I don't know how long it took, but eventually we made it to the beach. Of all the police officers I’ve met over the course of my life, those waiting for us there were among the nicest. And my first encounter with the Coast Guard was equally pleasant. I had been facing backward, out to sea, the whole time in, working the rudders in an attempt to keep the growing waves on the stern and trying to hold the mast up off the boat. The flashing lights and vehicles on the beach were a surprise to me when I finally turned around once the boat beached itself.
I was equally surprised to see my wife there, thankfully with just slightly more relief than anger in her eyes over yet another one of our adventures. She’d been on the porch and could just see the sails as we approached way down the beach. Then she saw them disappear and assumed we capsized, so she waited for us to right the boat and she waited and waited… Assuming we sank and tried to swim for shore, she walked down the beach periodically asking if anyone had seen a sailboat or three out of breath guys wash up on shore. They all said no so she continued on. Eventually she made it to a hatching sea turtle nest and asked one of the attendants. She also denied seeing us and was concerned enough to call 911, who then called the Coast Guard. By the time everyone arrived, we were nearly on shore.
In the end, Dad used the jib halyard and some rope to rig a makeshift shroud and we sailed off the beach and the last mile up to the house with no jib, a reefed main and the leeward shroud and forestay frighteningly, or rather dangerously loose. It’s something I’ll never forget and a story my son will probably tell his grandkids. The next day, still unphased by the event, just another of life’s scenic detours, Dad commented that had the shroud broken again or had we lost the mast entirely or had the tide been going out, he felt sure he could have still made pretty good time sailing up the beach with the boom rigged as a mast and the jib used as a spinnaker. By his reflective tone, he struck me as almost disappointed that the makeshift shroud held. What’s stuck with me though, is how glad I am that Dad was there. Had my Dad decided not to go, the outcome might have been the same; I would have rigged something together to get us on shore or come up with some other solution to get home, like putting the boat on the trailer once I made it to the beach. But Dad always has the right answer and like he said while fixing the broken shroud, “Sailing is a lot less work and a lot more fun than pushing a boat across the sand.” It dawned on me that despite the advancing years and the subtle change in our lives and no matter how well I think I can handle life’s ups and downs, my perspective will never change. If your father is a dad, then Dad will always be Dad. Maybe that’s just one of those universal truths.
When vacation was over and we were all back settled into our own homes, hours apart, back at our normal routines, I overheard my younger son ask his big brother, the now weathered deckhand, to repair a toy or something. “Take it to Dad." he replied, He knows how to fix everything.” “No, son.”, I thought to myself, “Take it to Grandpa HE knows how to fix everything.”
In reply to Apis Mellifera :
Thanks for posting the long version!
In reply to Enyar :
That was some seriously fun footage! Can you say "weather helm" when they were three up?
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