CHAPTER TEN: LOOSE SLIPS SINK SHIPS

CHAPTER TEN: LOOSE SLIPS SINK SHIPS

The meteorologists all said that Tropical Storm Debby was headed to Texas to “do Dallas”. So we kept moseying up the Florida Coast, expecting some rain from Debby’s progeny, but not a visit from Big Mama Debby herself. She came full force into the St. Augustine Municipal Marina Tuesday night, with 39 mile an hour winds and lots and lots of rain. The winds changed direction completely, from the southeast to the northeast. So while we were protected from the winds the night before, the winds were coming right at our bow on Tuesday night. Art was up 4 times Tuesday night to add more lines and adjust the ones that were on Slow Motion. At one point he saw a ship on the other side of the bridge that is 40 yards from us, and the ship appeared to have lost its mooring and be heading straight for Slow Motion. He went to the marina office to ask for help, and the staff called the police, who said: “What do you want us to do?” The marina staff said “Well, it’s your bridge, you might want to protect it.” The police said “ Call the Coast Guard”. No one was called and no one came, and, lucky for us, the ship stayed on its side of the bridge. You can see the bridge in the photos we posted for this Blog.

Little did we know that just three slips away, a greater drama was unfolding. A boat very similar to ours had pulled bow first into its slip. We were in stern first, because that’s what Mother Nature dictated when we went into the slip, even though we had been told to come in bow first too. The bow first boat had its stern exposed to the 3 foot waves that the wind had whipped up. And the three foot waves started coming over the stern. Dick and Karen, who have had their boat for 6 months (although Dick has captained boats for the past 50 years), were inside. Dick had gone out to check the lines on his boat, and he saw the water coming over the stern. His bilge pumps were working, but not fast enough. He had three hatches that were supposed to remain closed, but they all opened and started floating. Karen woke up and found 6 inches of water in the salon. She called every agency to come with pumps immediately. The marina staff showed up with a little pump. The Army Corps of Engineers slept soundly at the end of the pier. They have big pumps. They were clueless. Karen is kicking herself for not thinking of them. They would have had to do a study before doing any pumping, however, so they couldn’t have saved Dick and Karen’s boat. It sank. They got off and watched their “baby” go down under the force and weight of the waves.

The next day, Wednesday, we awakened to leaden skies, threatening rain, and a little less wind. We walked off the pier to get supplies – and, as we passed the three sailboats that had arrived shortly after we did,  we saw the top of what was once a boat like ours sticking rakishly out of the water. It’s a sickening feeling, like seeing a house burned to the ground or destroyed by a tornado. But for this boat, the damage was still being done. The current and wind were pushing the bow under the floating cement dock, crushing the starboard side of the boat. The so-called helping agencies that were not around when they were needed in the middle of the night showed up to do an environmental assessment to ensure that no diesel fuel was leaking into the muddy, murky waters of the marina. This is indeed important, but could they have shown the same alacrity it trying to prevent the disaster of the boat sinking as they showed in trying to prevent a spreading fuel disaster? Fortunately, little, if any, fuel escaped and a diver stuffed any possible holes with to prevent leakage.

There are photos we posted of the sunken boat, some taken from the bridge we are near (Bridge of Lions) that show the sunken boat, the three sailboats and Slow Motion. Today the crane came on a barge to lift the boat out of the water. That was quite an operation. The lead rescuer was a sixty five year old diver, whose job was to check out the position of the boat under the dock and to attach a huge sling under the hull of the boat to try to lift it up. According to the marina guys who know this water, it was not an easy job. The rains had filled the water with all kinds of dreck and visibility was extremely poor. The yuck factor was also very high. After hours of tireless effort under a very hot sun (yep, Debby is torturing some other marina now), they raised Dick and Karen’s boat. Nothing is salvageable. I wish there were a happy ending. But there it is.

The moral of this story is always to be vigilant and to expect the unexpected, especially the potentially disastrous unexpected.  Or, always go into a slip stern first. The Chapter Ten title, Loose Slips Sink Ships, is the best I could do in the pun department.  Actually, the floating dock, which is usually a great help during storms, turned out to be very harmful, ergo, “loose slips”. Once the ship started sinking and knocking into the floating dock, the floating dock rose up with the waves and the ship’s bow and starboard side slid under the foam underbelly of the cement-topped floating dock.

Today we showered and washed clothes. And Art made eggs and green peppers, toast and bacon for breakfast. We pumped out our poop line. And we called marinas for the upcoming week, through July 4, to check on availability. Georgia here we come! One more night in SA, and one night in Fernandina Beach, at the St Mary’s River border between Florida and Georgia. Then it’s on to Jekyll Island and Brunswick and places I have never heard of like “Two Way Fish Camp.”

The photos we posted show a lot of St. Augustine’s offerings. I walked around the town a lot while Art worked on his data processing job. And I rode the red train to places that were a few miles away. Then yesterday morning, in the wind and rain, I went to the black and white lighthouse, 219 steps, 14 floors. Climbed them. Was nearly blown back down the stairs once I reached the opening at the top. Still, a view worth the climb. As the other photos show, St. Augustine has a lot of “the oldest” in its city limits. It is the oldest city in the USA. It has the oldest street in the USA. I think it has the oldest cathedral in the USA. It has a fort that has never been taken by a foreign power. It has Ripley’s believe it or not – the log cabin made entirely out of one log, part of a redwood tree, is depicted in the photos. It has four rooms inside. The replica of Michaelangelo’s David is hidden demurely behind some very, very tall and thick bushes, because Floridians do not celebrate the nude body, apparently.

 I got hung up on door photos for a while, then gardens, brick streets, “Spanish moss” (which is neither Spanish nor moss), churches, statues (shrimpy Ponce De Leon, 4 feet 11 inches, who didn’t allow anyone taller than him to work on his ship), and of course, the egrets that feed off our back lines and squabble just like kid sisters. As you look at the photos, check out the white wood house, which is where Martin Luther King, Jr. spent one night. He had to move every night to avoid assassination. (It worked for a number of years.) This was part of the Freedom Trail throughout the South. It is in an area of St. Augustine called “Lincolnville” or Lincolntown”, formerly the all Black part of the city.

The only restaurant I can tell you about, besides DQ (yummy mocha shake), is the Nonna Trattoria on Aviles Street, the oldest…. I ordered an Italian sausage sandwich to go for Art, and everything about it was good – the bread, the sausage, the green peppers, and the onions – he reported.

The other photos we posted show you scenes from our fifth day on the ICW. We saw a gaggle of shrimp fishers (or is it a “murder” or a “covey”?). We saw lots of color coded deck chairs. The first ones we saw were one blue and one pink. Okay, that’s easy. The blue and pink duo continued for some time. Honestly, is nothing sacred or out of bounds when it comes to sex stereotyping? Then we hit a blue chair and blue chair dock, with the chairs very close together --  hmm, a definite statement. And then we got to the docks with pink, blue, lavender and green – you figure it out. Diversity?

Art has placed a temporary ban on bridge photos. I LOVE BRIDGE PHOTOS. I particularly love the bridges that open just because we ask them to. That’s when we need a working stereo and some triumphant music as we pass under the raised cement sentinels. We went through the Overhaul Canal, which had a great bridge. Art let me keep that one in the photos. Mostly, on our fifth day, we were traveling alone, the only crazies to try to outrun the storm to St. Augustine. Except for the sailboats who tagged along behind us. I’m piloting Slow Motion for longer stretches, as the Admiral deems my piloting a work in progress. We still travel between 6 and 8 miles an hour, so bicyclists can race us and win most of the time. That speed is fine with me, checking out the pelicans, cormorants, egrets, manatees, porpoises and the occasional, odd human, like a man with an ice cream boat or a surfboarder with a paddle and a dog balancing on the board. I wish we could all go that speed through life. Slow Motion is not just a boat name for us – it’s our current way of life.