CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN: HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE THE LOST H BOMB

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN: HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE THE LOST H BOMB

We’re in Charleston! The Admiral is doing what he loves to do – helping another boater get safely off the dock. All up and down the Atlantic Coast there are grateful boaters, from proud owners of 100 foot yachts to equally proud owners of 25 foot fishing boats, thanking the Admiral for helping them with their lines, as they ease off, fly off, or crash away from, a marina dock. We get a lot of help from other boaters too, and from great dock staff at certain marinas. The Hollywood Marina Horror and the untrained landlubbing staff at Vero Beach are rare exceptions, thankfully. Generally, the dock hands that greet us at a marina are prompt, competent, and friendly. That has been our experience since leaving the Jekyll Harbor Marina, where the help getting tied up was great. We expected to collide with the dock, since the wind appeared to be blowing on to the dock, but what a pleasant surprise! As we approached the dock, there was little wind, and we eased on to the face dock without any drama whatsoever. We needed to have a diver check the bottom of our boat to find out if we had snagged a crab trap on the way to Jekyll. So Rusty Whiting, the husband of the dock master, Terri Collins, obliged. He did not find any crab pots under Slow Motion, and he said the bottom looked pretty clean. The shrimp and sheepshead, however, still found some algae to munch on, and we fell asleep to the rat a tat tat of shrimp chowing down and the “borking” sound of hungry sheepshead. So now we’ve had the trifecta of underwater eaters: manatees, shrimp and sheepshead.

We followed through with our ocean voyage from Jekyll to Thunderbolt (Savannah). The wave predictions were wrong, but this time they were wrong in the right direction, if you catch my drift. There were no waves, just a very light chop – almost a smooth ocean – all the way to the Wassaw Sound and the Wilmington River. As we neared the entrance to the Wassaw Sound, around noon, the two foot waves that were predicted finally kicked in and gave us a pretty good thrashing until we reached the Wilmington River with land on both sides to serve as a buffer. So we had about 20 minutes of being tossed around instead of the 7 hours it took us to cruise on the Atlantic from Jekyll Creek and St. Simon’s Sound to the Wassaw Sound. Indeed, the Atlantic was very kind to us on this leg of the journey.

For history buffs, and I’m one of them, Wassaw Sound is the location of a hydrogen bomb “lost” by a B-47 Stratojet bomber in 1958. This “lost” nuclear bomb is called the Tybee Bomb. Tybee Island is right next to the Wassaw Sound. The Tybee Bomb is still “lost” somewhere at the bottom of the relatively shallow Wassaw Sound. And we were worried about tiny little crab pots and their lines attaching themselves to Slow Motion. Imagine a diver checking out Slow Motion’s bottom and coming up to report that we picked up an H Bomb in our travels. How did our B-47 pilot “lose” this bomb? Here is the story from Wikipedia:

“On the night of February 5, 1958 a B-47 Stratojet bomber carrying a hydrogen bomb on a night training flight off the Georgia coast collided with an F-86 Saberjet fighter at 36,000 feet. The collision destroyed the fighter and severely damaged a wing of the bomber, leaving one of its engines partially dislodged. The bomber's pilot, Maj. Howard Richardson, was instructed to jettison the H-bomb before attempting a landing. Richardson dropped the bomb into the shallow waters of Wassaw Sound, near the mouth of the Savannah River, a few miles from the city of Tybee Island, where he believed the bomb would be swiftly recovered.

The Pentagon recorded the incident in a top secret memo to the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The memo has been partially declassified: "A B-47 aircraft with a nuclear weapon aboard was damaged in a collision with an F-86 aircraft near Sylvania, Georgia, on February 5, 1958. The B-47 aircraft attempted three times unsuccessfully to land with the weapon. The weapon was then jettisoned visually over water off the mouth of the Savannah River. No detonation was observed."

Soon search and rescue teams were sent to the site. Wassaw Sound was mysteriously cordoned off by the United States Air Force troops. For six weeks, the Air Force looked for the bomb without success. Underwater divers scoured the depths, troops tromped through nearby salt marshes, and a blimp hovered over the area attempting to spot a hole or crater in the beach or swamp. Then just a month later, the search was abruptly halted. The Air Force sent its forces to Florence, South Carolina, where another H-bomb had been accidentally dropped by a B-47. The bomb's 200 pounds of TNT exploded on impact, sending radioactive debris across the landscape. The explosion caused extensive property damage and several injuries on the ground. Fortunately, the nuke itself didn't detonate.

The search teams never returned to Tybee Island, and the affair of the missing H-bomb was discreetly covered up. The end of the search was noted in a partially declassified memo from the Pentagon to the AEC, in which the Air Force politely requested a new H-bomb to replace the one it had lost. "The search for this weapon was discontinued on 4-16-1958 and the weapon is considered irretrievably lost. It is requested that one weapon be made available for release to the United States Department of Defense (DOD) as a replacement."

The bomb was again searched for in 2001 and not found. A new group in 2004 headed by Derek Duke claims to have found an underwater object which it thinks is the bomb, but the US Army Corp of Engineers discounted the claim, saying the radioactive traces detected by the group were "naturally occurring".”

All righty, then. Anyone want to form a search party for the Tybee Bomb? I’m very glad to have learned this information after we successfully crossed the Sound. I wondered what that loud bump on the bottom of Slow Motion was when I took the helm momentarily as the Admiral checked on something down below. Just kidding. This area has to be safe, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s not cordoned off. There are no warning signs like “BEWARE – UNDETONATED H BOMB ON THE LOOSE.” And as recently as 1996, throwing caution to the wind, the organizers of the Atlanta Summer Olympics used Wassaw Sound for the Olympic sailing contests. Still, it’s a bit unnerving to learn that you are sharing the waters with an apparently active nuclear weapon, a hydrogen bomb, described as “by far the most destructive weapon that humankind has ever invented.” (Google search).  

We arrived at the Thunderbolt Marina, between Savannah and Tybee, at 2:30. The dock hand was waiting for us and helped us tie up at their seawall during a fairly swift current. But the Admiral had that figured out ahead of time, and he expertly maneuvered our 19 tons of fiber glass, wood and metal into the small area designated for us. The dock hand tied the lines in the order we asked, and no other boats were damaged during the docking of Slow Motion (again). During our ocean travel to Thunderbolt I did my tai chi exercises and movements, preparing for the delivery of 6 freshly baked Krispy Kreme donuts to Slow Motion at 6:30 a.m. the next day. Sure enough, these sugary waist expanders showed up on time. And they were gone in the first half hour. Thunderbolt was an eating orgy. The night of our arrival we went to Tubby’s Tank House, and the Admiral had plump, recently caught oysters (fried) and I had a sirloin steak sandwich with real garden tomatoes as garnish. Let’s hear it for the few restaurants that serve vine-ripened, flavorful tomatoes! With those meals at dinner time, yes, it was a bit overindulgent to eat a half dozen Krispy Kremes the next morning. But there’s only one Thunderbolt Marina on the way north, and we always try to play to a marina’s strengths. Thunderbolt offers these two great eating experiences, PLUS really clean, private showers and reasonably priced washers and dryers.

But the real reason we stop at Thunderbolt – you’re not going to believe this – is Cheek’s Barber Shop. This is a little house painted red white and blue like a barber’s pole, located on Route 80 on the way to Fort Pulaski. We discovered it on our first visit to Thunderbolt, and every time we return, the Admiral starts talking about getting his hair cut by his Tybee barber about a week before we’re even near Thunderbolt. The first time a fine gentleman barber cut the Admiral’s hair, and the haircut lasted a good six months. This time, the shop owner did the honors. She was as skilled as the gentleman, who had just retired. I am so happy that the Admiral has opted for haircuts by professionals. And don’t get me started on the ridiculously low cost of a man’s haircut. These cuts require great precision and, as I observe the barber’s deft use of scissors and electric razors, I am in awe. For this artistry, the going rate is still around $15, and that’s on the high end. So let me see if I have this straight, men pay much less for haircuts, much less for dry cleaning their shirts, and much less for their clothing – but women still earn much less than men? What kind of a cockamamie society do we live in? Do you think that electing a woman president will eliminate these inequities? I’d rather have the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but having a woman president in my lifetime has to be a small step in the direction toward equality. Just once, I would like to pay $15 for a really, really good haircut, or $2.50 for dry cleaning a shirt/blouse (instead of $5), or get a 100 percent cotton T shirt for under $5 – like guys do every day. That would be my platform, if I were running for President. Oh, and equal pay for comparable work.

Speaking of women, our next stop on the ICW after Thunderbolt was Lady’s Island Marina, a new destination for us. We had previously stayed at the Downtown Marina of Beaufort and I met Kayla’s brother and his wife and toured the historic downtown of Beaufort, South Carolina. This marina has the wickedest current of any marina on the ICW. I can still picture Slow Motion flying up to the dock and the dock hand running along the dock trying to catch a line from me, then trying to rein in Slow Motion before we ran out of face dock. I mean, that current is swift. That is one of the reasons we wanted to try Lady’s Island Marina, which is up a narrow channel directly off the Waterway, so that the current is not nearly as strong. Another reason is that the reviews of Lady’s Island on the Active Captain website all give this marina five stars. And perhaps the most important reason is that Lady’s Island is priced much more reasonably than any other marina in the area. This marina belongs to the Buck a Foot Club of marinas, which includes the Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake, Va. and Marineland in Florida. After you have paid up to $2 per foot for an overnight stay for your 50 foot motor vessel, a buck a foot looks really, really good. We had been on the phone with dock master Steve of Lady’s Island, and he had offered us a T Head for tying up. That sealed the deal – the slips did not look very large. When we arrived at Lady’s Island on a brilliantly sunny afternoon, Steve greeted us at the T Head and took the lines that I handed him, tying each one to the proper cleat (little details like this mean a lot when docking). Steve is everything you would ever want in a dock master – hands on, knowledgeable about boating and about the area where his marina is located, helpful, and funny. We had missed the $10 steak dinner at the Fillin Station, a nearby bar, by a day. That’s the special on Friday. We arrived Saturday, when it’s back to being just a bar. But that’s a very good reason to return. Steve has two courtesy bicycles. I used one to ride to Publix a half mile away. And when a barking dog on a sailboat nearby started invading our space around dinner time, the Admiral called Steve, and he contacted the owner, who eventually silenced the barking dog. Most dock masters would have been long gone from their offices when the Admiral made the call, but Steve was available. He is worth every one of the five stars awarded to him and Lady’s Island Marina in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Steve was sure that we would find an excuse to stay more than one night, and under any other set of circumstances, we probably would have. But we had our sights set on Charleston and wanted to arrive there before the predicted thunderstorms hit on Monday. And so, we pulled away from the Lady’s Island Marina T Head at 6:10 a.m., as the sky was just showing some pink flares, and we headed inland for the Harborage at Ashley Marina in Charleston. We have spent two months at the Harborage; our last stay was the month of November, 2013. I have biked and walked all over downtown Charleston and I feel like I still have so many places to explore here. But before I start extolling the many virtues of Charleston, again, let’s spend a few moments on the waterway between Beaufort and Charleston. This has to be the most winding, curvy stretch of waterway – just as you hit a short straightaway, you have to start preparing for a 90 degree turn to the right, or left. Or you travel a serpentine route on the South Edisto River. Much of the time you’re heading south or southeast – this makes no sense, as Charleston is north of Beaufort on the chart. But that’s the way the South Carolina inland waterway rolls – and that means facing into the glare of the sun for much of the cruising time, trying to read day markers and safely pass slower sailboats safely. As if that weren’t enough to demand one’s attention, those darned porpoises and pelicans kept rearing their lovely heads and racing under and over Slow Motion. I had to keep putting on my life jacket and running to the bow of the boat to greet the porpoises with squeals and squeaks. And just as another squadron of pelicans glided low over the waters, the Admiral urged me to get a photo – too late again. What a life! Really! What a life we have cruising with Nature’s air and water wonders! What will I do when I’m no longer getting a daily dose of dolphins? A day without dolphins is a day with less beauty, magic and grace. For now, I’m enjoying every porpoise sighting like it was the first one.