CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN: KEEP IT DOWN!

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN: KEEP IT DOWN!

Seriously, how do you get to be a meteorologist? By making a lot of mistakes on your spelling tests in grammar school? By reading tarot cards? By not being smart enough to read the news on TV? This question came up again, as the Admiral and I struggled to keep our stomach contents in place during a wild and woolly ride on the Atlantic today. The Admiral kept reminding me that all the weather reports – from NOAA and other so-called reliable sources – promised, PROMISED, waves of 0 to 2 feet today between Hollywood and Palm Beach, Florida. If I had seen a wave of 2 feet during our five hours of tumult, I would have jumped overboard and kissed it. I was ready to jump overboard anyway, figuring that it would be no rougher for me in my life jacket in the ocean as it was in my life jacket on Slow Motion’s flying bridge. When you reach the point of wanting to throw yourself overboard, consider that you might be a tad seasick. With grim determination (is there any other kind?), however, I kept my mouth shut (good thing) and refused to give in to the 4 foot waves that were pounding Slo Mo from the side. The Admiral asked me how I was doing, as if the green coloring on my face, neck, arms and legs were not a dead giveaway. Of course, as he later told me this evening, he was close to retching much of the way too. That’s why he uncharacteristically stood most of the time, trying to get into the rhythm of the waves. You couldn’t exactly call it a rhythm – more like a relentless slamming against the sides, bow and stern of Slo Mo, shaking our fillings and just about every item not nailed down in the salon and our stateroom. There was no splattering of hot sauce all over the floor and carpets this time, but every item (about 20) on my bathroom sink went flying to the floor, and a plastic glass from the galley counter hit the floor so hard it broke. My bike nearly flew off the back of the boat. And God knows what other things were making the crashing sounds that came with each new round of white caps. Oh no, they weren’t just white “caps”, they were full blown white “gowns”, rising up from the ocean to smack us around. If I ever find any of the meteorologists who told us the ocean would offer 0 to 2 feet waves today, all day, I can think of only one appropriate greeting. Yep. I’m saving my bile up for him/her.

Yesterday, as we set out from Key Largo, the ocean was beautiful, much calmer than predicted (by another redundant “inaccurate meteorologist”). But the farther we went north toward our destination at the Hollywood Marina, the more roiled the seas became, and we had a good (read: bad) hour of almost cookie tossing toward noon. The Admiral assured me that this often happens the first day back on the ocean, and he further assured me that, while I might feel a little seasick this first day, I would have my sea legs the second day and not have to worry about throwing up. Okay, the Admiral has a lot of trust in weather reports, and when he made this reassuring comment, he actually believed that the second day – the one I am writing about – would provide calmer waters. With his assurance, I started out our journey from Hollywood pretty confident that I had “weathered” the worst of the waves. I had the bounce back in my step, and as I trotted up and down the steps between the flying bridge and the sundeck, I felt good. The Admiral was right again, I thought. Today I can eat a Little Debbie and not feel like upchucking. Still, there was this tiny little lingering concern, based on how sick I felt the day before, which led me to stop at a small cup of yogurt. Why tempt fate? Besides, I couldn’t really look at a Little Debbie this morning without getting that queasy feeling back. No offense, makers of Little Debbie, but your cinnamon breakfast buns are just not made to withstand heavy seas with waves over three feet.

Fortunately, as the seas slammed into Slow Motion from the side, we had a distraction from our unease: a water spout. This is a tornado on water. We looked up into the clouds and saw it forming, a picture perfect funnel of swirling wind and water. Then we heard a trembling voice come on the radio, Channel 16, calling the Coast Guard to report seeing the water spout. That reporter was about two miles south of it and had a clear view of its formation. We were directly opposite it. It was to our east, but these natural phenomena move very fast and this spout could have soared across the water toward us in seconds. We watched the spout actually touch down on the water, and then held our breaths. Then, unceremoniously the spout rose back up into the cloud from whence it emanated. Even as the woman was reporting the spout, while still on the radio, she also reported that it had disappeared. Once before I had seen a water spout dance across the water right in front of me on the Cooper River, as I was being carried by a big ferry from the mainland in Charleston to Fort Sumter. It is a sight to behold, as long as it’s not coming straight at you. So this was my second spout experience, a little farther away, thank God, but still so unpredictable that the Admiral and I did not take our eyes off it until it withdrew back into the cloud.  

As we approached the Lake Worth Inlet, keeping our mouths closed and standing and rolling with the punchy waves, another major distraction grabbed our attention. A distress call came over Channel 16 from the Island Breeze 2, a “casino boat”, that a passenger had had a seizure and passed out, then regained consciousness, only to pass out a second time after a second seizure. We focused completely on the drama that unfolded on our trusty radio, as the Coast Guard was contacted and immediately asked such trenchant medical questions as “About how old is the victim, er, patient?” I am not kidding. We followed the Island Breeze through the Inlet, as a Coast Guard boat provided an escort on the port side and a police boat took a protective position on the starboard side of this floating casino. By the time Island Breeze reached dock and the waiting ambulance, their captain reported that the patient was alert and had reported having seizures on a fairly regular basis, several times a month. And when we got through the Inlet ourselves – where the current was super strong and a sailboat directly in front of us kept tacking back and forth like a yoyo – we finally reached calm waters. By the time we entered the marina at Old Port Cove in North Palm Beach, my skin tone had lost its greenish tinge. And the Admiral was able to sit down to bring Slow Motion to the T Head, where we are spending the night.

 About the T Head, this is the most desirable place for Slow Motion, because as we learned again last night at the Hollywood Marina, there is no such thing as a “wide slip” and there is always something wrong with the pilings on both sides of the slip. The Admiral is extremely adept at maneuvering Slow Motion, but you can be the best boat captain in the world and still have some anxious moments backing into an unknown slip in the middle of a torrential downpour with no marina dock hands in sight to help out. Did I mention crazy, swirling winds and a strong current as well? And let me not forget to describe the sea wall which we were backing into – where the water was at low tide, and Slow Motion’s stern could have slipped right under the wall, pinning us to it and/or ruining the entire cockpit on the stern. My role in getting us safely into the slip, without destroying our boat’s back side, was simply to throw a line around the middle piling on the starboard side of the ship. It sounds simple, but when you fling the line backward to get momentum to throw it five feet over the back of the piling, which is sticking up high in the water, way above your head, the first thing the line does is hit the side of the boat, then it falls down in front of you. Meanwhile, the Admiral was not enjoying this scene of ineptitude, so I kept flinging the line toward the piling, and it caught on top. Then Slow Motion miraculously swung closer to the piling and I was able to reach up and pull the line down around the back of it. Oh my God – I felt like I had climbed Everest. I think this is the first piling I have been able to wrangle a line around. And none too soon, as Slow Motion’s stern was heading toward the barnacled sea wall.

Today at Old Port Cove, somehow the Admiral arranged to get the last T Head in the marina. I wasn’t there when he talked to the dock master’s office on the phone, but he said he had told the woman that we had been promised a T Head. He thought this was the case. It wasn’t. But he believed this, and when the woman said there was no T Head available and we would have to “slip” into a slip, the Admiral made an unpleasant noise, he says, and he hung up. Unbelievably, when he called back as we entered the marina, the same woman told him that she was wrong and there was in fact one T Head available for us. I had just finished preparing the lines for docking and returned to the flying bridge to find the Admiral actually smiling, as he reported that we were docking on a T Head. Lordy, Lordy. This was the best news all day. Suddenly my stomach went back into the middle of my body, and I looked forward to docking. But after four months of lounging around on Slow Motion in Key Largo, from late December until 2 days ago, I had forgotten certain basic rules about docking. First, if the Admiral says we’re going to dock on the portside, and I get all the lines and fenders ready for a portside docking, then almost invariably at the last second, the Admiral with change his mind and decide to dock on the starboard side. The second rule I forgot is that when this last minute change of plans comes, I have to put the fenders down on the starboard side. The third rule I forgot is that I have to be forceful with the dock hand and tell him to take the spring line from my hand, not to start with the bow line and let the stern fly out away from the dock. The fourth rule I ignored in my haste is never to put a line over the railing. All lines go under the railing to be secured; otherwise, the somewhat fragile railing bears the weight of the boat, not the body of the boat itself.

So it’s back to remedial deck hand classes. What happened to my two years of experience at docking? This is NOT like riding a bicycle. You have to practice, practice, practice and have your “mind in the game” and be “in tune with the boat” – you guessed it, some of the Admiral’s frequently used words of inspiration. I can see making one rookie mistake after the long layoff, but three mistakes all in one docking? That’s just sad. However, as I write about this shameful performance, I am not nearly as disappointed as I was at the time. I know there is room for improvement – hah! And besides that, the Admiral made the best Philly cheese steak sandwiches in the world for dinner. Everything looks better once you’ve eaten thinly sliced beef, provolone, red and green peppers, onion powder and ketchup on a fresh, squishy roll. Fortified with this delicious blast from the past, and determined to do better, I know I will acquit myself at the Vero Beach Marina tomorrow, unless of course, they tell us we have to shoe horn ourselves into one of their puny slips. One big change tomorrow –we’re not going out on the ocean – at all. No matter how stiff the wind, how strong the current, the Intracoastal Waterway will not offer a serious challenge to our stomach muscles. And that calls for a resounding “Hooray!!!”