Crashing into rocks, under the boat, and fisherman are saviors

Thunderstorms were in the forecast again on Friday July 19, the last day I was 26. I woke up later than I intended to after Rhelia and I saw the late night opening showing of “The Conjuring” So I set off forSt. Joseph almost as soon as I rolled out of bed. It was sunny, but windy, and I was glad to have the day off work from Red Lobster. I kissed Rhelia goodbye and told her I would see her later on that night.

Alex wasn’t awake when I got there, so I took Thor and Simba out for a walk. The puppy loves to play and I enjoyed running with him. He will be a good exercise buddy when he’s older. Alex came downstairs and we set out to the boat launch almost directly from when I came back with the dogs.

Alex was concerned about how windy it was and asked if we really intended to sail that day. “Of course we are,” is all I said back.

Rigging the boat went much easier this time than the first trip to the boat launch. We backed in quick and I got the mast on pretty much by myself in one attempt. The sails went up easily and I wondered why the previous owner installed a wench to raise the sails. It went up pretty easy by itself. Alex took a picture of me right before we set off and I felt very confident about getting out to the lake.

We pushed off without raising the mainsail but just by using the trolling motor and the inertia from my push off to get to the middle of the river. It crossed my mind how crazy it was that we were really under way. Once we turned, the jib sail started fluttering. The wind was coming out of the northwest so I had Alex tighten the starboard cleat. The wind caught us and I turned off the motor. We were sailing again at high speed. Alex said he was a little scared however as we passed a sandbar.    

It felt great to be underway again. I’m going to try to be poetic here so humor me if this is corny. The thing I like most about sailing is that your working with the wind and water like a dance partner instead of slamming against it when your in a power boat.  

I wanted to raise the mainsail, but Alex thought we were going fast enough. On the Benton Harbor side there were rocks on along the shoreline. We were traveling fast enough and if the wind continued out of the east I figured we could make it past the bridge no problem.

We started talking confidently about being on Lake Michigan in no time as we glided past the public access at Benton Harbor and past Brian’s Marina, where my parents had kept the first boat I had ever know, a red Rinker, when I was a child.

So maybe the wind changed or maybe I got careless. But the wind bent down on Pilar pushing us against the rocks. Most likely I didn’t pay close enough attention to the tiller. But the wind didn’t help.

But the next thing I knew we were gliding towards the rocks.

About ten fee t away the rocks Alex said he got really scared . He didn’t scream but when I told him to loosen the job line it didn’t help us. I jumped, doing my best Spiderman impression to the front of Pilar and pushed my (thankfully) shoed foot on the rocks as a grinding came over the boat. The sound stopped when Alex hit the centerboard and it rose safely into position.

We struggled onto the rocks as I kept my hands on the mast. A pontoon boat drove by and acted oblivious to our struggles as the job sheet flapped in the wind. After catching my breath for a moment Alex said, and I had agree that the best idea was too push off and use the trolling motor to get away from shore.

Soaking wet I pushed as hard away from the Benton Harbor side. Alex kicked on the motor and we set off towards the lake again. I asked him to raise and tighten the mainsail as I pushed hard away and…

We did a 180 and went straight towards the rocks again. I again was lucky to jump in the front of the boat. Alex said that he thought the motor was dying and that we should head back in. The wind beat down on us harder and I cut my ankle on a rock trying to keep us away.

We pushed off again but couldn’t get away. We need to use the jib to sail back upstream. The motor just couldn’t cut it.

So I pushed off as hard as I could and swam in the river for several yards before I pulled myself on and scrabbled to take a hold of the job sheet. I raised it as Alex steered and I shouted directions for which way to turn.

“Fall back, head towards the port side,” I yelled.

“What the hell does that mean? Left or right,” he said back. “It was fun when we were doing well but now I have no idea what you mean and it makes me upset.”

I tried my best not to get upset. “It does too clarify because we might get turned around but left right now, left!.”

We gained speed again and it looked like we were going to make it back to the boat dock. But we were also heading somewhat close to the rocks.  Alex responded by letting up. I was holding the line to raise the sail in my right hand and was trying to trim the sail with my left. He turned directly into the wind and the sail died.  The current caught us, turning us sideways and running Pilar right towards boats docked on the Benton Harbor side.

Again I scrambled up on the front of the boat and jumped off in order to catch the boat from ramming into a fishing boat.

I stood there for second, unsure of what to do. I stood on the back of the fishing boat until the owner walked up with a tackle box. Before he had a chance to ask what I was doing I shouted to him a hello.

“We ran into a bit a trouble, the current is too strong.”

He seemed a little slow to catch on what type a state we were in. We hoped to get a tow back up river but he said he had trouble getting off the dock himself alone, let alone worry about trying to worry about towing a boat that was adrift in the current.

I said I understood and we would try to get back up ourselves. I was feeling pretty embarrassed for landing on his boat anyway. It was beginning to feel hopeless so I did the only thing I could think of, I took off my shirt and jumped in the river.

The plan in my mind was to swim to the next dock and pull the boat there with the anchor line that we were using to tie up the boat.  

I made it the next dock by swimming a freestyle but the current was pushing the Pilar right at me and a new boat docked. It looked like it would crush me against the propellers if I didn’t get out of the way.

By this time I had swallowed a large mouthful of river water and struggled for a second before I did the only thing possible. Calmly with the boat coming at me I took a deep breath and slid under Pilar, pausing underwater in the St. Joseph River for a second at the centerboard. Alex said later that this was the first time he really felt terrified because he couldn’t see me thought I’d drowned.

I didn’t drown of course, but popped up on the other side. My muscles ached but other than that I was fine. Also important, Pilar was fine. It didn’t crash on the other boat like I had thought it would but bumped against part of the dock softly. I swam around the side and rested on Pilar and the prop of a dingy hanging on the back of the much larger boat.

Alex and I argued (calmly, we still hadn’t got THAT angry at each other) what to do. I thought we should raise the mainsail because we couldn’t use the motor going upstream. He said that was a horrible idea. I was still in the water, maybe we could swim it the next two docks. I didn’t think it would work.

Thank god for the fisherman.  

Luckily, my actions in the water caused him to decide to help. Alex threw him a line and in a form of what seemed like divine intervention we were on the way back to the boat launch. I was still in the water, clinging to the hull of my boat as were pulled. Alex was holding onto the boat the line connecting us to the fishing boat.

I stayed in the water for a while. The adrenalin had left my veins and I thought for a moment about how when I was younger my parents would tow me behind out motor boat on a giant inflatable alligator. It was the most fun I could imagine life could be at six years old. After about two minutes I pulled myself back up into Pilar.

I grinned at Alex and he gave me a half-hearted smile back as I helped steer us behind the fishing boat. It was the look that said he was glad we were getting out of this alive.

The fishing boat was pulling us to the wrong boat launch, if we went there I would have to walk up river and jump in before swimming across in the fat current. Alex was able to get their attention and yelled over the engines of the fishing boat were to go. Thankfully we towed to the right launch.

They let go of the line a couple about 30 yards away from the dock figuring we had enough momentum to make it. I also kicked on the trolling motor to make sure we got there.

We glided into the dock and I jumped off to secure our lines to the dock. Alex said it was just scare him one more time, because he almost fell when the boat wobbled one last time. With the boat tied up we both had a deep sense of relief. We sat on the dock and drained bottle water bottles until I could catch my breath enough to take down the mast. We were laughing.

A storm was supposed to be rolling in later that day, but the skies were still bright blue. I DE rigged the boat without a problem and rather quickly before we towed it back up to my mom’s house. We moved the sails, motor and life jacket into the garage and I took an out my mom’s bottle of vodka wishing it was rum or whiskey instead.

Since it was still nice out Alex drove us down to the Silver Beach. I talked to dad on the phone before we walked down the bluff to the beach. It was a red flag, so we had to walk out Second Street Beach to swim and play catch with the football in the water. Afterwards we went to dinner with Mom and I had a blacked walleye at the Ideal Place in Benton Harbor and a glass of Pino Noir.

That was my last day of being 26.

Getting the boat, St. Joseph Wine and a thunderstorm

7/17/13 WINE, HEMINGWAY BOOKS, AND SAILING. A FATHERS GIFT, BACKGROUND 

AND POST 1 OF A PERSONAL WRITING FOR THE PUBLIC

Well I’ve been trying for a couple of days to get things down but I haven’t had much luck. I blame most of it on work and on account of the heat. I worked a really hard double yesterday at Red Lobster and I’m sore.

I thought I wrote this down already and then remembered I did some of it in a notebook last night, ha well that’s rum after a double for you. Ok, well here is what I did the other day sailing.

Pilar Log 7/15/13

Monday was the first day to launch boat and I was nervous about trying to learn which lines are which and how to fit the sail. It’s been approximately seven years since I’ve sailed, and nine years since I sailed with any regularity.

My father got me the boat for graduation last week from a farmer in the middle of nowhere by Port Huron. The man said he never sailed it, and the only reason he bought it was to help a friend of the family to help out after a divorce. It looks sharp, but I hope it floats as well as it looks.

The reasoning behind having the boat is hard to understand if you don’t know my dad. The quick rundown is that we used to have money, a boat and go to Jimmy Buffett concerts when I was a kid. I loved it and read all I could about sailboats. I took sailing lessons for several years on 420 racers and when I entered High School joined the sailing team.

We lost a lot of money and he went to jail for bank robbery. When he was in prison, my birthday cards covers where hand drawn pictures of sailboats, islands and other Jimmy Buffett type stuff my dad paid a friend to draw for me. They were beautifully drawn.  

I hate to be an armchair psychologist , but now that my dad is happy, well employed and doing better in many ways than he has done in years, he wanted to give me a piece back of what I loved at a kid.

But back to sailing.

The boats back then were small so if it was a heavy wind I would race well by hiking far out over the side of the boat and using my weight to my advantage. If the wind was dead, the boat sat down in water most of the time and could barely move. Small boat sailing and being over 250 pounds has its ups and downs.

I’ve decided to name boat Pilar after Ernest Hemmingway’s boat; she’s a CL 16, a Canadian sailboat made in 1991 that is similar to the 420’s I used to sail. She should be steadier in big water and be able to fit 5 people on board, but it will be more difficult to rig, and the main concern I had is how to figure out how to fit the heavier mast without breaking the boat.

(A side note if you have not read Paul Hendrickson’s“Biography” of Hemmingway and his life centered on his boat Pilar, go buy it. Although the chapters toward the end start to center around his youngest son’s transgender lifestyle a little too much, it’s a very rewarding read.)

The forecast for Monday was sunny with no wind all day, according to my girlfriend Rhelia’s cell phone on the way to St. Joseph. I wasn’t concerned about this though, less wind means less chance of making a mistake.

We got into town early, and in no rush due to the forecast and the whole day off, went downtown to pick up a couple bottles of wine for my mother’s birthday. We tasted five wines from White Pine Winery, which just set up in downtown St. Joseph, and bought her a Pino Grigo. My favorite was a Shiraz, but we also got her a portable wine cooler, so the white wine made more sense as a gift. I highly recommend anyone in downtown St. Joseph to check the place out.

When we got back my brother was in a bad mood, he had just broken up with his girlfriend. He agreed to help but I knew that the rigging could cause more anger if I let myself get frustrated. I promised myself that I wouldn’t get upset no matter what happened.    

I dropped Rhelia off at Lions Park Beach with the idea of sailing up to her after we got everything going smoothly on during the trip down the channel. My brother wasn’t the most optimistic person while we loaded up the car pulling the boat with life jackets and the tiller.

“This is going to end in disaster,” is the exact words he said.

No one was at the public boat launch when we got there around 2:30 in the afternoon. Shortly after we pulled up though, a guy I vaguely remembered from the bars in St. Joe (being a bouncer from 17 to 22 years old means a lot of this when I’m in town.) We tried to back the sailboat carefully into the water as the guy pretty much dumped his small fishing boat in and tied her up.

“You going out,” the guy asked in a cheerful voice. We replied that we were. He seemed the happiest person I had met in a while.

We got the boat and the trailer in the water, and I was happy to see that both were floating. The boat was in the water! I climbed on board with it still tied to the trailer and was happy to find that it was steady to walk around in.

The first thing to do was also the hardest. I had to put the mast up and secure it before we could hope to do anything else. This was not easy as the mast was 20 feet long and weighed over 100 pounds. I decided, strong that I am that I could pick it up myself and put it in the boat easily.

Not really the case.

With Alex’s help I was finally able to set the mast into its slot, what I must remember next time is two things. 

First I need to disconnect the boat from the car and do this on land. The second is that a pulley makes on the mainsail means I need to rotate the mast so it will fit in correctly.

After we finally got it in there after a lot of effort it was easy to screw in the blot that held it in there. I than went to work on connecting the boom while Alex helped the fisherman catch minnows for bait.

It took a while for me to get things right. In the heat I took my shirt off and had sweat dripping in my eyes. I had just fitted the mainsail when bad news hit.

In the form of thunder and lightning.

It looked like thee storm would pass over, but Alex wasn’t so sure. I stood for in the boat and debating what to do before we saw a far off lighting strike. Rhelia called from the beach and left a message saying I 

shouldn’t take it out, and Alex echoed the statement.

Before I took down the mast however I paused for a moment as Alex took a picture of me in the boat with the sail up so we could send it to Dad.

I didn’t get upset but kept a positive attitude, which I was proud of. We packed the boat back up and other than hitting my head getting into the car, the trip back to my mom’s place went smooth. I went and picked up Rhelia in town and got a cup of coffee.

Back at home I took a large shot of vodka to quell my disappointment  and Alex, Rhelia and I went and saw Pacific Rim, which was a great monster movie and one of the best films I’ve seen since The Dark Knight Rises. We had a birthday dinner with my mom and gave her the Wine backpack and Pino Grigo before we headed back to Kalamazoo at midnight with the dog fast asleep on Rhelia's lap as we hit I-94.

So that was the first time Pilar was in the water. Hopefully I will be able to try again to take her out soon.