Just back from an overnite on Cape Cod, gentle people.
I decided to take a ride on a catboat. Their website looked pretty nice.
I got more adventure than I bargained for. A nice leisurely boat ride. Just one problem – it sort of sank. But, let’s start at the beginning
I show up at the dock when I was supposed to. Gosh, the boat looks smaller -- a LOT smaller -- than the internet pictures. They claim its licensed for 22 people. Well...?
There is some kind of work going on at the boat and it does not look like it had done its prior sail of the day. Hmmmm. Extension cords going into the boat. Older guy talking to younger guy, both with distinctive yellow jerseys.
Older guys leaves, and after some delay (the boat is now late in leaving) comes back with a power planer. Somewhat incognito because....
... he has removed his jersey, carries it bunched up in his hand and is wearing just a white tee-shirt. Hmmmmm. He starts planing the edge of several wide boards.
Departure time comes and goes and he is still furiously squealing and buzzing away with the planer. Chips are flying. I think I hear some blue language.
Okay, finally later we get ready to sail. Passengers appear at the dock and keep coming and coming and coming into the boat.
I feel like we are in one of those college student cram-the-phone-booth contests. 18 souls altogether. You'll see why I use the term just ahead.
We finally sit down and I see where and what those boards (remember them?) are. They are floor boards for the "below-deck" that is a few steps below and ahead where we are sitting in the rear. Hmmmmm yet again.
The sail starts out fairly okyaaaaaay ... (sorta metzza metzz, windy choppy and a lot of low clouds & haze)... until ...
-- about two miles out in Hyannis outer harbor--
-- we begin to see water appear in the aforementioned below deck.
The crew mumbles something about water in the bilge. I watch with rapt amusement and amazement as the water comes steadily, stealthily up and up and up and up. Someone mutters, " isn't this the way the Titanic started?"
The boat is clearly sinking.
We are sooooo far out I can hardly SEE land let alone know where to swim to. It is approaching seven PM and the light is already fading.
I envision paddling ineffectually away with my tendonitis riddled left arm, expensive digicam held high aloft in the right. Squeezing off a flash photo every so often as an emergency beacon. Lotsa pix of dark seawater.
Feigning nonchalance that convinces no one, the crew of two now comes about in the "vessel" -- charitably giving it the benefit of doubt. This only structurally loads the hull of the boat and just makes the leak worse. They are trying to hustle back home with the auxiliary engine AND sail. The captain tells the mate "could you give me more jib" (and hisses under his breath to him," ASAP!!!!") It is clear to me he does not want to put up more mainsail because that will load the hull further and make the leak even worse. It is a tricky balancing act and at this point I am not sure the water won't win.
Even though we now enter a "reach" position in the boat with the wind at our back, the boat is listing noticeably to starboard from its new wet and unwelcome cargo.
The mate now delves into the locker where they keep the champagne (they normally serve drinks on board - they should have started early this day) and I say to someone, oh, maybe he's trying to find a cork to plug the leak. Ha ha. I (silly me) assume they have an engine-driven bilge pump and are now happily pumping out the water at a prodigious rate. Everything will be relatively fine and dry in a moment.
Problem is, just about the time of that thought, the water gets so high inside that it floods out the engine and that quits with a shudder. They grind and grind the starter but it is dead as a doornail.
Turns out, below the bottles of bubbly in the locker is a teeny, tenny bilge pump about the size of a bicycle tire pump. He hurriedly extracts that and tries to bail out the water with it (which is now probably 1500 gallons inside the boat and has flooded below decks up over the floor boards and is coming up about an inch every five minutes). He jams the outlet hose of the pump into the centerboard drain, but every time he tries to pump fast, the hose gets loose and flails around the below deck cabin like an angry snake, hissing out streams of putrid oily bilge water. Okay, onto to the basics -- bucket.
In a stroke of genius, it now dawns on me that the reason the boards (remember them again?) had to have their edges planed is that, when boards get soaked -- they expaaaaaand. So obviously this not the first high-inside water event these boards and this boat has had recently. Very recently. Like just very possibly maybe, the prior trip?
The mate is now nervous, sweaty and soaked with bilge water. I toy with the idea of actually lending a hand, but gee, I'd really rather not sully my fresh tennis shoes and nice designer socks.
But, my moral dilemma is now miraculously solved by an unlikely source. The nasty damp wind which before was a negative now turns out to be our saviour. It pushes the boat just barely fast enough to get to an emergency dock and let us off before, presumably, the whole sodden shebang sinks
The dock is occupied with a jetski being hosed off by a young girl. When our crew calls out for her to please move it over for an emergency docking, she say she does not know how to drive it, and they say, "well then SWIM it over"..
We do not wait around to see when or if the mast of our conveyance submerges, faithfully following the lead of the hull toward Davy Jones’ locker. We do dutifully trudge back to the original dock and get the credit card charge reversed. No protest by the dock hands.
However my first act on dry land is to lean down and kiss the grubbly smelly pressure treated dock wood like it was my first born.
I am now hoping for a calm and dry weekend back at 660 feet above sea level in my beautifully landlocked home on a hilltop.
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