This Month's Story

Catamarans are fun. Ray, a neighbor, was a natural at running these, at times, tricky craft. I don’t believe when he bought his Hobbie that he actually had any experience with sailing. But in a few days, he was putting the Hobbie through its paces in the water in front of Heron Home in ways that at times seemed unbelievable.

He would bring it in flying on one hull and run it up on the beach to a thudding spectacular stop. The sand may have been hard on the hull, but it was an impressive show of control.

I went out with him every so often and we enjoyed sailing back and forth in front of the Waveland-Bay beaches. Although I preferred my Sunfish, I occasionally took his Hobbie out by myself.

However, there was one day when all of this changed. That day there was a strong easterly wind propelled by a large storm out in the Gulf. Although choppy, the wind was strong and steady; coming in at a good angle to the beach.

It was the weekend and I reveled in the storm winds throughout the morning, making the Sunfish race through the waves with Gretal. When I returned tired, after what I was thinking to be my last run, I met Ray on the beach. He was excited and pointed out over the water.

“This is something, Paul. Let’s go try it out.”

“I don’t know Ray. I came in because it was getting a bit too rough.”

“It won’t be that bad on the Hobbie. Come on, man, let’s go do it. We’ll have it rigged in a second and we’ll be out of here.”

So we quickly put the sails up, pushed the Hobbie off the beach and in seconds, we were flying over the water on a southwest reach heading for the Louisiana marsh. It was far different from my Sunfish.

“Damn Ray, this is unbelievable.”

“Yea, man. Ain’t it somethin?”

“But how are we going to turn it around? We’ll flip.”

“Yea, I was thinking about that, too. Maybe we’ll come into the wind or lower the jib or somethin.”

I looked back. We were quite a ways out. The shoreline was getting smaller and smaller. I became a little worried.

We were hiked way out, — sticking out from one little corner at the back end of the trapeze — and moving unbielvably fast, the riggings around us howling. The seas were fairly rough, too, and the tip of the one pontoon in the rough water kept trying to dip into the waves. Ray kept making small touches to the tiller to correct for this and to keep us from flipping.

Despite his efforts, the pontoon kept catching at the waves.

“Ray, I think we should…” It caught one and dug in. We pitch poled. Ray went flying through the air in one direction and I in another.

When I came to the surface, I saw Ray a little way away. He waved to me and together we swam after the overturned craft. We had to hustle; the wind was pushing the upturned boat away from us, using the trapeze like a sail. Suddenly the Hobbie stopped with a telltale shudder; the mast was jammed in the shallow bottom.

“I’ll go down,” I said, “and try to pull it free. If you get the strap and be ready to jerk it as soon as it comes free, we’re out of here.”

I waited until he had climbed up on the hull and got the righting strap. Then I went down to the dark muddy bottom and pulled at the mast.

This was not the Sunfish; there were miles and miles of sail and the mast was huge and covered with mud. I pulled and pulled and the mast suddenly came free. Above me, Ray jerked the strap.

The Hobbie moved away from me but refused to come upright.

Then the wind pushed it back down and stuck the mast in again. I came up for air, rested a second and then went down again.

I freed the mast, Ray jerked the strap, and we replayed the previous scene. We did this two more times.

The thing to do was to take down the jib and perhaps even the main sail. But as I found out the first time I went to the bottom, the mast had bent when it pitch poled and all of the lines working the sails were fouled and covered with mud; we couldn’t free them to lower them.

Finally, we did get the mast clear of the mud in a slightly deeper area. Ray and I grabbed the lines, stood on the hull and the two of us together tried to pull the Hobbie upright. No luck. The wind was just too strong and despite our combined weight, we were too light. We keep pulling anyway. We didn’t want the mast to go into the mud again.

Suddenly, I realized somebody was crawling up on the hull and joining us. He was tall and weighed more than either Ray or I.

“You guys need help?”

“Yea man,” said Ray. “Where did you come from?”

“We saw you from our boat and came out. Figured we’d give you a hand.”

He pointed to a small open boat with a motor in the back and another person aboard.

“All right!” said Ray, “Now we got the weight. Let’s do it!”

And we did. We pulled. The sail came out of the water. The hull came back down with a slam and the sails, dripping mud and water shuddered upright. Since its sails were still set and all the lines blocked, the Hobbie jerked forward and took off. The good thing was it was headed back to the beach.

The bad thing was that I wasn’t aboard.

Ray and the newcomer had hung on, but the hard slam of the hull when it came down had knocked me loose. I watched as the Hobbie raced away from me toward the shore. Ray was shouting something.

I yelled. Ray shouted something more. It was as if I was in one of the last scenes in the “Wizard of Oz,” the Gas Balloon was taking off carrying the Wizard away from Dorothy, with her crying “Come back! Come back!” and the Wizard shouting, “I can’t. I don’t know how it works.” And he left Dorothy stranded in Oz. Only in this case, I was definitely not in Oz.

In a few seconds, they were all but gone from sight. I looked around and the open boat with the other person in it was also gone. I started swimming. The shoreline was just a strip in my vision. It was going to be a long swim. A long, long swim.

I figured that with the way the current was going and the speed I was swimming, that I would end up at the beach at Bayou Caddy. That meant that after I got ashore, I would have a long hike back to our beach. But first, I thought miserably, I have to get ashore.

I hadn’t been swimming very long when I heard an air horn.

I looked around and saw a shrimp boat headed my way. I dog paddled and waited. If I had been a dog, my tail would have wagged.

When it came up on me, I saw it had a crew of three, two men and a woman. They brought the boat into the wind and threw a line from the bow. I grabbed it and started to climb up. The boat heeled with a wave and I found myself hanging away from the hull, and as it turned with the wave again I was slammed hard against the hull. When this happened, the band of my brand new Seiko wristwatch, a birthday present from Stella, parted and the watch fell toward the water.

I had no choice. If I lived, I would have to go home and tell Stella that I had lost my watch. I couldn’t do that. I let go of the rope and fell clutching after the watch. I saw it glitter in the air for a moment then hit the water, and I followed it down to the bottom. It was mucky, it was dark.

I felt around, no watch. I felt some more, no watch. This is impossible, I thought. It had to be down here, somewhere. The thing was, it was so dark and muddy and murky, I couldn’t even tell where the bottom began. I had to find that watch! But I couldn’t and I didn’t. And it slowly dawned on me that I was going to have to figure an excuse to tell Stella and come up to the surface for air. And I had better do the last part soon.

When I popped to the surface, I was at the stern of the boat. I heard a voice yelling, “He didn’t come up! He didn’t come up!” I yelled. They came running back. One of the men reached over as the boat dipped in a swell. I grabbed his arm and he heaved, and I was thrown on the deck.

“God,” he said. “We thought we lost you.”

I looked at him and nodded.

They offered to take me back toward the Nicholson Avenue beach. I said thanks and just sat there pooped. The woman fussed around me. I guess I had given them a bad scare. She kept talking.

She told me that they had just bought the boat in Biloxi and were ferrying it to Bayou Caddy when they saw me get dumped off the Hobbie and then try to swim back by myself.

“That would have been a long swim,” said one of the men. I agreed. The boat puttered and puttered and I leaned back and relaxed. Soon the Nicholson Avenue beach came in sight.

“We’re about as close in as we can get. You’ll have to swim the rest of the way.”

“Okay, this will be fine. Thanks for the ride. I really appreciate it.”

I dove over the side and swam the short distance to the beach. When I got there, I waved to the shrimp boat going away and they waved back. I wish I had gotten their names; they were nice people.

As I walked toward our beach, I passed several other Hobbies. Most of them didn’t look to be in good shape. Evidently their owners had tried to go out a little beyond their limits, also.

Finally I reached our beach and saw Ray talking to some people beside his boat. It, too, looked in bad shape.

“Hey, man, you made it back. Come on, have a beer.”

“No thanks,” I said.

I saw Stella up by the house and went to talk to her. I had some bad news to tell her about the watch.