Wounded

© Will McLendon / RumBum.com

For a few minutes, there was nothing I could do but crouch on the bow of the boat, and stare with utter shock at the scene before me. The mast was lying at an odd angle on top of the cabin. The sails were all crumpled on the deck and hanging into the water. The standing and running rigging, tangled all over the deck like a broken spider web. And Will, standing in the cockpit with the tiller in his hand, looking around, bewildered, at the scene in front of him. For a few minutes, we allowed ourselves the luxury of standing there wondering what the heck had happened. 

But standing around isn’t a way to solve problems. “Turn on the engine,” was the first thing out of my mouth. Will turned and pulled on the little outboard motor’s cord, sending it buzzing into action, as I made my way back to the stern, stepping over the pile of sail and mast and tangled line. This was just about the worst thing that could happen to a sailboat, short of sinking or running up on a reef in a really bad storm.  I’d had recurring nightmares about being dismasted ever since I was a kid, and, although the dreams usually involved a bigger boat and a bridge, the current situation seemed to be just about as bad as it could get. I allowed myself a few obscenities and started trying to pull the sails out of the water. 

© Will McLendon / RumBum.comWill motored us out into the deeper water in the middle of the river, as we had been drifting dangerously close to the shoals around the mash. As I worked to secure things, I noticed that one of the stainless steel stays was inches from the outboard motor’s spinning prop. If it had gotten caught in the prop, we would have had an even bigger mess. “Let’s anchor while we get everything situated,” I said, and Will shut the motor off as I went forward to throw the anchor over. 

We didn’t say much as we worked together to wrap the sail around the mast and secure it with bungee cords and whatever loose pieces of line we could find. I thought about the time I had been aboard a bigger boat that was dismasted. I was sailing on a friend’s boat in Tampa Bay during my freshman year of college, and my roommate, a quiet blonde named Laura, was at the helm when we sideswiped an unlit day beacon.  It caught the standing rigging and pulled the entire rig off the boat, and in a few seconds we were left floating under the Sunshine Skyway bridge with no mast all, wondering what had happened. My roommate ended up marrying the guy who owned the boat, so something good came out of the catastrophe, but the feeling of panic has stayed with me.

It took about an hour for Will and me to get the sails and lined situated to the point where they wouldn’t slide overboard on our way back into the marina. Just as we were pulling up the anchor, a pair of search-and-rescue volunteers sped out to us on red jet skis, towing a floating gurney.  “Is anyone hurt?” one of them asked.

“No, just the boat,” I answered.

“OK. Someone on shore saw you guys and called us.”  They waved as they sped off on their jet skis, and I smiled, thankful to know that, no matter how badly Annabel Lee was hurt, her crew was safe and sound.