Deja Vu All Over Again

As I write this journal entry, it’s February 26th and we are anchored on the Gulf coast of Florida between Indian Key and Shop Key, slightly north of Indian Pass leading to Everglades City. For the first time in over a month, it’s storming and Mother Nature is really trying to make up for lost time. It didn’t really catch us by surprise because we listened to the weather forecast on the VHF. But, somehow, the contrast to last night’s peaceful moonlight does give it an unexpected character. And, I’m not particularly comfortable sitting among the scrubby mangroves with our 57-foot mast taunting the lightening as the tallest vertical object within a five mile radius.

John has taken the precautions he can by turning off all of our electronics and circuit breakers. We’ve heard some scary stories about people losing GPS, autopilot, and chart plotters due to lightening strikes. It wouldn’t totally cripple us because we have hand-held equipment and charts. But, it would make sailing a lot less comfortable, not to mention, for me, the psychological trauma of actually being struck by lightening.

I say “for me” because I’m suspicious of how John would react. It is all reminiscent of the second day of our Basic Keelboat instruction five years ago. We were on a little 24-foot “J” boat in the Charleston Harbor with one other student and an instructor named Justin. When we first went out, the weather was very favorable, but as we practiced our tacking maneuvers out in the harbor, an obvious storm was building to the west. We didn’t really have time to determine a course of action. The storm moved with such pace across James Island and the Ashley River that all we could do was watch. It was a dark, angry storm and so low to the ground that as it came across the Ashley River Bridge, it appeared to swallow the bridge whole.

Within a few minutes, our little sailboat was engulfed as well. The storm caught us with both the jib and the mainsail up. The rain was coming at us basically parallel to the water with such ferocity that the drops pelted us. It felt like we were in the middle of a swarm of yellow jackets as each drop stung our faces. Justin excitedly handed the tiller over to John, who looked like he had just been given the best present ever. With the boat heaving and bowing to the wind’s wishes, Justin leapt up on the deck towards the mainsail. He yelled back that he was going to “reef” the sail (shorten the surface of the sail to match the power of the wind) and John needed to keep the boat into the wind as he did so.

I asked Justin what I needed to do. He yelled back that I just needed to watch where we were going and to look out for other boats. Oh right! How was I going to do that when I couldn’t even keep my eyes open long enough to see anything. Then, a bolt of lightening sizzled near us. The following thunder was simultaneous and I just about came out of that little boat. So, I screamed up to Justin “Where is a safe place to be?” He stuck his head back inside the cockpit and threw me a seat cushion. “Here – sit on this….. and, don’t touch anything metal!” I grabbed the cushion, plopped down on it and looked for something non-metal to hold onto. Let’s see now. We have the shrouds – nope they’re metal. Oh, well, we have the stanchions – nope those are metal, too. Maybe the backstay. Huh, it’s metal. Oh, look, there are the mainsheet and jib wenches. Whoops, better not go there – of course, they’re metal. Finding absolutely nothing non-metal to hold on to, I put my hands under the cushion and sat on them.

All the while, Justin was up reefing the mainsail and shouting “Wow!” every time a strike of lightening would sear down from the boiling clouds above. John was equally excited working the tiller to keep us on a course to some indefinite place that was totally invisible to us. I fully expected both of them to yell “Yee Hah!”

This was the second time I had been on a sailboat in my life. The first was the day before at our first lesson. There I sat, hands underneath me, being drenched to the bone with one thought rumbling around in my head – “THIS is NOT the way I want to die.”

It was nothing short of a miracle that John was able to persuade me to go out the next day to finish the lessons. But, I went and became certified in Basic Keelboat sailing. That was five years ago and the journey from then to now would be so much more miraculous that, if he were Catholic, John could qualify for sainthood. He certainly has the awe and respect of all the men we’ve met through sailing. They don’t understand how he was able to get me to do this. Sometimes I have the same wonderment. And, it’s amazing to me that in such a short time my world has changed completely – where it doesn’t matter if your legs are hairy, or you haven’t had a shower in a couple of days, or that your perfume is now a day-old mixture of Cutter bug spray and sunscreen, you’re still beautiful because you know how to tie a clove-hitch knot and can wench the jib until the telltails stream evenly on both sides.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a lamentation. It’s just that this particular storm brought me back to the very beginning of our sailing experience and made me realize how different our lives are now. So, here I sit, in the salon of UP JINKS cringing at each lightening strike trying to remember the most important part of Lesson 2 – don’t touch anything metal.