Oft-Told Stories, Revisited . . . . .

[Charles Brennan]

During tonight's TSBB  Monday evening chat, I discovered that Monroe had never heard of an incident that happened to me back in 2005 on a CDCR regatta.
For those of you already familiar with the story, please indulge me; those of you unfamiliar with it, here it is:

The Incident . . . . . .

I woke up in the night with the wind coming over the transom into the cabin.   SHOULD have been coming in through the forward hatch.  My brain sleepily registered this fact and tried to ignore it.  Fortunately a Calvinistic Conscience took over and roused me to wakefulness, since this could only mean: Something Was Wrong. 
The boat SHOULD have swung around on the tide change. 
Something just "felt" wrong.  So I roused myself, grabbed a flashlight and headed up on deck and peered over the side. 
What the Heck, it was time for the Late Night Ritual known to all Middle-Aged Males, anyway.

A single glance told the whole story.
I had forgotten to crank up the centerboard (I was anchored in a shallow area, to keep the Powerboat Crazies from running me over in the middle of the night) and when the tide went out, the centerboard stuck in the sand.  When the tide changed direction, the centerboard snagged on the anchor rode.   This is what my sub-conscious had awakened me for.  Had I simply rolled over and gone back to sleep, the rode might easily have chafed through and I probably would have awakened, well on my way to Bimini. 
"Easy Fix!" Thought I and I went below and cranked up on the centerboard winch.  I figured it would lift clear of the snagged rode and my boat would swing around and all would be well.
Nope. The centerboard jammed.
I tried cranking it back the other way.
Nothing.
"Swell." I thought. "Just what I need in the wee hours of the night."  I went below and got my mask, snorkel and fins and with flashlight in hand, went over the side in all of about 3 feet of water to see what was going on underneath my hull.

"Marvelous." I thought sourly, as the flashlight showed me what had happened.
A loop of line had gotten caught over the trailing edge of the centerboard and when I cranked the board up, had jammed the centerboard in the trunk by wedging the line in on either side of the board.  Popped up for another breath of air and went below to pull the board down.  Didn't budge. 
"Well, DUHHH!! Charles. You DID crank the board up, didn't you?"  I surfaced and climbed back in the boat and went below and un-cranked the winch several turns, to give myself plenty of leeway to drop the board clear of the jammed rode.  Down I went again.  Took a big breath and went under my hull and pulled on the back of the board.
Nothing.
I pulled and pried some more.
Still stuck.
Getting another breath, I wedged myself between the board and the hull, using my knees against the bottom of the hull to pull the stubborn board free.  As it started to move, I sidestepped to get clear.  The centerboard is made of cast iron and weighs 400 pounds.  As I flailed for balance with my fins, the board swung down and landed squarely on my foot, forcing my fin and my foot nearly a foot down into the muck and silt.  Pinned me there, like a bug on a pin.

WOW!! That HURT!!    
I tried to pull my foot free.
Didn't happen.
Next I tried to do a leg lift  (Yeah, Charles! Like YOU could bench 400 pounds with your legs!)    I succeeded only in giving myself a massive calf and thigh cramp.  I shifted weight to my free leg and tried to push backwards to pull the captive foot free.  This resulted only in a lower back muscle spasm. 
"Way to go, Charles."  Thought I, in disbelief.  "Not down here 30-seconds and you've already managed to trash three different muscle groups." 
Speaking of 30-seconds, some more air would be a Good Thing, right about now.
I lifted myself under the hull, reaching up. 
My wrists cleared the water; my snorkel did not.
Swell.  My snorkel was about a foot and a half, shy of clearing the water's surface.  ANY NBA pro basketball player in the same position would have probably cleared the surface, but not me.

For the first time, I felt an electric shock of fear. 
I was about to drown. 
"Well, Charles, THIS time, you've REALLY done it! The Final, Fatally STUPID Stunt of your Life"
Adrenaline-charged, I began considering my options.
I had my Leatherman in my pocket and could use the sheeps-foot blade to hack off my foot.  I remembered that hiker who cut off his own arm after getting it trapped in a boulder.  I wondered if I could get it cut free before I ran out of air, or bled out underwater, or blacked out from the pain and drowned anyway.   Even if I DID manage it, I would probably attract every bull shark and hammerhead shark from Sands Cut to Triumph Reef.
I NEEDED AIR!! 
Maybe I could saw a hole in the hull with the Leatherman saw blade and get a few more breaths and live a few precious moments more, while the hull slowly sank on top of me, crushing me to death.

Lame as that particular thought was, the idea of air in the MIDDLE of the boat, instead of from the sides where I couldn't reach, got my thought processes back into gear.  My cockpit drain empties into the centerboard trunk, right behind where the winch cable goes into the boat.  If I could reach the drain . . . . . .

I contorted myself over the trailing edge of the board as though I were about to perform an un-natural act upon it and jerked my snorkel out from under my mask strap.  (Florida snorkelers rarely bother with snorkel keepers, simply stuffing the snorkel under the mask strap.)  I shoved it up as far as I could reach until the side of my face was against the hull and I took an experimental breath of air.  It was redolent of eau de wet boat shoes.  (I had left my wet boat shoes in the cockpit since my wife refuses to allow my smelly wet boat shoes in the cabin at night.    It is simply a force of habit with me now.)  Smelly wet boat shoe air had never tasted so sweet!  I took another gulp and considered my situation: Horrid, but not Hopeless. 
Not counting that whole trapped-under-the-boat-by-yourself-in-the-dark-and-nobody-knows-where-you-are thing.

Maybe I could pivot the board off my foot by turning the hull.
I reached down and grabbed the leading edge of the board where it was above the bottom with my hand and braced the hull with my back and heaved.
The boat turned slightly.
My!! THAT certainly was EXCRUCIATING!!!
And it didn't work, either.   The boat settled right back where it was.  It was like having a 400-pound Giant stomp on your foot, then grind out a cigarette on it.
I don't recommend it.
I noticed that the leading edge of the centerboard was rough.  I had gone aground several times since I first applied coal tar epoxy to it and the epoxy had worn off and the cast iron had rusted.  It was very rough.  I made a mental note to tell Charlie Jones the next time I saw him (in a sort of kidding way) that coal tar epoxy is pretty good, but it's not perfect.  By then, I needed another breath and had to contort myself back over to the snorkel that I had left jammed in the cockpit drain.  I pulled myself up along the centerboard pennant cable.  (Note to self: Remove centerboard pennant "meat hooks"!)        As I took another breath, I thought that the next time I saw Charlie J. might NOT be in this Life, but the next Life, instead.  Which was starting to look like the next few minutes for me and maybe the next several decades for him.  I decided I'd use the extra time I had on him, to figure out a way to sneak out of Hell, so I could tell him in person.

What to do, what to do? 
I could sit tight, breathing out of the snorkel, waiting 4 or 5 hours for the tide to come up again and float the hull and centerboard free. In 83º water, in 4 or 5 hours, my 98º body might be too hypo-thermic to support consciousness. 
Swell. 
I drown, the tide comes in, my body floats away, a few days later they find it and write it off as another drunken sailor in the CDCR lost it, fell over the side and drowned or something.  They wouldn't even know just how STUPIDLY I had perished.  That was vaguely comforting, in a perverse sort of way.

I crouched there quietly in the watery darkness, feeling as alone as I have ever felt in my life, waiting for the distant beat of Angel's Wings.
Then it hit me: Angel Wings.
That's the name of a mollusk on the west coast of Florida.  Its shell is shaped like the wings of an angel and is delicate porcelain white and very fragile.  They live burrowed in the sand.  Trying to catch one is a Cruelty, as they will dig down to escape whatever is chasing them.   Many times in a panic, they will break their own shell while burrowing down to get free and then they die.  Maybe I could dig under my foot?  The board would push down on it again, but EVENTUALLY, either the cable would stop it or the angle in the dirt would slow its pressure on my foot enough for me to get free.

I took several deep breaths, then crouched over and began digging with both hands for all I was worth.  I threw up so much silt my flashlight was useless and I had to go by feel, hand over hand up that treacherous centerboard pennant to locate my snorkel by touch.  I bent over again and dug like a man possessed.  I was making such a mess I could see nothing, whatsoever.  This is tough on the environment and is the kind of thing that can get you arrested in a National Marine Park.  They have hefty fines and even prison terms.   Actually, I welcomed getting arrested and thrown into prison, right about now. 
I hear those prisons are chock full of breathable air. 
My biggest fear now, was that the silt would stop at coral rock and I would still be pinned.  Eventually, I felt a lessening of pain and took it as a sign that I was either losing it entirely, or was making progress.  Finally, with a jerk that split the top of the fin open, my foot pulled free and I slammed myself up to the surface.  Shaking, more from fear than exertion, I clung to the lower unit of the outboard to keep from being swept by the tide out into the Ocean.   
The way my Luck was going tonight, that was a distinct possibility.

Next problem: HOW to get back in the boat?
I had neglected to deploy my ladder before going over the side (Why? It was shallow water!) And NOW I was unable to put any real weight on my foot.  I couldn't tell if it was broken or sprained or what, I just knew that trailing it limply behind me, was about as much discomfort as I could bear, just now.   Finally, I figured a way to boost myself on the left foot on the anti-ventilation plate and pivot myself around as I boosted and end up sitting on the transom until I could swing my leg around and crawl aboard and lay in the cockpit.  It hurt too badly to try and climb inside the cabin, but that is where the first aid kit was with its aspirin and ibuprofen.  Just as well, because in my current state, I would probably have taken them all.  After a few minutes, I worked out crawling across the cabin roof to the forward hatch and leaning in and down to retrieve the first aid kit, I keep on a forward bulkhead. I took three of the 200mg tablets and decided I would wait at least an hour before having any more.

I lay there in the cockpit, looking up at the stars for a very long, long time.
Sleep was a long time coming.

Charles Brennan

[Roland of Macatawa]

Wow! That's quite an adventure, Charles

[Noemi - Ensenada 20]

That one makes me hold my breath every time.