Dear readers,
I started posting blogs on my josephhowellphotography.com website over 15 years ago, around 2010, and according to the stats on the photography website, the number of blogs posted so far totals over 700. Glancing over the posts I would estimate that about 20 percent have been about travel (including the fabulous 2014 trip with Embry around the world without flying), about 30 percent about politics, about 20 percent about spirituality and the meaning of life, about 20 percent about my life story including several posts which I called “Gullible’s Travels,” documenting that, yes, I am an idiot, and the final 10 percent about miscellaneous topics of whatever I was interested in at the time. I added Substack about a year ago as an alternative venue, but the same stories appear there as are posted on the photo website.
Good heavens! Why on Earth have I been doing this for so long? Am I nuts? Don’t I have a better way to spend my time?
The sad fact is that for me writing is a form of recreation and has become an obsession. I confess that I love the process though it is not always easy, and I admit not always good writing. But, hey, it is what it is, and I intend to keep at it as long as I can though at age of 84, I am surely running my last lap.
The post today is part of a series I am calling “The Sailing Life.”
The Sailing Life 1: “505”
Those who know me know that sailing for me has been a bit of an obsession. Embry and I have owned six sailboats over a 50-year period starting in 1972 and ending sadly a few years ago when we sold our last boat, Second Wind. The first boat was a Sunfish, which we sailed on Lake Norman near Davidson NC where her parents had a lake house when we were both graduate students in Chapel Hill. We never gave that boat a name other than “the green Sunfish” but loved the boat, which we sailed on summer weekends and vacations for decades. That was followed by a 505, which I purchased with a coworker in 1974, also never named, and which is the first subject of the Sailing Life series. Then came Mother Courage,a Wayfarer, a 16-foot daysailer, which we owned from 1975-1990, followed by Amazing Grace, an Alberg 30, which I bought in 1990 from a good friend and sold in the early 2000s to be replaced by a genuine racing boat, a J-30, which I named Carolina Blue because of its bright, sky blue hull and raced her seriously for over a decade, and, last but not least, Second Wind, a Jeanneau 39, formerly part of the Sunsail charter fleet, which I paid two Brits to sail up to the Chesapeake from the British Virgin Islands in 2016. We sold that boat in 2020.
The 505
In the early 1970s when I and another friend purchased the boat from a mutual friend for around $800, the 505 was considered the world’s fastest racing dinghy. Someone told me it lost out to the Flying Dutchman from being accepted for the 1968 Summer Olympics only because it was considered too difficult to keep from capsizing. The boat was sleek, light and elegant, about 18 feet long, and had a trapeze to allow the crew to hang out over the water to keep the boat from capsizing, but my friend, the seller, had warned us that this particular 505 with no name, needed some work. That was an understatement. The boat was a dismal wreck. But what do you expect for $800? And besides I was so anxious to begin serious sailing that my friend, Scott, and I decided to take our chances and bought the boat.
The boats demise happened about three months later on the Fourth of July. The Fourth of July 1974 was a beautiful day, low humidity, sunny skies, temperatures in the mid 80s and a perfect 10-15 knot breeze from the south. Embry and I and Naomi, a good friend, had a fabulous time hanging out over the side of the boat using the trapeze, speeding past other boats and experiencing the euphoria that happens when a sailboat planes and doubles its speed. We assumed all the other sailboats that we passed on that day were looking at us with awe and envy—and there were lot of other sailboats that beautiful July Fourth on the Potomac. And for the first time sailing the 505 there had been no problems. That is, not until we brought her back in so that we could meet other friends and see the fireworks. The sail got stuck coming down causing us to end up about 50 feet downwind from where we needed to be to get into the marina. Hey, no problem. Naomi scampered up a piling, walked the several hundred yards to the marina and thirty minutes later returned riding aboard a huge 2-story houseboat with rock music blaring over a loudspeaker and filled with middle aged couples with big bellies and skinny legs, chugging beer and throwing the empty cans over the side.
“This was the best I could do!” Naomi shouted over the roar of the motor.
All eyes of the 20 or 30 people were on us. The captain threw us a line and then returned to the wheel. “Let me know when you got it secured!” he hollered.
I nodded that everything was secure and heard him yell over the loud motor. “Let her rip, Charlie!”
The boat’s motor roared. The houseboat lurched forward as if it were trying to pull water-skiers out of the water. The 505 was yanked out of the water for a moment, then turned sideways and capsized with contents of our cooler and everything in the boat going into the drink. Embry and I had on life jackets so we were not fearful of drowning but were dumbfounded that the boat owner would use full throttle to tow us.
“Was that too fast for you?” The captain shouted. “I ain’t never rescued no boat before.”
“Well, yes.” I shouted back. “Very, very slow next time.”
I can’t remember how many next times he tried, but each one ended the way the first attempt did and by this time our cooler and everything we had in it and on the boat had drifted away.
Then the captain yelled, “Is that woman pregnant? Your friend says she is five or six months pregnant and the Potomac is filthy! If she is pregnant, she is in danger!”
“Yes!” I shouted back. “She is pregnant!”
“Save the pregnant woman! Save the pregnant woman!” he yelled to his crew as Embry, who was about five months pregnant, started to swim to the enormous boat. The partying continued with people throwing beer cans off the boat, loud rock music blaring, and staring at us with amusement and disbelief. Someone on board offered Embry a hand. She boarded and the boat charged off leaving me alone in the water as motorboats whizzed by without offering any help.
This all happened between 4:00 and 4:30 PM. Over four hours later at 8:45 PM, about a half hour before the fireworks were to begin, I was still in the water with the mostly submerged 505, having drifted several miles up stream due to a rising tide and strong tailwinds. Attempts to rescue me and the 505 had been made by the DC Marine Police, The Maryland Marine Police, The Virginia Marine Police and the U.S. Coast Guard. All had failed. As soon as they started to tow the boat forward, it would capsize due to the hull being almost completely submerged. By this time 505 was directly in front of the Blue Plains Sewage Treatment Plant, noted for being out of date, inadequate, and the major polluter of the Potomac River.
At 8:45 just as it was starting to get dark, the DC Marine police suddenly roared in (for the second or third time) and paused in front of me. “You still here, owner? The fireworks are about to start. We are gonna take you in and your goddamn piece of shit boat and drag you in. They ordered me to unattach the sails, boom and mast so that they would fall to the bottom, freeing the boat from capsizing because with the mast up, the boat could not stay upright. Two or three times when the sail got caught in the prop of the outboard motor, the two furious cops yelled obscenities at me. Finally, totally exhausted I got everything unclipped and watched as the sails, mast and boom ingloriously sank below the surface. I muttered something like “good riddance.” I had suffered enough. Maybe sailing was not going to be my thing after all.
“Okay, owner, you can hop aboard.”
As I climbed up the boarding later, one asked, “Owner, you drink?” and when I nodded yes, he muttered “thank God,” and offered me the last can of what had started off as close to a full case of beer with the empty can holders scattered about. I was amazed that they were able to do as well as they did, since I concluded that they must have consumed at least a couple of six packs each. We all downed our beer, poked the empty cans with ice picks and threw them overboard. The captain’s assistant sheepishly smiled and said, “Hey owner, happy Fourth of July!”
The sun had set and it was starting to get dark but at last I could relax, thankful that finally, finally after four hours of torture and exhaustion I had been rescued. I did not realize that the ultimate humiliation was yet to come.
The fireworks were about to start, and the police pulled the partially submerged boat into the marina where hundreds of people–mainly families with children running helter-skelter–were anxiously waiting for them to begin, bored and looking for amusement. I was to be their amusement.
When I saw people pointing at us and laughing, I was determined to avoid eye contact and to escape from the ridicule so I hopped off the boat when it reached the marina and quickly moved to the back of the crowd of what must have been several hundred people, mainly families with kids. All around me people were gawking and uttering things like “idiot,” “pitiful boat,” “piece of shit,” “didn’t know what he was doing.” Pretending to be just another one of the restless crowed, I found myself uttering the same things, hoping no one would recognize me, until I heard the bellowing voice of the police captain shout, “owner, owner come here now!”
Miraculously as the boat was being hoisted out of the water, one shroud (wire) was still attached and at the end of the shroud came the mast, the boom and the sail. The crowd, which by this time had doubled in size—roared as if a touchdown had just happened. The mast and sails were all saved! A miracle! Maybe I did not have to give up my sailing dream after all. I pushed my way through the anxious crowd watching people stare at me with open mouths and wide eyes, then did a swan dive into the water and rescued the sails and mast.
I headed grimly toward the picnic where Embry and several friends were gathered just as the fireworks were to begin, answered their anxious questions and silently watched the fireworks wondering if my sailing days had ended abruptly.
But that was not the end of the story. What happened next will be the subject of the next post—on Tuesday.