A Sailing Misadventure: In Praise of Coleman Coolers and Captain Morgan

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Many years ago, when I lived in Chapel Hill, NC, I had a boyfriend who was an extreme outdoorsman. I myself like the outdoors quite a bit but didn’t share his need to conquer every climate and geography. A nice run is as aggressive as I get. An ambling beach walk is lovely. Sitting at an outdoor café with an Arnold Palmer is just delightful. Boyfriend camped, snowboarded, mountain biked, rock climbed, and sailed, among other things. As couples tend to enjoy spending time together, he invited me to do these things with him. I picked sailing as the least demanding of the sports and we headed to Beaufort, where he borrowed a small sailboat from a friend. I want to say it was a Sunfish.

It was a sparkling spring day, sunny, cold, and windy (great for the purposes of sailing). Boyfriend enthusiastically showed me the physics of sailing (a very appealing way to learn physics). We tacked and jibed (I couldn’t tell you exactly what those words mean but he used them a lot) around the Beaufort channel, not quite ready to head out to sea. I was feeling very Jackie Kennedy-off-the-coast-of-Cape-Cod, very chic and of the prep school boating class.

Maybe thirty minutes in Boyfriend said, “Huh, that’s weird, the boat isn’t really responding like it was before.”

It wasn’t turning (tacking? jibing?) as sharply. It was sluggish even though the wind hadn’t changed. Then we noticed it was lying lower in the water. There seemed to be a lot of water sloshing around inside the boat.

Then it was even lower.

Then it was below the water.

It was the oddest feeling, sitting in a boat that is inches below the surface of the water. I wondered if there was a nautical term for that. It didn’t seem to be the right moment to ask.

Boyfriend was still calm. “Hmm,” he said, pushing a now-bobbing little Coleman cooler my way.  “Hold on to this.”

I awkwardly hugged the Coleman cooler, grateful for my life vest as a secondary flotation device. As the boat slipped from sight below us, panic set in. I was really cold and, of course, quite wet and was thinking, ‘well here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten yourself into. All for a man.’

I had this thought a lot in my twenties.

At this point the only part of the boat that remained above the surface of the water was the tip of the mast.

Then we realized we were floating towards the mouth of the channel, the part that opened out to the sea.

Boyfriend started to lose his calm, trying to figure out a way to hang onto some part of the boat, no doubt afraid to tell his friend that he lost his boat.

I was more concerned that he not lose his girlfriend. And I don’t mean in the ‘I’m breaking up with you’ sense, I mean in the ‘I’m floating out to sea’ sense. Although the former would most certainly follow the latter, should that happen, and should said girlfriend survive.

Just as we reached the mouth of the channel a big yacht came roaring at us and the fear of floating out to sea was quickly replaced by the fear of lethal motor propellers coming at my head.

The yacht driver slowed, turned and, as we were flung up and down in the waves caused by his approach, yelled out asking us if we needed help. Boyfriend, still clinging desperately to the mast (a questionable priority), yelled ‘yes.’ I was losing my grip on the cooler and got a mouth full of salt water when I tried to answer but I think my wishes were quite clear as I swam furiously towards the boat, abandoning both cooler and boyfriend. He’d made his choice and it wasn’t me.

The yacht driver hauled me up onto the deck, at which point the smell of alcohol hit me so hard I almost fell back into the water. Apparently our rescuer was Captain Morgan, fuzzy eyed and staggering (although that could have been the increasingly big waves). Captain Morgan must have had lots of experience maneuvering while drinking because he efficiently threw in some ropes to fasten to the mast to hang onto the sunken sailboat, helped Boyfriend aboard, then called Sea Tow (who knew there was such a thing?).

Deeply relieved to be in a boat that floated above the water I sat back, cocooned in the towel Captain Morgan gave me, watching the Sea Tow come, watching Boyfriend talk to them, watching as we finally made our way back to the docks. Calm to the point of drowsiness.

Hypothermia can do that to a person.

We found out later there was a crack in the hull of the boat (which was towed, repaired and eventually made it back onto the water). The boat survived. The relationship, ultimately, did not.

Boyfriend was not to be tamed, and I was not to be untamed. I took him to the wild and set him free. Once in while he showed up around the back fence and gave me a wave before heading back off to unmapped worlds, and we were both the happier for it.

I was left with an excellent lesson, one I have used repeatedly, both in relationships and subsequent sailing experiences, which is to never refuse a life jacket when one is offered.

 

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