Imagination vs. Reality
Fort Lauderdale fireworks barge
by Christine Kling
Yesterday was a long day for Barney and me, and thanks to the new autopilot belt my friends Pam and Dave had sent over via Fed Ex, I didn’t have to steer at all. That left me with plenty of time to play with Barney, pet him and hold him on my lap. However, playing with a dog is not exactly mentally taxing, so I was left with plenty of time to do what I do best: daydream.
I left West End on Grand Bahama Island at 6:00 a.m., and I arrived at the mooring field here in Fort Lauderdale around midnight. From the time I was a little kid, I have always made up stories to pass the time while sailing (or motor-sailing, as was my case). My chart plotter (aka iPad with iNavX) was giving me an ETA of 9:45 p.m. on the 4th of July off the entrance buoy, and I was making up stories about how lovely it would be to come sailing home to the rocket’s red glare.
The difference between my little imaginary scene and the real situation was vast.
When I was about 11 miles off the coast, I saw the first tips of the buildings of the Fort Lauderdale coastline. The sun set around 8:15 when I was still just over 7 miles out. It was about that time that I saw the black squall on the horizon. Since my mainsail is tissue-paper-thin, I decided to bring in all sail, but with the 2-3 foot swell, I began to roll my guts out. And worse yet, the 30 minutes or so that I had spent turned upwind had cost me about 5 miles in the good made against the current, so I was now making only 2.5 knots over the ground as I was heading directly into the full force of the Gulf Stream. Down below, it sounded like the bottles in my condiment locker were turning themselves into gooey glass shards, as we rocked and rolled. It only rained long enough to soak everything in the cockpit, but the plastic glass in my dodger was covered with tiny droplets of water that reflected every coastal light.
Does this face look the face of a bad dog?
Meanwhile, with darkness closing in and me having to concentrate on driving the boat, I became afraid that the dog would distract me or go overboard, so I hustled him down below and zipped him into his canvas crate. That was when the howling, shrieking, barking and whining made me think I had the devil dog down there who was the progeny of a Banshee and the girl from the Exorcist movie. About that time, I asked myself a simple question. Why do I put myself through this?
Then all of a sudden, the firing began. I must have been seeing the municipal fireworks displays from about 20 different cities and all the lights were bouncing among the water droplets on my dodger window so I couldn’t see a blasted thing in the pitch black night, as I dashed along at about 6 knots in the darkness (through the water, not over the ground). This beautiful display of fireworks that I had dreamed about all morning, had turned into a nightmare.
Then from out of the morass, I made out what looked like it might be two dim little white lights and some red and green directly behind me. I hustled below to check out the AIS on my radio, and my boat looked like it was surrounded by dozens of targets. The one behind me was a 600+ foot container ship about 1/2 a mile off. I called him on the radio to ask if he was turning into Port Everglades, and when he said no, he agreed to change course and allow me to turn to enter the port. I think I heard a chuckle in his voice in response to the pure terror in mine.
When I was finally about one mile off the harbor entrance, blue flashing lights surrounded the entrance buoys and I saw that the tug towing the fireworks barge was passing back into the port and the police had set up a perimeter around the barge. The tug towing the thing moved at about 2.5 knots and it took the thing forever to make its way into the port with me crawling along behind at the requisite distance off.
I finally made it inside and turned north on the ICW to head for the city mooring field, and to add insult to injury, they repositioned the towing of the barge and came up and passed me again, causing me to have to pull over off Bahia Mar, then when I picked up my mooring, I saw the damned barge tied up less than 1000 yards off on the other side of the ICW.
The punchline about the barge came the next morning when a squall came through and some thunder and lightning started. You should have seen the guys run off that barge when the first boomer hit close by. I gather there was still enough powder on there to be of concern to them – ahem, and me.
So the next time you are imagining what it must be like to be able to go sailing like me, having this wonderful time gently sailing back from the Bahamas on a warm tropical night – remind yourself to make the date anything BUT the Fourth of July.
Ain’t yachting fun?
Fair winds!
Christine
(Just a note about my first novel (and first in a four book series) SURFACE TENSION. It is available as a free ebook today and tomorrow on Amazon.
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