Nobody Yells

(Originally published in 2012)

Back in the spring of 1996, Annie and I were thinking about finally taking that big North Channel cruise that’s so renowned on the Great Lakes. Lake Huron’s North Channel is a remote stretch of Canadian water that extends in an easterly direction from the eastern tip of Michigan’s upper peninsula across the southern shoreline of northern Ontario. It is bounded on the south by a number of large islands, including Manitoulin Island, the largest freshwater island in the world. If the Great Lakes are recognized as the greatest freshwater cruising grounds in the world, then the North Channel must be the crème de la crème. At this point in our extensive cruising careers we had been sailing for a total of about two Great Lakes years. (Like dog years versus people years, that’s probably the equivalent of about 3 months in actual real-life sailing years for anybody who lives in a climate where they aren’t spending 6 or 8 months of the year commissioning and decommissioning and wistfully dreaming about sailing rather than actually doing it! But, alas, I digress…)

One of the fundamental issues of sailing on the Great Lakes is that there are virtually no natural anchorages available in most areas. Thanks to the lazy way in which glaciers dig large holes, there is little in the way of contours along the shorelines of any of the lakes. Government’s answer to this is to create small manmade harbors of refuge along the shoreline, which are generally enclosed with a breakwater and marked with the appropriate navigational markers. Inside of these small enclosures there is usually a marina that operates under the authority of the parks and recreation department and is essentially part of the state parks system, at least in Michigan. The other states and the Canadian provinces I assume operate similarly. In any event, the bottom line is that you rarely get an opportunity to anchor out in those fun little anchorages that you find in the Chesapeake and other places along the east coast and the ICW’s, there’s not much gunkholing when cruising the Great Lakes.  A result of this lack of natural anchorages is that there is very little opportunity to practice anchoring for many sailors on the Great Lakes. This was us.

Since we were in need of some anchor training and experience, and since Annie was concerned that she simply didn’t have the necessary skills for piloting, boat handling, and sailing in general, I decided to give her the gift of sailing for Christmas. In December of 1995 I bought her a weeklong cruise with Women for Sailan all women sailing school then operating out of Annapolis, Maryland. The cruise took her on a gunkholing training cruise around a number of anchorages on Chesapeake Bay, just what she (and we) needed. The boat, a 44-foot Irwin center cockpit sloop, was crewed by Annie and two other women under the guidance of a female captain. (Shortly after Annie took her cruise, Women for Sailwas acquired by Womenship, another all women sailing school [now defunct also] whose motto was “Nobody yells.” I think these male-free learning environments are a valuable teaching tool for a pastime where the male ego often tends to be somewhat overwhelming to females. The idea works.). The women took the boat in and out of anchorages and dropped the hook, practiced coming alongside docks and piers as needed, and learned the ins and outs of sailing for a whole week, all without the macho ravings of their sometimes lunatic male counterparts, nobody giving orders that didn’t make sense, nobody yelling.

One night near the end of their cruise they were anchored out in the mouth of a Chesapeake Bay creek a few hundred yards from the nearest boat. It was just them with two other boats off in the distance in the calm and quiet of a May night well before the start of the hustle and bustle of the sailing season on the Bay. The water was flat calm without so much as a rustle in the trees along the shoreline, and they sat placid in the cockpit quietly discussing the events of the day, watching the sun slowly fade in the west. Before long as darkness overtook them they were winding down and feeling the unavoidable lassitude that sets in after a day spent sailing and, one by one, headed off to their bunks. Annie was the last to go. Since there were only three crewmembers plus the captain, they each had a private berth down below. Annie snuggled up against the chill of the evening and settled in to read a little of her Doug Allyn novel when she subconsciously heard a distant shout from outside the open port. Her first thought was that it must be the sounds of some people quietly partying aboard one of the other anchored vessels. She shook it off and continued to read for a few minutes before she heard it again. This time she felt a chill of certainty that somebody was deliberately calling out for help from a long way off. She sat up and listened with that intensity that you muster up in such a situation, unable to move for fear of making a rustle just when the sound occurs again, and finally she heard it again. This time she was certain, as she briefly debated whether to wake the captain. She had not exactly hit it off with Captain Judy.

Now, although not exactly a human resources nightmare, Captain Judy did not have the greatest people skills. When Annie arrived aboard the boat she met the other two crewmembers. The captain held an encounter in the cockpit where they all introduced themselves to one another. Coincidentally both of the other recruits happened to be named Karen. One Karen, a practicing RN type nurse was quite petite. She and her husband owned a sailboat and she was in need of some familiarization with the basics. The other Karen, who was taller and a little heavy set, decided to take the course so she would be more comfortable aboard her boyfriend’s catamaran. Now at some point Captain Judy, in her infinite wisdom and feeling the obvious need to differentiate one Karen from the other, decided that she would call the smaller, more petite Karen “Little Karen.” Fine, no problem. Unfortunately this left the other Karen with the perhaps ignominious nickname of “Big Karen” – not “Tall Karen” but BIG. Now “Big Karen” never complained about this to anybody, but Annie and “Little Karen” discussed between themselves how inconsiderate that decision seemed to be. But, such was Captain Judy. In the days prior to political correctness, all three students were in agreement that Captain Judy was certainly not that. Big Karen was assigned to the double bed stateroom (no doubt, because she was big?), and Annie and Little Karen took the passageway bunks, Annie in the bottom bunk and Little Karen on the top (in Annie’s words “because she was little…” joke).

Anyway, back to my story. Annie, prior to heading down to Baltimore, had put in a good deal of effort trying to learn as much basic seamanship as she could, plus we had both previously taken a college level introductory sailing class at a local college a couple of years before. As a result, Annie’s seamanship knowledge was more extensive than the other neophyte students and the captain was a little less than excited about having somebody that she looked upon as a “know-it-all” among her crew. Needless to say, Annie was not her favorite. After deliberating only momentarily, Annie padded down the passageway to the V-berth and knocked on the captain’s door. She told Captain Judy, who was in bed sleeping, what she thought she had heard. The captain, with an attitude of having been unnecessarily disturbed, told Annie that what she heard was probably just some people ashore having a party and that she should just ignore it and go back to bed. So Annie reluctantly returned to her bunk and continued to try to read but now, with more concern than ever that there might be somebody out there in serious trouble while they all rested safe and sound in their bunks. After a short time she heard the calls again, twice in succession. At this point she walked down to the captain’s quarters, knocked, and politely but firmly demanded that Captain Judy come up on deck with her to listen. Captain Judy reluctantly agreed and climbed the companionway steps to the cockpit where they both carefully listened. This time it seemed like forever. Then, just as the captain was about to write the entire incident off to an overactive imagination, they both finally heard it, clear and clean, a desperate cry for help coming from off in the distance. They immediately and deliberately jumped into action.

Annie went and roused the crew from their bunks and then, while Annie was calling the Coast Guard on the VHF as ordered by Captain Judy, the crew weighed anchor and started the engine. They made their way over in the direction from which the cries seemed to be coming and deftly came alongside the other anchored boat where the sound had apparently originated. After carefully rafting up alongside the 35 foot Tartan sloop, they went aboard and, looking down from the bow, found a barely conscious gentleman in the water desperately clinging to the anchor rode with his last bit of strength. The Tartan sailboat had no swim ladder, so it was necessary to maneuver the nearly unconscious victim from the bow of the anchored Tartan over to a swim ladder that the women had hung from the side of their bigger boat. In the process of wrestling him aboard they noted that his fly was unzipped, an all too frequent condition found in men who accidentally fall overboard after drinking to excess and then feel the need to relieve themselves at the rail and somehow become detached from their vessel. The man was so weak and hypothermic that he was unable to grab or hang onto anything, so that grappling him aboard took all of the effort the four ladies could muster. Once aboard, he was promptly examined by the resident nurse, “Little Karen.” Under her direction they gave him a warm cup of tea and wrapped him in blankets while awaiting the swift arrival of a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, which efficiently took him aboard. From there he was immediately airlifted by a Coast Guard chopper, which whisked him away for medical attention.

In the letdown period afterward, it took some time for the adrenalin rush of the night’s events to wear off. The three crew aboard the teaching vessel let go their raft-up and motored a short distance away, where they dropped the hook for the night. Captain Judy spent the night aboard the rescued vessel while the rest of the ladies discussed the excitement of the evening over a bottle of wine. Although all three women had brought along some liquid entertainment expecting the typical evening get-togethers that are one of the little perks of living the sailing lifestyle, to this point they had simply not been comfortable taking such liberties in the presence of their captain. But tonight all bets were off. The women discussed the events of the night, the trials and tribulations of a week of liveaboard sailboat training under the auspices of Captain Judy, and in general wound down until the wee hours. Next morning, as ordered by the Coast Guard officer in charge, the ladies divided their crew, putting two women aboard each vessel, and delivered the rescued craft to St. Michaels, the nearest port.

They later found out from Coast Guard officials that the man was severely hypothermic and had the expected significantly high blood alcohol content. It was the opinion of the authorities that he was very near to losing consciousness and without a doubt would have drowned had it not been for the heroic actions of the rescuing vessel and its crew. As an aside, the women were also quite surprised to find out that the victim was a retired Navy captain. The appreciative gentleman, not to be outdone by a boatful of novice female sailors, once released from the hospital the following day made a point of taking the entire party out to dinner to express his gratitude. In special recognition of Annie’s part in saving his life, to the chagrin of Captain Judy, he gave Annie a box of chocolates and a bottle of wine as a special thank you for the rescue. His comment, “Just to let you know, I’m drinking iced tea tonight.”

So it was that Annie learned the necessary anchoring techniques and, needless to say, much more, on her little weeklong sailing trip with the ladies. A well-spent week for her and for me, and especially for one very lucky retired Navy captain. And, fortunately in this case, somebody did yell.

(Author’s note: As an afterword, we can’t ever tell this little anecdote without tossing in an unrelated but unusual aside. It so happened that that very night, at about the very time that Annie was hearing the cries of the distraught and helpless hypothermia victim, I was awakened at home by a phone call from the hospital where my father had been lying in a coma for nearly a month, informing me that he had passed away. When Annie called me the day after that night’s rescue all excited about what had happened, I had to pop her bubble by telling her of the death of my dad. Suddenly she was struck by the timing of the two events and, for us both, the whole thing took on a rather eerie, almost supernatural quality – one life lost and another life saved… that sort of thing. At the very least it was strange timing.)