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  THE HORSE,THE BOAT, AND THE LADY B

  By Jim Farrell

  We were riding our anchor at Mud Bay, Lopez Island in our “new to us” Lady B, a Hughes North Star 38, waking up in the V-berth the morning after a great run from Bellingham.  Becky, my new to sailing wife, rolled over and began to tell me of her dream of the night…

  

  …. It seems that somehow Lady B had become stuck in the mud.  Becky probably wouldn’t have dreamt this except maybe it reminded her of our first, and I do mean first, trip on Lady B from Semiahmoo marina to Bellingham Bay on the initial leg of what we hoped would be a summer trip with many stops.  We had hoped to sail among the San Juan Islands for most of the summer through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and down the Washington Coast, ending in Portland by fall.

  

  I was trying to impress my wife and her two teenaged children with my sailing skills on their first long trip on a sailboat.  But alas my pride went before the fall, and me not paying close attention to my navigation, ran us aground just as we left Semiahmoo.  Embarrassed though I was, I did appear to be the hero when I got into our unstable, little tender; you know the one that tends to flip over when you first get into it, taking you with it.   I then took the ship’s anchor with chain rode over the side of the Lady B and rowed back the way we came, dropping it back over the side, trying to stay clear of the rode as it quickly played out.   

  

  I then yelled for the family to begin to pull it back into the boat, earning it (the anchor) the name that I for one never use, of “F#@$*r” by my new to sailing crew as they struggled to get the heavy 45lb “expletive deleted” up.  With the tide coming in and the anchor holding in the mud, Lady B came clear, and after getting one tired, extremely exhausted, very out of shape writer back into the boat, we were on our way.

  

  Back to Beck’s dream…” along came a horse, no, not just any horse but a big horse like a Belgian workhorse.  Apparently I attached the horse to Lady B and was having the horse pull the boat through mud, no, not water or even a little water, but mud, sticky slimy mud.  Not too unlike Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn as they pulled the African Queen through the marshes and mud of Lake Victoria.  The Belgian workhorse began to pull the boat back toward water….”  Of course, there were many more twists and turns in Becky’s dream that I won’t bore you with, as they serve no useful purpose to the telling of the rest of the story except to further embarrass me.

              For the next few months whenever we had the opportunity to stay onboard the Lady B overnight, we would look up above the V-berth and joke about painting a mural with a Belgian horse pulling Lady B through the mud.  If this were the end of the story I would have been happy, but as any sailor knows the best laid plans not only go astray, buy also given any possibility, will really go astray.

              The day that we had the pre-purchase survey done at Semiahmoo Marina, the yard caught the propeller shaft with the lifting strap and bent the heck out of it.  They fixed it before the boat went back into the water, and we took possession.  This may not seem to be part of the story, but wait……

  … Now comes a day, six months hence and a lot of “old boat” problems later.  Becky and I are spending a very pleasant November afternoon, anchored on the Columbia River on the downriver end of Reed Island, in about twelve feet of water.  The river’s gentle rocking of the boat made us feel the need for an afternoon nap, which we felt obliged to pander too.  Upon waking, we looked up at the V-berth bulkhead again, joking about the horse pulling the boat through the mud again to have the mural painted. 

  

              Upon going on deck, to our amusement, not two hundred feet away there was a large horse walking along the beach.  Okay, it didn’t look like a Belgian, but it was a horse and had four legs and then again this is my story, so I’ll say that it was a BIG horse even though it may have been a little swaybacked.  While we were laughing about the horse and reliving the dream, I suddenly had a sickening thought as I saw how close to shore we were!  What was our depth?  I quickly jumped into the cockpit and looked at the depth meter.  Phew, the number eleven was still flashing on the screen.  

              By then it was getting late and we could see a storm front fast approaching coming upriver. So, I asked my wife as any good Captain does, if he intends to keep out of trouble, to pull up the anchor.  As I started the engine I heard a screeching noise and Becky yelled back asking what the noise was.  Being a dedicated Ford owner I as fairly certain that I knew what that sound was and told her that it was a loose fan belt.  Visibly relieved she proceeded with pulling up the “you-know-what.”  As she was struggling and generally using the words she saves for such an occasion, the Lady B began to move toward the set anchor.  The wind began to pick up and I decided to take pity on her and put the transmission in forward to help take the strain off the rode, easing her labors. 

  

              I advanced the throttle forward…… nothing.  No forward movement!  The engine raced but the motion generally associated with putting the engine in forward was absent!  I thought it shifted rather easily, but it hadn’t really sunk into my consciousness.  I looked behind and saw no prop wash.  I put her into reverse and again…nothing!  By now it was beginning to dawn on me that something was wrong, and Becky after much exertion had the “you-know-what” almost on deck.  The Lady B was drifting quickly drifting downstream toward shallow, and I do mean shallow water.

              “Drop the anchor (even under stress I still call it by its proper name) NOW!” I yelled.  Becky, being from Missouri of course turns around and yells at me with unflattering words that questioned my sanity until she saw I was serious and dropped the “f#$#&*er back into the water.  The depth meter screen flashed seven feet back to me.  A tense minute later the anchor held in the river’s current.  Thank you King Neptune, something’s do go right.

              I went below and opened the cabin floor hatch to get to the engine.  Much to my amazement I found water coming in!  As I looked at the engine it dawned on me that there was no shaft going from the transmission through the hull!  No wonder it shifted so easily.  (We found out later that the marina hadn’t properly tightened the set-screw when they replaced the shaft.)

              With water coming in the hold via the hole left by the missing shaft, and the sound of the wind and waves getting louder, my attention was needed elsewhere.  So I drove a wood plug (alas the reason to keep wood plugs close to the through hull fittings) into the hole where the shaft should have been to stem the flow of water.

              Back on deck my lovely wife without any prompting from me, was getting the sails ready to go up.  I suspected that her spontaneous action was a result of her experience thus far in sailing with me.  It seems that with this boat we use the sails for auxiliary power instead of the engine.  After getting the sails up and pulling and my wife’s use of more expletives (that I’ll delete here) than anyone as lovely as her should even know, we sailed the anchor out of the river mud as she pulled it up and headed back into the main channel towards Big Eddie Marina, back downstream.

              By now it was pitch dark as only it can be in November with the rain coming at us sideways from the west, throwing up white caps on the river.  We had to do a lot of tacking as the Columbia as that stretch looks wide, but gets shallow out of the channel.  Although worried about hitting the narrow opening to the eddy from which our marina derived its name, we were able to shoot through it with a good deal of speed on.  The marina rapidly approached our port side and I began to bark (well maybe I just requested) orders to reduce sail, put bumpers over the side and get line ready to attach to something on the dock.  Did I say dock?  Let me describe the “dock” …

              … Big Eddie Marina was undergoing renovation at the time and while most of it was finished, and I might add, quite well-designed the outside dock only consisted of four or five old growth logs with cross-beams, floats underneath and nothing else spanning the total length of the marina.  Our slip was way on the inside, upstream from the entrance, with little room to maneuver a large boat even with power available, hence my decision to make fast to the unfinished dock once inside the marina and pull the Lady B upstream into our slip.

              All began to go as planned; Becky followed my orders (err…requests) just as I gave them to her and we were all lined up to make our landing.  Perfect!  We made the one-eighty into the marina, dropped the sails and Becky ever so gracefully stepped off the boat with the spring line just as our forward motion matched the river current, making for a perfect landing.  The original Lady B was quite proud of herself and in this writer’s opinion, justifiably so.

  

              I, however being the suave, experienced sailor that I was, stepped onto the wet, slimy logs with the bow line, only to quickly have the unexpected feeling of my feet sliding uncontrollably toward the very wet cold river.  I don’t think that it would have been as bad as it turned out had I followed my own advice, previously given so freely to my wife, about hanging onto the boat in case the logs were overly slippery.  But true to my trying to show her my worldly ways and knowledge, my unruly slip was not just off one side of the log.  No, my feet choose to go two different ways and straddle the log as one would a well-bread horse.  My descent toward the water came to an abrupt halt at the point where my pant legs come together, I don’t need to express my feelings about this, except to say I took my time getting back up on the log, moving very slowly and with that I’d best continue the story….

   …I was able to attach the bow line to a cross beam and make her fast, thus giving me time to assess the situation and allow a moment for the pain to dissipate.  We were a good five hundred feet downstream from our slip’s row and then needed go another hundred or so feet toward the shore to our slip. I pulled myself up gently, oh so gently and grabbed the seventy foot extra line to tie to the bow and pull the boat forward, crawling on all fours along the slime covered logs like the horse in Becky’s dream.  Each move came with an inadvertent slip and another strong possibility of freezing contact with the cold fast moving stream beneath the slippery logs.  When I reached the next crossbeam, I’d run the line around it using it as one would a block and have Becky walk along the boat with her hand on the toe rail and snub off her line to the crossbeam. 

  

  I’d then begin the next harrowing movement along the slimy logs, only to once again experience the temperature of the Columbia.  We followed this unique procedure for what seemed like hours, but really only took forty-five minutes, with a lot of expletives I’ve deleted.  Yes, there are times that I have been known to indulge in their use given the appropriate motivation.   Believe me, this was one such time!

              Finally with a lot of exertion we were able to reach the point where we could stand on the dock that was finished, only to find a sixty-foot floating home blocking the way to our slip.  By now weary, cold, soaked (okay, so I was the only soggy one)  grouchy and facing yet another challenge, I decided the best solution would be to take a line around the floating home to our berth and throw it back to Becky so she could tie it off on the boat.  How simple it would be then to just pull the boat into our slip.  Sounded great, oh yeah, but just try and put that easy task into practice when you’re drenched and your hands are numb with cold.

              I coiled a 100’ line and heaved it with all the strength I could muster and …short by 10’.  Three more attempts, all short.  Becky did try to pluck the line out of the water each time with the boat hook, but no go.  I pulled the by now, very heavy, soggy line back, recoiled it and with all the effort I could rally, threw it again.  This time the line landed over the bow of the boat and Becky quickly grabbed it to make it fast.  I stood there with rain cascading off my back trying to decide how to tell the woman that I loved and I hope would still love me that, well, I had, ah, shot of let go of the line on my end and it was sinking slowing into the water. After walking back to the boat to retrieve the line from an understanding (?) lady, I was determined not to lose the end again while trying to get the line back to the boat over the open water. 

              I couldn’t find anywhere to tie off the line so I decided to tie a bowline and put it around my leg.  I did have an uneasy feeling that it might not be the best idea I’ve ever had, but when you’re cold and tired, the brain doesn’t seem to function all that well.  Again I coiled the line and threw it. Short!

              By now my frustration level was on the rise as I recoiled up the line again.  With the added assistance of anger-induced adrenaline raging through me, I heaved the line for all I was worth…short…but Becky was quick with the boat hook and captured the line before it sunk.  By now, her adrenalin was causing her to reel the line in as fast as she could.  She didn’t’ have a clue that I had the line wrapped around my cold, deadened leg. 

  In my numbed state of mind, I watched the line tighten; only realizing at the last possible second that I had best let her know the situation before she jerked me back into the water.  I yelled a yell that any Johnny Reb would have been proud of.  She stopped pulling just as I felt the line squeeze on my leg, causing a very funny feeling in the pit of my stomach and a wave of relief flow through me.

              After this last event, which I’m quite sure would have been catastrophic, especially to me; we were able to pull the Lady B into our slip. We tied her off, went below and changed out of our wet clothes.  After closing the boat up we had a very quick trip home for a hot bath, a shot of Scotch and warm bed.

  

  We have since sold the Lady B to a couple from England who are currently enjoying the sun of the South Seas with her, while we’re enjoying our Beneteau 423, Autumn Daze.  The only catch is that my loving wife still only half jokes about having a painting on Autumn Daze’s bulkhead of me pulling the Lady B through the mud toward open water, just like ‘Ol’ Bogie.  I’d probably go along with it, except she wants to have me painted straddling the wet, slippery log, capturing the look of pain and surprise I had on my face that night.