Saturday, December 17, 2011

Sibling Overboard!

Rail meat, happy as clams

It was going to happen sooner or later. I’ve been tripping all over boats, docks, and various invisible barricades my whole life. Deb is always having too much fun staring at the rest of the world to worry about where she steps. All her falling thus far, though, has taken place inside the boat. Which is not to say it’s taken no physical toll.

My brother, who is more graceful than myself despite his prodigious stature, took his freshwater bath a few years back in front of a receptive audience. He’d successfully slipped a vessel he’d been a passenger on after a challenging night-approach off Lake Michigan had prompted the anxious new owner to pass off the controls. That owner was proffering thank-yous as my brother put the final wraps on a dock line, when one of John’s feet chose to test its holding strength. His 360 forward-roll entry garnered generous style points from the judges at the drinking establishment bordering the dock.
Man decapitated exercise conducted on John's boat

My sister was visiting us recently from that freshwater state where I was harvested. She and I are alike in that we do not need lots of activities to fill out a family visit. What we do when we get together is involve each other in our day-to-day lives. This has in the past included such chores as home renovations and the like. Her visit happened to coincide with the end of our boating season, so Deb and I involved her in the tasks of emptying the holding tank, topping off the fuel supply, and parking the boat in the wet storage slip that would see our Laura Lynn through the winter.

Things went well at the town dock, if pumping human waste out of one’s non-hermetic holding tank can ever be said to go well. Fueling up was accomplished with little fanfare. The nice thing about diesel fuel is that its pervasive odor masks that of the head. Hooray for life’s little victories.

Our last stop would be a short trip to the slip, just over yonder. Fenders were deployed, lines run, and the docking process reviewed for those less versed in chaos theory. Deb would be first off the boat with the bow line, followed by Cathy with the stern line. We’d be pulling up to a portside finger dock with a boat to starboard. A dash of reverse would pull our stern over nicely, and a light breeze on the nose wasn’t going to hurt us any. While I’m not a regular slip frequenter, I was expecting an easy go of it. As we pulled in, Deb hopped off and headed forward.

It would help to know a detail or two to fill out the scene a bit. The finger docks at this establishment are narrow, and they are free to rise and fall with the tide. One is reminded of lumberjacks competing at one of those logrolling events. What I’m trying to say is they’re not real stable underfoot. I probably should have mentioned this to my sister.

Substitute water for granite outcropping and
look of surprise for smile. You get the picture.

Cathy also happened to be wearing an interesting pair of shoes I’d seen advertised somewhere, hyped for its notable “rocker sole” design, which is supposed to somehow expedite the walking process, I suppose. Interesting concept. Had she been wearing the kind of shoes I’ve seen on kids that sport wheels in the heels an alarm might have gone off in my head.

Human events can occasionally transpire quickly, so we’ll never know quite what happened next. Certainly Cathy had no intention of testing the temperature of the Long Island Sound in late October. She only remembers that for some reason her body chose to keep on going once she’d landed on the dock. For Deb and me there was just a surreal image of my sister continuing on her way… south, as it happens. There was no stumble, no cry of alarm, just a stroll that should have ended sooner.

I generally don’t make light of this kind of event. Those of us with any sense of our own mortality know that terrible things can happen during the course of mundane activities. We’ve all seen videos of the misfortunes of man and beast preserved via smart-phone. We view them knowing (in most cases) that the subjects survived. But there is always that moment when, understanding how the laws of physics work, the groin aches for the victim taking the header into the fencepost, or the golfball in the gonads, as the case may be. So Deb and I were holding our breath as Cathy surfaced, and we searched her expression for signs of serious damage.

Flirting with fun

It’s amazing how quickly surprise and fear are supplanted by embarrassment once the all-clear sign is given. It took me a shamefully short period of time after receiving her thumbs-up before I glanced around to see if there had been any witnesses to the proceedings. The coast was clear.

Once I’d helped Cathy back onto the dock (a maneuver even less elegant than her exit), the next pressing question was whether she’d ruined anything of value. She would answer that question many times before the day’s end. We Americans have our priorities down. Cathy had removed her cell phone from her pocket as soon as she’d boarded. I know that’s what you were wondering.

My sister’s chief observation afterward was that the water was warmer than she'd expected. I suspect a heavy shot of adrenalin distorted that reading. But it raises another question about the mind, which is, what kinds of questions might it formulate during those shocking, one-off events? Did hers actually go, “Is the water going to be really cold?” in midair? Will mine go “Are crabs going to feed on me before the Coast Guard finds my body?”

In any event Deb and I, being boaters, had plenty of dry clothing aboard. Cathy used the facilities at the marina to rinse off the seaweed and harbor scum she’d collected, and a short while later we were dining on deck. It all kind of ended up fun in a way that’s hard to explain to the one who’s still in the water.

 By the end of Cathy’s visit the shoes had dried out and were once again fit, if that could ever be said for them, for use in the proper environment.

All's well that ends wet. I mean well.