The Admiral's blog

December 17, 2007, Shelter Island:

Wake Up Call

As we pass through life we get these little hints that perhaps we should slow down and pay closer attention. Some times these calls may be as subtle as a tear in some ones eye, some times they are as brutal as being slapped up side your head with a big stick. It was December 17th 2007 that we received one such call.

Now a trip to town in the winter for us always requires more elements of care than say a summer trip when Mother Nature’s temperament is more predictable. Our local prognosticator told us, this day, of any other in the week, looked the most promising for crossing the stretch of inside waters necessary to reach “the real world”. The seas and wind were predicted to blow from the north early AM, then switch from the south in the afternoon, turning again and build from the north in the days to follow. The four-letter word of the day would be snow.

It had been a week since our last trip to town and this time of year the junk mail catalogs fill our post office box daily. After a week both our boxes are usually packed so tight that you can barely pull mail out without ripping off the edges. We had been working feverishly on holiday greetings and packages all week that needed to be mailed. About 60 cards short of my mailing list, my color cartridges in both printers were drained. So now the pressure was on, not only did I have to get this stuff mailed, but I had to get home, finish printing, and mail out the remainder of my holiday greetings. I am aware that most of the pressures in this life I place upon my self, and it is my own expectations that are the source of a majority of my disappointments.

When the daylight began to expose our beach we took note of the tide. It was falling and we needed to keep on task if we were to get off the beach before it reached a spot in the driveway that is too shallow, where the slate ledge jets up forming a pool on either side. This spot is particularly difficult to launch the boat for lack of draft without backing the truck into the water further than we like to. It was launch now or wait about an hour for the tide to go out where we would have another opportunity. With the mailbag and Rubbermaid totes stowed in the boat, I dressed in my usual winter crossing attire. A full layer of long johns under my Carharts, and a sweatshirt, over all of that goes a pair of neoprene chest waders and boots, scarf around my neck, float coat, hat with brim for my glasses, and gloves on my hands with an extra pair stuffed in my pocket. I coaxed the cats out of the house with a bit of can cat food, chased the dog out and locked the door behind me. Grabbing the broom I began to sweep the snow from the deck and down the stairs. Glancing behind me I see that I’d left the light on in the kitchen. Cursing and backtracking I unlocked the door just far enough to keep the cats from bolting back in, slipped my hand through the crack and flip the switch.

The rocks on our beach are slick. Rick backed down quickly and came to a sudden stop in several inches of water, which made the boat go shooting off the back of the trailer into the shallow water. There were gentle waves and current flowing from the north as I pushed the boat out further and stood in water to my thighs, waiting for Rick to park the truck and make his way back down the beach and climb aboard. The sky was gray but clear; visibility was excellent. The Chilkat Mountains glowed in the distance like piles of confectionary sugar. I was standing waste deep in water before the motor develops a steady purr and we were deep enough to kick the it into gear. With a hefty leap, I pulled, pushed and dragged myself up over the side of the Led Zeppelin and we were off.

We rounded the south end of the island. The wave and wind action seemed to be coming rather aggressively from the south instead of the north. Hmmm, we must be in one of those swirling vortexes you see on the satellite pictures I thought, perhaps the weather was moving in faster than predicted. We’ll get our chores done in town as quickly as possible and get home before it switches back from the north. It’s the north wind that makes our crossings treacherously lumpy. It also makes loading and launching on our beach increasingly difficult. It tends to pack a particularly chilly, cutting edge, usually washing waves over the back of the boat. We are weary of these winter winds and waves, as they have brutalized us severely in the past. So we pounded across in two-foot southerly chop, which is a good trip in the winter.

Jess met us at the harbor, having warmed up our truck and helped us pack our stuff to the top of the hill because for reasons we wont go into, our 4 wheel drive doesn’t work on the truck and the hill from the harbor to the highway was polished ice.

We went about our day dropping off and gathering mail and necessities with only a couple minor truck malfunctions in the new junker we have acquired. We kept a constant eye on the flags and trees around town for any changes in the weather. Dean, our neighbor from Anchor Point Lodge on the SE side of the island called us at about noon and said that the wind had switched back around from the north and was picking up. Then Jay, our neighbor from the SW side of the island called and reported seas building from the north, but our beach still looked good. So we kicked into high gear always anxious to get out there and do a little “white cappin”.

Now slipping back into a pair of cold clammy chest waders is always a pleasure, whether it’s a sunny spring day or a day that is promising to be a wicked challenge. It is like pouring a thick lumpy liquid into a narrow necked bottle. Even though they are wet, they eventually warm up and provide another protective layer between the elements and me. We checked in with our island contacts for on-site weather reports before untying our lines from the dock. Visibility good and the waves have subsided a bit from earlier; whew, this was a relief to hear. So we headed out of Auke Bay harbor for a ride that should have lasted 30 to 45 minutes.

Then a white wall of death descended upon us as it began to snow, visibility dropped from miles to maybe 100 feet and the sky dulled from the mass of snowflakes that engulfs us. All points of land were obscured. That’s okay I thought, we had our compass and had been here before. (That’s another story) It wasn’t too bad. Seas were a bit choppy from the north and out in the middle of the channel the rollers might have been 3 footers with a 4 tossed in for good measure. We can handle this, just waller across in the troughs, with an occasional slam dunk as we fell off the back of a sharp crest and received a thorough soaking from the next wave that decided to break on top of us instead of under us. I had bungee cords attached at the leading edge of the canvas top stretching down and hooking at the bottom of the windshield to keep the wind and waves from forcing their way in. Even as leaky as our tarp is, it and the windshield are a must for old people to do this sort of thing.

I began to hum my summons to the Goddess and whispered requests to our guardian spirits to guide us safe and true. It seemed to be working, the water calmed to a light 1-foot chop. Rick began to get disoriented in the whiteout. “Don’t doubt your compass,” I remind him. But he was concerned that the seas had changed, the waves had become confused, something was not right. We made a call to Dean and inform him we had no visibility and got his report of conditions from shore. We made our next call to Jay and did the same, then we slipped into a conversation of probabilities.

“Wouldn’t it be sweet if we emerged from the other side of this snow squall into a spacial-fold with a tropical paradise on the other side? Nah, on second thought that would not be good we’d have more problems than we could imagine, global warming and all. How about we just slip out of the snowstorm to find ourselves in front of our own island home; “Yeah, that would be sweet,” we agreed.

I tried to meditate and encourage a hot flash to raise my core temperature. We had left Auke Bay harbor about 2:30. By rights on a good day we would be loading the boat on to the trailer by now. We kept on our westerly heading. About this time Rick decided he just couldn’t see well enough so he had a wild desire to stick his head out from behind the windshield, but I had the front of the tarp strapped down with a bungee cord. He shot me the stink-eye and cursed at my bothersome modification then stormed to the rear of the boat to peak over the top of the tarp. I grabbed the steering wheel to keep us on course, at an idle. As soon as he stuck his head up the wind pealed off his favorite hat and carried it away, off into the now breaking chop. Now he was really pissed. All my fault. Me and my dam bungee cords. He attempted to make a circle around to save his prized possession, but within seconds the sea devoured it, probably to show up again some beautiful sunny day on a beach far, far away. He raged to the front of the boat, riped my bungee tie downs off the tarp and pushed open the front window so he could have a better view. Sea spray pelted his face and snowflakes wrapped around his eyeballs, sticking to his wet hair and beard. The spray on my glasses and the wind in my face became intolerable, I was already getting pretty cold, so I headed to the rear of the boat where I could be back away from the funnel of weather. I knelt in the center, between the seats with my legs spread for balance, tightened up all the strings on my two hoods and brace myself for the tossing and bouncing. Rick tried to sit back in his seat and look through the windshield because his head was freezing, but if the windows were not clouded by icy spray they were coated with a blanket of snowflakes. He grabbed the squeegee and climbed through the open windshield and attempted to reach around and clean off his side window. His coat caught on the windshield wiper and tweaked it so now it became motionless, growling and quivering; pointing forward like a sick directional device. Great!

Then a faint outline of a mountainous horizon appeared in front of us. A welcome sight but what was it. Shelter? Portland Island? Admiralty? Had we gone that far? Naw, couldn’t be. We checked the time. Seemed this vertigo that one experiences in this type of situation not only affected ones vision but sense of time as well. By the time we spotted land through the blizzard it was 3:30 and the waves had resumed from the north. We checked in with Dean on the SE side of Shelter. “Are you lights on?” Rick asked. “Not sure we are out cutting a Christmas tree, but heading home now.” So we headed south along the shore watching for any recognizable points.

Now came our first wave of concern as the theme from Gilligan’s Island started rolling through our minds. We knew we were going to be all right; after all we had our survival bag. Concern began to churn our gut when we discovered that we had left it at home. Dam! How many hundreds of trips had that bag crossed the channel with us over the years and never been given a second thought? When the boat motor came to a sudden stop we yearned for the flash light from within. The gremlins that had been following us all day had become so active, if I had a bit of sage, a good burning would have been appropriate at this time. Rick cursed and began to holler orders, “check the oil reservoir, is there still oil for the fuel mixture? Is there fuel visible in the settlement jar? I squinted in the ever-increasing darkness to give him some kind of answer. Not just the ones we wanted to hear but the true nature of our status. My fuel report was “still a full jar”. He slipped up to the front of the boat and poured an extra five gallons of fuel into the gas tank even though the gauge said we were all right, at lest as good as he could tell in the dark. He sat momentarily as if in a trance, running through all the possible scenarios that could have caused this new crippling event. Then he began to fumble with his “frozen sausage fingers” trying to locate the magic end of the kill switch that had become dislodged in all the bouncing. If he could get it back together it would complete the circuit so the boat would start and run again.

My hands were numb, I wished for the little heating pads that can be slipped into your gloves from the survival bag. My feet felt like blocks of ice, numb and clumsy. Now even though land was close at hand we had no GPS to tell what land it was. If we did have to ground we had no means to build a fire, no flairs for signals. What was the name of that creek where we some times end up without a paddle? We were there. Now we had to pull a rabbit out of our hat or we would surely perish. Rick cranked the switch and the motor sputtered and resumed it rhythmic purr.

Whew, we gave thanks.

We followed the beach south; nothing looked familiar and there were no friendly lights from cabins. We were in almost constant contact with our shore support. We needed to forsake this route and head back from whence we came. I felt hesitant, as the sight of land is always a welcome sight in my book. My fingers were so numb that I could hardly push the buttons to call or answer the cell phone. We relayed our intentions and turned around setting a course east. It was not long before we broke out of the snowy abyss. We could see the horizon of the mainland, the glacier with other landmasses and small islands, in the forefront. The sun, which had been only an occasional faint orb during the day, was now a dying glow below the horizon behind us.

“Okay” we think, “north, south, east, west. The shoreline we were following has got to be the east side of Shelter, but how did we get this far north? Lets resume our course and continue south along the shore, where we should be seeing Anchor Point Lodge at any second.” With our visibility now very limited again because of the darkness and continuing blizzard, landmasses started to appear on the left side as well as the right side. “Ding-Ding, Admiralty, Horse and Colt Island, Holey Cow! We are not too far north; we are too far south, way too far.” It all started to make sense, the wind and waves had pushed us further off course than suspected. Rick thought he had made an allowance with the compass for conditions, maybe even over correcting being unaware of the exact variables. It is getting scary dark and we were miles from home, miles that we would have to buck head first into the dark north wind, waves and current to get home. We relayed our position to our friends on shore who had now secured the brightest lights that they had available and were flashing and shining them in our direction. We saw a stack of bright lights that looked like they belonged to a commercial boat of some kind heading south down the channel, toward us. We asked our friends on the SW point if they could see them and had any way of contacting the boat via VHF radio, as ours was in the survival bag. Both Rick and I were chanting “go to the light” over and over and I thought, what is going to keep him from running us over if he couldn’t see us? Our friend Jay saw no lights. We were being pounded in the waves but there was just a little bit of foolish confidence in the fact that we couldn’t see just how gnarly it really was. Still kneeling on the floor between the seats, knowing that my knees would be sore tomorrow, that is if we lived that long. But at least the pounding was less, further back in the hull, and staying low I was less likely to be tossed out. If that had happened I am afraid it would have been all over but the crying.

I began to get uncontrollable shivers. I couldn’t remember the last time I was this cold. I pushed the recall numbers with my knuckles and had trouble getting my unresponsive frozen fingers back into my gloves. Rick began to complain of the cold. This doesn’t usually happen. Here is a guy that doesn’t even have on any long johns on, only a pair of Helly Hanson rubber pants on over his jeans. I’m surprised he was not a block of ice. He didn’t have a string on the hood of his float coat so his hood wouldn’t stay up. I untied my hoods, remove my baseball style cap and passed it to him. He put it on and drew his hood up over it as well as he could. I retied my hood strings with my numb fingers, any good knot at this point would do. My glasses immediately begin to collect sea spray. Heck who needed to see at this point? I only left them on to keep from loosing them.

We called Dean and confirmed that the stack of lights that we saw were his, not a commercial boat, as he flashed them from the deck of the lodge. We didn’t think we should be able to see them from our position, we only thought we knew what direction we were pointing. Go to the light! As we grew nearer to the Shelter Island his lights disappear behind the trees on the SE point just as Jay’s light on the SW corner of the island became visible. We can not be seen in the darkness, even though I located the poles with the boat marker lights on them, I could not risk hanging to the edge of the boat to attach them especially with my frozen hands.

The minutes stretched on in the darkness with the timeless momentum of cold molasses. We finally reached the beach on the SW corner, Jay and Jayleen passed us their spotlight and flashlight so we could locate our beach and pull our boat, only a mile left to go. They offered to come down and help us get on shore but we had already put them through enough and declined their offer.

We made our way north along the SW side of the island it became quickly apparent that the spotlight was not going to do us any good. Snowflakes intercepted each ray of light reflecting it anywhere but on our desired target. We could not even locate our mooring buoy even though we were practically right on top of it. We hemmed and hawed then decide to call upon our neighbor once more. I reflected that if I had just left that kitchen light on we could have possibly seen our house.

When Jay answered his phone, he was huffing and puffing. We looked down the beach toward his house and could see a small flash of light bobbing and dancing along the shoreline already heading our way. We smiled and felt better knowing that we had such great neighbors that were willing to go the extra mile to help. They had come to our assistance in the past more than once and we try to do the same. Always attempting to stay one up on the favors we impart. But this night had placed us deeply in their debt. Words could not express our gratitude.

Once we reached the shore I oozed off the front of the skiff and walked it up into the shallows. Jay was standing ready. Rick made his way up the beach and backed the jeep down. I pushed and wrestled the boat back out into the waves to make way for the trailer. I was hip deep in the surf with an occasional wave washing over the back of the transom. The water felt warm to me, telling me just how cold I had become. Jay waded out to help hook the boat to the cable and helped line it up on the trailer rollers. He was over his boot tops and his jeans were getting soaked. I could still make my body work even frozen but had to be very aware of how badly I could injure myself without knowing.

Rick operated the new electric wench and it slowly dragged the Led Zeppelin up on to the trailer. When she was secured I signaled to him to just get up the beach. Normally I would insist on strapping it down before bumping over all the rocks. But tonight my primary thought was to get up into the house to warm up, we could come out and unload the goods and secure her after we took care of ourselves. Jay walked us up to the house and made sure we would be all right. He had to turn the key in the lock and twist the doorknob for me to enter, what a guy! We insisted that he stay to warm up and dry before he headed back down the beach but he maintained that his adrenalin was running and he would be fine. And if you knew Jay you would know this to be true.

I immediately stripped off my turd suit (chest waders) in the shower and hobbled over to the oil stove and attempted to absorb every BTU that it produced. Rick grabbed a few sticks of wood and some diesel and built a fire in the wood stove. I wrapped a blanket over my shoulders and sat as close as I could to the stove, rubbing my frozen hands over my burning-frozen feet to restore some kind of life. Calico, our cat came up and insisted that she needed her share of lovin so I told her today it would be a trade off. If she laid on my exposed bare feet I would massage her. However if she refused I would gut her and stick my hand and feet inside. She seemed to sense my urgency in sharing her warmth and complied, keeping her hide intact, until I allowed her to leave. Rick was quit astounded that I would even say such a thing to one of my beloved felines but dam I was beyond cold I was hypothermic.

In the days that followed we discussed the events of our miss-adventure over and over. What surely transpired and could have. We came to the conclusion that we had ventured out with only a half a brain between us and because of that, perhaps we belonged in a constant care facility. Surely the next crossing we would be better prepared. Ya Think?

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