Bad Luck Bob By John M. Porter
B
ob had been following us for a month. We were both liveaboards sailing south from Canada for the winter of ‘89. I think he left both his common sense and his boat sense at the Canadian border and had made it to Florida by a fortuitous combination of autopilot and dumb luck. His nautical blunders and misfortunes could fill a book, but the groundings, anchor rodes wrapped in the prop and tools over the side were merely preludes to the infamous holding tank incident. Our boat was built in the early 1970s for offshore passages and had a holding tank installed with a now-outlawed “Y” valve, so we could pump waste overboard while at sea. Bob had a Great Lakes boat— newer—with a welded nylon tank and no through-hull plumbing. He did have an idiot light—adjective appropriate—that indicated when the tank was full and in need of a pump out. I had onboard a portable hand bilge pump with hose and fittings that I had devised suitable for a multitude of mostly urgent uses. Bob had borrowed my pump a couple weeks earlier when we had been days from the nearest marina. He could attach it to his deck fitting and perform his own pump out in about 10 minutes. As previously arranged, Bob’s guests arrived from the frigid North just in time for our Gulf Stream crossing to the Bahamas. The party must have started right away, as our VHF was strangely quiet. We heard none of the usual “mini maydays” from him for the longest time. Then about halfway into our second day of slogging against 25 knot headwinds in the middle of the Bahama bank, the radio suddenly chirped on 68.
“Say, John, can I borrow your pump contraption?” “Sure, Bob, but I thought you pumped out in Miami.” “No. With the guests arriving and all, I never got around to it. Besides, I thought the light was broken.” “What Light?” “The ‘tank full’ light. It’s been blinking on and off.” I didn’t have the heart to remind him that if a light is defective it usually doesn’t come on at all. “With the four of us using the head for a couple days, it’ getting really hard to pump and I thought the tank might be getting full by now.” “Have you checked the tank, Bob?” “Uh, no. I’ll do it now.” “Gee, it looks pretty full. The sides are even bulging out.” “Right. Maneuver alongside and
I’ll toss you the pump.” I may have said that we were motor sailing into a nasty three- to four-foot chop with nearly 30 knots apparent wind across the deck. Did I mention that Bob’s deck fitting for pump out was forward near the bow? The prudent skipper might have thought to stop and anchor by the stern before unscrewing that fitting. Since the Bahama Bank is only 15 to 20 feet deep, it would have been quick and easy. Alas, no. It now becomes my task, dear reader, to try to verbalize what my eyes witnessed that breezy afternoon so long ago from less than 100 meters off. Mere words fail here. The way they fail to describe the glories of nature like Old Faithful at Yellowstone Park, or the Mount St. Helens eruption, or Kilauea, or...suffice it to say that within two seconds of unscrewing that deck fitting Bob no longer needed my portable bilge pump device. His 20gallon holding tank had reduced its volume from 25 gallons to about two all by itself. That was the good news. The bad news covered nearly the entire boat—deck, dodger, bimini, even the foot of the main had sort of a tan bark look. The clean-up took a couple of days. The good natured guests even pitched in and the boat was made almost as good as new. We parted company a week later in Nassau and never saw Bob or the boat again. We don’t know if he is still sailing somewhere. So, if you ever cross tacks with a nifty Canadian 33-footer with half a tanbark main, be a prudent sailor yourself. Let him anchor first, and then don’t anchor downwind.
GOT A SAILING STORY? If you have a story about an incident that happened that was a real learning experience, or a funny story, or a weird or unusual story that you’d like to tell, send it to editor@southwindsmagazine.com. Keep them short—around 800-1000 words or less, maybe a little more. Photos nice, but not required. We pay for these stories. 70 March 2017
SOUTHWINDS
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