- Local News for Southern Sailors - May 2002 Next Story
Another adventure in paradise
By Allan Horn
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Getting closer, I realized what I was seeing was a 17-foot Scotty travel trailer that someone had lashed to 55-gallon drums to build their own houseboat. The vessel had the name Sailor Trash emblazoned across the apparent stern...at least I guessed it was the stern because there was a 1979 Virginia license plate on that end, along with what appeared to be an old Homelite weed-whacker hanging out of the rear window. Someone had apparently converted the yard tool to use as an outboard motor by installing the propeller from a model airplane on it. Two plastic lawn chairs and a plastic parson's table were bolted to the top of the trailer, and in front of them there was an aging truck tire laying flat to the deck with begonias growing out of the middle of it.
At the other end of this floating apparition was what appeared to be a plywood deck screwed down to the top of the trailer fork with a raised gangplank suspended to the side of the fork apparently for boarding when tied to the dock.
Next to the dock there was a thin man of medium height and a five-o'clock shadow. Being a somewhat cool February day, he was dressed in jeans and a red plaid flannel shirt covered by a L.L. Bean denim jacket sporting an embroidered "Captain" on the left pocket and a wilted begonia in its lapel. The other end of the tan manila rope that Fred and Pete were tugging was tied around his waist rather than to the vessel itself. The captain was wearing cowboy boots.
As was the case about half the time, there was a fair-moving tide running through the marina and out the pass into the Gulf, thus keeping Sailor Trash well off the dock despite the efforts of the three men.
I hurried to the side of Foghorn Fred and offered to help, setting the paint and hardware items I had just purchased aside and out from under foot. Pete said, "Glad to have the help, but the three of us are liable to pull this bonehead right off of his deck!"
I offered: "Why doesn't he tie off to something on deck instead of himself?"
A flustered-sounding Pete said, "We tried to get him to do that, but he said he's always done it this way and he ain't about to change now! I don't think he has any cleats."
"Okay..." I skeptically replied and picked up the tail of the line that Fred was tugging.
Foghorn Fred shouted in his Herculean tones over to the harnessed yachtsman, "GET READY... WE'RE REALLY GONNA PULL NOW!" to which the guy merely nodded acknowledgment.
Pete counted off "one...two...three..." and we all put our backs into the effort, thus pulling the guy from his deck like he was shot from a medieval
catapult and dropping him into the 58-degree water about halfway between his deck and the dock.
He came to the surface spluttering and swearing as his unique home-built barge began drifting away at an increasing speed in the 2.5-knot tide race.
"Come on Fred," I yelled and dashed for my boat.
I had left my dinghy in the water tied to the stern of Island Lady after a short sunset cruise the previous evening. Normally it hangs on my davits
as a self-defense measure from those boats that constantly collide with the docked vessels as they come and go. This day I was happy for my
procrastination.
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In moments, Fred and I reached the dinghy and, fortunately, the outboard fired on the second pull. Fred cast off the bow line, and we raced after the rapidly escaping houseboat just as Pete was pulling its disgusted captain onto the dock.
In seconds we were gaining on the ungainly floating contraption, but because of its mass we naturally could not see that it was floating down on the local Ringo Key Marine Patrol officer who was berating a teenager and his girlfriend for not having adequate Coast Guard approved flotation devices aboard their small runabout.
I swung the dinghy wide to pass the houseboat just in time to see it slam into the aft quarter of the police boat, propelling the usually ill-tempered Officer Fuzby and his ticket pad into the chilly dark water between the police vessel and the
teenager's boat.
Suddenly our houseboat rescuing mission had turned into something more dramatic. Fred cast a flotation cushion to the officer as I swung ahead of the Marine Patrol boat and grabbed its anchor line from the bow, looping it over the outboard on the dinghy.
Quickly, I swung the dinghy around and put its bow on the side of the renegade houseboat—gradually slowing its downstream movement—then slowly pushing it back to where a spluttering and furious Officer Fuzby was clinging to the float cushion with one hand and the kid's runabout with the other.
The two teenagers pulled Fuzby from the water and gave him a beach towel to dry the water from his hair and bright red face. It was apparent that the teenagers were about having a hemorrhage trying to keep from laughing.
After thanking the smirking kids and reminding them not to go out onto the water without the proper equipment, Fuzby scampered over to his own vessel while the kids escaped quickly and were roaring with laughter before they were 30 yards away.
Fuzby then turned his wrath on Fred and me in spite of our heroic efforts on his behalf to this point.
"Who is the skipper of that garbage scow?" he shouted.
We explained to a glowering Fuzby that the apparent owner had himself fallen overboard and was being rescued by Pete back in the marina while we came to salvage the houseboat.
"So neither of you has anything to do with this monstrosity?" Fuzby asked with a suspicious eyebrow raised.
Fred and I simultaneously replied, "NO WAY!"
Fred added, "We're just yore everyday po-leese-boat-saving-heroes, sir," followed by a stiff formal salute.
Fuzby reddened again and said, "Okay...but I'm going to follow you back to the marina. I hope the guy that owns this contraption isn't planning any big dates tonight because I want to have a talk with him."
In an instant, we cast off Officer Fuzby's boat and turned our attention to pushing and prodding Sailor Trash slowly back to the marina with our dinghy-tugboat, a police escort, and flashing lights.
Just another adventure in paradise, leaving me feeling like Gardner McKay.
Fuzby spent the next several hours lecturing the soggy and red-faced transient houseboater on the necessity of deck cleats on floating navigational hazards and garbage scows...and the travel trailer-houseboat was long gone from Ringo Key the next morning when I got up at 8 a.m. I hoped it hadn't just drifted away.
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