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The Yachtsman
Copyright 1983 TrixiePixGraphics
Non-Fiction
Published Alaska Fisherman Journal
4359 Words Exactly
We'd recently completed some particularly tough rescue job; I don't remember what it was, but we felt as though we'd earned a moment's relaxation before we were called out again. Spring was our busy time of year.
We gathered up our wives and screaming kids and drew them down to the fishing docks where the bulk of our salvage machinery was moored. And upon the bleak decks of a barge we assembled a sturdy steel table-- the round kind, with an umbrella stuck up through the center; and about it we arranged a dozen lawn chairs and several coolers full of wine and sodas. We sent the wives off to fetch chicken and burgers-- wives are so gullible-- and we, the crew, reclined in the frail chairs and lounged about the decks pretending it was warm and we were but gentlemen on the stylish verandah of some Caribbean townhouse.
It was early April and the waterfront was finally coming out of hibernation; even the less hardy fishermen were about, sorting out what ravages winter had inflicted upon their vessels. The yachtsmen, too, were launching their little jewel-like things, eyes wide with anticipation, mouths half open like young boys at a carnival-- "Oh what fun there'll be on the water!"
Occasionally larger yachts slipped back and forth across the glassy water of the marina on mysterious missions, wives always stationed, ready, pensive at the rail with a line held awkwardly in one hand, jumping spasmodically at every frantic command of their self conscious captains. They didn't want to be there, of course; they hated the water-- that she took their men away. But in desperation they came along, as if to show "her" there was a bit of fight in them yet. My God what devotion.
And there was always the family mascot, most often a dainty poodle, having been stripped of the dignity a proper tail provides, and dressed so cutely in some absurd life jacket for dogs. "Oh how yachting....", we always said as they passed. The pooch would run fore and aft along the decks yipping insanely as the great vessels slid along past. We hated them-- the dogs; wished they'd fall in. Sometimes they did.
After some while a big, shiny, slab-sided yacht appeared from around one of the inside jetties. She was forty feet at least, and as full and beamy as a cardboard carton. She was tall-- obnoxiously so. As so many modern designs, she looked as though she'd tip right over on her flat sides if a little wave pushed her just right-- and the records showed that she would, too. She had a couple of decks up, and a great flying bridge high above the water... The length of a yacht, in recent years, has little to say of her social status--rather it's the altitude of her bridge, her "Height Over All"... And in that regard, the Jackie B was no slouch.
Her Master was obviously a man of means, for his ship was as ornamentally outfitted and as delectably decorated as they come, a most proper lady, he thought. More a garish, painted whore, thought we. Good for nothing, when the chips were down.
She'd just been fueled or polished or otherwise serviced, and the captain elected to motor her a few hundred yards to an empty float to receive a lone lady guest. She waited primly dockside, dressed in a striking purple skirt-- a tight, short one, and tall shoes, more magenta, with a dove white, rhinestone studded suitcase daintily in hand, while her handsome beau piloted his magnificent ship ever closer. Oh what a weekend it would be . . .
As he neared we could more clearly make him out: thirty five, perhaps; a "Jet-Setter", obviously-- but they call 'em "Yuppies", now.. He wore an almost luminescent white preppy shirt, monogrammed above the pocket with a small alligator and below that, the name of his yacht; and loud, freshly pressed Bermuda shorts just a tad baggy in the seat, though he would have never suspected.
His tan was flawless, like a finely turned roast bird-- the hair, slick and trim and black, like that of a cheap plastic doll, a bold, daring style, bigger than life. He wore dazzling yachting shoes, too, brilliantly white, and stockings that stayed halfway up his calves no matter how he leapt about that bridge. It was uncanny. Perhaps yachtsmen glue them there, or pin them to their abundantly hairy legs. And those masculinely hairy legs always looked as though they'd been carefully groomed and brushed.
How DO they DO it?
What a specimen--
--but of course he knew that.
He peered, at first calmly, over the blue-tinted sun-screen of the bridge, judging the distance and drift from the dock, chin held high, a wry smile etched on his face-- the look of the rich. But as he neared the dock his composure faltered almost imperceptibly.
He was hard on her engines, clunking her in and out of gear, while yet there was seventy yards to cover, and while the engines still turned too fast. She grew nervous beneath him.
His lady friend jumped up and waved from the dock all at once, once. But he didn't see her, and she sat back down on her suitcase, a trifle miffed.
She looked away, then; then he suddenly found a free half instant in which to glance up and to wave. She was still peering prettily into the green water just over the edge of the float, and never noticed. I believe it was that microscopic event which unnerved him initially, and to such a degree that recovery was impossible. Appearances are life and death to such a breed.
Though the Jackie B was still sixty yards from the nearest obstruction and there was not the faintest breath of wind, and she was making weigh at barely a quarter knot which would have left the man plenty of time for lunch before she was in the slightest danger of even gently bumping that float, that instant of inattention caused the Yachtsman's tenuous grasp of the physics of his present position in space and time to be loosed. He was now, clearly, half a step behind his ship, and he began to struggle frantically to catch up. We could see it in his face, almost a kind of terror-- Though cloaked professionally behind a mask of absolute confidence and calm, inside there raged the blind, illogical fear of one who suddenly, inexplicably found himself the only person aboard a jet-liner, it slowly beginning to creep down the runway, and no brake or off switch in sight. And what's worse, oh horror of horrors: Someone was watching! It's "The Whammy Syndrome...."
The Yachstman began to convulsively snatch at an impressive array of levers and knobs up on the bridge. First one engine slammed into gear causing her whole hull to flex and shudder, then another raced at full RPM with no load on it at all. --Then back to the first to boil away in reverse-- while it should have gone gently ahead.. Finally he found some wits and got the power off everything-- all shiny chrome levers came to their neutral positions, and the ship visibly took a breath. She bobbed gently on the glassy water, and the whine of her reverse gears subsided, and the smoke of her throaty exhausts began to move away in the stagnant air. But he'd not checked her motion fully, and she began to fall off to starboard, drifting ever so slowly towards ourselves.
For a moment the man valiantly kept 'hold of what little composure remained, and gently moved a lever here, experimentally a knob there, turning the wheel port or starboard indiscriminately, just for good measure. But every correction was only a mistake, and inexplicably his ship began to move at greater speeds toward our barge. He cheated and stole another quarter second to look up at us on the barge as if to inquire why we didn't DO something. But what could we do? We gazed on, content that our barge would survive the impact.
The great shape loomed ever closer while her Master fought the controls, nearly panicked now, struggling, cursing. We heard a faint squeak, a kind of inhaled whine or whimper of frustration. He may as well have been that horrified person aboard the jet-liner, spiraling down now, only two instants from slamming into a mountain. Apprehension was tangible. It hovered about him like a small dark cloud. In the confusion he knocked over a tall, green drink from the dash, and it dumped solidly onto his bare legs and shorts. He was thinking of letting go of the controls long enough to brush the ice from the hairs of his legs, but thought better of it-- there was no time-- and then he was back at the all encompassing business of mercilessly jerking those handles and levers back and forth to their stops, for all he was worth, like the Great and Powerful Oz...
His ship complained, bucked and rolled under the incredible torque of the engines, first full ahead, then all astern full, then some combination thereof-- and always with a spin of the wheel, this way or that-- He thought himself so handsome when he spun that big plastic wheel, so he did it often. And onward she danced, like a frightened Thoroughbred.
We stood up, finally, wondering if there WOULD be something to do when she hit us. When it appeared absolutely imminent that contact was upon us, the crew collectively retrieved their drinks from the table, like actors in a staged beer bar brawl would lift their glasses even while the table was smashed to bits by some flying body-- We knew not what else to do! But when there was not three fathoms remaining between us, the man somehow hit upon the magical combination, and got both screws churning simultaneously astern. She belched a nasty cloud as both mains screamed to a hundred percent and she began to move deliberately away.
At a distance of a hundred yards he managed to slow her down, and to push both gearboxes mostly into neutral again. He wiped his brow and looked self consciously about. We took a deep breath and sat back down, the catastrophe accidentally averted.
His lady friend stood up then, and yelled loudly once. She was tired of waiting. He looked over at her, took a deeper breath himself, and started anew.
The girls arrived with warm boxes of cheap food, and we settled in to dine and watch the second act.
The poor chap was literally flustered now, too embarrassed even to look up for fear a great crowd might have gathered. Sweat rolled profusely down his sideburns; that finely groomed hair was matted to his glistening legs.. Once or twice he chanced upon control positions that put both engines going the same direction, and the Jackie B charged in toward the float where his pretty passenger still waited, but he could never convince his ship to stop, and always veered away sharply at the last possible instant.
Once, convinced the ship was out of control entirely, the lady clutched her purse and her bag, and ran a few steps toward the ramp-- then she turned quickly to see the yacht still bearing down on her, and, sensing there wasn't an instant to lose, she dropped her suitcase, abandon all lady-like styles of gait, and simply ran headlong up the ramp for safety. But the Yachstman caught his ship in time, and slammed both boxes into reverse. It snorted roughly to a stop, half a length from the float. We looked back to see his lady on her hands and knees over the open suitcase, cursing with little regard for her manners, plucking up a trail of small items of neon colored clothing from the dirty dock. The yachtsman saw it too, and swore loudly then, as if that might appease the Gods-- or his date. Neither showed obvious signs of forgiveness.
Once, too, the yacht came up to the float, bow on, and apparently under control--but at two fathoms away both screws somehow found themselves straining all ahead full, and she lurched onward, ramming the float with a nasty crack. The lady was dropped to the deck-- sat down abruptly, eyes wide in incomprehension-- as though a rug had been pulled none too neatly out from under her. She bellowed an unbecoming word, but the Yachstman never heard-- was back hard at work on those controls as his ship glanced along the dock scraping and grating the delicate skin of his yacht as she went. He got her shut down a hundred yards out-- pointed entirely the wrong direction. Repositioning efforts were initiated without hesitation.
Too, once, he backed her into the bowsprit of a moored schooner, inserting that protuberance impressively through an aft cabin port'le.. There was no damage whatever to the sprit, though money exchanged hands from the Jackie to the other.... Incompetence is thusly forgiven-- or paid for.
All at once there was a whine, and a great cloud of smoke. The Jackie B charged ahead, slewing drunkenly to port. She plunged on; we could see her Master; he made no attempt to fiddle with those levers but just held them all tightly to the forward stops. His knuckles were white; his jaw was set; his eyes half wild. The Jackie's stern dragged a great, smooth arc, at one point nearly striking an adjacent float, but she cleared it just, through no act of skill, and the Yachstman spun the wheel back to starboard and the Jackie roared off out of the bay entirely, at last leaving us in peace.
The lady on the dock was mortified. She looked over at us, threw her suitcase disgustedly onto the dock-- it busted open again to scatter its dainty contents-- and she stomped away up the ramp. Without a word, our diver Ron passed the salt. I passed the chicken. And the girls took up some gregarious chatter.
Ten minutes later the Jackie B returned. The lady saw him coming from somewhere, and ran down the dock, arms flailing in the air, positively bubbling that her man had come back for her.. And he came on ahead then, too. We sensed a fresh determination-- a grimness even. By God, this time he was going to do it, and for the first hundred yards it even looked good. But as that damnable dock grew closer, his nerve began to waver and break. With every foot made to the good his wit and stamina eked away like blood from a wound. He sensed its draining, that there was little in reserve. He ultimately cracked, lost his nerve, and commenced to jerking and throttling those poor levers-- I swear I wanted to grab him, to throw him by the hair to the deck and to just moor his damned boat. Such a mooring requires but three moves, even on multi-screwed hulls: From ahead to neutral on the shifter; then at the proper time from neutral to reverse, and a timely burst of power to check one's weigh. Anything more than that is a botched maneuver-- but the man had executed half a thousand moves, and was no closer to the float, than to the moon. It was beyond amusing, past merely silly-- it was criminal. Unconsciously, Ron began to tap the table .
My beeper went off. Nerves about the table were strained such that we all jumped. What an obnoxious device! I slapped at the bar along the top and it ceased. What in Hell did they want now...? The girls rolled their eyes and began cleaning up. And the kids, excused from the table, began to run along the length of the barge, veering often too close to the unprotected edge. They all wore small life jackets-- we'd recovered too many of the chalky forms that hadn't-- but when one of the little beggars went in we weren't allowed to merely pluck them out with a boat hook-- the wives routinely insisted that we actually dive in and remove them by hand! "What would someone think!" they argued. And so we yelled none too politely when they got too close. They fancied it a great game.
As the women packed most of our picnic we stood up, the general feeling of urgency growing among us. I'd have to go call the service to see what was up. We were but puppets dangling uncomfortably on invisible strings. We'd come to resent it.
The Master of the yacht was still busy at his work, thrashing his great ship to and fro, at and away from that stupid float. His lady found other interests, now oblivious to her man's inhuman perseverance, and was talking and smiling seductively to a couple of commercial fishermen who'd approached her. We began to speculate openly on which vessel she'd finally board-- and sail away: The tall fisherman's, or that of the fat, balding man.
Presently another yacht, a beautiful ketch, approached from outside and hove to close aboard the Jackie B. The Jackie B moved uncontrollably about for another few moments, struggling to get herself pointed toward some open piece of marina water so that she could move ahead and let the other vessel pass by. Finally there was a gap between them barely sufficient, and the ketch slipped quickly through in a huff, roared smartly up to her berth; her diesel rapped sharply in the cool afternoon air as she killed her weigh and came up "all stop". Her mate tossed a line deftly; it was taken, secured. She was moored. All the while the Jackie B worked incessantly to get back to a position from which she could assault the dock, the other yacht having so rudely fouled her approach...
The Yachstman's lady interrupted her conversation with the two fishermen, looked at the Jackie B, then at the other yacht, her crew and passengers now departing-- then back at her man-- then she freshened her smile, and the conversation with the two fishermen took up its place.
We prepared to depart. The women gathered little bags of greasy napkins, and the children, with about as much regard for either, and began to herd them off for the gang plank. We men lingered, wanting to see once and for all the conclusion to such an heroic effort. We silently rooted for him, cheered him on. What drive! What stamina! Why his hands must be but two sore and festering blisters from all that frantic jerking of levers and the like. What grit... We wished we could impart some fleck of sea sense to that man by sheer telepathy, if such a thing could be done. We wished to knock him along side the head with a pipe so that he'd just calm down. If he'd only fall overboard, a wafting breath of air would eventually moor her.....
At one point he nearly had her, had nearly attained that far, elusive objective, and sensing that he was, at long last, close enough, he leapt from that bridge, scurried down the ladder like a squirrel and flew to the rail. Time and again he threw his line to the float. The first couple of tries no one was even there to receive it, and it slipped impotently back into the water. He would retrieve it and try again. Finally his lady left her new gentlemen friends and strutted down the dock to where the thin line draped over both sides of the narrow float. The Yachstman urged her on, explaining energetically that he "couldn't hold her there long!" And just then, the only bit of moving air, the only gently wafting piece of summer breeze within a thousand miles fell out of the sky and descended upon the unwitting Jackie B. She began to move ever so slowly downwind of the float. It was a phenomenon. It was a fate so cruel.
He yelled at his lady friend then, "Hurry up!"... And that was his fatal mistake for she took immediate offense and stopped a fathom from the line, wholly indignant to have been spoken to thus. She put her hands on her bony hips, gave him a stern, intolerant scowl, and he slumped over the rail, hanging his head, knowing then the nature of his error.
The Jackie B drifted away. The rope slid silently across the dock, its bitter end dropping off the float and into the water with a distinctive, tiny plop. The momentary breeze fell dead. His lady shrugged her shoulders. The Yachstman pulled the line back aboard, climbed slowly, resolutely to the bridge, and began, yet again...
The women returned from the cars, tired of waiting. We knew we should go. It had been ten minutes since the original page.. We were generally underweigh within eight. A quick response was our trademark. I felt guilt at the indulgence. My beeper went off again, then Ron's, not a quarter minute later. We were definitely wanted. What bloody inconvenience. Eventually, reluctantly, we departed in search of a phone.
As we drove away enroute the rescue tug, Ron suggested we take an alternate route, one that would grant a last glimpse of the marina and its sad entertainment. I turned the wheel and presently pulled up near a high spot that afforded a marginal view. From the car we could see little, so we got out and walked a few yards through some brush to the edge of a bluff. The Jackie B was still there, visible in the marina below us, but close aboard the dock now... Had he made it? Was he actually moored? We couldn't quite make it out, and I yelled for the binoculars. Through them, if one held his head just right, sideways and cocked to see between some branches of a tree, the Jackie B could be seen very close to the float indeed.
I strained my eyes and could just make out a long, slender, metallic device nearly bridging the gap. The lady was standing on tiptoes, leaning awkwardly far over the edge of the float, a delicately manicured hand outstretched toward the yacht. The silvery device was a long pike pole; he was extending it across the short expanse. He'd come as close as he could; now it was up to her. But another light burst of afternoon breeze was prevailing, and the Jackie was beginning to move along, across the end of the float. I could see the Yachstman's head as it lunged and jerked. The veins in his neck were swollen and red. He was obviously shouting at her again, caution to the wind. But she stayed with him this time, faithful, obedient. There was one instant at which the yacht would be close enough for her to at last grab the hook end of the pole and thereby exert some pull upon the light craft that may possibly bring her closer to the dock, and finally right along side. That instant drew near as the yacht drifted closer.
The man was advising her, coaching her, telling her precisely how to stand in order to extend her arm to its absolute fullest length out over the water.
And then she had it! Dear God she grasped that hook firmly, with her whole hand, and began to pull with all her heart. I found my teeth clenched, my hands cramped about the binoculars as though I could magically send her that strength.
"Come on! Come on!"
I saw her head turn then, from her man to the hand that held the hook. The expression on her face altered curiously. For an instant I was perplexed. I thought she might have injured herself, cut her hand perhaps, on some sharp burr of the metal hook. But then suddenly the expression turned to one of "ugh" and she disdainfully dropped the hook into the water, and waved that hand in the air as if it were burned. She brushed the palms of her hands against one another to knock off what of the dirt she could. The face oddly contorted, she looked as girls often look when they've just touched a slug... Why, there'd been some "ick" on the pole-- A tiny fleck of seagull dung, we might guess...
Then, all at once, realizing what she'd done, she apologetically dropped to her knees along the edge of the float, ruining those comely magenta fishnet nylons, and began clawing at the water, even though the hook was now ten feet submerged on the end of the pole.
Seeing the futility of it she stopped and looked up to her man, but the yacht was drifting away now, that one instant of favorable proximity gone forever.
I scanned the binoculars to look there too, to her man; he was slumped over the rail again, one arm hanging loosely down as he kept 'hold of his end of the pole. It pointed straight down into the water alongside the yacht. His head hung at an ungainly angle, like before, as though he were dead.
The lady slumped down then too, sat yoga style on the dock, oblivious to the dirt now, her skirt hiked up about her waist, those crooked knees thrusting forth in an unbecoming manner, and she peered silently into the water once more. She picked up some tiny bit of crud off the dock-- a small pebble, perhaps, and plunked it idly into the water. Then, beaten and resigned, she sighed, and moved no more.
I looked to the yacht again, but in the freshening breeze it was drifting more rapidly away from the float, and out of my vision for some leaves of a tree. Ron took a last, sad look too. Then we walked back to the car, and drove quietly away.
......"Oh what fun we'll have on the water."
