More Sailing Adventures
Sailing anywhere has its hazards and there were several occasions when we could have lost the boat if things hadn’t happened just right. One day, we were anchored in the harbor at Careyes very close to some major rocks. It was a touchy place to anchor, but it was a clear day and Lee Lyon was on deck, so I asked him to keep a sharp lookout while I went below to do some chores. Half an hour later I came back on deck to find us literally inches from the rocks with Lee engrossed in his book.
He said his attention wandered when he got to the part where it said, “and she arched her back.”
I think it was that same trip when I was ashore, out of sight of the boat, a little kid came running up yelling,
“Your boat is on fire!”
I got back as quick as I could and found that indeed it had been on fire—the generator had overheated. Luckily, Betty was there and was able to put out the fire. We found a Mexican mechanic to rebuild our generator. That spring, we installed an automatic fire extinguisher in the engine room.
One winter, Betty invited Jeni and Kyle to Vallarta for a week and I decided to invite some stags to go cruising. The group included Jim Moran, Willie Jordan and Dale Eubank. We had a whole series of disasters.
My guests took the dinghy and went exploring one afternoon. I had warned them about the surf, but they didn’t listen. They flipped the dinghy, soaking the engine (outboards don’t run when full of saltwater.) It was a long row back only to spend the rest of the evening taking the motor apart to clean it.
On the last night of that trip, we did an overnight from Careyes to Vallarta. It was overcast, there was no moon and no lights along that shore – in other words it was black as stink! The wind came up to about 30 knots, we ripped our jib and the engine quit. To restart a diesel that has sucked in some air you have to bleed it, which involves opening various lines to let the air (and always a fair amount of diesel fuel) out. In a rough sea, we take off all our clothes to do this as it is akin to taking a diesel bath in a very hot, pitching, crowded space.
Dale was helping me, but fifteen minutes in he started to turn green and asked to be excused for a minute. Dale is quite a guy—he went on deck, threw up, and came back to help me get the engine started. And just in time, too. I went topsides and found that we had been driven so close to shore that I could hear the surf breaking. We sailed away from another close one!
In 1980 we chartered a boat on the French Riviera with Barbara and Carson Bell. The highlight of that trip was our time in the harbor at St. Tropez with our little sailboat moored among the mega yachts.
One day we were walking along a beach on one of the French islands. There were trees, then a sandy area, then more trees. As we came out of the trees onto one of the pocket beaches, we saw this gorgeous French gal lying on her back stark naked. We didn’t bother her, but Carson was so fascinated he walked right into a broken tree branch and put a hole in his forehead. He bled like a stuck pig.
In the summer of 1982, I took a stag group—Fritz Benedict, Ron Gray, Lee Lyon, and Willie Jordan—on a cruise from San Diego to Catalina and the Channel Islands. We got to Catalina without incident and were enjoying great camaraderie as we started the overnight sail to the Channel Islands.
My eye had been bothering me a little, but that night it got badly inflamed. The pain was excruciating. It was obvious that I needed a doctor and soon.
We bypassed the islands and headed for the nearest port, Santa Barbara, where Fabi Benedict’s relative, Herbert Bayer and his wife lived. As soon as we hit the dock, the gang immediately got me to the emergency room of a hospital where I was fortunate to find an excellent ophthalmologist on duty. He gave me shots and IVs to fight the infection and told me that in another twelve hours I would have probably lost that eye. It was an infection caused by a bad contact lens.
I was one sick puppy and since there was no way I was going to get out of the hospital for a few days, the crew took the boat back as far as Newport Beach. Most of them didn’t know very much about boats except Lee who knew how to sail and was a good navigator because he had flown in World War II. If it hadn’t been for Lee, I’d have probably lost the boat, as the rest of the crew got heavily into the rum bottle and were so drunk by the time, they arrived at Long Beach that they were lucky the harbor master allowed them to go ashore.
With heavy antibiotics I recovered nicely, and Betty and I picked up the boat at Newport and sailed it back to San Diego.