The original plan had been to leave Newport, Rhode Island early in September and head for Maine. I had only owned a boat for a couple of years, and even though I had confidence in my sailing and navigation skills the thought of running into pea soup fog off the coast of Maine made me just a little bit nervous. So this trip had been scheduled for September, when weather conditions could be expected to be a little cooler, crisper and, most of all, dryer. That is, with a bit of luck we might miss the fog.

It was 1979. There had been some hurricane activity and our original departure date was postponed due to Hurricane David. Once that storm swept by, we heaved the proverbial sigh of relief that it had taken no notice of us and we departed immediately. It was still the season for hurricanes, but what were the chances that another significant storm would hit the New England area?

Somewhere north of the Cape Cod Canal we heard the news that a major-league hurricane, Frederick, was roaming the south Atlantic and threatening to hit the United States. Oh well. The sailing conditions as we slipped past Cape Ann were just terrific, and it didn’t take too much effort to convince ourselves that Frederick was not a threat to our life, liberty or pursuit of the Maine coast. We continued cruising northward.

Well, the good news was that the principal goal was achieved: We sailed our little 27-foot sailboat, Bluenose, to Maine. The bad news was that Hurricane Frederick also made it to the coast of Maine. In fact, Bluenose and Frederick reached Portland within minutes of each other. Timing, as they say, is everything, and ours could not have been much worse.

To better understand this story, a few words about Bluenose, a Cal 27, are in order. While it is unlikely that Bill Lapworth designed her to battle hurricanes, she was a great sailing vessel in virtually any (normal) condition you might expect to encounter. She had tiller steering, which wasn’t a problem. She also had a 10-horsepower outboard motor. That was a problem, as we were soon to find out.

We had just chugged into Casco Bay when the wind came up. It blew hard right from the beginning. We weren’t flying any sail, but even under bare poles we were going fast — alarmingly fast. Just ahead we could see a cluster of moorings, so we thought we would pick up an empty one. Most of them were unoccupied, so we had plenty of choices. We aimed for one at the edge of the mooring field. This led to the first scary moment.

The wind was blasting and Bluenose was going very fast. We maneuvered close enough to a mooring to try picking it up. I put the tiller over. With both the wind and the mooring in front of us, we would make a controlled approach at a slow speed. At least that was the plan.

With the tiller hard over, Bluenose’s bow started to swing around into the wind, but when we reached a point where the boat had turned roughly 60 degrees and the wind was coming just a little bit more over the beam, the swing of the bow stopped. We did not make it around head-to-wind. We did not even make it beam-to-wind. My anxiety level shot into the red zone. I tried the maneuver again, but the result was the same. Was something wrong with the rudder? Should I put the tiller over more forcefully? I took a deep breath and, doing my best to make even Arnold Schwarznegger proud, I pushed the tiller down hard and fast. No go. Bluenose would not answer the helm. Whoa baby! The hair stood up on the back of my neck. It stood up in places where I don’t even have hair.

You did not have to be an engineer to figure out what was going on. When the tiller went over, the port side gradually turned into the wind, giving the wind a bigger target. The outboard was trying to spin the boat in one direction; Frederick was trying to push it back. Guess who won? It became very clear that our outboard was not nearly strong enough to win this match.

So there we were. With the axis of our boat roughly 60 degrees to the direction of the wind, we were blown right past the mooring field before you could say, "I’d rather be sailing." Frederick was in charge. It did not really matter too much what I did with the tiller. I could push it this way or the other and change our relative attitude to the wind perhaps 60 degrees on either side of the wind’s direction. But Bluenose was going where Frederick was going. And just where might that be? I wasn’t absolutely sure I wanted to know.

Following the direction of the wind from our position, I noted the new destination. My death grip on the tiller became even tighter. About a mile and a half away, right smack in front of us, was some kind of low-lying concrete structure. It could have been a bridge. It could have been a causeway connecting a couple of islands. I didn’t know exactly what it was and I didn’t care. I could see that it was just above water level and that it was made out of material hard enough to smash Bluenose to pieces. We were aiming right for it and there was nothing I could do!

Ah, the irony. I had been worried about getting lost in the fog and pounding into an invisible pile of rocks. As luck would have it, we were on course to achieve the same result with the added advantage of having a perfect view of the whole thing. Mama Mia.

We needed some good news, and we got some. Our most trustworthy anchor had been fitted with extra chain for this cruise. We threw it overboard and it created enough drag to bring Bluenose up head-to-wind. That was an exhilarating moment.

The news was not entirely good, however. We were still going very fast. Consequently the anchor was just skipping over the bottom. So while we were now head-to-wind and our rate of travel had been slowed, we were still heading toward the low-lying bridge. The only difference was that now we were going to kiss the abutment with our stern instead of the bow. The anchor maneuver had bought us some time, but the ultimate outcome had not changed very much.

Then we found The Answer.

The Answer. The outboard motor had been of little value when we tried to swing the bow around. Once we were pointing into the wind, however, it provided enough thrust to slow our slippage rate to leeward. The more we opened the throttle, the slower we went. The more we slowed down, the more our anchor had a chance to bite into the bottom and do what anchors are supposed to do.

So we gave that little outboard a chance to really scream. The thing made a hellacious racket, but it did the job. After running it at warp speed for a few minutes, it began to look like we were staying in the same place. That was good. For the moment, at least, our rendezvous with the concrete bridge had been postponed.

We were now holding our own, and we felt a little better about things. Just a tiny bit of stability can brighten your outlook enormously. Still, there was one sobering question we had to think about: What was going to happen if and when we ran out of gas? After all, the gas supply for the outboard was contained in a small portable tank (maybe five or six gallons). We knew that throttling up the motor had made it possible to bring the boat to a stop. That being so, it seemed very possible that absenting it from the set of forces currently affecting us, we might once again be on our merry way for a date with the bridge.

The Acid Test. It was time to find out where we stood. A second anchor was applied to the task. We waited a few minutes, giving it an opportunity to set. Slowly we began reducing throttle on the outboard motor. The anchors took on more of the load. We did not slip. We did not drag. We cut the engine even more. Eventually we were able to throttle back completely and finally the outboard was turned off. We stayed put. Some time later the wind began to ease a bit and I felt enough comfort with our situation to go below and catch a wink or two.

At 2 a.m. I woke up and climbed into the cockpit. The scene was like a picture postcard. The wind had stopped blowing altogether. Hurricane Frederick had come and gone. The night air was crystal clear. The moon and stars were out, and Casco Bay was just like a pane of glass. Not a ripple. Not a sound. Anxiety and white knuckles were replaced with awe. It was beautiful, and I’ll never forget it.

Philip Osborne lives in Mansfield, Mass.

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