Since the announcement of the upcoming publication of “Being Big Red,” a bunch of Points East readers have asked me, “How about a taste of what’s to come?” So why not a sneak preview? Here’s a piece from the middle of the book.
“Big Red” is based on a six-foot, four-inch, 290-pound Mississippi River pilot I knew years ago, and have written about before. The story is told from Red’s point of view. In this scene, for the very first time in his waterborne river life, Red’s on the ocean, on a sailboat and in thick fog. He’s helping Grampy’s grandson Cubby deliver an old wooden sloop from Maine to Massachusetts in the 1990s.
Cubby showed me how to keep Sarah into the wind by looking at this little arrow at the top of the mast. Then he went to forward and raised the big sail, and then the little one in the bow. We was tipped pretty good right away. “How ’bout just use the little one,” I said.
“That’s the jib, Red. You need to know the terms so we can communicate.”
“Seems like we communicated fine. What’s wrong with saying ‘little one’? Seems clear enough.”
“OK, anyway, you need to fall off now.”
“In this water? No way; I ain’t falling off. I’m staying on the boat.”
“It means ‘fall off the wind’; to let the sails fill more with wind.”
“Then I’ll be headed out of this channel if I do that.”
“We’ll have to tack.”
“Now what’s that mean? Why don’t we just use the motor for crissakes?”
“We need to sail when we can, Red. We don’t carry much fuel. Plus, sailing’s what it’s all about.”
“Sitting here hanging onto the seat, tipped over at thirty degrees and getting wet ain’t what it’s all about to me. You sure this boat ain’t gonna tip over? A Mississippi River towboat would have capsized at this angle. I ain’t afraid of drowning, but I do not want to freeze my @*&%#s off in this Maine water.”
“There’s six thousand pounds of lead in the keel.”
“Well, that should sink us for sure,” I said.
“No, imagine the physics.”
“That subject was senior year in high school; never made it to senior year.”
“OK, imagine Sarah as a cork in a bath tub; the cork has a long pin pushed lengthwise down the center. Attached to the end of the pin, the part underwater, is a lead fishing weight. So you have a cork in the bathtub, floating upright with a weight at the end of the pin.”
“OK. One question. Am I in the bathtub with the cork?”
“Sure. Why not? That’s an interesting image. So now blow on the cork; try to blow the cork over. What happens?”
“Cork blows over.”
“Yes, but only until it’s parallel to the water, then the wetted surface of the cork against the wind is decreased, and the counter weight tries to pull the cork upright.”
“I do believe there’s one big difference, Cubby. A cork won’t sink. A boat will.”
“The cork’s just to illustrate the concept. Anyway, we’re not going to tip over, Red. It’s against the law of physics.”
“Good, ’cause I don’t want to break no laws – ‘cept the ones worth breaking.”
Right then, I looked up to the next buoy I was following in the channel, and it was gone, along with most everything else.
“We’re going to get fogged in, Red, and right in the middle of this narrow channel,” Cubby said. “You start the engine and I’ll drop the jib. We’ll keep the mainsail up in case we have an engine problem. Just hold the compass course you had. About 90 degrees, OK?”
“No problem. But don’t you worry about this engine. She’s a honey and she don’t need no wind.”
While I fired up the Atomic 4, Cubby got the little front sail down and then shot into the cabin to plot a course. He came up on deck a couple minutes later.
“It’s pretty much a straight line out between all the channel buoys, so we’ll keep to that 90 degrees for 1.3 miles, which should put us at Green Bell “1”. Then we’ll head to 160 magnetic for 1.9 miles to the gong off of Hard Harbor Island. Then 240 for a quarter of a mile will take us straight in. We should be able to hear both the bell and gong fine since we’re headed up wind.”
“Did you write all this down, Cubby? Don’t forget your helmsman here is the guy who can’t even count pump stokes without forgetting.”
“Yes. Don’t worry.”
“Hard Harbor Island don’t sound too easy, with a name like that and all.”
“I think we’ll be fine; there’s a couple of mean, outlying ledges that we had trouble with once years ago. But that’s a story for later. Thanks to Grampy, I know the best approach. You still headed 90 degrees, Red?”
“I thought you said ONE ninety.”
“God, Red, are you….”
“Just kidding, Cubby. Doing 90 degrees on the dot.”
“Well, it’s been about fifteen minutes now, so, at four knots, that would be about a mile we’ve done since that buoy where the fog dropped. I’ll cut the engine soon and we’ll listen for bell number one.”
“Pretty smart math you did there. Right in your head. Pretty smart math.”
“Not really, Red. Going about four knots for one quarter of an hour, would make about a mile, so we should start looking.”
“OK, Einstein. All I know is I can’t see squat.”
We cut the engine and listened for that Bell “1”. Didn’t take long. We both heard it at about the same time. Only problem was Cubby pointed one way into that dungeon fog and I pointed about 40 degrees from where he was pointing.
“Can’t be both places,” I said. “Want to flip for it?”
“The fog plays tricks on you out here. I learned that many times with Grampy. Your mind gets tired of seeing nothing, and then you start imagining things that aren’t there and hearing sounds that aren’t coming from where they really are.”
“Hey, over there! I think I see a Pizza Hut; sign in the window says they’re giving a free pitcher of beer with each large pizza. Let’s change course.”
Cubby ignored me and held out his arm, pointing. “Let’s try this way, going slow, then stop and see if the sound gets stronger. If not, we’ll try your direction.”
Cubby was right, and this big old green bell started to come into sight, first like a drunken ghost, just a swaying outline, then it got clearer and you could see the big “1” on it.
“Now let’s run 160 degrees at about four knots as before for about 20 minutes. Then we’ll start all over again, stop the engine, and listen,” Cubby said.
When we heard and found the gong buoy, Cubby said, “Now it gets tough. We’ll run slow, about two knots, and then smell, feel and listen.”
“Smell the Pizza Hut?”
“No, spruce trees. Land. You should smell the trees, feel the warmth of the land, and hear the breakers. The entrance is hard to spot, even in good visibility. But there are bold hills on both sides and the water’s deep going into the cove.”
“I got one question for you Cubby: Are we having fun yet?”
We have complete issues archived to 2009. You can read them for free by following this link.
