July 2010
By David Roper
It’s 3:22 a.m. on a Friday in June and I’m sitting on Elsa’s starboard berth looking across at a small oil painting of Marblehead Harbor that highlights a handful of gaff-rigged sloops and schooners from another century. The painting has a wonderful patina, and now, further illuminated by the gimbaled kerosene lamp near its gold frame, it holds my gaze for more than a few moments.
I’m up at 3:22 a.m. because I awoke with an idea for this column, and I knew a deadline was fast approaching. No more time for staring at a painting. While my mini laptop is firing up, I flip on the VHF and turn it to “scan,” maybe yearning for some company at this odd hour.
My column was going to be about how 99.9 percent of boaters don’t know how to dock. Snobbish of me, but true. I begin outlining the physics of why one can quite easily dock, initially, without any bow or stern lines and even without any bow or stern person. It’s always bugged me the dangerous way that people dock, throwing and missing lines, jumping off the deck too early, cleating bow lines too early, and springing the stern out away from the dock, often generating much yelling and scrambling all around, and even perhaps an unplanned swim between dock and boat. When docking the wrong way, things can change for the worse mighty quickly.
Anyway, I was thinking about all this when the VHF stopped scanning and started blaring its emergency signal on Channel 16. About the same time, I heard a few raindrops on the cabin top, which sounded oddly heavy, like falling fishing weights. Tornado watch: Possible two-inch hailstones, and 70-knot winds possible, the digitized man on the VHF told me. So I forgot about my docking column and got to thinking about tornados, which seemed appropriate given the moment. Besides, rowing ashore right then seemed a bad idea.
A couple of summers ago, I was headed alone from Marblehead to Maine on Elsa. At the eastern end of the Annisquam Canal, which bisects Cape Ann, I began to head back out to sea for the 20-mile stretch to the Isles of Shoals off the New Hampshire coast when the sky sent a poignant message. About the same time, my low-end (read: not smart) cell phone rang. It was my gadget-head, weather-head friend. “Stay in the Annisquam,” he commanded, “I’m tracking these death cells and even a tornado on my iPhone, and you’ll get hit for sure before you make Isles of Shoals.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I will, but keep me posted, OK? And, by the way, do you have to always call them ‘death cells’? How about just saying ‘bad thunderstorms?”
“You know David, if you weren’t so cheap and had a smart phone yourself, you’d see what I mean.” Then he hung up his really smart phone, no doubt moving on to another “app” (maybe one predicting 21st-century atmospheric anomalies off the Isles of Shoals), and leaving me in waiting.
The next morning at dawn he called me again. “Go, go, go…go right now. Go, go, go. I’ve computed a window of under five hours for you to make it to the Shoals between death cells if you leave right now.” So off I went, pushing Elsa for all she was worth, while looking over my shoulder for the rapidly encroaching death cells. After my arrival and a safe mooring, the sky fell, the death cells came, and tornados hit New Hampshire. One person was killed.
But the closest I came to a tornado was on the Mississippi River in St. Paul one summer. I was captaining a sternwheel-driven river-cruise ship at the time, and on this particular trip we were loaded with a band, dinner, a giant wedding cake, one groom, one bride, 400 guests, a bunch of caterers, and my crew of five. I was particularly excited about this charter because I love wedding cake and, as captain, was certain I could score a big piece.
As we headed upstream along the heavily-wooded, state-park section of the river, I received a VHF warning about a tornado heading east toward Minneapolis and St. Paul. On the intercom I called my crew chief, who was two decks below managing a very busy bar. I could hear the band in the background blaring “Rollin’ on the River” for what must have been the hundredth time that summer.
“Shawn, I need you in the pilot house RIGHT NOW,” I said. Shawn was a sincere, fairly innocent 21-year-old college senior who had been my crew chief for three summers. It seemed I’d just turned off the intercom when, bingo, there he was, breathing heavily but standing proudly at the door in his white shirt with its two gold epaulets. “Hey, Cap, what’s up?”
“Tornado coming very soon. Chief. I’m taking all 135 feet of this floating wedding cake and driving her into the trees, then holding her there tight with the engaged paddlewheel. I want you to get another crewman on the winch, drop the swing stage ramp over the bow, and when the bow hits the beach, grab your heaviest anchor line, jump ashore off the stage, and tie it to the biggest tree you can find.
“Then I want you to have the crew close all the windows on the main deck. And do it subtly Shawn. I don’t want the guests to know about the tornado until they have to. I don’t want panic. If it’s going to hit us for sure, I’ll announce over the P.A. for everyone to move to the main deck; you and the whole crew will then get every single person to do so. Just say, ‘Captain’s orders’ if they ask why. I don’t want panicked people jumping into the water or running into the woods.”
Shawn took in all the information with utter concern, his eyes darting from me to the sky in the west. “And Chief,” I added, “When you’re done with tying off, come back to the pilothouse.” And off he went.
Even though she was 135 feet long, this sternwheeler was flat-bottomed and drew only two feet of water, making her a beachable ship. All went well, and Shawn dutifully returned to the pilot house. “Put on a lifejacket,” I said as he entered. “It’s headed this way. Got reports that giant elms to the west of Minneapolis have been yanked from their roots, six-foot pieces of the sidewalk still attached.”
Shawn sat in the corner of the pilothouse, stared at the sky, hands folded tightly in his lap, and slowly turned as white as a Minnesotan in January. I was talking to police, Coast Guard, and towboat pilots as the tornado approached. My veteran towboat pilot friend Big Red, captain of the massively powered Mike Harris, was on the radio as usual, following everything. “Better get them two folks married right quick before she hits there, Cappy,” he chimed in. “Might be a short marriage – maybe shorter even than some of mine – but that way them two can at least get to heaven together, married and legal and all.”
Shawn listened to all this very carefully. Then he stood up and walked back and forth, faster and faster, in the pilothouse, looking skyward from each side. Finally, he turned to me, his white face seemingly sprouting from his bulky bright orange life jacket. “Cap, please…I’m really scared…Do I have to stay up here?”
Just then the report came in: The tornado had veered north after hitting south Minneapolis, and was tracking away from our Mississippi River location. I watched the color return to Shawn’s face. “Chief,” I said, “New assignment for you: Go to the main deck and steal me a giant piece of wedding cake.”
“My honor, Cap,” he said, already heading out the door.
“And Shawn, take off that life jacket. You’ll scare somebody.”
Dave Roper sails Elsa, a Bruce King-designed Independence 31, out of Marblehead, Mass., where he lives and works.
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