Boat Tag

Many of my sailing stories are of events that happened to us at the Isthmus of Catalina Island off the California coast. This particular story, however, took place in the anchorage outside of Avalon.

One lazy afternoon, most people on the hook were relaxing in the sun, napping or reading. The owner of one small sailboat (about 18’) had evidently dropped anchor and taken off for the shore without waiting to see if his anchor had set. Later, I envisioned the anchor dangling straight down into the deep water without touching bottom.

Anchoring is an amusing topic for another post, so I won’t get into that at the moment.

This little boat was drifting between all the rest of the big “girls,” and each time she bumped against the hull of someone else’s boat, they would just give it a gentle shove to send it on its way. Pretty soon, a little breeze would blow it toward another boat, only to be sent off in yet another direction. I watched until I got bored with it all, and decided to nap.

This particular story probably comes under da Vinci’s “Sfumato” heading http://lothlorien-lucy.blogspot.com/2008/06/overview-of-davincian-principles.html because all of us pushing that little boat away were fairly ambiguous about what to do with her. She’d been a nuisance but no one knew who she belonged to or what to do with her, and I suspect that most of us really didn’t want to be bothered with it.

I’m not sure how much later I woke up, but in the meantime, evidently someone had called the Harbor Police to come take care of the little boat, and he was towing her down the coastline out of everyone’s way. At one point, he casually glanced back to make sure she was following adequately.

We watched as he quickly cut the motor of his own boat, took off his jacket, balled it up and flung it down. I think it’s probably a good thing none of us could hear what he was saying.

The object of his frustration was trailing behind him. It seemed that in the process of drifting from one boat to the next and being sent on its way, the little boat’s anchor had gathered up the rodes of several other anchors and was pulling them off their own secure anchorage. A trail of about six boats were being towed, one right after the other.

The guy got on his radio to call for assistance. I wanted to watch it all get untangled, but I never did get to find out what finally happened. Several of us were heading into shore for dinner, and the main topic of conversation was that little boat. We could just imagine the owner coming back out on the bum boat at the end of his day, scratching his head and wondering if his boat had sailed off without him - especially if he’d been drinking. What a shock that would have been!

We wondered if all the other boats received the same free trip down the coastline to be re-anchored. I wonder what those owners thought when they found their boat missing. If that had happened at the Isthmus, everyone would have known what was going on, but at Avalon there were too many boaters and very few people shared stories with others. If anyone was there and knows the end of this story, I’d love to hear it.

I was very happy my own rode wasn’t one that she picked up.

Livin' the Life!

One summer, I hadn’t gotten paid for about three months. The insurance company that reimbursed us for most of our clients was undergoing a major change in their computer system. None of us in the clinic where I worked were getting paid on a regular basis. My boys and I were hanging on by a thread.

So what does a girl do when the going gets tough? She takes her boat home to spend a week moored at the Isthmus of Catalina Island. With a good book, all her troubles are left behind.

We were really living a good life, in spite of having no money. I had a bag of masa, a hunk of cheddar cheese, a few eggs, and stuff like spices. The boys were fishing and diving for abalone. What else do you really need for food? We had lots of homemade tortillas with melted cheddar and scrambled eggs, along with plenty of fresh fish and abalone. That’s when abalone was still plentiful in California.

Someone taught us how to eat raw abalone. Instead of pounding it like you need to if you cook it, you cut the raw meat into pieces like shoestring potatoes. Dip it into a mix of soy sauce, ginger, and anything else your taste buds desired, and munch! It’s a wonderful treat!!

Once, when folks from our local sail fleet had a cookout, we showed up with fresh sheepshead http://www.landbigfish.com/fish/fish.cfm?ID=26, abalone, and hot tortillas. Everyone else was roasting wieners and opening cans of beans. Even though we didn’t have money for beans or wieners, we ate well – and were the envy of everyone else.

I was kicking back on the boat one day with my book, half asleep in the fresh air and warm sun. My boys, Mark and Erik, had gone ashore to hang out with friends. The dinghy bumped against the fenders on the side of the boat and I knew they were back. The boys scrambled up into the cockpit.

“Hey, Mom!” Mark whispered. “Come below. I want to show you something.”

So we went down below and he pulled a huge roll of money from his pocket, about $50 worth or more - a lot of money in those days, and especially to us.

“It was just there on the ground by the garbage cans,” he said. “Someone must have dropped it out of their pocket when they were dumping trash.”

We talked about what to do, and finally checked with the Harbor Police who said that almost anyone could say they’d lost a bunch of money. So they suggested that we wait a couple days to see if anyone asked them about it and if they didn’t, it was ours to keep. No one ever came forward to ask about money that might have been found. It was enough to get us over a financial hump.

The picture above shows me hanging out on Lothlorien, hooked on a mooring - livin’ the life – livin’ off the sea (and a bag of masa)!

Lothlorien at the Isthmus

Most of life on Lothlorien was like normal living anywhere. We did laundry, went to work, fixed meals, washed dishes. I qualified for a homeowners exemption and we were even visited by the census taker for the 1980 census.

Erik was a junior in high school at the time. Each morning as we left for school, he and I found more and more interesting things to watch as we walked down the dock toward the car – starfish, tiny black crabs, even a baby octopus. His teachers couldn’t understand why he was always late for class.

Sometimes, on school holidays, when I was able to get away from work, we would go off on a short (and nearby) cruise. One of our favorite places was the Isthmus of Catalina Island, one of the California offshore islands with a fascinating history (http://www.catalina.com/history.html). Sometimes we picked up a mooring at Avalon, but our favorite spot continued to be at the Isthmus.

Now, I say “picked up a mooring” like it was easy. Wrong! It was a steep learning curve, and warrants an entire post on its own. But we had to learn soon enough or bang into some angry boaters!
http://virtualguidebooks.com/SouthCalif/ChannelIslands/TwoHarbors/IsthmusCoveWest.html

The Isthmus was quaint, laid back, neighborly, and generally more fun than Avalon. It was a place where even the local sheriff would hang out and smoke a doobie with us. There was local musical talen and sometimes a group would put on a little outdoor theater in town. Everyone who moored there quickly became friends with both villagers and boaters. http://virtualguidebooks.com/SouthCalif/ChannelIslands/TwoHarbors/DowntownTwoHarbors.html

I was accepted as just another sailor, but it seemed to be an outrage among some of the male boating population that a woman could have purchased a boat that size on her own without winning it in a divorce settlement! I have many stories about that prejudice, and I’ll leave them for another time, but there is one that I’ll never forget.

One year I took off from work, and spent two weeks there with my son Erik and my daughter Inga. While I lazed in the cockpit, they entertained themselves by taking the dinghy back and forth to shore, polishing the hull, catching some rays. A man and his wife with two teenage daughters pulled up and moored beside us. Their girls were sunning in skimpy bikinis for the benefit of my son (who seemed to be oblivious, but maybe wasn’t).

After about a week the man couldn’t stand it any longer and asked me if my husband was coming over for the weekend. I told him I didn’t have a husband and that the boat was mine. He gave a salute with a very sarcastic “Aye, aye, skipper!” and never spoke to us again.

If I didn’t have to go back to work to make mortgage payments on my floating home, I could have stayed right there on Lothlorien at the Isthmus forever!