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Author Topic: Member Interesting, Hair Raising, Humorous or Otherwise Unusual Experiences  (Read 6783 times)

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AGelbert

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I've got one for you. Let me lay a little groundwork first.

I first went sailing with some friends when I was in college. I grew up around ski boats and fishing boats, the kind working class  people used to be able to afford when I was young , but coming from rural East Texas, I was not exposed to sailing at all as a kid. That was something rich people did. I never even thought much about it. But once I tried it, I was hooked for life. However, for four long years of dental school, I was nose to the grindstone. I didn't even have the time to read a book for pleasure. Dental school is roughly equivalent to carrying about a 25 hour load as an undergrad. I was at school every weekday from 7:30 am until midnight most nights, when they made us leave and go home whether we wanted to or not. Four years, with a month off for summers. I worked as a research assistant during the summer breaks. I needed the money.

When I got out of school in San Antonio and moved to Houston to start my residency in pediatrics, I scrimped together enough money to spend maybe a thousand bucks on a very neglected but very worthy old Flying Scot, a 20 ft daysailor with a big swing keel with a windlass. I didn't even know where to go to put it in the water. I asked someone, and they said people sailed on Offut's Bayou in Galveston. I proceeded to hook up the trailer to my 1976 Toyota Corolla Wagon (1600cc's, 5 speed manual transmission, roughly half the size of the boat) and headed down there to check it out.

Fortunately, the freeway on to Galveston Island crosses Offut's Bayou, so I found it without much trouble. I backed down the public ramp and launched my vessel. I was pretty busy between the hospital and two part-time side jobs, but I found time a couple of times a month to drive down there and begin to figure out how to sail a boat. By the time I was out, two years later, I at least knew a tack from a jibe, and enough not to get blown on to a lee shore. There was a lot more about sailing I didn't know, far more than I did know. But when we moved to Austin i pulled the Scot down (now behind my new Ford Bronco II, the worst car I ever owned...but that's another story).

When we had moved to Houston, my two oldest girls were ages 2 1/2 and 6 months. Near the Med Center there was a fairly famous infant swimming school, the Phil Hansell Academy. Remember that article from Life Magazine in the 1960's that documented how children younger than a year could be taught to float and even swim? Phil Hansell (one time swim coach for University of Houston) got in on that early wave, and started such a training center. By the time we came to town, it had been in business over 20 years, and it's still there now. The teachers there have taught thousands of babies how to float on their backs fully clothed, with a soaked diaper. The kids don't graduate until they can do that.


A Typical Infant Swimmer (after 3-6 months of training)

On the wall at Phil Hansell are displayed many letters, photos,  and anecdotes from parents whose children's lives were subsequently saved in various water accidents as a result of their training, even one involving a toddler who fell through an open manhole and floated far below street level in a storm sewer for half an hour until the fire department could get a man down. Expecting a corpse, they were surprised to find a floating kid who wasn't even that upset.

My wife wanted to put our girls in swimming lessons, and so we did. We lived in some student apartments owned by the University of Texas, which had an Olympic pool. Very soon my kids were known around the complex as swimming prodigies, and the late Dr. Red Duke (trauma surgeon turned TV personality) who had a regular spot on the nightly evening news, even sent out a camera crew to video my kids, and they were on TV one night, for maybe 30 seconds. LOL. Frequently, people who didn't know they were completely water safe, would jump into the pool and try to rescue them, or just walk up and give us a ration of **** about not watching our kids around the pool. It was a great joke for me and my wife.

Fast forward to the summer of '87. We moved to Austin, and I started asking again about where to put in a sailboat on Lake Travis. My wife's brother allowed as he had seen people sailing at a place called Windy Point, so once again, I hitched up the trailer and went to check it out.

There are no coincidences.

Now, today, Windy Point would be the last place I'd go to launch a sailboat on Lake Travis. Very shallow water, no boat ramp. I had to back way out into the water in my car to try to launch, and it still wasn't easy. A guy about ten years older than us offered to help us launch. He'd been sailing a borrowed Sunfish, but had just broken his rudder. He helped me launch the Scot, and bummed a ride. Turned out he was a single Dad who lived right in our neighborhood and had a son right between my kids in age. We would go on to become best friends and sailing buddies (on a long string of boats) for decades. He was already an experienced sailor, but not on small boats.

We spent the whole summer sailing our asses off, kids along, often all three kids and me, my wife and our new friend Terry.


A Flying Scot Under Full Sail

In Texas it isn't always obvious when summer ends. We went out one fine Sunday, the first weekend in November, 1987. The weather was glorious, the water still fairly tolerable for swimming, and the wind was blowing a steady 10-15 knots. By this time we were feeling pretty good about our expertise, and we "put the rail in the water" as they say, and spent a great afternoon sailing across the main basin in Lake Travis. Now, one thing you should know, is that lake sailing can be tricky. Unlike the bay, the wind is constantly changing direction and speed, and promontories of land can put you out of the wind completely. Eventually, Terry and I would know that lake like the back of our hands, but we were still newbies then.

We had already named the main basin "The Vortex" because of the weird wind effects there. One side of the lake is lined with high cliffs. At the top is a huge destination restaurant and bar called The Oasis, which bills itself as "The Sunset Capital of Texas". The wind along the cliffs creates whirls and eddies and you can never tell exactly what you might get hit with next.

We stayed out until very few other boats were still on the lake. The wind started to rise a bit, but we didn't pay that much attention. We had put away a few beers, and we were having fun. Terry was at the helm...if you can call lying on your back with one hand on the rudder and the other holding the mainsheet "at the helm".

Then, suddenly, it all went very wrong. A big gust, and we heeled way over. Terry let go the main and I let go the jib. but the mainsheet (the line that lets the mainsail release, thereby de-powering the sail and preventing a capsize), got caught under someone's foot. In one long second, we got knocked down. We were in the drink. Me, Terry, my wife, and my two girls. His kid was not there. Mom's weekend.

The Scot has a somewhat unique rig. The main halyard (the line that raises and drops the main sail) is not a rope. It's a cable, and it works by turning a tiny little ratcheting winch in a box affixed to the mast. To drop the main, you need the winch handle. The winch handle was gone. As we went over, my oldest girl grabbed the boom, and I had to pry her strong little hands off of it to keep her from being dragged under as the boat proceeded to turtle,

The kids had on life jackets. The rest of us grabbed one and put it on. Nobody was hurt. Everyone was fine.

Except...the sun was going down and the water was getting colder. There wasn't a single boat in sight. Terry and I finally stood on the centerboard together and stood the boat back up. But it was too full of water to bail, and the wet main, still up, was making the boat unstable. It could turtle again anytime. We were already getting exhausted. 


A Swamped Scot

Within a few minutes, I knew we were in real trouble. I was cold, but the kids were really cold, teeth chattering cold. Blue skin cold. They wouldn't last an hour. No way. The sun set and we were way too far from shore to swim in. It started to get dark.

Just about the time I was coming to the realization that my kids were in danger of dying of exposure, a small cabin sailboat, sails furled, motored up under the power of a tiny outboard. They took my wife and kids onboard and dried them off. We didn't want to abandon our boat. It was too unstable to tow, though. So....Terry and I stayed onboard and sat on opposite sides on the gunwales and kept the wobbling boat upright, while they towed us to shore, which took about an hour. Their tiny motor strained just to pull the Scot with its cockpit full of water and its flapping main sail.

It was nearly 10pm before we were able to secure our boat to some rocks near the put-in, where we left it for the night, still full of water. We would return the next day to bail it and put in back on the trailer.


The actual site of our accident. The shore is not nearly as close at it looks.

I was colder than I ever remember being. Our rescuers gave me some dry sweats and towels, and I stripped off my wet t-shirt and shorts and put them on, but my teeth kept chattering for a half hour and I didn't get warm for hours. Not until I was home in bed. We quickly thanked our rescuers and they motored off. My wife drove us home, because neither Terry nor I was was able to drive.

About ten years later, my wife was attending an adult bible class here at Riverbend Church one Sunday. The teacher asked everyone in the class to recount some experience they'd had that had made a real impact on them. The people in the class took turns telling about things that had happened to them.

One woman started to tell a story about a day when her family had been at the lake, motoring in at dusk, when they came upon a derelict sailboat and some people with little kids stranded in the middle of the lake....and how they pulled them out of the water and saved their lives. As the story progressed, my wife suddenly realized she was talking about rescuing us!  So she finally had the chance to thank them properly.

I'm sure they'll never forget what they did for us. Neither will I. What would have happened if they hadn't stopped to help us? I'm not sure. But the outcome might have been very tragic. I learned a lesson that day about sailing. A hard lesson I'll never forget.



EXCELLENT! Thank you, Eddie! 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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