Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul (21 page)

But I still had hope of sharing that indescribable feeling with the man who’d given me the tools to start. Until, one spring, I finally figured it out.

I was camped out on a secluded point break in central Baja. We’d driven for two days down dirt roads and across salt flats just to futz around in tiny surf for three days and babble beneath the stars at night. It was a blast. My dad was much on my mind these days, and at one point I watched a slow crumbler roll through and thought,
This is
it.
I’d get Dad in a car with a couple of boards. We’d hit the road south and spend a week charging around Mexico. Speak some Spanish, drink some beers, argue life’s more trifling matters. Maybe we’d even get lucky and get in the water. I was still contemplating the details as we packed the trucks the next morning and giddily blazed off to Cabo to see if we could find something legitimate to ride.

Less than two days later I fled Baja’s tip and was standing at my father’s side in a Houston hospital as he grappled with the cancer that he’d only been diagnosed with a month earlier. It seems things weren’t nearly as positive as the early tests predicted. In three days he would pass away. We spent the bulk of that time around his bed, holding tight to every moment and memory, saying our final sentiments while simultaneously trying to maintain the illusion that none of it was really happening.

He’d given it all to me: the first equipment, the support to stay in the water and the encouragement to write about it. And in twenty years, not once did he say, “Why haven’t you taken me surfing?” Instead he apologized for me having to cut my Baja trip short “just to come see him.”

But that’s being a father. Dad got more joy by watching me embrace something unspeakably special than he could have ever experienced by keeping it to himself. And I suppose that’s the essence of a true gift.

Matt Walker

Surfer

[EDITORS’ NOTE:
In his 1872 memoir
Roughing It,
the ever-adventurous
American storyteller Mark Twain recounts the strange
Hawaiian custom of riding waves on a thin board.
]

The surfer would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea, taking a short board with him, then face the shore and wait for a particularly prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would fling his board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he would come whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not seem that a lightning express train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself. The board struck the shore in three quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the sand about the same time, with a couple of gallons of water in me.

Mark Twain

Two Battleships

[EDITORS’ NOTE:
The story of “Two Battleships” was widely
circulated during World War II. As a “Tin Can” sailor in the
United States Navy, Maurice Ricketts spent six years on destroyers
in the North Atlantic and South Pacific. According to Ricketts, who
heard this story more than sixty years ago, such incidents didn’t
always make it into the ship’s official log.
]

An aircraft carrier had been at sea in heavy weather for several days. As night fell, a patchy fog rolled in, so the captain remained on the bridge to keep an eye on all activities. Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, “Bright light ahead, sir.”

“Is it steady or moving astern?” the captain called out.

The lookout replied, “Steady, captain.” That meant the ships were on a dangerous collision course.

The captain called out, “Signal that ship: ‘Please divert your course fifteen degrees to the north to avoid collision.’”

Back came a signal, “Recommend you divert YOUR course fifteen degrees to the south.”

The captain said, “Send: ‘This is the captain of a United States Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.’”

“I’m a seaman second class,” came the reply. “YOU had better change YOUR course.”

By that time the captain was furious. He spat out, “Send,
‘THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER
ENTERPRISE,
WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!’
”

Back came the signalman’s light, “This is a lighthouse on a land mass straight ahead.”

Maurice Ricketts

The Bond Between
a Captain and His Ship

CAPT: I am the Captain of the Pinafore.

ALL: And a right good captain, too!

CAPT: I’m very, very good, And be it understood,
I command a right good crew.

From
H.M.S. Pinafore

Captain Elijah G. Baufman was a big, jovial man, his leathery skin tanned by many years of sun, wind and storm. He was an expert mariner and a friend to all who knew him. He loved the sea and the poems of Robert W. Service.

For his ship, the S.S.
Humboldt
, the captain had a special and very deep love. She was his “little girl,” a member of his family. He kept the small, trim and sturdy steamer spotless and gleaming.

Built in 1897, the
Humboldt
began her career during the ’98 gold rush to Alaska as a passenger and freight carrier out of Seattle. It is estimated that she brought gold valued at $100 million safely out of Alaska and went to the rescue of more than a thousand shipwrecked persons.

Captain Baufman was the only master she ever knew. For thirty-seven years he guided her through storm and sunshine, blizzards and fog. His affection for her, his pride in her accomplishments, were frequent topics of conversation along the Pacific Northwest waterfronts. He turned down offers to skipper large ocean liners to remain with his little ship.

But time is as relentless as the tides, and in 1934 both the captain and his ship were heavy with years. Newer, faster vessels had succeeded the
Humboldt.
And the time had come for Captain Baufman to retire.

The captain seldom cried, but tears ran down his weather-worn cheeks when the
Humboldt
was taken south from Seattle to San Pedro, California. There she was placed with other old, forlorn vessels in the ship graveyard, eventually destined to be reduced to scrap. Captain Baufman, with his memories and still pining for the sea, moved to San Francisco.

Less than a year later, on August 8, 1935, just at “sunset and evening star,” Captain Baufman closed his eyes for the last time and “crossed the bar.”

That same night, four hundred miles south, the Coast Guard cutter
Tamaroa
was near the San Pedro harbor when the crew noticed an old steamer, outward bound, holding a true course for the channel. No smoke came from her funnel. Dark and silent, with only one red warning light glowing at her stern, she was headed for the open sea.

It was the
Humboldt.

When no answer came to the guardsmen’s challenge, the cutter swung ahead of the ship and launched a boat. But the boarding party found the ship deserted, the wheel in the pilothouse unmanned.

Whatever force it was that slipped the moorings loose from the
Humboldt
and guided her through the harbor, it was not strong enough to resist the towlines of the cutter. The ship was returned to the graveyard and her final destiny.

Vincent Gaddis

Sailsmanship!

John Cacciutti dove into the water to snare his prize catch—after it had swiped his rod and reel!

During a vacation in Acapulco, Mexico, in 1989, Cacciutti, of Wallingford, Pennsylvania, his wife, Terry, and four friends chartered a boat and went looking for sailfish. Within a couple of hours, Terry and a friend had each caught two sails. Everyone was having a good time as Cacciutti settled into a chair on the bridge of the boat, sipping a cool drink.

Suddenly, like the crack of a whip, the rod in the bridge rod-holder snapped from the outrigger and started dumping line at an alarming rate. Cacciutti quickly pointed the rod at the fish, locked up the drag and set the hook hard. “Up out of the water came a beautiful nine-foot Pacific sailfish,” he recalled. “The bridge was a great vantage point to watch this aerial action, but it was no place to fight a fish. I needed to get back down on deck.”

Cacciutti took the rod and reel and started down the ladder when he slipped and fell onto the deck below.

“Unfortunately, the rod and reel didn’t make this journey with me,” he recalled. “As I was falling, I tried to pull a six-foot rod sideways through a three-foot ladder hole, but the rod had its own idea and shot from the bridge like an arrow. We all watched in amazement as the rod sailed high over our heads and splashed into the water.”

Then they saw the sailfish make a few jumps before sounding into one thousand feet of water. While Cacciutti sulked and tried to shake off his embarrassment, one of his friends on the bow spotted the sailfish still dragging the rod and reel. The boat pursued the fish and came close to it several times, but each time the sailfish sounded again.

“All the hopes and dreams I had of recapturing that fish quickly faded,” Cacciutti said. “I went to the bow and stared into the deep blue water as thoughts of defeat raced through my mind. Suddenly, I spotted the fish again next to the boat. I knew there was no more time for thought or words to the crew.

“I dove off the starboard bow with my hands outstretched and hit the water behind the big fish. I swam about twenty feet down and grabbed onto the taut fishing line. With my lungs about to burst, I made it to the surface for a breath of air.

“Meanwhile, the big fish was running away from me, and the line was burning my hand. But then the line slowly became slack, and I began to worry about the fish and its sixteen-inch bill. Could it be charging me this very second? My heart was pumping from fear as I swam toward the boat. But fortunately the sail didn’t charge, and I climbed back onto the deck.”

Once on board, Cacciutti continued to pull in the line hand over hand until, up from the depths, sprang the rod and reel. The soaking-wet angler grabbed hold of the rod with two hands, quickly took in the slack, and pulled and cranked in one thousand feet of line. Finally, he reeled in the tired fish until it was alongside the boat. With heavy gloves on his hands, the first mate then leaned over the side and grabbed hold of the bill of the sailfish.

“I got a baseball bat and was ready to subdue the fish when the captain and his mate shouted for me to release it,” said Cacciutti. “After thinking about it, I decided that the greatest trophy would be in the pictures that my wife was taking and the story about this catch. There was no need to kill this great fish.”

After measuring the sail, they pulled it along in the water, forcing water through its gills, which helped to revive it. “The fish began to move his big tail, so we gave him a push and set him free,” said Cacciutti. “The sailfish returned to the sea to fight again.”

Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo

Raymond the lunatic and his far-fetched
tale of alien abduction.

IN THE BLEACHERS
© Steve Moore. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS
SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

First Homecoming

My husband, Alan, and I had just had our first baby when we purchased our first commercial fishing boat. Our “new” boat, the
Valiant,
was a thirty-six-foot salmon seiner, fifteen years old and in sound, if worn, condition. Its problems included a tired engine, leaky hydraulics and extremely sloppy steering. It was impossible to drive the boat in a straight line. It seemed to always move at an angle. But it was June and the fishing season was upon us, our only chance to make all the money we’d need for the year. We’d have to live with our zigzagging boat and fix things over the winter. For the moment we were proud new owners taking our place in the fleet after years of crewing for others.

The mainstay of our income was salmon, but twice a year we were given twenty-four-hour periods to fish for halibut. The huge bottom fish had become abundant in the waters off Kodiak and fetched a good price. Fishing for halibut meant switching to hook-and-line gear and traveling far offshore. It was a race to fill the boat in twenty-four hours. That alone made it dangerous, but bad weather on the designated day could be especially perilous. With some nerve and a little luck, fishermen could make a great deal of money in a very short time, and the temptation ran high to ignore storm warnings and risk everything.