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Here's your true-life adventure story of the day!
I'm in Florida this week; we're visiting my husband's folks. His grandfather (who we're both close to) is in his 90s and in poor health, which I guess is not surprising for a guy who's 92, but since we don't get down here often, we wanted to jump on the chance to see him while we can.
Some decades ago, my husband's grandparents bought a retirement home on a canal along the western coast of Florida, and his uncle retired down here a few years back to be close to the parents as they aged. Uncle Lee is an avid fisherman who owns a 21-foot fishing boat and is REALLY REALLY ENTHUSIASTIC about taking people out on it. I am lukewarm about this because, while I do enjoy being on boats once I get out on them, I'm a nervous sailor and prone to motion sickness. However, he wanted to run us out to Anclote Island, which is about a half-hour via boat from where they live, on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. The weather was basically nice today, with intermittent thunderstorms predicted, but it looked good and so we packed a lunch and headed out to the island.
It's actually a small chain of islands and sandbars, some of which are a wildlife refuge. We dropped anchor at the nearmost sandbar, waded ashore, and walked around for awhile, examining shells and looking at interesting seabirds.
Then Uncle Lee noticed that there was a pretty heavy-duty storm front moving in from the coast.
We packed up pretty quickly and scooted back to the boat. We had been all the way down on the south tip of the sandbar when he started getting concerned, and by the time we got back to the boat, the coast was mostly obscured by a solid wall of dark gray. It was amazingly well-defined -- there was a definite edge to it, a big block of storm clouds and rain with hazy but reasonably nice weather on either side. And it was headed for us, coming from basically the place we wanted to go to.
Waiting it out on the island wasn't wise because there is nowhere to go, and the whole island is about a foot above sea level.
So Uncle Lee decided to try to race around the leading edge of the storm before it hit us, get beyond it, and let it blow out to sea. He was worried about going the other way (into deeper water) because we might hit bigger waves than we could handle. His boat is not large. It's an open powerboat with no shelter beyond a small sunshade over the pilot's steering console.
Off we went, on waves that were already rising, racing alongside the leading edge of the wind-driven storm. It was the sort of choppy sea where the boat will rise up and then smack down like hitting concrete, and we were already getting some pretty intense spray over the side.
(On an interesting side note, although I'd gotten queasy on the trip out to the island, I handled all of this just fine. Apparently adrenaline is a good seasickness cure; who knew.)
Running around the forward edge of the storm was scary but exhilarating. We were going as fast as he felt he could safely go in the higher seas, which was pretty fast, but you could see the storm front bearing down on us. As it got closer I could see the spray churned up around the base of it from the rain and wind whipping up the water; it was like a gray wall floating on a cloud of gray haze.
Later, back at the house, Uncle Lee said that at about this point, he figured we'd made it; we were rounding the storm and he figured it would be rough but clear sailing from there on. And then, he said, the storm turned 90 degrees, and ran over us.
At this point things went from scary but fun, in a "this will make a great story someday" kind of way, to really fucking terrifying.
You couldn't see a thing; the world was nothing but a dark gray blur. Rain was coming down so hard that it was hitting us sideways, and it hurt. Every time we'd hit a wave, which was pretty much constantly and from all directions, a deluge of water went over the boat; it was like having someone throw buckets of lukewarm salt water over your head. Even though the day had been about 90 degrees and humid, the wind was shockingly cold, and I know that I got a little hypothermic. It took me a hot shower and a nap, once we got home again, to finally start to feel properly warm again.
We lost some poorly secured items, beach towels and whatnot. I was mostly concentrating on not being a poorly secured item myself. Though, like I mentioned, I was not seasick at all, which I guess is infinitely better than having to deal with that on top of everything else.
And it went on and on and on. It was hard to say exactly where we were in the storm, or relative to the land. Uncle Lee kept having to cut the engine and then change our heading because he kept losing his bearings -- not his fault at all, between the wind/wave direction changing constantly and not really being able to see the GPS in the downpour and with the boat bucking all over the place. Luckily, he's a very experienced sailor who's been out in all kinds of weather, so he knew what he was doing, and eventually the gray mess gave way to choppy but visible water, and the coast began to emerge from the murk. By the time we reached the coast, it was clear and calm and looked like nothing at all had happened, except for the gray haze out to sea. (And the fact that we were all dripping and wringing out our sodden clothing.)
HELLO DRY LAND, NICE TO MEET YOU AGAIN!
I suspect Uncle Lee felt terrible about this, because I'd been nervous about the possibility of rough water and then we ended up in ... that. Ironically, after some rest and food and getting warm again, I think I actually felt better about going out on the water than I had before, in the paradoxical way that you sometimes do when things go wrong, but not as wrong as they could have gone. And we both pointed out to him that this is a quintessentially Alaskan sort of outdoor experience: everything is fun and games right up until THE OUTDOORS TRIES TO KILL YOU! So it's not as if this isn't consistent with our general impression of how Nature works.
And the memory of trying to outrun the storm, going hell-for-leather with clear sunshine on one side and an advancing gray stormwall on the other, will stay with me forever. It was like something out of a movie.
Some decades ago, my husband's grandparents bought a retirement home on a canal along the western coast of Florida, and his uncle retired down here a few years back to be close to the parents as they aged. Uncle Lee is an avid fisherman who owns a 21-foot fishing boat and is REALLY REALLY ENTHUSIASTIC about taking people out on it. I am lukewarm about this because, while I do enjoy being on boats once I get out on them, I'm a nervous sailor and prone to motion sickness. However, he wanted to run us out to Anclote Island, which is about a half-hour via boat from where they live, on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. The weather was basically nice today, with intermittent thunderstorms predicted, but it looked good and so we packed a lunch and headed out to the island.
It's actually a small chain of islands and sandbars, some of which are a wildlife refuge. We dropped anchor at the nearmost sandbar, waded ashore, and walked around for awhile, examining shells and looking at interesting seabirds.
Then Uncle Lee noticed that there was a pretty heavy-duty storm front moving in from the coast.
We packed up pretty quickly and scooted back to the boat. We had been all the way down on the south tip of the sandbar when he started getting concerned, and by the time we got back to the boat, the coast was mostly obscured by a solid wall of dark gray. It was amazingly well-defined -- there was a definite edge to it, a big block of storm clouds and rain with hazy but reasonably nice weather on either side. And it was headed for us, coming from basically the place we wanted to go to.
Waiting it out on the island wasn't wise because there is nowhere to go, and the whole island is about a foot above sea level.
So Uncle Lee decided to try to race around the leading edge of the storm before it hit us, get beyond it, and let it blow out to sea. He was worried about going the other way (into deeper water) because we might hit bigger waves than we could handle. His boat is not large. It's an open powerboat with no shelter beyond a small sunshade over the pilot's steering console.
Off we went, on waves that were already rising, racing alongside the leading edge of the wind-driven storm. It was the sort of choppy sea where the boat will rise up and then smack down like hitting concrete, and we were already getting some pretty intense spray over the side.
(On an interesting side note, although I'd gotten queasy on the trip out to the island, I handled all of this just fine. Apparently adrenaline is a good seasickness cure; who knew.)
Running around the forward edge of the storm was scary but exhilarating. We were going as fast as he felt he could safely go in the higher seas, which was pretty fast, but you could see the storm front bearing down on us. As it got closer I could see the spray churned up around the base of it from the rain and wind whipping up the water; it was like a gray wall floating on a cloud of gray haze.
Later, back at the house, Uncle Lee said that at about this point, he figured we'd made it; we were rounding the storm and he figured it would be rough but clear sailing from there on. And then, he said, the storm turned 90 degrees, and ran over us.
At this point things went from scary but fun, in a "this will make a great story someday" kind of way, to really fucking terrifying.
You couldn't see a thing; the world was nothing but a dark gray blur. Rain was coming down so hard that it was hitting us sideways, and it hurt. Every time we'd hit a wave, which was pretty much constantly and from all directions, a deluge of water went over the boat; it was like having someone throw buckets of lukewarm salt water over your head. Even though the day had been about 90 degrees and humid, the wind was shockingly cold, and I know that I got a little hypothermic. It took me a hot shower and a nap, once we got home again, to finally start to feel properly warm again.
We lost some poorly secured items, beach towels and whatnot. I was mostly concentrating on not being a poorly secured item myself. Though, like I mentioned, I was not seasick at all, which I guess is infinitely better than having to deal with that on top of everything else.
And it went on and on and on. It was hard to say exactly where we were in the storm, or relative to the land. Uncle Lee kept having to cut the engine and then change our heading because he kept losing his bearings -- not his fault at all, between the wind/wave direction changing constantly and not really being able to see the GPS in the downpour and with the boat bucking all over the place. Luckily, he's a very experienced sailor who's been out in all kinds of weather, so he knew what he was doing, and eventually the gray mess gave way to choppy but visible water, and the coast began to emerge from the murk. By the time we reached the coast, it was clear and calm and looked like nothing at all had happened, except for the gray haze out to sea. (And the fact that we were all dripping and wringing out our sodden clothing.)
HELLO DRY LAND, NICE TO MEET YOU AGAIN!
I suspect Uncle Lee felt terrible about this, because I'd been nervous about the possibility of rough water and then we ended up in ... that. Ironically, after some rest and food and getting warm again, I think I actually felt better about going out on the water than I had before, in the paradoxical way that you sometimes do when things go wrong, but not as wrong as they could have gone. And we both pointed out to him that this is a quintessentially Alaskan sort of outdoor experience: everything is fun and games right up until THE OUTDOORS TRIES TO KILL YOU! So it's not as if this isn't consistent with our general impression of how Nature works.
And the memory of trying to outrun the storm, going hell-for-leather with clear sunshine on one side and an advancing gray stormwall on the other, will stay with me forever. It was like something out of a movie.
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