Tales of the Intercoastal Waterway

“There were four of us heading for Porto Rico.  My next door neighbor, a state official from Massachuttes, a state trooper and a young boy of 18.  We were in my 48-foot wooden schooner out of Marblehead.  She was an old boat, but in good shape.  We had spent most of the summer getting her ready for the trip.  The boy was a son of a friend and kept pestering his father until we agreed to take him along.  We were about a hundred miles off Hatteras when we were hit by a hurricane (he told me which one, but it escapes  my mind at this late date).  Trying to bypass it to the east we got caught in the right side, or the dangerous semicircle, which you know is the worse place to be.  Now the Nathan was a good ship and well built, but I doubt if any wooden boat could have weathered that storm.  The planks started to work and she began to leak.  Every hour more and more water started to come in.  I waited too long to call for help, and by the time I tried, the radio had gone dead.  Four or five hours later, I knew we would have to abandon ship.  The water was now over the floorboards.  Everyone was relatively calm as we had a six-man life raft on board.  While we were gathering food and water I told the boy to go up on deck and get the raft ready.  As soon as he inflated the raft, the hurricane force winds whipped it off the deck  and away from the boat.  I only blame myself as when we had an abandon ship drill, I forgot to tell him to tie the raft before inflating it.  We were now in serious trouble.  The only thing we had left was a kid’s plastic boat.  I don’t know why we brought it along, maybe the boy thought he could float on it when we got to the islands. 

We had to work fast as the sailboat was sinking rapidly. We all had life jackets on, and I insisted that we all tie ourselves together before we got into the water.  About the only thing we took with us was a small jug of water.  (One member of the crew had a broken arm, I can’t remember which one).  We got into the water literally, as the boat sank under us.  The waves were still tremendous.  We hung onto the side of that little plastic boat.  We didn’t dare try to get in as we were afraid we would tip it over.  After hanging on for hours we knew that we would have to get the guy with the broken arm into the boat.  He was ready to give up and he had swallowed quite a bit of salt water.  Two of us got on the bow of the dinghy and held it from tipping.  The state trooper who was a strapping fellow was on the stern helping the guy with the broken arm on board.  After much strain we got him on board.  Then the three of us hung onto the side for the night.  The worse night of our lives!  Twice during the night the lad wanted to let go.  We talked him out of it, we even tried singing to keep up our spirits, but we swallowed so much salt water, we decided to keep our mouths shut. 

The dawn crept in slowly with an angry sky, but the waves had diminished somewhat and we took heart with the coming of daylight.  We were all tired, wet, hungry and scared.  Knowing that we needed something to get our minds off our problem I said,

“I think that we can get another person in the raft.”  Everyone agreed and we chose the boy  to get on the flimsy craft.   

We were so exhausted that it took us over an hour to get him on board.  After several hours,  I knew that the two of us in the water could not last through another night.  I decided to see if we could lay on top of the other two.  It was voted that we try.  I can’t tell you how we managed it, but we finally all got on board.  Two laying on top of two.  While this was very uncomfortable for the ones on the bottom, i