|
This is kind of a cool story that happend to me last Veteran's Day that is worth sharing...
Paula and I were on a quick trip from Bradenton to the Skyway and back for a relaxing trip in our J24 "Silver Streak" on Veterans day a year ago. The weather was PHENOMINAL. Sunny, cool, beautiful.
Coming back from the Skyway, we decided to turn the music off to enjoy the quiet. I launched the shute, and started a beautiful and relaxing downwind leg home.
Thank god we turned down the radio.
I kept hearing something... Like a tiny voice on the wind... Something very faint, but noticeable. There were no boats around, and I didnt want Paula to know I had voices in my head, so I didnt say anything. After all we were in lower Tampa Bay far from shore.
Then Paula said to me "Whats that over there?"
Wholy #@$!! Several hundred yards to port was what appeared to be a person clinging to a peice of wood and waving at us!
It was probably the biggest "Wholy #@$!!" moment I can ever remember... and I have teenagers.
I told Paula to keep her eyes on him and hold the tiller while I dropped the shute so we could turn back to him. After all, the water temp was cold for that time of year because of some early cold fronts.
As we eased up to him, we found he was a kyaker who had swamped his boat and could not get back into it, and was drifting out towards Egmont Key. Whats more, he was a big fella, so it was pretty much all adrenaline that let me haul him up inside the lifelines. We had no ladder, naturally.
He was trembling like mad, but warmed up after a few minutes, so we slapped a beer in his hand and started the cruise back to the Bradenton Yacht Club. I could not WAIT to hear what he had to say.
Durring the sail in (still a BEAUTIFUL afternoon) he told us he was kyaking from Emerson point but got off balance and fell out of his kyak while trying to take a pee. He said he had been in the chilly bay for about 6 hours drifting farter and farther from shore!
Here's the kicker.. He (Neil) was a wounded combat veteran who had suffered massive head trauma a couple years before and recently started on disability. Welll, what did we expect on Veterans Day.
We all hit it off, so we had beers all around and had a comfortable sail in to BYC narrowly beating sunset, chit-chatting the whole way. Fotunately, fate let Neil's misfortune lead to nothing more than a good laugh with new friends. I like to think of it as the ultimate tribute to Veteran's Day!
You see, you never know what kind of neat people you are going to meet when you go sailing :)
Happy Veterans Day, Neil.
T.
|
