Near Death Experience
I did the heat dance with it for an hour and
started to get ready to pour my diesel jerry jugs into the diesel tanks because
Eric and I were going to go to town and do a fuel run before he had to go to the
airport to pick up his mom.
...I said
yes and rested a minute hanging onto the dinghy before I could get up enough
strength to pull myself in. My arms were tingling from the
exertion.
I woke this morning to a rolly boat at about
0630. The freezer wasn't working again. I did the heat dance with it for an hour
and started to get ready to pour my diesel jerry jugs into the diesel tanks
because Eric and I were going to go to town and do a fuel run before he had to
go to the airport to pick up his
mom.
The kids were up in the cockpit
playing gameboy when I looked up and saw our dinghy floating away. The painter
had snapped because of the swell action. I quickly went down and tried to hail
Sula on the radio. No answer. I looked out at the dinghy. It was a couple
hundred yards away, and was slowly drifting out in the wind. It looked like I
could catch it. I told Roma to keep trying to get someone on the radio and
jumped in with the kill switch in my pocket. In hindsight, this was a really
stupid thing to do.
As I swam toward
the dinghy, it kept blowing away. The wind picked up a bit. By now I was
starting to get tired, and I was about 1/3 mile away from the boat. I looked up:
I was still catching up to the dinghy slowly. I was thinking that if I didn't
make it to the dinghy, I wasn't going to be able to make it back to the boat.
Actually, I'm now shaking as I write this just
remembering.
I finally caught the
dinghy about 1/2 mile from the boat. I reached out and grabbed on. Just then, a
friendly local panga came up and asked if I was tired. Boy was I tired! I said
yes and rested a minute hanging onto the dinghy before I could get up enough
strength to pull myself in. My arms were tingling from the
exertion.
Once in the dinghy, the panga
guy left. I probably would have been OK because he would have fished me out if I
had failed to make it, but I didn't know that at the time it was
happening.
I had to rest for five
minutes before I could pull the starter cord and get the motor started. Just
then, Jim from Zephyra came out in his dinghy. Roma had reached him on the
radio, but he had to put his motor on his dinghy. We chatted a bit and I was
really glad he was nice enough to come out and make sure things were
OK.
I had swallowed a bit of seawater
and felt ill like I might throw up. I also had a pounding headache. Not a really
great way to start your morning. I motored slowly back to Trinity where Roma and
the kids were waiting anxiously. What should have been a mellow situation was
made tense by my stupidity. This could easily have been a Darwin
award.
I climbed back aboard Trinity
and had to lie down for ten minutes and sip some water. Finally, I felt like I
could move again. It started to rain and I went below to take a shower and work
on the freezer some more.
This is not
the recommended way to get a good day's exercise, but it was
effective!
Posted: Wed - June 29, 2005 at 10:52 AM