Restless Heading Home

March 27th would find me chugging up the ICW under a pleasant sky, with everything in harmonization. Lunch was long overdue, and it was time to switch hats, and make a trip to the galley. With all clear ahead, and the wake astern, as straight as an arrow, “George,” (the autopilot) proved to be a better helmsmen than myself. The stage was set for a classic case of false security.

The process of preparing a meal while underway in confined waters is not a comfortable one. Culinary actions are brief, while visits to the wheelhouse and glances thru the companionway astern are frequent.

Much of the Intracoastal thru the Carolina’s are traveled thru relatively open sounds, yet here too the channel is narrow and marked with staked day markers. Interspersed, are narrows that are made up of elongated small islands, and areas of spoil. Depending upon the state of the tide and current, strong distinct eddies run in various regions that flow 90 degrees to the channel. These have the potential to drive your Autopilot: “Nuts!”

After about 6 or 7 sequences of cycling thru the galley and wheelhouse, I paused on the top step leading to the helm a bit longer than those of the past to take everything in. Turning and starting back down into the galley, I had a premenonsion that something was amiss as my foot hit the deck of the aft cabin. The shape and color of the next day marker was wrong. Restless, was on an excursion, after being upset from an eddy, and headed out of the channel.

Doing an about-face, I dashed to the helm, where a flurry of rapid events: clicked off the autopilot, put the wheel hard over to port, and rang up stop; all while uttering a few colorful metaphors. “Leaving the Channel,” could now be expressed in terms of the: “Past Tense.”

Glancing at water beneath the keel was like looking at a depth indicator with the transducer mounted in the floor of an elevator with a cut cable. “To Hell with trying to steer back into the channel.” Know water; sufficient to provide buoyancy lied astern, ahead was: “Terra Incognita. “

Doing an, “Emergency Stop,” is very much like participating in a Tugboat Race. At full astern, the deck beneath your feet shakes as if the hull was coming unglued. Loud noises and thick black smoke are emitted from the stack. Astern, a great thrashing of water occurs as the prop cavitates, and seemingly; “Nothing Positive Appears to be Happening.” As the momentum is finally overcome, and the direction reversed, the final moments are played out like a Hollywood Movie.

Like the hero disarming a time bomb; the distance between mud and keel, halts with a decimal point before it.

“Who in the Hell needs to Eat?”

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