For a Christmas present, I received Free Fall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy.
I sent “The Day I Found My Soul” to a couple of magazines. My true story was rejected.
The Day I Found My Soul
In late August 1976, Tropical Storm Dottie cut across the Florida Keys from the Gulf of Mexico and swept northward up Florida’s east coast. Along with me on Bold Venture, my 37 foot sloop, were my girl friend, an Air Force colonel and wife. We were sailing from Nassau, in the Bahamas, to Palm Beach, Florida. Dottie hit us at 2:00 A.M. some 50 miles east of Ft. Lauderdale.
I was due to stand watch at 2:00 A.M. Only a few minutes before Dottie hit, the colonel’s wife, who had been on watch, awakened me. She said a storm was approaching. I hastened into my foul weather gear and went topside to view a line of lightening filled clouds from horizon to horizon. I furled the head sail and took the wheel. The two women were below. The storm hit and over we went, the colonel hanging onto the stern rail. I brought the boat into the wind. With the mainsail snapping and popping, we stopped and I held my breath. If the wind got behind the sail, the boom would fly across decks with such force it could demast us.
The sail filled and over we went again. This time I slowly brought the boat into the wind. With the rail just above the water I had control. The wind was out of the northwest. We were in the Gulf Stream, which moves northward. With the wind against the Stream, the waves were steeper, the tops airborne, and I was unprotected. With my head down, hanging onto the wheel to keep from being swept overboard, I had not had time to put my safety harness on, I steered by the slope of the deck. It was like walking a tightrope. The wind spilling off the trailing edge of the sail, making the boat shake, it’s force unbelievable, reflecting off the airborne sea was my running lights. All I could see out there was that eerie glow. I got the feeling that this was not real, that it was a dream; I wasn’t really there. We couldn’t be afloat in a storm like this.
After a time, my tension eased. I anticipated which way to turn the wheel. It was like I was an orchestra conductor getting maximum performance out of Bold Venture.
The storm lasted in all of its violence from 2:00 A. M. to 5:00 A.M., and then began to abate. With daylight all I could see was sea when we went down a wave, and sky when we went up. At around 9:00 A.M. I saw smoke stacks in the west. The wind direction had changed enough for me to point toward them. The stacks turned out to be Florida Power and Light’s, a mile south of our destination, Lake Worth Inlet. We arrived at my estimated time of arrival, before the storm.
We were in the Bermuda Triangle, where there have been reports of time warps. As we approached our inlet, to our horror, with the tide going out, completely across the inlet were huge breaking seas. I was exhausted. Something in me said to go for it. Seas were breaking on both sides of us. My stern went up and I held my breath. We slid down a huge wave that never broke into the inlet. My friends hugged and kissed me. They called it a miracle.
Mine is a story that has never been told. The stories about the Bermuda Triangle all have a bad ending. My story that led to the above story was about when my life went up in smoke.
What follows the sinking world economy? We are told that we are entering the Age of Aquarius, an age of brotherhood and spiritual awakening. Some believe in miracles. It is our choice.
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