When I was a few years older, we moved south to Charleston. We had a next door neighbor that owned an old wooden motor yacht. I remember my first trip offshore. It was with our next door neighbors aboard the “SS Minnow”. Ok, it was probably a very good boat considering the year this happened. Fiberglass was still not very widely used in the boat industry. We went out for the day to cruise the bay and do a little crabbing. I'm sure it was a glorious day...just don't remember more than just going. I do know we caught a bunch of Blue Crab and my parents had a fun time when we got them home.

We soon moved to Houston and by the time I was in high school, you couldn't keep me away from the beach. Not that Galveston was much of a beach, it was what we had. Eventually I discovered Surfside, the hangout for all the 3rd coast surfers stranded too far from the jetties of Port A or Port Isabel. But the surf was usable, especially if you had the fortitude to hit it as a strong cold front came in or while a hurricane sat offshore.

This was about the time my Dad surprised me with my first boat. He had returned from a flight to the Pacific with an honest to goodness dug out canoe, complete with bamboo outriggers. It was honed from a single Mahogany tree and sealed with black pitch. What a site that boat was. It looked just like something out of the movies. We worked on that boat the best we could, just never could get ahead of it...and what I wouldn't give to have that boat back today, with what I know today about boats. That boat eventually got sold, as all boats eventually do.

Next he brought home a small wood runabout with a Johnson outboard motor, never will know how he talked my mom into that boat. We worked that boat over and finally the day came to launch it. We hauled it up to Lake Houston and wouldn’t you know it, we left the plug out and sank the damn thing. Don’t actually ever doing much with that boat.

Well, now we were getting to be pros at this. Next would come an Invader ski boat, what a chick magnet that was. This was way before the day of go-fast boats. It was a bow rider with a brown metal-flake paint job. After all, it was the early 1970’s. By now I was really starting to pay attention. No more sinkings for me, I read everything I could find about taking care of that boat. The last thing I wanted to do was have an incident in front of a girl. I didn’t even like people wearing shoes on the carpet. I remember dumping my girl friend at the time, because she burnt the seat with a cigarette, I didn’t smoke and she had to go! Never did get that seat fixed.

Once I started getting real comfortable on the boat, still not realizing how little I knew, I decided to try Galveston Bay. All was fine until a massive storm rolled in and everyone onboard was getting sea sick. I learned a new lesson that day; check the weather forecast before you go into open water for the day, also that shallow water gets real rough in a storm. Not sure why that boat got sold, I guess interest just went down; was a great ski boat though.

I soon graduated high school and joined the Air Force and took a break from boating. Years later while bartending and going to college, I landed in Clear Lake Texas, and trust me, it isn’t clear. But I was living on the water and my room mate had a little go fast boat, “Wind Me Up”. What a way to live. Condo right on the water and a boat in a slip steps from your front door.

REBORN

One day while I was out at the pool, a guy I’d meet around the pool, sailed up and asked me to help him tie up at the dock. We were throwing back a few cold ones when he told me his dilemma. He was scheduled to be in a race on Saturday and his partner had gotten sick. He needed ballast. Considering my limited boating experience and my non- existent sailing experience, that’s about all I was good for. He did, however, insist that I learn the basics, just in case I had to bring the boat back to the dock by myself.

Well, I must say that was a life changing experience. I was hooked. We didn’t win the race, but you’d have thought we had just won the Americas Cup by the size of the party we had afterwards. I started hitching rides on sailboats any chance I could. Soon the single life came to an end and marriage came into my life. The lucky thing was that my new wife loved boating, especially sailing. Things were a lot better than I realized at the time. Now she owns a sailboat, it’s twice the size of mine and lives in paradise.

A few years before I was married, I had purchased my first sailboat, a Cal 20. We had sailed this little gem many times on Canyon Lake, but now moved it to Clear Lake, yes we decided to live on the water, were else. We would sail this boat once in a while, but now we had access to boats of all types. We would crew on any boat we could get a ride on. She sailed J-24’s in winter races, I’d sail the Wednesday night rum races, and our boating life was in full swing. Shortly after we were married, I had started a marine maintenance business with her college roommates’ husband, one of 2 or 3 in the lake area. I was working at all the local marinas and hanging at the Yacht Club for happy hour. Everyone you meet had a boat bigger than yours, but the access it created was incredible. Sailing on big boats became a routine part of life. Day trips on Galveston Bay or overnights to the coast, were the order of the day.

THE REAL LIFE BEGINS

Sailing was now just part of everyday life. My first real offshore experience came when I was invited to fly to Miami to sail back to Clear Lake aboard a 38 foot sailboat I had commissioned for the owner of one of the local yacht dealers in Clear Lake. Seems he had sold it to a gentleman from Houston that had never been offshore, and was ready to experience the open ocean. Little did I know what crossing the Gulf, east to west, in January was like? The run to Key West took all night. We did our best to stay out of the Gulf Stream since it really got rough if you got too far offshore. Close to shore gave you better time over the bottom and a smoother ride, the better choice with a crew of greenhorns.

It was unbelievable. The sky was completely cloudless, we had a full moon and you could see the lights of south Florida. Jimmy Buffett was playing on the tape player and we had all the beer we could drink. We ran all night and I don’t think I shut my eyes once. We made the turn around to catch the channel just as the sun was coming up, what an amazing experience, my first sunrise at sea. It was even better than the first sunset offshore I had seen the night before.

Once in Key West, we tied up at the Key West Yacht Club and got ready for the week long trip across the Gulf to Galveston. By day we readied the boat and by night took in all that Key West had to offer. We partied at Cap’n Tony’s Saloon and most every other bar in town. By the third day the boat was ready and we had to leave our paradise behind. A massive cold front was predicted to make its way thru the US and down as far as south Florida. We knew we would get caught in it and Wayne, the yacht dealer from Clear Lake, wanted to get into deep water before it hit us. We left Key West behind us on a perfect day for sailing, sunny skies and a light breeze from the southeast. The captain set our watch schedule and we were under way. With a down hill run, sailing was easy for my shift. I was having so much fun, I hated to hit the rack, but four days of extreme excitement was starting to take its toll.

The next morning I awoke to the sound of the engine chugging along. We were off the coast of the Dry Tortugas and the seas were like glass. After some breakfast, I took the watch with a friend I had brought with me from Clear Lake. Tom, would do work for me from time to time, and had always wanted to try an offshore trip. He knew his way around a boat and was strong as an ox; I knew he might come in handy, even if he had never been offshore either. He had spend years as a lumberjack in northern California, was about 5 foot 5, and could probably lifted a car off someone in a pinch.

A few hours after lunch, the temperature got stifling hot. I decided it was time to take a break, rest the engine and take a quick swim to cool off. We hadn’t done very well at keeping to the schedule, since everyone wanted wheel time. We would soon learn how important that schedule was. Tom shut done the engine and over the side we went.

The new owner and his wife thought we had lost our minds, and Wayne was still down below sleeping. He had been a Marine before getting into the boat business, and I think he could have slept anywhere at anytime. Tom was the first over the side and said the water was great. As I stood on the fantail, ready to take the plunge, I spotted what looked like the discharge from the blowhole of a whale in the distance. It had be at least a mile away, so over the side I went. The water felt great. I had brought my mask with me and began swimming around under the boat. It didn’t take long for me to feel very uneasy. We were in about 800 feet of water, miles and miles from shore, in the Gulf of Mexico, and I didn’t see a single living thing in the water, just endless blue. Wondering if I might look like lunch to some miss guided shark or other creature from the deep, I quickly exited the water, not to return. It seems funny now when I look back at it. The surfing I’d done earlier in my life was far more dangerous when it came to sharks; I was just too young and stupid to care.

While the smell of dinner was still fresh in the air, the wind finally returned. We had a great sail that night, another downhill run, on a broad reach and light winds and gentle seas. One of the many things I learned on that trip was probably one of the most important. While dinner was being prepared, Wayne required all hands to secure the boat inside and shorten sail. It would slow your progress, but make for a much more enjoyable evening, and he knew that you always had a chance of the winds coming up after the sun went down. He couldn’t have guessed it better. All through my watch, the winds continued to build, as did the seas.

That night all hell broke loose. Seas eventually built to about 10 to 15 feet out of the south. We eventually had to add the second reef to the main, hoping that would slow down some of the surfing. I finally hit the rack for some much needed sleep. During the night, with Wayne at the wheel, we passed through the front. By the time the sun had come up, the wind had switched to the northwest, was blowing about 40 knots right on the nose, and standing the seas up all around us. When I awoke, or was awoken as it was, I could tell things weren’t good. The boat was slamming into something over and over. Never having been offshore in a storm, I just didn’t get it. I also noticed the engine wasn’t running, and Wayne was a stickler for running the engine every morning to charge the batteries. I struggled out of my berth and into the main salon to find a boat full of sickies. Tom and the owners were all sea sick. I poked my head up thru the companionway to find out it was about 40 degrees colder than when I’d gone to bed. I let Wayne know I was up and would be on deck after I changed from summer to winter cloths. Once on deck, I was amazed how much things had changed, I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. To say it was ugly was an understatement. I’d never seen anything like it.

We would surf down the face of one wave, only to smash thru the next. We spent the next 36 hours getting the crap kicked out of us. The engine had gotten air bubbles in the fuel line shortly after Wayne had fired it up that morning, so sailing was all we had at this point. Wayne was content to hang onto the wheel while I went below to get the engine running, after all, I had built all the mechanical systems for the boat, so it was only fitting I should be the one with diesel all over him. But I had a little trick up my sleeve for this problem. I had installed an automotive inline fuel pump before the first time I fired the engine as a way to prime the Racor fuel filter. I had left it behind, just in case. Little did I know how important it would turn out to be?

The rest of the trip was spectacular. The front behind us, the boat spent most days on the spinnaker. The night I remember the most was the night that at about 3am I caught a bounce on the radio and listened to the San Antonio Spurs game. We were still 2 days out of Galveston.

Soon I was making regular trips across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida or Mexico, moving boats from ports far away back home to Clear Lake. Attending the rum races on Wednesday nights or just going out to watch the sunset was just a regular part of life. It’s about this time that I got the chance to enter a race from Corpus Christi to Galveston on a 51’ sloop. It was an over night race and I thought it would be interesting to be in a race that lasted more that a couple hours. That’s when I realized, racing was not my cup of tea. I guess I had really felt it coming anyway, just too much yelling. When that race ended, I never raced competitively again.

TIME FOR A CHANGE

That seemed to be a turning point in not just my racing life, but life in general. My business partner lost his mind and left the state to pursue what he saw as a better opportunity with a woman other than his wife. My marriage fell apart, I moved further inland, and my life on the water seemed to fade away. After some time, I shut down what remained of the business and became a landlubber. Now living in Houston, the smell of the sea became fainter and fainter. I did re-marry, even sailed away from the hotel in grand style, but life had changed. I did still make a few deliveries from time to time, even got to tangle with a hurricane in the Gulf, but my life on the sea was fading. Now with 2 kids and a new wife, being a businessman in Austin seemed like the right thing to do.

To my amazement, I was sucked back to the sea. When the time required drastic steps, I accepted a job with Mobil Oil running a crappy 95’ crew boat. What an eye opening experience that was. Not having the slightest idea what to expect, I meet my first assignment at the docks near Port Arthur. It was about midnight when I pulled up to the Mobil Oil Offshore Service dock. I could have never been prepared for what laid ahead of me. I had been hired as a second captain on the good ship “Piece of Crap”. I stood on the dock with my bags, wandering how this thing stayed afloat.

Answering the bellow from some old coon-ass on the back deck, I knew I must be in the right place. He barked at me to stow my gear, and “by God get your hard hat on”. Before I could get settled into my cozy little cabin, the engineer, John, had dropped by to let me know the captain was looking for me and I’d better get up to the wheelhouse. John was maybe 23 or 24, thin with long unkept hair. Later I would find out just how good of an engineer he was. By the time I answered the call, we were pulling away from the dock in fog so thick you couldn’t see the bow. The glow of the dual radar screens illuminated the wheelhouse with an eerie glow. Captain Bligh took no time making me aware of my duties. He had been up for 3 straight days, and had no interest in any BS, “just take the wheel, pay attention to the Loran waypoints, don’t hit anything, and only wake me up if we are sinking”.

Before I knew it, I was clearing the jetties, headed who knows were, and in charge of the largest boat, and the largest excuse for a boat I had ever seen. I finally felt comfortable enough on the wheel that I took a few minutes to check out the Loran waypoints. To my amazement, I was going to Grand Isle Louisiana, and at our current rate of speed it would take between 14 and 16 hours, what if I had to pee or got hungry, it’s not like you just pull thru the drive thru at McDonalds. Not to mention feeling completely alone, I was in totally unknown territory. Being a “yacht captain” rarely meant traveling in the fog, maybe if you were way offshore and came across a fog bank, but you never left the dock in the fog. And if you got to your destination and it was foggy, you’d just hang offshore until it cleared to come in. Not to mention the fact that we were only running about 10 miles offshore, just in the right spot to continually be weaving in and out of the rigs and production platforms. And if that wasn’t enough, we were taking the seas on the beam. Nothing beats running offshore, rocking side to side the whole way.

It wasn’t long before engineer John showed up with the cook. Yes, we had a cook onboard. He was an older black gentleman, maybe in his sixties with a deep back bayou accent and a name I never could pronounce, I just called him “Cookie”. He had brought some coffee, and wanted to meet the “former yacht captain”. The three of us sat and talked for a bit, then he informed us he had pies in the oven, and needed to get back before they burned. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all. The engineer John started giving me the straight scoop on my new job, not quite the vision I had got from the interview before I got hired.

New hires always started at the bottom when it came to boat selections. Our Captain had been reassigned to this boat when the office had found out he was a diabetic and was on daily shots, which tied to his 300 plus pounds, meant he needed to stay near shore, just in case. Work shifts were 12 hours, and mine was daily from midnight to noon. That was going to lead to a tough night. Since it had taken me about 8 hours to drive from Austin, meant I would be up for at least 20 hours before I would have a chance to sleep. I was glad to know that John could spell me if I needed to get a bite to eat or go to the bathroom, so I did both.

By 3am I was the only sole awake on the boat. The fog gave an unforgettable look to the oil platforms and rigs. They would just appear out of the dark as these wild glowing masses. Having never used two radars, it took some time to get the hang of driving without looking out the front windows. Luckily the seas remained calm the entire trip, just a gentle roll on the beam. The smell of bacon and coffee quickly brought me out of my daze, the boat was alive. It was 7am and all hands were up, including the Captain. John offered to spell me while I got some coffee and some toast while Cookie whipped up some Denver omelets. In the galley, sat the Captain, half awake, but up. I fixed myself a cup of coffee and he invited me to have a seat. You could have stood a spoon straight up in that coffee. He and Cookie got a big kick out of my reaction to the first sip. “Never have had a good cup of coon-ass coffee”? Up until then I thought I had.

I’d been to New Orleans, I had had coffee at Café’ Dumont, but it had never been like this. Now I knew how he’d stayed up for 3 days. Dupree’ didn’t seem to be the same Captain that had gone to bed the night before. I guess 3 days of no sleep makes you a little edgy. He actually seemed interested in teaching me all he could about running the boat and what my job entailed. I wouldn’t find out for about a month that the reason why was purely selfish. It seems he had not been able to leave the boat for over 4 months, since he had no one to replace him, and that was going to be me.

We finally arrived at the dock in Grand Isle, what an arm pit that place was. I had become use to arriving at Yacht Club docks, with waiting line tenders, million dollar yachts and beautiful women walking around. What a shock to see the other side of the boat world. Multi-million dollar commercial vessels everywhere, lines of semi-trucks waiting to unload there cargo onto waiting boats, helicopters buzzing overhead, and more activity going on than you’d see in the visitors stands during the last five minutes before the start of the Clear Lake boat races.

This was amazing, and some of these boats were huge. My shift had ended before we made it to the dock, but either from the coffee or the excitement, I just couldn’t sleep. We finally moved into our spot at the fuel dock and Jason, the deckhand, began tying up the boat. Thinking I could help, I offered to throw him a line. Little did I know, it was like throwing a large piece of concrete. The line probably weighted 40 to 50 pounds dry, and this one was wet. Everyone around got a real kick out of watching the rookie try to throw the dock line into the water. Eventually, Jason got tired of waiting and jumped aboard and grabbed the line. One toss of the line and the loop at the end easily captured the mooring bit on the dock. Dupree barked at John to kill the engines and promptly informed me to get some sleep. About 3 weeks later, Dupree was gone and I was on my own.