One of the joys of cruising with family on our Pearson 39 sailboat, Hydrotherapy, was being there to watch the kids as they grew. One such instance took place on Aug. 21, 1991, a date burned in my memory by a storm named Bob.
Into the hurricane
After a bumpy sail from Woods Hole, Massachusetts, we arrived in Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod, on the morning of Aug. 20. While we were checking into the town marina, the dockmaster casually informed us that if the hurricane hit, we would be thrown out of the marina because the concrete floats always broke up in a hurricane. We were shocked considering that we neither knew there was a hurricane on its way nor where we would go if we were evicted. With the typical Long Islander attitude that hurricanes were no big deal, we went about our business exploring the town that afternoon and evening.
With the hurricane rapidly approaching, Robin and I could not sleep. While the boys (Josh, 10, and Dan, 9) slept blissfully, we used our nervous energy to strip the boat in case the hurricane struck us.
Aug. 21 dawned gray and windy. The dockmaster came by to tell us we had to vacate by 8 a.m. After a good deal of searching, the harbormaster found us a mooring abandoned by a fishing boat seeking a safer haven, but we had to hurry to catch the last run with the launch before they hauled it.
The four of us started for the boat when Dan let out a howl of pain. He had leaned against an unfinished wall and punctured his palm with a nail. With the dockmaster pushing us to leave and Danny screaming in pain, we decided that I would put the boat on the mooring with Josh helping me.
The 6- to 8-foot waves in the harbor were intimidating. I put Josh in a harness on the bowsprit and tied him down. Approaching the mooring, there were times when he was 12 feet in the air and times when he was in the water to his butt. It was scary, yet he stood his ground and concentrated on grabbing the pennant with the boat hook.
I approached the mooring with more than the usual caution. Half the time it was over my head and then I couldn’t see it. Plus, I was nervous about my young son on the bow. I eased up to the mooring, and Josh reached out, snared the pennant on his first try, flopped the loop over the cleat, and ran like hell for the cockpit. After I put a few more lines on the mooring, we jumped into the launch and sped for shore.
When we were “safe” on shore and I relaxed a bit, I had a chance to marvel at Josh’s performance. Grabbing a mooring pennant can be an adventure in the best of conditions, and these were the worst, yet my 10-year-old handled it with aplomb and skill that I did not know he possessed. While we all prefer ideal conditions, some of the adversity that we go through when cruising brings out the best in us and enables our children (and us) to grow before our eyes.
The aftermath
With the family stashed in a motel, I took off to see what happened to the boat after the eye of the storm passed. When I arrived at the harbor, there was not a floating boat to be seen. Masts stuck out of the water, and boats lay smashed under the concrete town pier. Dozens of boats were stacked like cordwood on the beach. I walked the length of the beach and could not find Hydrotherapy. I was somewhat upset.
Finally, another sailor told me that he saw what had happened. Several boats had broken from their moorings and were hanging on Hydrotherapy until it broke loose, too. The other boats were carried to the beach while my boat, with the wheel locked, took off across the harbor until it hit the concrete U.S. Coast Guard pier. After hitting the pier with the forestay, the boat turned right and beached itself, bow first, between the concrete pier and an abandoned wooden pier.
I found the boat there, bobbing up and down with the incoming tide, looking as if it had been through a war. The bowsprit was gone, all the stanchions were knocked flat, the stern rail and ladder were missing, and there were huge holes near the transom and one of the cabin windows. I tied the boat to the pier so that it would not go aground again.
I hired a local marina to pull the boat off the beach, an easy job since it was floating and I had tied it to the pier. They pulled it off with a Boston Whaler and secured it to a mooring.
The next morning, I caught a ride to the boat with a launch. After surveying the damage, I figured that I could patch the holes and bring the boat home. I set up the dinghy and went looking for supplies. When I got to the motel, Robin wanted me to go back to the boat to make coffee since there was no electricity in town. Since we had electricity, water, cooking facilities and a telephone on the boat, we decided to move out of the motel and back onto the boat.
After moving onto the boat, we got the bad news. I started the engine to charge the batteries. When I tried to put it in gear, the vibration was serious. After cutting the engine, I dove to check it out and found a severely bent prop and shaft. The local marina could not haul the boat until Thursday or Friday. While we were waiting, I patched the holes and straightened out the deck as best I could. I unfurled the jib and discovered that it looked more like a colander! I set up the inner forestay so I could sail with the storm sail.
Since there was nothing open in town, we invited a family from the motel to join us on the boat for a barbecue, swim and water gun party.
The boat was hauled on Friday. At high tide the boat was lashed to the dock, and when the tide went out, the marina workers went to work. After pulling the prop and shaft and plugging the log hole, they sent me off to New Bedford for replacements. I got back in time for the next low tide, and repairs were made. The boat was refloated, and I motored out to the mooring.
The next day we took off for Plymouth and the start of our miserable journey home.
