Draining the Swamp

Jim and I decided to go fishing one Saturday. We often fished together from the rocks on the rugged California coast. Our equipment was simple, but so were the fish and we usually fooled a few into biting on our hooks.

This day was different though. Today we were hitting the big time. We had access to a boat with a motor, and we were sure that all we needed to do was get out there a ways, and man, were we gonna catch some beauties!

The boat was, well......marginal would be high praise, and the motor was just...wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. The boat was an ancient rowboat, about 14 feet long, and had been well on it's way to total decomposition years before, but it had been 'rescued' that year through the ill advised efforts of the entire school. We essentially took a rotten hulk with zero physical integrity, barely enough to hold its  own shape, and fibre-glassed the crap out of it inside and out. This involved layer upon layer of woven glass cloth covering the entire hull, bonded with a two part plastic resin that must be mixed in the correct proportions to set properly.

We learned several things doing that project. If you don't combine the ingredients in the right amounts, the resin either will never set, or set incredibly quickly, and incidentally get amazingly hot and then cure to a really brittle solid, in the can in which you mixed it. To make up for the lack of  structural strength in the rotted wooden hull, we used lots of fibre-glass. When complete, it was a thing of beauty. The hull was painted a brilliant white, with bright red stripes outlining the profile of the boat, and another red stripe running diagonally down from stem to stern.

Fibre-glass is heavy. Our boat could float, but it wasn't a happy ship. It only floated because physics demanded that it float. The darn thing was lighter than the amount of water it displaced, but only barely. And the shoddy workmanship of the fibre-glass crew ensured that the hull was not entirely water tight.

No worries. It didn't leak that much, and we had a coffee can to bail with. and at 14 we were pretty much invincible anyway.

Now we get to the motor, which proved to be quite sufficient to start, and get us out of the cove and well into the current running dawn the coast from North to South. The plan was fool-proof, we motored out to a position well North of the mouth of the cove and killed the motor. We would drift South with the current, fishing along the way, and when we wanted to head back up the coast, why, we would just start that little motor and putt back up stream.

I don't know what I expected, but the coastal cliffs looked much smaller from the ocean. The swells lifted, then dropped us on a regular basis. The wind, which sculpted the low-growing trees along the coast into a dense mat, blew constantly from North to South along with the current, hastening our drift. Because we were outside the surf line, we couldn't actually see the white foamy breaking waves, but we could sure hear them between us and dry land.

The first part of the plan worked to perfection. Out into the current. Kill the motor. Bail just a little. Bait up and cast our lines out. No takers in the first drift, time to head back up hill. This is where the plan began to unravel. That poor little ole motor had pretty much given us everything it had getting us into this predicament. We were drifting directly towards a rock they we called 'Spray.' It got that name because of what happened to the ocean waves when they dashed themselves against the flat vertical surface of the rock that faced the oncoming surf.

We had oars, so I began to row us back up current as Jim yanked repeatedly on the starter handle. Rowing takes on a different aspect when you are propelling a half submerged boat that drifts back a little bit farther than you managed to row it in the first place every time you stop to bail with a coffee can that moves so little water out compared to the amount that is now filling the boat.

Jim and I took turns rowing, bailing and pulling that damned starter cable, for what seemed like hours. First pulling away from the rocks and then drifting back towards them, time and again. The wind had picked up and some spray was blowing into the boat as well. We were both getting soaked, cold and tired. I could only imagine what would happen to us if we couldn't stay off of 'Spray.'

Every once in a while the motor would pretend to start, only to stutter a die again. We had to go quite a bit North before we could try to enter the cove because there were many rugged rocks with lots of waves breaking over them between us and the safety of the cove.

As I fought alternately with the oars and the rising water in the boat, I thought about the fact that we had not actually told anyone what we had planned to do, not that it would have made any difference. There was no other boat for miles; our fate was solely in our young hands.

After almost an hour, we were finally far enough North to began to head into the mouth of the cove. As soon as we pulled even with the surrounding cliffs, the wind, which had been conspiring with the current to drive us on to the rocks, was blocked. The calm was palpable. The constant bobbing of the boat had ceased and we began to be able to actually feel the warmth of the sun. Of course, that is when the motor decided to rejoin the party, when we needed it the very least.

We calmly motored the rest of the way to the rocky beach, got out and pulled the boat above the high water mark, then felt the giddy release of those who suddenly realize just how close they came to disaster. Oh, yeah, during that last hour, our focus had shifted a wee bit. We had no fish, but I now understood the fullness of the saying, "When you are up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember that you came to drain the swamp."