This one hit out of the blue during lunch at work this past Tuesday.
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Lake Cumberland, Kentucky.
My family is a camping family. Growing up, our vacations were always trips through various parts of the country as seen from the vinyl windows of a pop-up camper. (In fact, I never stayed in a hotel or motel until my junior high class trip in eight grade.)
We were also boaters, of a sort. The three of us each had our own one-person sailboats that would get strapped onto the camper. The middle child and I each had a little stryo-hull Sunfish, like a predecessor to the surf-sailors that become so popular, but the hull was more like a flat boat than a surfboard. The sail was permanently mounted upright, but the person could stand or sit.
My oldest sister had a slick one. More like a large surfboard in appearance but it had a jib as well. It really cut through it all when both sails went up. I don’t think I ever took it out with both sails. This was all during my pre-teens, I would say.
Lake Cumberland was the destination numerous times, since it was one day’s travel, great for holiday weekends. For those unfamiliar, Lake Cumberland was formed out of Cumberland River by the US Army Corps of Engineers for a source of hydroelectric power. What this means for preteen sailors…? It still has a current. It runs through the central part of the lake.
I was out on the ‘big’ boat on my own. It was a great day. Beautiful, a steady wind. The wind shifted, but no big deal. I just had to tack to return to shore. No sweat, this was years into us having these boats. Off I went on my zig-zag way. Only, something was wrong. Every time I tried tacking to the one side, the boat body wouldn’t turn. The sail filled but the boat wouldn’t adjust course. The keel would make violent noises. The first round, no biggie, I thought I just missed something and I tacked another round. By the third time, the vibrations of the keel were flipping me out. Visions of drowning among the submerged homes filled my head as it dawned on me how far I was from shore, alone. I didn’t know yet that the lake had a current or that I was trapped in it. I really thought I was just forgetting something….
Back story on the sailboat. The previous owner did some redesign. And was an idiot. He moved the tie-down cleat of the mast… onto the mast! Bonehead. This meant that the mast would slip out if the boat overturned. This was addressed when we first got it. My sister had ripped the socket out of the hull up-righting the boat on the first outing, since the mast slid out part-way and it popped the hull surface. My dad was a handy fixer those days. Some steel plates and rods fixed the damage and a fiberglass patch resealed the hull.
But all of this was in my head as I decided the course. I was a bit too fixated on wrecking my sister’s boat. Weird about that.
I kept at the tacking. Clearly this was before I learned about Einstein’s definition of insanity. This time, it overturned. I did what I was suppose to do. I climbed up onto the hull and leaned into the keel. The boat didn’t really want to upright. I was afraid the sail didn’t release. if so, it would try to upright while still full of water. Not a good thing.
Luckily, I was not as alone as I thought. (I am never as alone as I think…) Mom. Yes, Mom and her eye. She isn’t just a hawk looking for trouble. She genuinely enjoys watching her children live, i think. So she was always on us while we did such things. My sisters had palled up with a camp site of guys and had been water-skiing with them on their speed boat. Once back to the shore, my mom sent the guys out with their boat. They were older, likely mid-twenties, and bigger than I. They up-righted the boat no problem. I folded the sail and they towed me closer to shore, out of the lake’s current.
I was so frickin’ relieved when I stepped off of the dock onto land.
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A note about Randomemories:
They do not likely occur in my head on Thurdays. The memories of these posts are not pulled randomly from my brain. I gather them. The randomness of it is how they come to me. These aren’t the many many memories I carry with me through life. These are the socks that fall through my arms as I move from teh dryer to my bed to fold clothes. The bulk of my life is sorted and folded neatly, tucked into their proper cubbies… these get forgotten. Eventually, I wander back in that direction. “OH, HAI! I can has sockz!”
In those moments, the focus of the now generates a quicker-than-normal flow of tangental side-steps andI slam head-first into the brick of the forgotten memory. BEcause I do not carry it close to the surface, rediscovery floods me with images and texture and smells…. much like Dorothy leaving the black and white of Kansas and stepping into technicolor Oz.
Welcome to my Randomemories. Welcome to my hole.
This is the randomness of Thursday Randomemories.
gryphon's hole 