A dreamy cruise in local waters ends with a surprise in this short story written for a class in URI’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
By Bruce Zimmerman ’51
It was a dark and stormy night … No, you’ve heard that story before. The sun was rising at Campobello … No, not that one either.
The sun was well above the lighthouse at Provincetown, at the northern tip of Cape Cod. I think it was about 10 a.m.—plenty of time to get around Nantucket Sound and home to Narragansett Bay. The waters were pretty flat along Cape Cod National Seashore, but I decided to navigate through Cape Cod Bay into the canal leading to Buzzards Bay. We could then cruise on the leeward side of the Elizabeth Islands and set a course due west toward home—Bonnet Shores on Narragansett Bay. Point Judith Lighthouse, at the mouth of the bay, is a reliable navigational aid, and I felt that to be the prudent route, especially for our guests, who were great company but were landlubbers.
We stopped for lunch and lay anchor on the western side of the Elizabeth Islands. We all had generous bowls of Murphy’s stew, which finished off our leftovers, along with the last bottle of red wine.
I looked at my watch.
“Okay, gang,” I said. “Party time is over. Honored guests, please go below and secure everything. You know how to do that now, don’t you?”
The answer was affirmative. Knowing I had only two more hours of daylight, I set the LORAN’s coordinates about a quarter mile south of Point Judith. The 200-mile range on the weather radar showed clear on our course. I flipped on the navigational radar in both visual and audible mode for a half-mile distance, 180 degrees, and north of the centerline. That allowed me to push the throttle forward until she planed out at 3,400 rpm.
Comfortably on autopilot, I zipped up the isinglass on the upper bridge and joined my guests below. I took out a bottle of properly aged cognac and four of the finest clear plastic snifters, which had come with the cognac from the salesman when I bought the boat.
We had a wonderful conversation, and I could see they were having an especially good time.
“You will have to excuse me,” I told my guests. “The lighthouse should be in view, and I have to get back up top and steer us into the channel.”
I got settled in my chair, cross-checked my instrumentation, and swung her around to the north. I looked up, left and right, back and forth, but there was no lighthouse.
“What the … ?” I was confused and mumbling. “What the freak is going on?”
I bent down to the lower portside panel and flipped on the generator, looking for more auxiliary power, just in case my navigational system somehow got screwed up.
Just then, a gigantic rogue wave knocked me over onto the open sliding door and into the water.
I never heard it or saw it coming.
As I bobbed to the surface clutching what I thought was my generator manual, I was surprised to see it was my copy of the latest issue of Yachting Magazine.
I heard laughing and giggling, for, as I napped, my grandchildren had flipped my lounge chair into the pool.
“We gotcha this time, Grandpa!” they yelled.
PHOTO: ISTOCK