Suddenly Overboard (22 page)

He dropped the tiller and jumped to the cockpit seat to dive in, then caught himself. If the boat got away, they'd both drown. He looked around, sighted against a tall tree on the distant shore to calculate his position, and then rushed to the mast and released both halyards. The sails rattled down, and he dived into the water and swam toward the tree.

As he swam and dived, feeling his way through murky water, his mind rejected the situation. Nick could not simply have vanished like that; he'd pop up somewhere nearby any moment.

He searched until he was so exhausted he was barely able to get back to the drifting boat. Part of him didn't want to.

Once back on shore he telephoned for help from the truck, and the water-rescue people arrived quickly. They wouldn't let him on the boat when they went out in the direction he pointed. The light breeze had all but died, and the waves were very small and wouldn't conceal anything floating. He sat on the shore, dazed, watching.

When they came back later, he saw right away they had the dead puppy. Then they opened a plastic bag and showed him a pair of sneakers they'd found floating. He recognized them and nodded, and they put the bag away.

“We have a diver on the way,” they told him.

By dark the diver had found nothing. Numb, Scott still couldn't accept it, still expected Nick to come walking up along the shore from where he'd swum out. He'd have to tell the boy he could get a new dog.

Three days later a fisherman found Nick's floating body.

“Three old farts on a boat,” Scully's wife called them. Well, maybe the other two, Scully thought, since Nolan and Geoff were both older and retired. He was just between jobs; it wasn't his fault the older guys were his only friends free to sail on a weekday.

“Your unemployment's going to run out soon,” his wife reminded Scully again in the morning when he told her they were taking the boat out on Long Island Sound.

“All the more reason to enjoy it while I can,” he told her. “Besides, I'll bring home fish for dinner. Some blues, maybe a striper.”

“Like that will pay for the beer,” she said, watching him pack ice around the case in the big cooler.

But she smiled. She didn't really begrudge him his time on the water. It seemed about the only thing he enjoyed these days.

Scully picked up Nolan and Geoff at their houses on the way to the marina where his 22-foot pocket cruiser was docked. When the checks stopped he'd have to keep it at home on its trailer, but until then he planned to enjoy the marina's convenience as often as possible.

“We headin' toward Fishers?” Nolan asked.

“I heard the blues are running,” Geoff added.

“That's the plan,” Scully said. “Wind's supposed to be light, just right for sailing at trolling speed.” He glanced into the back seat at the pile of stuff they'd brought along. “One of you old farts remember sandwiches?”

Nolan and Geoff looked at each other and broke out laughing. From the back seat Geoff twisted around and lifted the lid of the
cooler in back. “Doesn't look like much room in here for sandwiches, anyway. Sure you got enough beer?”

Scully snorted. “It's gonna be hot this afternoon, trust me. I'll sell ‘em to you a buck a can and you'll be begging for more.”

“Okay,” Nolan sighed. “Stop somewhere and I'll pay for the sandwiches.”

“I'll kick in for gas,” Geoff offered. “So's you don't keep calling me old fart.”

It was after 11
A.M
. by the time they parked at the marina and loaded everything into Scully's old sloop.

“Geez, ever think of hosing this thing off once in a while?” Nolan said, surveying the deck.

“That's what rain's for.” Scully unscrewed the cap of the outboard gas tank with its busted gauge and looked inside. “Got enough gas, so you can kick in for the beer,” he told Geoff. “Put that cooler down below out of the sun.”

“Pretty hot already,” Nolan said.

“Have a beer, then.”

They opened three cans, and Scully set to work starting the old Johnson two-stroke outboard. As usually happened, his arm got tired from pulling the cord and the thing had only coughed a couple times.

“It's that ethanol,” Geoff said. “Gums up the carb on old motors.”

“Thanks,” Scully said. “Real helpful.”

Finally the outboard started with a big puff of blue smoke.

“Let's get out on the river before it dies again,” Nolan said. “Tide's runnin' out, right?”

Geoff untied the lines and Scully backed out of the slip, keeping up the rpm. When he shifted into forward with a roar, the boat lurched and Nolan, who was still stowing gear, dropped his beer and almost fell over.

They watched the foamy liquid swirl down the cockpit drain as they cleared the last floating dock and turned down the Thames River through New London Harbor for the 3-mile run out into Long Island Sound.

“Get me another beer,” Scully said, “and get that sail cover off.” He was hot already, the cooler breeze of the sound still far ahead.

Geoff rigged a lure and cast far out to port. “Won't catch anything in here,” Nolan said.

“You never know.”

“Well, for all that,” Scully said, settled back on his cushion, “you never know about nothin'.”

“Ain't that the truth.”

An hour later the harbor mouth had widened out and the boat was rising and falling on lazy swells rolling in from the sound. The air was cooler now but not much. Through the haze ahead they could see the western end of Fishers Island. When they cleared the last of the inshore ledges Scully directed them to raise the sails and then shut off the noisy outboard.

“Ah, the quiet!” he exclaimed. “It's what I live for these days.”

“I'll drink to that.”

The wind was about 8 knots west-southwest, letting Scully sail on a beam reach toward Fishers. They had two lines in the water, Nolan and Geoff holding the rods out to either side. Scully watched the sails and the tips of the rods. It was a fine day, and it wouldn't matter much if they never got a bite, though he'd like to take home a couple of fish for his wife.

The afternoon got hotter as the wind dropped. They turned east through Fishers Sound, passing the Dumplings, sailing downwind now, just ghosting along. The problem with downwind sailing, though, was that you felt no breeze at all and there was no shade from the sails. Fortunately they had lots of cold beer.

After a while Geoff went down in the cabin to take a nap. Nolan looked at his line and said, “It's just hanging straight down,” and reeled it in.

Scully decided to turn for the slow sail back. At this rate it might take until dark.

But there wasn't enough wind to move forward against the tide through the sound. “Screw it,” he said at last. “Let's motor-sail a while.”

But the outboard wouldn't start, and pretty soon both his and Nolan's arms were tired from pulling the cord.

“Get me my toolbox,” Scully said.

Nolan climbed below and found the toolbox. “It's cooler down there in the shade,” he said. “You need my help with the motor?”

“Nah, I'm just gonna clean the plug, check the fuel filter.”

“I think I'll lie down for a while, then,” Nolan said. “Get out of the sun.”

“Get me a beer first.”

Scully opened the toolbox and spread out some tools on the cockpit seat. Then he bent over the transom to the outboard on its low mount and worked off the top cover. Getting to the motor from the cockpit was a real bitch. It didn't fit on the small mount well and couldn't be rotated around to make it easier. To reach the spark plug to the rear, he practically had to lie prone with his legs on the bench seat, his stomach pressed uncomfortably against the aft cockpit wall, and then reach way out and around, feeling with his fingers—all without dropping the wrench in the water. What a hassle!

He got the plug out and wormed back into the cockpit. It looked pretty dirty and was oily at the tip. He wiped it with a rag, then brushed it off with a wire brush and checked the gap.

He drank the rest of his beer and squinted up at the sun. Then he moved some tools out of his way and crawled back out over the transom with the plug and wrench.

Just as he was working the plug back in, fumbling with the wrench, he felt his sunglasses slipping off. With his other hand he let go of the transom to grab them before they fell.

Neither Geoff nor Nolan had any idea how long they'd slept. Geoff woke first, groggy, and climbed out the companionway to look around. The sun was lower but it was still hot, and the boat bobbed in the low swells without wind. He looked around the boat and took in the tools spread over the cockpit seat.

“Hey, Nolan, where's Scully?” he yelled back down the companionway.

Nolan was slow to wake. “What?”

“Where'd Scully go?”

He rubbed his eyes. “What do you mean, where'd he go?”

“He's not here.”

Nolan climbed out, and together they looked all around the boat and scanned the water.

“Some kind of joke?” They looked at each other. “Like he got off on another boat?”

But they knew Scully wouldn't do that. There was no explanation, he was just gone. Geoff moved back and looked at the open outboard. “He was going to check the plug,” Nolan said. “That's what he was doing when I went below.”

Then it occurred to them that maybe he'd fallen overboard and that they should do something. Geoff took out his cell phone and looked at Nolan. “What am I supposed to say?”

Scully's body was found 3 days later. There was no sign of injury, and he was not wearing a life jacket. The autopsy showed he had drowned, and it was presumed he'd fallen overboard and become separated from the boat
.

The Mediterranean, October 2011
. French sailor Florence Arthaud, famed solo sailor, was sailing singlehanded off the coast of France. Like many sailors she likely knew the more-than-half-true Coast Guard joke that drowned (male) boaters are always found with their zipper down, the result of falling in while urinating overboard. (This is actually more true of powerboaters, who lack stays, shrouds, and lifelines to grab as needed.) But she was apparently not thinking about this when one night, as she later said, she was “having a tinkle over the rail without attaching myself as usual” and was unluckily bounced overboard by a wave. Luckily, however, she'd just bought a waterproof case for her cell
phone before starting the voyage, and luckily the phone had a signal. She got a call through and was found in the dark after an hour and a half suffering from hypothermia, but was released from the hospital later without harm.

A lake in Utah, 2008
. A father and his two sons were sailing a small boat that capsized when the wind and waves increased. None of them wore a PFD. They succeeded in righting the boat and getting back in, but one of the boys noticed their paddle was floating away and jumped back in to retrieve it. The wind was blowing the boat away from him faster than he could swim back, so his father jumped in the water with a line to try to reach his son. He couldn't get to him, so he returned to the boat to help his other son sail back to the boy in the water. They watched as he took off his shoes in order to swim better, but he disappeared under the surface before they could reach him. The recovery search was fruitless; his body was found when it surfaced 4 days later.

Phuket, Thailand, February 2012
. An Australian woman was sailing offshore near Phuket with three other experienced sailors on a large cruising sailboat when she mysteriously disappeared at night when on deck alone. The others had no idea what happened or exactly when it happened during her watch, but they assumed she had fallen overboard. The extensive search operation turned up nothing. They could only imagine her horror as, alone in the water in the dark, she helplessly watched the boat sail away.

Lake Champlain, Vermont, 2007
. Two people were sailing on the lake when one accidentally dropped a winch handle overboard. It was a warm day and he could swim, so he thought nothing of jumping in to fetch the floating handle. Without a PFD, however, he was unable to stay on the surface long enough for the other person to sail the boat back. Twelve days passed before his body was found.

Lake Michigan, Indiana, 2009
. A husband and wife were out on their sailboat on a hot, windless day and decided to cool off by swimming beside the boat. The boat drifted off, and soon the man
was struggling in the water. His wife tried to hold up his head, but by the time rescuers arrived he'd been facedown in the water for 30 minutes and could not be resuscitated.

Lake Erie, Presque Isle, Pennsylvania, July 2011
. A small group was sailing 2 hours before sunset when one of them, a 27-year-old man, jumped in for a swim. When the others saw him struggling in the 78°F water, they threw him a life ring, but he couldn't reach it and soon went under. They called for help and a Coast Guard boat arrived within minutes, but rescuers were unable to find him.