White Squall

One of the few movies Mark has on board (we don’t have a TV – we watch movies on our laptops) is White Squall, about a sailing ship with a crew of teenage boys captained by Jeff Bridges. They encounter a huge storm at sea and some of the crew die, including the captain’s wife. This movie is very vivid in my mind.

Lately – especially as we prepare to take my parents on a five-day fishing trip – I’ve been asking Mark questions like, “If we start to sink, how soon until we know? Would we have enough time to blow up the zodiac?”

My main concern is that, if an emergency happens, I will know what to do and what to tell everyone else on board – so I can remain calm, and the captain remains calm, and nobody freaks out as we’re putting on life vests and jumping into the zodiac and firing off flares. My other concern is that we save our feline crewmates, and putting them in the zodiac seems the best option.

Off the coast of Chicago, the concern is not so bad, as the playpen area in front of the John Hancock, for instance, is only about 12 feet deep. If we started to sink, we would just bring everybody up to the fly bridge and wait for the Coast Guard, who would probably arrive before the water even reached our feet.

The established emergency plans all include #1 – put on life jackets, #2 – call for help.

If the Coast Guard stops you, for instance, one of the first things they look for is a life preserver for each person on board. (We’ve actually had to stop and borrow lifejackets from fellow boaters when our guests exceeded our number of preservers.)

So we came up with a plan in case of emergency while underway: put on life preservers, radio the Coast Guard our coordinates, blow up the zodiac, hop in and fire off flares. And wait.

Last week on the way to work we were discussing our emergency plan options. Underway, the only way to tell that we’re sinking is if we actually run into something and start to take visibly take on water. “The real threat is that we would sink at the dock,” Mark said, describing the six places water can get into the boat, via the hull fittings at both toilets, the propeller drive shaft, heater intake, engine intake, and generator intake.

I found a recent study by an insurance company of 150 sinking claims the sites for every boat that sinks while underway, four boats sink at the dock in their slips. “Most recreational boats spend considerably more time at the dock unattended than they do underway. Silly problems like a bad bilge pump, or loss of shore power or a weak battery are sufficient to make a boat sink, even in waters that are only six feet deep.”

That afternoon about 2 pm, oddly enough, Mazurka’s alarm system called Mark’s phone. He called the Harbor office, and they did a quick check: there was water leaking inside. Mark sped home to find an inch of water in the salon. The drinking water filter beneath the sink (which he had just fixed the weekend prior with super-duper glue, “That’s not going to leak anymore,” he said) had burst, and the line was leaking water everywhere. He shut off the water, mopped it up, and returned to work, very upset.

It took a couple days to get the right piece to fix the line. In the meantime, I went outside to get water for coffee at a spigot. We kept the water off, except when washing dishes and showering, and then we kept a bucket under the sink to collect the runoff.

Adapt, overcome, improvise.

And just for fun, Mark bought a radio that will broadcast our GPS coordinates to the Coast Guard if we activate it.