13 Saved by a Juicy Fruit Gum Wrapper. Song: “I Dig R & R Music”. Photo: “Naples Yacht Club Gig”
The following story illustrates the importance of knowing the facts about boating safety BEFORE going out in a boat (like wearing life preservers). I had just experienced my first time on water skies. At age 14, I suppose that I could claim to be an experienced water skier, and an “avid(?)” boater because I had water skied one time already, and when my chance came again I was determined to try it once more.
The neighborhood’s recreational facility is called “The Grosse Pointe Farms Michigan Park-Pier” on Lake St. Clair with a resident pool, tether ball/basketball court, beach, boats, concession stand, and eventually a small ice skating rink for year round recreation. One sunny summer morning, I met a girl my same age who showed me her boat that was around the back of the pier moored in a slip. It was an old small wooden boat with an engine that had a blue cover. After talking it over with her, and seeing that it had a full tank of gas, we decided to start it up and take it out for a short ride together. I was excited about the possibility of being able to try water skiing again, and for some reason she seemed as excited as I was to go out with me for a ride in her boat. She told me that it barely had enough power to pull a water skier, but I knew from my previous experience that I wasn’t interested in ever going that fast on water skis again.
It only took a few minutes to reach clear out to where it seemed like the deepest part of Lake St. Clair, and we stopped. I guess that it was still Lake St. Clair way out there, but it’s not like we had navigation maps, or even would have known how to read them back then. Neither of us were prepared in any way as boaters, and when I asked her if I could try the water skis she said fine, but at some point it became apparent that it was her older brother’s boat, so I was feeling uncomfortable with water skiing, but determined to try it again. So, with no life jacket, I jumped into the middle of Lake St. Clair braving the cold deep water. We were obviously scared and excited, but too young and inexperienced while at the same time both of us were putting on a good show of looking cool and comfortable as if we knew what we were doing.
I fit into the water skis as quickly as possible, and when the rope slack tightened, she gunned the engine. It was a lot easier getting up on the water for my second time ever. Off we went – water skiing – this time, (instead of just offshore), clear out in the middle of Lake St. Clair. After skiing for around fifteen minutes, I saw a HUGE “OCEAN GOING” FREIGHTER, which was heading almost in the same direction as we were, and on approximately the same parallel course. Soon, we found ourselves riding up and down on the huge swells which the freighter made. It took more strength staying on the skis while riding up on the ship’s swells as it did riding down them, and it was much harder to hold on to the tow rope while slowly going up them because the skis sank a little lower in the water. Riding down those large long gentle non-breaking swells was much more fun, and a lot easier, and It’s important to note that even at the boat’s top speed, we were just barely going faster than the ship’s swells. After riding over the large rounded swells, we caught up to just past midship of that freighter, and after I waved for her to go closer, she steered the boat so close that we were only a few yards away from it!
Getting even closer to the side of the ship seemed okay with me, too, because neither of us knew any better, and as we got closer, the ship loomed in size. However, when I looked up, I had an uneasy feeling – kind of like the opposite of “don’t look down” when treading on a very high narrow path you could fall off from – because when I looked up and saw the height and immensity of the huge ship, I felt that I could actually lose my balance. Then, for some reason, I had the cockamamy idea to reach out and touch the hull just so I could say that was what I did!
First, I noticed that when I got close to arm’s-length away from the hull of the ship, the ship blocked the sun at the same time that I suddenly I couldn’t hear the sound of her boat motor anymore. In fact, I couldn’t hear any noise at all for a few seconds, and I’ll never forget that was like an erie phenomenon as if I had crossed over the vortex of a different world or something when, just as suddenly, even the air flow was different, alarmingly different! I think, now, that what I was really experiencing was STUPIDITY for getting that close to an ocean going freighter! I couldn’t hear the boat motor because of the sounds that the water was making from being displaced by the freighter cutting through the water canceling out the sound of the boat motor, plus it became louder the closer I got as I reached out to touch the hull. It startled me to realize that the noise was the crashing, crunching, and crushing sounds of hundreds of tons of water rushing over the lip of a waterfall which was being created only inches away from my right water ski!
Until then, I was unaware of how dangerous it was to be anywhere around the front, side, or even close-by any large boat or ship, especially an ocean going freighter, whether water skiing, or even riding in a boat. I was suddenly looking into a waterfall the likes of Niagara falls just inches away, and that endless cycle waterfall of white water mesmerized me. I could see how it stretched clear down to where it wrapped around the bottom of the ship, and the force that the water made while being dropped off steeply in the process of displacement was so strong that it was obviously what was making the powerful, sucking, windy, turbulent air. Needless to say, I was in a very dangerous environment, and serious situation.
Then, I saw a bright flat yellow Juicy Fruit gum wrapper which came bobbling by right in front of me. Seeing that yellow Juicy Fruit gum wrapper saved my life, because it not only immediately revealed the speed and direction of which way the water current was flowing, it also put into perspective the speed at which I was moving on my water skis relative to the faster speed in which that gum wrapper was bobbing along. The significance of this was even more alarming because it made me realize that the gum wrapper was actually going as fast, or FASTER through the water, than I was going on my water skis! And, that yellow gum wrapper was being sucked SIDEWAYS towards the ship’s hull, and then it disappeared over where the water dropped into the abyss making me realize how seriously foolish I was getting that close to that ship. I steered back into the striking contrast of the bright warm sunshine, and saw my new lady friend driving the boat looking as if in happy bliss, and thorough enjoyment. So far, both of us, barely teenagers, were spared tragedy.
We eventually passed that freighter, but we both could have ended up being killed by being violently cut to pieces from being sucked into the ship’s propellors if I fell, or even if the little boat stopped anywhere close enough to it. After she passed the bow of the ship by a couple of hundred yards, she stopped the boat! I had great difficulty gathering both of the skis after slipping them off from my feet, and it wasn’t at all easy keeping them together while I swam toward the boat. By the time I got to it, I noticed that the ship had gotten considerably closer, and thought that it wasn’t very smart of her stopping directly in line of the ship’s path. By the time I reached the boat, it was difficult handing the heavy wooden water skis up to her because when they went up, I went down, so they were hard for her to reach. Then, I couldn’t figure out how to get back on board because there was no ladder or swim platform, and my several clumsy attempts were a completely unsuccessful embarrassment. I was thinking that she had stopped the boat to let me onboard so I could catch my breath, but what I didn’t realize, because she hadn’t yet told me, was that the reason that she stopped the boat in the first place, was because THE BOAT MOTOR DIED! She just stood there looking apparently calm, but I saw that she had both of her hands over her mouth, and was looking straight at the approaching freighter as if this was her destiny.
Our boat sat there stalled in front of the huge freighter’s path, I was still in the water, and it was obvious that the ship was not going in any direction other than straight toward us. She mumbled that she didn’t think that the boat motor would start, and as I realized how much closer the ship actually was, I got even more clumsy by trying frantically to get onboard. As I did so, I heard the sound of her cranking over the boat motor. Then, the cranking become slower, and then even slower until I heard just a click sound (that’s how the starter sounds with a near dead, or dead battery). That was also when I figured out that she hadn’t turned the boat motor off, but that the boat motor had died!
She tried to remain calm probably because she wanted to feel that whatever the problem was, together we could figure out what to do. But the blunt reality was that she was clueless, I was still in the water, and even my own knowledge of boat motors was limited. While I was trying to figure out how to get on board, and clumsily attempting to do so in different places and ways unsuccessfully, we were both startled by the sudden deafening blast of the freighter’s warning horn!
Shocked, and being overtaken by the ships looming shadow, we both looked back behind us, and up! Almost at the same time, we could hear the sound of the ship breaking through the water, and while it closed in, it again became as high as a skyscraper. With a burst of adrenalin I catapulted myself faster than a cat out of water, and into that boat. It was only a matter of seconds before that ship would be on top of us with disaster. I didn’t know what to do, but something had to do be done RIGHT AWAY!
When this massive ship was less than a few feet away from crushing us there was only split seconds left to do anything. With my adrenalin still pumping, I ripped off that big blue engine cover with my bare hands which revealed a large thick round aluminum casting way larger than a 33 LP record, and I saw that it had notches on it. It looked very similar to a old lawn mower where you would have to wrap a rope around it and pull to make it start. I had no clue if that would work, but unbelievably, she threw a length of rope with a knot tied at the end of it over to me, and I wrapped that rope around the big aluminum round piece lightning fast, and pulled on it with all the strength I had. The throttle had to have been set to full, because on my very first pull, the motor started, and the boat lunged forward, but not before the boat was nearly swamped from the front-wash coming off of the bow of the freighter. Just in the nick of time we weren’t rammed by the freighter, and we survived.