| Navigating The Piers of Life written by Lane Hudson |
When I moved to Carrollton, Georgia, located in the northwest corner of that state, a colleague told me with excitement that I was going to love Carrollton because the ocean was only seven hours away by car. He also told me the best place to eat seafood was Shoney’s seafood buffet on Friday nights. I knew I had moved to a beach lover’s hell. After these two revelations, I appreciated only more the short distance from Myrtle to Rockingham. Many lessons can be learned at the beach – some moral and some not so moral – but it was the South Myrtle Beach Pier, not bikini clad women or the Spanish Galleon, that taught me my most valuable lesson. During my visits to the shore, many summer days were spent sitting on the Atlantic shore watching enviously those brave souls who had broken free of the land on their sailboats. The sailboats were mostly catamarans, those small boats with two fiberglass pontoons and a canvas deck stretched underneath a tall brightly colored sail. Some boats had skimmed so far out into the blue-green water they seemed balanced on that dividing line between the ocean and the sky . “Sailing looked pretty simple,” I thought. “The wind blows you out to sea, and then blows you back again. Why, even a moron can do that!” So one day, tired of being a spectator, I decided it was time to learn to sail. So I located a sailboat rental business in south Myrtle Beach where, for a $175 deposit and $75 an hour, I could captain my own ship, or in this case, a Hobie Cat catamaran. First, the rental manager handed me a stack of legal release forms to sign. Then he took my deposit and confiscated my drivers license. (I guess others had set sail to Europe or South America and never returned with the sailboat.) Then he asked a question I wasn’t expecting: “Have you sailed before? If not you have to take a lesson.” Now, I knew I didn’t need a lesson. I knew any moron could sail, besides what could possibly go wrong in that great big ocean? So I looked the manager straight in the eye, and did what comes naturally in moments before great adventures begin -- I lied: “Yes sir! I said enthusiastically, “I’ve sailed before.” (I bet Columbus stretched the truth some for the Queen of England before he set sail.) So with the paperwork in order, I strolled out to my catamaran and stood beneath the sail which was taller and grander than I imagined. Then two other men helped me slide the sailboat across the sand into the ocean’s shallow waters where I jumped aboard. They then pushed the sailboat beyond the breaking waves where the sail popped taut and I was on my own, pushed by the wind. I looked straight to the horizon because I knew that soon, I was going to be one of those free birds, dancing on that dividing line between water and sky -- free of the shore, envied by those left behind. But then, several hundred yards beyond the breakers, all joy left my heart. I was paralyzed with fear because directly ahead of me, between me and my horizon, was something I did not expect - the South Myrtle Beach Pier – and I was heading straight for it. It was in this moment of crisis, I realized sailboats do not have a brake, do not have a neutral, do not have a reverse, and do not make U-turns. And, it was definitely too late for a lesson. So I jerked and I cussed those little rudders back and forth as hard as I could, tipping the sailboat to the brink of capsizing several times. Somewhere in heaven above, I knew all high school geometry teachers were looking down and laughing. I was in a misdrawn geometry problem. I was the hypotenuse side on a right triangle on a diagonal collision course with the pier. And no matter how I tried to change my side of this right triangle approach, the pier was just too long to clear. My outcome was obvious to me and it was also obvious to the people on the pier who were waving to me (as if I didn’t see the pier in front of me). And like a herd of sheep, they kept moving up and down the pier, excitedly anticipating the exact place of my impact, my obvious humiliation and death. Some of the people were even taking their cameras out, ready for a picture to sell to the nightly newscast. I was definitely proving my earlier point, that even a moron can sail. (Had I been driving a truck, I would have woken ole’ Blue up). Then, I had an epiphany, a brainstorm: “If I can’t go around the pier,” I thought, “Maybe I can go through it!” (I had seen those 60’s beach movies where daredevil surfers safely threaded through piers.) So I jerked the rudders and shifted the sail to change my diagonal collision course to a suicidal head on with an immoveable object -- the pier. I moved to the boat’s center and I aimed it between the 24-inch pilings. But instead of artfully weaving my way through the pier pilings, the boat bounced between and off the creosoted poles like a pinball. The pontoons scraped the timbers and the tall mast scraped and bent on the pier’s underside. Behind me were fishing reels, bait buckets, and other fishing stuff I had yanked with my sail from the fishermen on the pier above me. Waiting for me on the other side of the pier were lifeguards with a small motorized rescue craft. My rescuers weren’t very friendly or even sympathetic. To further humiliate me, they ordered me off my boat, and ordered me to hold to the side of the rescue craft while it dragged me through the breakers to shore. The lifeguards beached the wounded sailboat, and taking the bent mast off the catamaran, they handed the mast to me, and ordered me to follow them back to the rental shop. Dragging the mast, I left a single furrow in the wet sand the half mile up the beach to the rental shop. Strangers laughed, friends jeered, and my girlfriend covered her face with her beach towel. I figured I wasn’t going to get my $175 deposit back. And although I had only been on the sailboat about 25 minutes, I figured I wasn’t going to be refunded any of the $75 per hour rental charge. And I also figured that by now the rental manager realized I had either lied to him about my sailing expertise or else I was just crazy. Ahead, I could see the manager waiting for us on the beach. As we neared him, I saw him laughing so hard he could hardly speak. “You are one lucky fellow,” he said between attempts at getting his breath. “I have never seen anyone do that. You’re a moron. Do you know some fishermen on that pier have already called me and want me to pay for the equipment you jerked off the pier. I told them that according to maritime law, a ship in distress has priority over fishing – and you definitely were a ship in distress.” I’m glad he saw humor in my situation, but obviously not enough, because like I figured, he kept my $175 deposit and never offered a refund on my shortened hour. The manager’s final words were, “Son, I’ll remember you for a long time, but don’t you ever come back here again., even if you learn how to sail.” In retrospect, my money wasn’t completely wasted that day. My 25-minute encounter with the South Myrtle Beach Pier taught me four valuable lessons: (1) Its important to know what you don’t know; (2) Life’s lessons are usually surprises; (3) The best lessons are hands-on (or head-on). And (4), when it looks like you’re really going to screw up, a crowd always seems to gather. Eventually I did learn to sail. I certainly wasn’t going to let a small thing like a pier discourage me. |
|
|