Sailing
I tied the main sail line to my waist and began to pull in the sails, throw them into the cabin with Ken's help, and the sailboat started to 'right itself'. I tied down the mast and started the engine. At this time, we are about 3 miles from the entrance to the port.
Two more waterspouts appear starboard and the waves were getting higher; to the point where I could not get the propeller to grab the water, because we were now going in a circle, skipping on waves.
I did a quick mental calculation of wave movement, stood as far aft, as possible, with a rudder extension in my hand, and managed to get an angle on the waves that allowed the 'prop' to grab water.
Making a long story short, we made it home safe and Ken smiled when we returned, mentioning I 'had held up to my word and got him home safe'.
Without going into it, there were a number of witnesses of this event and we started getting asked to crew to places like Hawaii, etc. on some very nice yachts.
Three Hour Tour
by Ken Schneider
Judging from the photograph of the excursion, I think we left shore somewhere in 1990. Curtis and I had met at SF City College, where I worked and taught in the Broadcasting Department. Curtis was studying television and audio production. We had some shared interests, among them music, free thinking, the Diggers, appropriate and creative use of technology, and the San Francisco Bay. When Curtis mentioned that he had recently bought a sailboat, I jumped at the chance to sail. A date was set, we met at the docks in San Rafael, and we launched on a classic Richardson Bay morning, sunny and gray at the same time.
We motored out of the harbor, set the sails, and before long, Curtis provided food and libation. He cracked open a can of dolmas, saying,
"This is the kind of stuff I've been eating lately."
They were my first dolmas from a can--and they weren't half bad. Later, I would re-discover them at Trader Joe's, which I had yet to shop at. He smiled, we took off our shirts, and enjoyed the sun. I noticed Curtis' Om tattoo on the left side of his chest, just below the breast. I was musing about "Om" as the first sound of the world (in "The Wasteland," TS Eliot seems to think that the first human utterances were "Da! Damyatta! Dayadvhan!" Perhaps, as Vico noted, the first sounds were humans' attempt to imitate thunder or other such natural sounds. And perhaps "Om" precedes all such human utterances. If an Om falls in the forest, and there is no one to hear it......). Curtis told me that this was an early tattoo of his (his first?) [Yes, my first ;-) but not my last. - Curtis] and that it had been done by Lyle Tuttle [Yes, when Lyle was downtown (San Francisco) on 7th St., near the bus station, between Market & Mission St's., upstairs.]. I was too young to have served as Tuttle's canvas, but I had recently had my first tattoo, done by a woman named Mandy, who told me that she had been trained by Tuttle. I appreciated the irony.
An hour or two or three past, with laughter, mirth and storytelling. We talked about the Diggers (Emmett Grogan's memorial had been held at Curtis' house in '78 [Actually, held at my coffee house, the United State Cafe, near my home.], a few years before I arrived in the Bay Area), baseball, current music interests, his involvement with early computer experimentation, etc. On a boat, you can be whomever you want to be, so why not be yourself?
Typically, the blue sky gave way to gray, and in a moment, the wind kicked up something nasty. The howl of the wind was loud enough to drown out our voices, and the little ship began to toss. Up to that point, I had never feared death, imagining that, if it came to me, I would be ready. But fear kicked in, and I went to the pre-thought place of, "Oh, shit." Involuntarily, my hands began to shake. I began to wonder if Curtis actually knew how to sail. He did look a little frantic, but it's hard not to trust someone with that twinkle permanently shining in his eye--the left eye, I believe. I decided that he didn't actually know how to sail, but that he would manage to get us out of this, as I knew that he had, no doubt, extracted himself from more bizarre scrapes than this one. He threw a life jacket my way and suggested, shouting, that I go below deck. With hands still shaking, I tied the life jacket on, when my manly, "I-can-handle-this" kicked in. I started to go below, then turned around and said, "what I can do to help?" By then, Curtis was taking down the sail and tying it up. "It's OK," he yelled, "it's just a devil gust. They come up quick sometimes. I'll use the engine to get us in."
We were being kind to each other. He refrained from telling me that, had I had my act together, we could have sailed through it all, and I refrained from asking him if he knew what the hell he was doing. A few moments later we were docking, the devil gust had passed on, and we were laughing.
By circumstance, geography, and my commitment to family, we rarely see each other these years. The last time I remember was bumping into Curtis after a Haight Street Fair, many years ago. But, and I know it sounds cliche-- I do remember that sailing trip. And the dolmas. And the tattoo. And the devil gust. And, of course, the twinkle.
