Page 59 - North Star Literary & Art Magazine

Tornado
Cullen Phipps
I achieved my goal of making it on my own sailboat from Rochester, New York to the inlet at Peanut Island, Florida, on the intracoastal waterway. I had been living there on a mooring ball for about a month and settled into a community of other liveaboards. There was Brian, a diesel mechanic who lived on his power yacht that didn’t run. Dan lived on his old Hatteras from the 70’s, which also did not run, and had a lawn growing on the bow with other tropical plants hanging over the sides. Dan’s little brother Sean, lives on two smaller boats lashed together, and of course they didn’t run either.
My closest neighbors were Skyler, the only other liveaboard my age I met on my travels, and his girlfriend Lex. We were also the only two sailors around the neighborhood, which was just a haphazard array of half derelict boats in an illegal mooring field. We spent our days swimming in the clear hightide waters, drinking rum around the reefs, spearfishing, and cooking out on the bows of each other's boats. Our lives played out casually on a day-to-day basis filled with minute worries: where was dinner tonight, when was high tide, and “why is all the rum gone?”
Eventually, the weather, every boater's nemesis, broke our days of ease with a stern reminder that mother nature is always in charge. Late in the morning one day, Skyler and I could feel foul weather coming. We sat on our bows, noses facing the coming winds, parallel to each other about thirty yards apart. Dark clouds appeared over the horizon and sat low in the sky. Coming out of the west, a grey wall rolled over and the sea began to roll with the increasing wind. Skyler and I looked at each other realizing this was not a normal squall. We sat and watched the storm approach. The temperature dropped and a mountain of formida- ble clouds made their approach. The wind was already blowing at about thirty knots or so and the sheet of rain had not hit yet. Skyler and I glanced at one another. I shouted, “This is going to be bad!” over the crying winds. The storm barreled across the channel, the winds began to scream, and the green seas turned dark and churned with foam running across the waves like white horses. “Here it comes!”
The rain and wind hit, roaring as if God were in your ear. The boat rolled to its side and we ducked below from our front hatches. The mast and halyards rattled violently while the wood and fiberglass strained under the force of seventy-five-knot winds. The sea frenzied, the fresh and powerful waves smashed into the hull. I peered out of my hatch, the wind and rain blew hard against the sides forcing water in from every crack.
The neighborhood was about to shrink, I knew this for certain. I watched through the crack in my gallyway. The boats around me broke free and began to crash against the rocks or drag on their anchor out of the inlet into the rolling sea. I put a life jacket on, and stuffed my phone and sailing log into a backpack. I knew if I broke loose, I would have to go out on deck and the odds of me going in the water would be high.
The water crashed around me and the wind and rain whipped. For no longer than a half an hour the power of nature tore around us, and the whole time I watched in terror, that it could get worse than it already was. That I or my friends might break free. Then, as fast as it came, the wind left.
NORTH STAR 57