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Dinghies Were Not Meant To Fly

December 22, 20198 min read1,719 comments
Written by Kimberly Croddy

Deep into the dark night on a violent and bouncing sea, I startled from my berth to the wild call of Topher shouting “All hands on Deck! All hands on Deck!”  I scrambled to the deck as fast I could while throwing on my life vest wearing only my short white night shirt an a hair elastic to keep the wildly blowing wind from whipping my face. Our dinghy, our trusted tender that we rely on to take us from boat to shore, had been slammed hard by a wave and tossed into the sea behind our vessel.  Bumblebee was struggling to stay afloat, she was on her side, her 20 horsepower Honda 4-stroke engine halfway submerged and being dragged through the jolting sea.  We needed to change course and find a compass bearing moving away from the wind to attempt to secure the dinghy.  I tried to hold a bearing of 270 degrees, but I was so disoriented in the darkness and with adrenaline that I could not determine at first which way to turn the wheel to hold the bearing.  I was scared and trembling from the cold wind the sounds of the dinghy slapping the sea and the noise the wind and sea sounded like thunder in the distance.   I needed to focus and control my fear to steer a course. This was the easy part of what was happening.  Topher and Tanner had secured themselves to the boat with jacklines.  Topher ran a second rope to the steel ring of the Dingy while Tanner grabbed the line and ran it to a second cleat.  Just then we heard a cracking sound of the metal shackles holding the dinghy to the starboard stern snapping in two, releasing the dingy completely into the water.  If we had been 30 seconds late in responding, the dingy would have been in the sea and there would have been no way to safely retrieve it at that point.  We would have had to stand by it until daybreak or cut our losses and make a claim.  Given the violent sea, you can guess that I may have probably left it behind.  We were miles into blue water sailing, two days from Cuba and 20 hours from the Bahamas, crossing over 4,000 feet of water in the deep water passage known as the “Tongue of the Ocean”.

Topher and Tanner did secure the dingy and I headed back east into the bouncing sea.  We really had little choice at this point as we were closer to Great Exuma in the Bahamas than to Cuba.  We had a backup plan and that was to bail out to Pigeon Key at Southern Andros in Bahamas, but that was 6 hours behind us now.  We had about 11 hours to head east so we really we did not discuss turning back.  I did think though that our 40 foot Lagoon Catamaran sounded as if it could be split into pieces by pounding waves and we saw we were only making 3 knots headway against to 20 knot winds on our nose.  This was going to be a long ride.  There is a saying, “The vessel can take more that it’s captain” and this was one of those cases.  At one point I was just clutching a pillow and praying that we make it safely to shore.  As the night grew long, I became exhausted and went below to my berth falling onto the pillows of my bed like a rag doll. My toes would curl in fright every time we would plunge down a steep wave feeling the gravity and hearing the slam of riding over a large wave over and over, it is not for the faint of heart.

The water was cold when it poured through my hatch. Waking instantly I thought the boat split in two. Soaked, I screamed over and over for Topher, while water was splashing into my berth.   Luckily, if you can call it that, it was only that the hatch had come loose in the pounding waves and it opened allowing the waves to crash into my berth rather than over my berth and back into the sea.  In that moment I was just so grateful that we had not split in two and it was just me being awakened from sleep by a wave in my room that had sacred me senseless.  The boys helped me clean up the water as we continued on our journey.  Thanking god for autopilot and our lives. I laid back down because our boat was bouncing and I truly could not see straight.

Two days earlier had left Cuba on a beautiful sun shiny day. We had double and triple-checked the weather, filed our sailing plan with a dear friend and were going to head out for a blue water sail that would span 3 full days and 3 nights.  I was feeling vulnerable but inspired to choose courage over comfort – we were setting sail to spend Christmas in the Bahamas.

Our first stop was checking out of Cuba… immigration, we had kept a few gifts to give the children of the Guarda Frontera de Cuba, but they could not accept them.  They made certain they took our pictures and that they matched that of the pictures they had taken upon check in, they inspected that Tanner’s drone was still wrapped up in customs stamped packing tape and then wished us safe travels.

We left the channel into a clear blue ocean that was undulating like a vast deep blue magic carpet blowing in the wind.  I had never seen any sea like it, calm but moving in a way that made for a beautiful and comfortable ride as we headed east to sail past the Malecon of Havana. That night brought a multitude of shimmering stars twisting through the Milky way on my night watch. I was moved to tears and mesmerized. The night my mother died, I saw a shooting star on the way home from the hospital.  I had drove alone in my car with tears streaming down my cheeks when I saw the most beautiful long shooting star, I knew that was her, my mom Dorothy, saying “goodbye” and that she was part of the larger universe now.  When I stepped out to the port side of the deck that night on the Dorothy Rose, I said aloud to the vast starry night “Hello Mom, if you want to come by and say hello I am here watching for you.”  Moments later I was treated to the most beautiful shooting star, followed by many more that evening.  My spirit filled with happiness knowing that we are always connected and that my mother is watching over me from beyond this earth.

The next morning just before sunrise the sea was like glass, an eerie calm. The only sound I could hear was that of the gentle waves lapping the bow.  We were on the banks of the Bahamas, just south west of the Island of Andros.  Sailing in shallow water and needed to keep a watchful lookout for rocks with the help of our eyes and a program called Navionics which is one of our navigation tools.    The pale sky melted into a soft pink horizon that gave way to the gray morning sea.  I contemplated how could something so soft be so stunning, then the sun rose, creating a multitude of tangerine and rose colors in the sky, a beautiful sunrise at sea with no land in sight.

Day gave way to dusk and we were singing every word to old disco songs and 80’s rock playing on the iPhone that Topher had dutifully downloaded from Amazon Prime.  We were having a wonderful time dancing, taking turns at the helm and enjoying our sail.  Then after two and a half days of bliss we were safely through the Hurricane Flats of the southern coast of Andros and into the deep sea of the Tongue of the Ocean.  It was not bad at first as I watched the last light of day fade into dark but then it started to become rough.  Our vessel felt like a 40 foot bucking bronco bouncing uncomfortably across the endless ocean. We nearly lost the dinghy, we nearly lost a hatch but we remained calm and we made it safely to shore.  When I write that we made it, by we I mean all of our guardian angels and god who protected us along the way.  I love you, I am grateful for you, my life, my family, my health, loving friends and for adventure.  So very grateful!

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