RockWacker No. 3

"WumpWacker"

In profile she was the picture of elegance and grace. End-on she was fat. “The Gossamer Wump,” a Hurley Silhouette bilge-keel sloop.

Captain and crew were homeward bound, beating satisfactorily against the gusty final gasps of a dying front, riding the last of a favorable ebb.

With Point Francis still to negotiate, and the tide turning contrary, the Wump at last found herself becalmed in the earnest rain left behind by the front. The captain uncharacteristically remembered that the Wump had a motor, and reluctantly started it.

The destination was in sight when that motor quit. The captain tried this and tried that, mainly tried pulling the starter cord a lot, until, arm-weary and depleted of blue language, he concluded that there would be no power. Meanwhile the tide had demonstrated its new direction by pirouetting the Wump and hiding the destination back behind Point Francis.

It was no doubt in anticipation of answered prayers for wind that the captain, with a couple sudden pushes against the tiller, wrenched the little vessel back toward her intended course. This led to the discovery that, with excessive pushing and pulling at the tiller, the Wump could be sculled, like a short-handled gondola, almost perceptibly forward. Frantic effort and heroic endurance eventually put the little vessel on the desired side of the point, where the tide would not carry all over the horizon.

Pausing for a well-deserved rest, the captain enjoyed, for a moment, the crystal ringing of the heavy rain as it joined the glassy surrounding water. There may have been a discussion of calling for help at this point, but it would have been short and could have resulted in the crew’s retreat below.

That alternative eliminated, it remained only to get back to work. To his discredit, the captain neglected to sing the romantic arias required of the gondolier he had become, so the crew remained below while he doggedly waggled his tiller. The Wump, like an amputee sperm, wriggled her sorry way, mostly theoretically, across the bay.

Time on time this continued, “creak-crock, creak-crock,” said the rudder post. Of less concern than the developing bursitis was the wearing of the tiller and rudder post, which added a growing thump to the dreary rhythm.

After careful calculations, the captain concluded that the Wump would reach port before captain and crew perished of thirst, starvation, or old age. But surely the wind would return, so the sodden sails remained aloft in anticipation.

Meanwhile, as though battling a filling bilge, the captain pumped and pumped water out behind the Gossamer Wump and edged her homeward.

And then there was another boat on the bay. Everyone else, of course, had gone home to get dry. But this boat had just come out of the distant harbor, and was approaching at good speed. In fact, it was heading directly for the Wump. In fact, if it held course, it would run her down.

The captain ceased his muttering about stupid power boaters when he realized it was the Coast Guard. It was a million dollar vessel, with a sky full of whirling antennae, with a full contingent of uniformed, armed, life-jacketed young men, with a roaring monster of a diesel, that pulled up too near the little Wump, tossing her in residual wake and knocking her back several hard-won yards.

They hailed: “Are you Captain Bozo?”

Shit! What’s this? “Yes.”

“We had a report that you were in distress.”

How could that be? Duh.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure, we’re fine.”

“Do you need any assistance?”

“No, we’re fine.”

The crew, of course, was now on deck, and staring at the captain in something like amazement. Perhaps perplexity. With a macho roar, and a great gout of taxpayers’ smoke, and another surge of back-knocking wake, the government vessel spun about and blasted toward home; the same home that the Gossamer Wump sought.

The crew may have had something to say at that point. Then she gamely produced her RockWacker, and began to paddle with it. Surely, the wind would return.

Late on some ensuing night, in continued calm, the Gossamer Wump limped into her slip, rudder and tiller flopping, captain painfully prying fingers loose, crew persisting in a silence that might have been good-natured.

Sadly, nothing was learned, for after repairs to all, captain, crew, and Gossamer Wump ventured out together again to make more stupid mistakes.