Happy Ending ...For Me

[keelbolts]

I got a call tonight as I was eating dinner, about 8:00, from a guy at my marina telling me that Favona had sunk. I can tell you that call did nothing for my digestion. From what he said, she had gone down about 4:00. The Fire Department & the Coast Guard had been down there. I couldn't fathom why nobody called to tell me about it, but there was no reason to believe the caller was wrong about my boat. She's a 57 year old wooden boat - it could happen.

Daughter Jan is USCG so she made some phone calls & lined up a pump. Some of the crew from Milford Haven were going to meet Jan at the Coleman Bridge to xfer the pump to Jan & my wife. I took off for the marina with a plan to, at least, tie her mast to a couple of pilings to keep her from flopping, at low tide, into the boats oneather side of her. Bear in mind that there's a tropical storm pouring buckets full of water on us here in Tidewater, Virginia so everybody's running around in the storm.

I get over to the marina &, from a distance, I see Favona doesn't seem to be at all low in the water. I thought, "maybe they got her up earlier." Going down my pier, I found a plastic powerboat, about 4 boats up from mine, on the bottom. How do you spell relief? N-o-t s-u-n-k. I managed to get a hold of everybody before they set out to do the pump transfer, but I sure do need to send out some thank you notes to all the folks who had a pump on it's way to me in no time. Son Nathan's still down at the marina. Hopefully, he didn't go down to punch out the caller. He was headed that way, but I think I talked him out of it.

Wifey just called Nathan. He's on his way home - no bloodshed. It's a good thing.

Having said all of that, I can truly say I feel the other fellow's pain. It was mine for an hour or more. So, happy ending for me. Not so much for my neighbor.

[Chris Campbell]

Wow. I hope I never have that experience, but what a relief! I was confused as to how the relatively short post was going to reconcile the title (happy ending) with the opening sentence, but you did it. And as you say - very much too bad for the other fellow. How did the marina mix you up? Seems like as with things like medical results, if you're calling with news that bad, you should make sure of who you're calling!