Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the two dogs into the shark infested waters on a little island off Palmyra Atoll a few months
earlier.
Within seconds, Dave jumped into his powerful rubber dinghy and raced over to Déjà vu.
“Hey you guys, do you want to lend a hand? There's some guy just ran aground in the bay.”
“Yes, we just heard it too!” yelled Gavin. “Remind me to tell you a little story about that
guy,” he said, as we jumped aboard. We had raided the rope locker and now brought with us
a couple of coils of strong anchor rope. Sure enough, upon arriving at the dramatic scene,
there was Southern Star lying on her side, hard and fast in the mud.
“Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy,” I said under my breath.
Uwe was there yelling excitedly to Steve, the owner of the beached boat. It looked as
though they were trying to lean her over more with a long line attached to one of her hal-
yards. They needed more line, and they also needed a stronger dinghy. We saw no sign of
Linda, his wife, who had been with him in Palmyra.
Dave motored right up to Southern Star and introduced himself. Steve saw us and a flicker
of recognition played across his face; he nodded curtly to us. We handled the large an-
chor that he swung over the bow into the rubber dinghy and gave him the bitter end of the
lengthy anchor rope we had brought with us. We motored out to the end of its scope and
dropped it in deep water in the bay. The line was attached to Southern Star's electric wind-
lass. Then, Dave motored over to where Uwe was attempting to drag the stricken yacht
over by way of a long line attached to one of her halyards. We attached this line to Dave's
dinghy and, with Uwe's dinghy in tandem, strained against this line. Southern Star heeled
over alarmingly onto her beam ends with her keel being exposed from underneath. We saw
Steve hanging on to the pulpit and working the electric windlass.
At first there was no movement, but with both dinghy engines screaming at full throttle
assisting in pulling her in the same direction as the kedging anchor, little by little the big
yacht began to slip around, with her bow pointing towards deeper water. She had pivoted
on her fat, round chine in the gloopy, shallow mud and was now being inched into deep
water until finally she began to right herself and was again free.
After the thanks were out of the way, we puttered back to our boats, and Gavin retold the
tale of what had transpired on Palmyra atoll. “We should have left him there!” joked Dave,
grinning broadly. “I guess what comes around goes around, hey?”
We were anchored near a little baby island called Snake Island, probably no bigger than a
couple of hundred square yards. It had a few palm trees on it and thick lush vegetation. I
thought it must be overrun with snakes. Rowing over to itone day, we saw several yellow
and black moccasin snakes swimming happily along through the water around its shore.
