The Rescue
Once, a long time ago, I remember being on the bridge of my father’s Crisscraft called The Tritan. We had been visiting with friends for the weekend. I did my usual kid activities. We were about to leave the docks. We may have been at Kismet that weekend. My father had already removed the soft nylon ropes from the poles and I was on the bridge waiting for him to come back. He did after a few moments and turned the key to the engine. Everything was routine until we looked ahead.
We were waiting for our friends to leave in their boat. To our horror as they were pulling out, the captain’s wife was removing the thick, brown ropes from the poles as the boat was moving away from the dock. The ropes pulled her around the thumb and leg and she was pulled overboard. She yelled once, but was caught up in the ropes and was being pulled forward as her husband was unaware that she was in the water.
I saw my father move toward our bow. I thought to ask him for his glasses, but we had already communicated. “Stay here, Joan.”
He dove into the water and swam to the woman. I saw him lift her above the water and keep them up, but to our horror, the husband panicked and had thrown the boat in reverse. My father was pounding the boat and yelling, “Stop the boat! Stop the boat!” He was trying to avoid getting near the propellers or being swept under the hull. The captain finally put the boat in neutral. In the meantime a rescue crew must have arrived by helicopter from the mainland hospital and some had to cut this woman from the ropes and take her to a makeshift tent on the dock so she could be stabilized before transport. All of this time I thought how could I help. I turned the engine to our boat off. My father was now out of the water and soaking wet. He had his hands on his hips and the water was all over him and the dock. He could not believe his friend who had schooled him in boating had almost backed over his wife and my father. My mother didn’t say much. I didn’t say much. I just knew my adult friend who had given me a doll, was suffering in pink blankets. Aparently she risked losing her thumb and leg and was facing several surgeries.
My father was reluctant to leave, but he did so to change clothes. He said he lost his glasses. I said, “You should have given them to me.” Of course we knew there wasn’t time. When he got to the bridge he asked me why the boat wasn’t running. I said I had shut it off, but he was more concerned that he couldn’t see well enough to drive us home. He asked me of I could help him read the red and black buoys as he read the chart. This was like the blind leading the blind but I was up for the challenge. My mother was on the lower deck by this time. We left and somehow we found our canal after about an hour on the sound. It was not the usual trip home and I felt badly knowing my dad had to clean the boat before returning home for supper.
It never occured to me that my father knew what to do until recently. He wasn’t just brave or a decent human being. He had been in the U.S. Coast Guard during the the Second World War and thank God his training kicked in, but I was too ignorant at the time to realize why and how he knew exactly what to do to save the woman. All I know is I visited the woman a few days later with my mother and she was severely injured but alive and very happy to be recovering her bed at home. I did not see her husband; my father was strangely absent, but I knew she was grateful about coming through such an ordeal and I was proud that my father had done something so selfless. Sadly we never went boating with our friends again. They gave up their boat. My father never spoke about the incident. That was Dad…
Joan Noëldechen