This weekend we are going to be partying with the rat pack says father Wracks. The Kool are going to take you on yacht vacation. We will see you when we get back. Have a good time in Vegas says the Wracks.
The Kool live in an exclusive housing tract up on the hill, at the top, with a good view, and their modest four-bedroom house with swimming pool and all the windows showcased with steel bars highlight the big front door built like a hatch on a submarine. The Wracks is happy to be here because his mother thinks that Kool will make a good friend and partner because of their socioeconomic status. Mulo is a contractor, he builds all the streets and bridges and big stuff contracted by the city. He is a rooter at the prestigious university down town in the city of angels. He has just bought a Columbia forty-three foot sail boat and wants to sail to Catalina. The sails are new, all nylon with a shiny look, guaranteed to last at least a year on the high seas. The winches on which the sails lash are bronze because this metal corrodes least in the salty air. At sea, in the sun, even stainless steel corrodes and ships and yachts eventually become rust buckets covered in lead paint.
Be sure to have a spare battery that you keep at home says Mulo. Salt air destroys everything eventually, and if you are becalmed on the open ocean without power, the current eventually takes you to south America. Before a person sails, test the electronics on board because even the best radio transmitters only last two years before they have to be replaced. Bring a new can of carburetor cleaner, because if a gasoline engine fouls due to the salt water, it must be disassembled and cleaned before it works again. I am in the process of installing a diesel engine on board as a replacement. Diesel engines do not foul and are more reliable in a salt water environment. Pump the bilge before a sailor sets out because all boats leak and too much water in the bilge will capsize the boat in a heavy tach. Let’s go.
The Columbia drafts at a slip on the far end of the marina. A berth at the far end is the most expensive and desirable because it is easy to leave and arrive and a small berth inside of the marina might cause damage to the hull when the yacht arrives. Boats have no brakes and are hard to stop once they are in motion. The Kool family sets out with the Wracks, Kool, and the petit brown-haired daughter in fancy designer clothes all prepared for a family outing. We are all on deck and once motored out of the marina, the shiny new nylon goes up with stainless steel cable running inside of the mast that must be replaced periodically or they will snap with the heavy stress induced by the wind. Today is a perfect summer day around Independence and the air is a balmy seventy degrees at sea and the wind blows 5-10 miles an hour, perfect for sailing and Mulo throws Wracks the sail rope and he winches it and they set out on a new tack. They are young and beautiful and opulent and the ship sails forward at an inclined angle and they are off to Catalina Island. At fifteen knots, the journey to the island takes about three hours. They and other boats are to dock at Doctor’s cove on the windward side of the island, have a party, stay the night and then sail home. Doctor’s cove is a dent on the far side of the island, somewhat protected from the wind where all sailors choose to land and a harbor has been built there with mooring for boats under one hundred feet in length. Once a lanyard attaches the ship to a cleat on the mooring, the party have a lunch of chips, a can of Coke and a shard of beef jerky, a usual sailor feasts. Kool junior challenges the Wracks to a swim race across the harbor. The water here is deep, offshore, not like the mainland, and the two swim like a man possessed in the deep water so the huge sharks that lurk offshore don’t take them. Kool wins and hoists himself up on the wharf, the Wracks follows and they go to explore the campground set in a strange, secluded place away from the scrutinizing eyes of the law. Small benches abound onshore around a huge fire pit and a pit lavatory stuck in the dirt and painted light blue.
It is night time and at least five other yachts arrive under cover of the dark. It is time to gather around the campfire, drink, sing songs and be social with one another. One of the sailors pass a parcel to Mulo. The parcel is about one foot long by one half foot wide. Sewn over the parcel, professionally is a cloth coat in green. Mulo accepts the parcel with a smile. As night draws to a close and the campfire slowly burns out, everyone exits to their boats, the kids wave goodbye, and the Wracks goes to sleep in his sleeping bag on deck. Mulo, with the parcel, places it in a metal housing torpedo canister with a nylon rope line attached to a ring on the nose and tosses it starboard off the back side of the boat. The stars in the summer, in the northern hemisphere, sparkle and glimmer and glow. Sleep, so ubiquitous, so Dearing, so forgiving overtakes a young sailor in the dawn of an age during the great darkness.
In the morning, with the sun slowly coming up, the Wracks arises and pees off the side of the boat which is a fashion among boaters, the girls use a privy or wade into the water to go. Breakfast being a fruit rollup and a grape soda, the adults cluster in a group and talk and the children play, the day moves on and it is time to go. With the wind prevailing in a westerly direction, the return should be fast, about two or maybe two and a half hours. Anchors aweigh and with the carburetor cleaner sprayed in the intake of the engine, the boats slowly disengage from the Doctors Cove and begin the return to the mainland. With the white and red and green sails up, and the line winched the boat accelerates eastward to the coast. A new swell happens and a three-foot chop make the ship arise and fall as a light wind pushes the sailors back home.
Mulo and Kool junior play backgammon in the forward cabin and the wracks gets to steer, in an easterly direction, making certain the direction makes the sails stay full. Soon enough they enter the entrance to the Marina and Mulo starts the cruise engine to bring the ship safely past the breakwater to the slips at a predesignated speed set by the coast guard. Late afternoon slides in, and the sun begins to set in a beautiful and enticing way and the yacht moor again in the most forward slip. Wracks set the cushions out, jumps off the ship, Kool junior throws the line to him and he secures it. Mulo opens the engine hatch and takes out the battery, puts it in a case and brings it with him up into the marina.
Don’t forget to always have a new battery, on the ocean your life depends on it, says Mulo.
The sun sets, obscurity moves in, the sailors walk to the parking lot and enter a gold jaguar xke with a six-cylinder engine and the Wracks gets to sit in the back with Kool Juniors sister. Out of the corner of his eye, and it gets his attention, two people move to the far slip and fish the torpedo like canister out of the ocean behind the boat, cut the line, and put it in a knapsack they toss over their back. They move under cover of the dark, and they are white and have blond hair. They walk down the passway, ascend the gang plank, move to the marina club building and then they are gone.
A Jaguar xke is a fast car. Kool Junior stole it one day from his mother and he and the Wracks got it to go 110 up a hill. The Wracks thought he would see his maker that day and the surf was flat and there was nothing else to do. The Kool drop the Wracks off at his house on Bacon way and wave goodbye. The Wracks is happy because his parents are back from Vegas. The house across the street seems vacant and the woman there occasionally comes out. The garage door opens; she drives away and then the door closes. A long time ago, somewhere, perhaps, this all happens, and it happens every year, and the Wracks is old now and lives to tell the tale of life in the fast lane.