Should I Stay or Should I Go?

If you spend enough days on the bays, sooner or later, you will be forced to make a decision... Should I stay or should I go?

My Dad always said that if you see bad weather at a distance the first thing that you should do is try to figure out which way it is heading and how fast it is moving. The second thing you should do is figure out if you have an escape route should it get really bad and head your way. The third thing you should do is figure out if the bad weather is going to get between you and safe port.

Ive always remembered those simple rules and yet I have broken them on three occasions. Fortunately, the outcome of combining bad weather and my bad decisions never turned into something awful and we always made it in without injury or severe damage to my boat.

I have written in years past about getting caught on the south shoreline of West Matagorda Bay by a fast-moving cold front that was hours ahead of predicted arrival so I wont relive those memories for you here. I still get the flutters when I think of that day.

Back in the mid-90s we got caught by a freak thunderstorm in Espiritu Santo Bay. Old Bob at Clarks where I unloaded that morning said the storm approaching from the northwest was stalling and moving toward the east and the radar confirmed that, so we headed out through Fishermans Cut. When we idled up to the north side of Grass Island the wind was southeast around 10 or so but by the time we had the anchor set and our wading gear on the wind stopped blowing and that eerie feeling started coming over me. A quick glance back towards Port OConnor confirmed my fears; I watched the water tower vanish in a wall of rain. The storm had changed course.

I had my young son and a friend with me that morning and, as fast as I could, I pulled the anchor and ran for safety in the lee of nearby Bayucos Island. We made it just as the blast of north wind slammed into us at what we later learned to be near 60 miles per hour. Lightening bounced off of the water and islands, hail beat us unmercifully from an almost horizontal direction and visibility was near zero. I had already made a huge mistake by unloading and leaving port with the weather as it was and not absolutely knowing which way it was going to go.

I was in the middle of what I hoped would not turn out to be my second mistake that morning listening to my gut telling me that we needed to move up into Mitchells Cut and keep the bow into the wind.

With my son Sterling and friend Mike lying on the floor of the boat cradling our rod and reels and wearing life jackets, I started moving the boat towards the cut and had not gone far when a huge lightning bolt hit almost exactly where we had just been. OK maybe leaving wasnt such a bad idea after all!

I was pretty much on auto-pilot by then just concentrating on keeping the bow into the wind and on top of the huge swells we found in the cut before we came to Saluria on our right. A 19 Boston Whaler and another center console boat had beached on the bank at Saluria and Mitchells and three or four men hunkered there hoping to escape the lightning and the sideways hail and rain. My heart told me to beach our boat next to theirs and get out of the boat but my gut told me to keep going.

We were moving so slowly in the huge waves that it took forever to get past Saluria and make the short turn to the left into Mitchells. The hail finally stopped, having failed in trying to beat us to death, but the rain and the wind seemed to have plenty of punch left. I hugged the mudflat after leaving the relative shelter of east and west Bayucos and, being shallower, the waves were not as brutal as that of the deeper water.

There was a boat running the troughs coming at me from my port side and he ran aground just before the entrance to Big Bayou from the Mitchells Cut side. The fiberglass over wood boat literally came apart and the captain was thrown forward into the grass, mud and oyster shell. There was no way that I could stop to help him and thankfully he appeared unhurt and he waved to us to keep going and not try to get to him. With a heavy heart I did just that.

By the time we made Little Marys the wind was only blowing about 40 or so and the rain, while still stinging my face, was giving up more visibility and I was able to increase speed a little. As we approached Fishermans Cut, the wind, just as it had done to us at Grass Island, stopped blowing.

As I made my way through the cut I could see the damage that the storm had left behind. Clarks had lost the roof and walls that made up the bait stand and the place was a wreck, barges were blown against the bank on the opposite side of the ICW, coolers, boats torn from their moorings and all manner of flotsam and jetsam was adrift in the water.

We tied up at Clarks and Bob met me with a worried look and we both just shook our heads as Bob actually chuckled and pointed towards the stern of my boat. Turning around I saw a huge palm frond that was flattened out against the transom and packed in ice; I never saw it come into the boat. It looked like someone had dumped a few hundred pounds of ice into the low-sided Explorer. The space between the center console and the cushioned ice chest in front of it was solid ice from the hail storm.

We were wet and still shaken but we were not injured other than my having a bleeding lip and a cut over my eye from the hail. I was exhausted from the tension and, to be honest, I was also angry as Hell for putting our lives in danger by not following those simple rules my Dad had passed onto me years before.

About then I remembered the man who was in the water with a wrecked boat but before I could get back into the boat to go get him the Whaler that I had seen beached at Saluria came in and they had him. As they made the turn towards the Fishing Center I waved and they all waved back and raised their hands to the Heavens. Yeah; I felt the same way.

The only thing missing from our boat was my wallet that had been in the top lid of a tackle box that had blown open and a throw cushion, both of which were floating God knows where and we never found them.

What I would like for you the reader to glean from this story, besides the fact that I made a really bad decision, are these simple rules:

If you see bad weather at a distance, try to figure out which way it is heading and how fast it is moving.

Make sure you have an escape route should the weather get really bad and head your way.

Try to figure out if the bad weather is going to get between you and port.

Oh, and if you decide to break those rules, never turn your back on the weather. It will sneak up and bite you in the posterior.

Be Safe! -Martin