Suddenly Overboard (24 page)

The city police arrived first, the harbor patrol a minute later by boat. They quickly checked the sloop. Men in uniform on the pier and men in the boat below were busy on their radios. The sailor from the bar watched a while from the periphery, then stood looking at the long glare of the orange-red sun on the water to the west. Somewhere out there, he couldn't help thinking, there was somebody without a boat. He shuddered at the thought of it. Then he heard the sound of a helicopter and saw one of the lifeguard choppers rushing down the shore from the north. It reached the pier and hovered a moment, then continued south just offshore.

For some reason it was easier to swim with his eyes closed, as if not seeing the distant shore made it closer, more possible. But once when he opened his eyes again, as he fought to keep moving in a slow crawl, he saw the sun low in front of him, and the shock of
that snapped alert him as if from a dream. He turned east again, grimly opening his eyes when he raised his head to breathe. It wouldn't be long until dark, he thought, when it would feel natural just to go to sleep.

The Coast Guard helicopter, its crew better trained for search and rescue, took over the air search and started a grid pattern. A half-dozen watercraft went west into the ocean to search. The lifeguard helicopter stayed low to sweep the beach areas north and south. The radio had informed the searchers that the police had traced the boat by its registration numbers and spoken to someone at the marina who had seen the boat leave with just one man aboard.

It was almost dark now, and he knew some sort of end would be coming. The sun was down, the sky behind him a fading red. He took a slow stroke, grabbed air, paused a few seconds, tried to stroke again. The stars were coming out now, one star at least. Low in the sky to the east. It was moving, or maybe he was moving, he couldn't tell anymore. Just one lonely star in the sky and him in the water. It seemed sad. Then he choked, gasped, threw up his head and coughed out water. He'd let his head go under with his mouth open. There was that star again. He tried to swim toward it but found he couldn't move his arms anymore.

With its bright searchlight, the helicopter continued its grid search, now about 2 miles offshore. It had been almost 3 hours since the sailboat had crashed into the pier. Though no one said it, the four crew on board were thinking of the effects of hypothermia on anyone in the water. The water was just too cold. Hopefully the guy in the water was wearing a PFD that kept his head up
even if he was unconscious. They were thinking too that if he'd been in a dinghy or life raft, they should've spotted him already, unless he was way out in the Pacific somewhere. So he was likely in the water and would be nearly impossible to see.

About eight o'clock they spotted someone floating in the water below. Not moving, apparently not wearing a PFD, facedown in the water. They radioed the nearest rescue boat, which could reach the person sooner than their rescue swimmer, and in less than a minute the boat's crew were bringing the man on deck. The radio crackled; someone thought they felt a weak pulse. The boat shot off for shore at top speed.

It was only a matter of minutes before Jason was transferred to paramedics in an ambulance and rushed to the hospital, CPR continuing the whole way. But at 8:15, as the last of twilight faded, Jason was pronounced dead.

Zimmerman was sitting in the cockpit of his Catalina 30 sailboat on the outer dock of the Manatee River marina enjoying a midmorning cup of coffee when he heard a sputtering outboard out on the broad river. He turned to look; yep, it was that older guy, Wylie, or whatever his name was, puttering about in his open daysailer. He was a couple hundred yards from shore, moving slowly down away from the bridge, no sails up, his little two-stroke outboard blowing blue smoke. Wylie himself was at the tiller, his back toward Zimmerman, the boat noticeably heeling to starboard under the man's weight. Well, something to watch, anyway; better than the powerboats zipping around throwing their wakes in this no-wake zone in downtown Palmetto.

Zimmerman sipped his coffee and watched.

Wylie was barely making headway even downwind. There was little current in this broad stretch of the river where the Manatee opens up before spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. The water was calm, the wind maybe 10 knots.

Zimmerman's eyes drifted over to the big ketch anchored 100 yards out from the marina. A pretty boat, he thought. You could really cruise in a boat like that, go down around the keys and head for the islands.

He was daydreaming about the Bahamas when he heard the outboard stop, and then he saw Wylie stand and move to the mast. Maybe he was actually going to get the sails up today, he thought. The little boat drifted forward slowly as Wylie seemed to be straightening out his halyards, staring up at the masthead, hanging on to the mast with one hand.

A powerboat went by, too close to the little sailboat, and Zimmerman watched it rock back and forth on the wake and imagined Wylie hurling obscenities.

The mainsail started up slowly as Wylie pulled down on the halyard and fed the boltrope into the slot, but about halfway up it seemed to jam. It would help if he'd use the outboard to point the bow into the wind, Zimmerman thought. Even though he'd never seen the boat up close, he wondered how well it was maintained. It had a tired look from a distance. You can't let the halyards get frayed, he thought, or sometime you won't be able to get the sail down when you really need to. He knew, as it had happened to him once on his own boat—but only once.

Wylie was still beside the mast, now tugging at the sail. It came down a few feet, and then he was yanking the halyard again to try to get it up. About two-thirds of the way up it seemed to jam again. Wylie was jerking hard on the halyard. He ought to have a life jacket on, Zimmerman was thinking.

As the sailboat drifted down past the anchored ketch, Zimmerman lost sight of it for a bit, and his thoughts turned again to Bahamas cruising. He'd chartered in the Abacos once and had vivid memories of easy sailing and the red-striped lighthouse of Hope Town. That's the place to retire to, he thought, not Florida. Too many old people down here.

He was still gazing at the ketch when the little boat drifted back into view on the other side. The sail was still only two-thirds
up, but the boat was heeled over away from him as if sailing a close reach. Then he realized he couldn't see Wylie. Was he down low in the cockpit getting a tool or something?

He reached for the binoculars he kept in a rack on the binnacle. He focused but still couldn't find Wylie, and the cockpit didn't look deep enough to hide him. Then he saw a line from the masthead pulled down at a funny angle on the far side of the boat, and the boat was listing to that side. Uh-oh.

Zimmerman stood and quickly surveyed the water, looking for a harbor patrol boat. Should he use the radio or the cell phone? There were no other sailboats in sight, and he guessed the powerboats down the river wouldn't have their radios on or wouldn't hear them above their engines. So he grabbed his cell phone and called 911 and made a report.

Then he looked around his marina for anyone with a boat that could be gotten out quickly, but on this Friday morning there was no one else about. It would take too long to untie all the lines of his own boat and motor out to see if he could help. Besides, by himself, unable to watch the water from the bow, he'd risk running over Wylie if he got too close.

Then he heard the siren of the marine police boat as it shot under the Green Bridge, moving fast toward the listing sailboat.

He watched through his binoculars as the police boat cautiously came abreast of the sailboat, two men near the bow looking down into the water as the driver angled in. As they stopped a few feet from the drifting sailboat, one man with a boathook reached out over the bow and caught the line down from the masthead that Zimmerman had noticed earlier.

He couldn't see what was happening on the other side of the sailboat, but he saw all three men bent over the police boat's gunwale. Together, the boats drifted farther down river.

After a couple minutes, two of the men moved back, still bent at the waist, seeming to struggle with something, and then he saw them pull a body up and over the gunwale. Because of the high freeboard of the police boat he couldn't see Wylie on the deck,
but two of the men were crouched over him. The third moved up to the wheel, and the siren started wailing again.

One of the other men quickly stood and seemed to be fumbling with something. Zimmerman saw a flash of sunlight from a knife blade in his hand as he reached over and sawed through the halyard that had been pulling down on the masthead.

The sailboat bobbed and steadied, no longer listing, and one of the officers shoved it away with the boathook as the driver gunned the big outboards and spun the boat back the way it had come, the other two still bent low on the aft deck.

In a moment the police boat had disappeared back under the bridge, its siren already fading. Later that day Zimmerman would learn that they'd found Wylie facedown in the water, tied to the drifting boat by the halyard that had wrapped around one of his ankles. CPR hadn't been able to revive him.

Now, Zimmerman watched Wylie's sailboat continue to drift downriver, broadside to the wind, its sail still jammed two-thirds up, the cut halyard swinging loose. He hoped Wylie was okay. That was no way to go out, because of a lousy accident. A solo sailor himself, Zimmerman had thought often about being caught out in a bad storm, fighting wind and waves. A sudden unexpected northerly while crossing the Gulf Stream headed for the Bahamas, the seas rising monstrously—a battle. Go out fighting, struggling with the elements, not because of a stupid jammed sail.

The little daysailer, another man's dream, drifted out of sight down the river. He imagined it floating undisturbed out into Tampa Bay, then drifting through the barrier islands into the gulf and finally out of sight of land.

Then he found himself gazing wistfully at the big ketch at anchor. A big boat like that, he thought, would be safe in almost all conditions.