The Pulse

get to Casey first.”

When the last of the oil platforms dropped astern, the sun was setting on the Gulf and they were once more in open water. Larry calculated it was less than 30 miles to West Ship Island, but said it was so low lying, they wouldn’t see it until they were within five miles of it. Once it was fully dark, Artie helped Scully put a reef in the main so they could maintain a slower approach while they waited for the moonrise. Two hours later, they were able to pick out the unlit markers indicating the Gulfport Ship Channel in the moonlight. On the horizon to the north, a faint line of white sand could be seen, and soon they heard the distant sound of crashing surf as they sailed closer to the island. Artie was eager and elated at the prospect of the end of the voyage. But he was also disappointed to see that there were no lights or even a distant glow in the direction of the mainland, where he knew, from driving it, that there was almost a solid line of urban sprawl from New Orleans to Mobile, Alabama. From what they could tell so far, the entire coast was as dark as the uninhabited barrier island they were approaching.

When they were closer to the island, Larry pointed out an odd, circular structure rising some 30 feet above the otherwise featureless dunes of the island. “In the daylight, we would have seen that before we could have seen the beaches. It’s Fort Massachusetts, built after the War of 1812. It’s a park now, and there is a dock near it on the north side of the island where excursion boats land to bring tourists out here. We can anchor around there on that side. It’s the best harbor at any of these islands, which is why they built the fort there in the first place, to guard the approach to New Orleans.”

Artie was surprised at how brightly the white sand beaches of the island glowed in the moonlight. It was almost like daylight against that white sand, and he could clearly see the outlines of the dunes and the sea oats that grew on them as they rounded the west end of the island and entered the sound to turn east to the anchorage area. The long excursion boat dock came into view, and as they sailed past the end of it, they saw something else —a small campfire on the beach, situated in a hollow between the high dunes that had made it invisible to them from the Gulf side of the island. A few yards out in the water from the fire, leaning over several degrees from upright, was a small monohull sailboat that was apparently aground on the bottom. Two anchor rodes could be seen leading from its bow and stern out to deeper water, and there was a third trailing off towards the beach. As soon as the Casey Nicole appeared past the pier, someone by the fire jumped up and began yelling and waving for help.

“Sailed dat boat too close to de beach, dat mon,” Scully said.

“Or, he could have been out here and dragged anchor when those squalls blew through the other night,” Larry said.

“Could it be a trap?” Artie asked. He’d seen enough at Isleta Palominito and the Cay Sal Bank to be suspicious of everyone they encountered on the water.

“I don’t think so,” Larry said. “But why don’t you bring the shotgun on deck anyway, just in case. I think what we have here is simply a fellow mariner in need of help, and he may be able to give us some useful information about the conditions ashore, if he’s local. Scully, let’s come about and sail within hailing distance on the other tack. I don’t see a dinghy of any kind on the beach, so he must have waded ashore when he couldn’t get it off.”

Artie laid the shotgun in the cockpit and helped Scully with the sheets. There was just enough wind to power the sails and allow them to maneuver, but with the ocean swell blocked by the island, the water was nearly smooth. They came around and sailed to within 50 feet of the beach.Then Scully put the bow through the wind again, allowing the jib to go aback momentarily and stall the boat long enough for a quick conversation.

“I’ve been stuck here for two days!” the man on the beach yelled back in response to Larry’s inquiry. “We had some hellacious thunderstorms that came through in the night, and once my anchor started dragging, I couldn’t get another one set before I was swept onto that sandbar. I went aground at high tide, and there’s no way I can get her off by myself.”

Artie started to relax. The man’s story certainly seemed plausible, and the boat was hard aground. Though the depth at this distance was probably three feet and no issue for the Casey Nicole, this man’s monohull obviously had a deeper keel. Larry yelled back that they would try to help, and then pointed to an area of deeper water out beyond the stranded boat where he wanted to anchor.

“What can we do?” Artie asked.

“We can try to pull him off if we can get a firm set on our own anchors. He doesn’t have a windlass or a decent winch on board, besides being alone. I can’t do much with this arm, but if you can work our winch, and Scully and the owner can get on board the boat and try to heel her over some more, then I think we can drag her to deep water. That’s just a little J/27, not very heavy for a keelboat, but draws almost five feet.”

When anchor was set, Artie helped Scully launch the two-seat kayak and, once he was in sitting in the boat, passed him the end of a long length of spare anchor line. Then Scully paddled away, first taking the line to the bow of the stranded boat, then continuing on to the beach to get the owner and explain what they were going to try to do. Artie and Larry waited until Scully and the owner returned to his boat and climbed on board from the kayak. Scully secured the end of the line to the main bow cleat of the J-boat, and at Larry’s direction, Artie took up all the slack from the other end and wound several turns around the big drum winch mounted in the center of the catamaran’s cockpit. This centrally mounted winch served mainly to handle the jib sheet and halyard loads, but Larry had sized it to do double duty as a windlass in just such emergencies. As Artie began putting tension on the line by cranking the winch handle, Scully and the boat’s owner used their combined body weight to heel the boat much farther over on her side by hanging on to the boom, which Scully rigged to stick out perpendicular to the hull. By leaning her over and getting some of the weight off the keel, it was a fairly simple matter to pull her free of the sand, but it was still a lot of work for Artie, who was sweating profusely by the time the job was done. Scully helped the owner reset his anchor just downwind of the catamaran, then the two of them paddled over and came aboard.

“I can’t thank you guys enough,” the grateful sailor said as he shook hands with everyone. “I didn’t think I would ever get out of this fix. I’m Craig, by the way.” Craig went on to explain that he’d decided to take to the water as a last resort, but really wasn’t prepared to do so and didn’t have much experience cruising or much of what he needed on board.

“I bought the boat for day sailing, mainly, with the idea of getting into racing later. I never thought I would try to go somewhere on it, but as things got worse, it occurred to me that leaving by water might be the best option. Trouble is, I didn’t have paper charts for this area, and of course the GPS is down. I knew some people from the marina that used to sail out here to these islands all the time on long weekends, though, and they talked about what a good anchorage this was. It was my first time to sail out of the lake, believe it or not, but I found my way here okay, I just wasn’t counting on those storms.”

“Lake? Do you mean Pontchartrain?” Artie asked with great interest.

“Yeah. I kept my boat at South Shore Harbor Marina.”

“Is that on the New Orleans side of the lake, I’m guessing?”

“Yeah, it’s just a few miles east of the Causeway, but west of where the I-10 bridge crosses the lake.”

“Oh man, that’s fantastic!” Artie said, then seeing the look of confusion on Craig’s face, he explained: “We’ve sailed all the way from St. Thomas to get to New Orleans to find my daughter. I can’t believe we were lucky enough to run into someone out here who’s just come from there since the lights went out.”

Craig shook his head. “I feel for you if your daughter is still in New Orleans. There’s nothing good happening there, and I would hate to know I had to go back there looking for someone I loved. What a nightmare that would be!” Craig went on to describe his experiences in the city since the pulse had occurred. If what he said was true, and they had no reason to doubt him, the entire city had descended into anarchy and chaos. Craig described gun battles between the police and large gangs, and rampant, unchecked looting, burning, and rioting. He said some people began trying to leave the city by the second day, mostly on foot, and then a much larger number began leaving within a week, when everyone finally realized help wasn’t on the way and the grocery stores were cleaned out. Craig said he would have been completely out of food, too, with no way to get any more, if not for the fact that he’d had a key to his dock neighbor’s larger cruising boat. The absentee owner lived in northern Louisiana and kept the boat at South Shore for vacation cruising. Knowing they would never be able to get to the marina until all this was over anyway, Craig said he didn’t feel bad about going on board the boat and taking the leftover provisions that were still there after her last Florida trip. He said he’d often driven to the marina in the middle of the night during storms to check the vessel’s dock lines, and he knew the owners were grateful for that and would want him to utilize supplies that wouldn’t do them any good.