Quandary at Quantico

Greetings, Gentle Reader,

It’s been 48 hours since I came off the river, and this morning I felt the effects of the journey for the first time.

Yesterday, my first full day at home, seemed so…so…so very normal. Up early, I attacked the chores that face a sailor newly returned from the sea: sorting through stuff, running a laundry, rinsing and refreshing all boat mechanicals that had been “salted,” washing and waxing the boat itself, picking up varnish and sandpaper to attend to repairs, sorting through a week of snail mail and e-mail, yadda, yadda, yadda. I even washed and waxed the Mini. (To be sure, waxing a Mini is an intuitively light endeavor, but I add this small detail to convey the idea that yesterday I had lots of energy.)

But this morning I didn’t stir until 11 AM, and I’ve been sleepwalking ever since. I’ve knocked off some more mail and correspondence and a bit of reading, but I feel leaden and sleepy and will welcome an early bed time. It occurs to me that while I keep track of certain numbers and trends during the row, I am not especially attentive to (or even conscious of) how much sleep I get. Throughout each day on the water I’m in a state of quiet but constant calculus: assessing trends in my speed over the ground, navigating to optimize winds and currents, calculating times to next checkpoints, weighing my consumption of liquids against the distance to the next secure supply, and so on. But sleep comes at the end of all other imperatives, and as I wonder why I didn’t roll out of bed until 11 this morning, I suspect that I was getting precious little sound sleep last week.

In fact, I could still be recovering from last Friday night’s Quandary in Quantico….the real topic of this entry.

Last Friday was a hot, humid day on the Potomac. My lil’ transistor radio kept promising “increasing clouds and possible thunderstorms,” and I found myself hoping desperately for the shade of the former while naively discounting the possibility of the latter. By two in the afternoon I was so sun baked – baked clear through, and quite behind the hydration curve – that I pulled off on a small creek, found a sandy spit in the shade, flopped down in the grass, and promptly fell asleep (passed out?).

I was awakened by distant hushed voices. I cleared my head, looked up, and saw an approaching pontoon boat filled with teenagers, armed with compound bows, staring intently in the water, fishing. They’d target a hapless aquatic creature, chant, “ready, aim,” and let loose a fusillade of arrows into the stream.

Call me squeamish, but a disquieting hybrid of “Deliverance” and “Lord of the Flies” came immediately to mind. I quietly gathered my stuff…and fled.

By early evening I came across Quantico, the Center of the Universe for our Marine Corps. No marina was noted on my chart, and I was delighted to discover that the Corps is possessed of quite a nice facility on the base. I pulled in and, after explaining myself as best I could, asked three young fellows if the Leathernecks would mind if I pitched a tent on their dock.

“Sir, before we have this conversation, I think you need a bag of ice and at least one cold beer.”
Those teens on the pontoon boat need to discover the Marines.

Anyway, we easily negotiated a “don’t ask, don’t tell” arrangement, and they pointed out a nearby floating dock where I might pitch my tent somewhat out of sight of the sentries.
“So, Mr. Frei,” you may now be asking, “where’s the “Quandary in Quantico”? Sounds like a sweet deal so far.”

Be patient. At 9:00 I was settled into my tent, transistor in hand, laying back to listen to an hour replay of Diane Rehm on public radio…. a nice end to a tough day. Heat lightening occasionally illuminated the interior of the tent, and while distant thunder suggested that the earlier weather reports might come true, I was ready for the rain and a solid night’s sleep.

At 9:05, it hit. Lightning strikes all around….blinding, explosive shafts of white so close that the thunder was simultaneous. My tent seemed the highest object around, and its supporting rods suddenly seemed like encapsulating lightening rods. The idea crossed my mind that when I got hit, as it seemed I inevitably would, at least I’d be evenly cooked.

This fear quickly passed as an estimated 50 knot wind flattened the tent, then lifted it and dragged me to the edge of the wildly bucking floating dock. Being dumped into roiling water in a fully zippered tent was the next concern and I unzipped the side, frantically reached out, and grasped the nearest boards with both hands to stop my slide to the edge. Then the hail started…marble-sized ice chunks…literally bruising my hands and wrists as I held on for dear life. The continuous lightening illuminated my boat flailing itself against the dock, and I was concerned that it would take a possibly fatal beating. The wind-whipped waves rose to the point where I was often looking UP at the boat as waves crashed over the dock and into my now-collapsed tent.

It was bad, Gentle Reader. Real bad. The aforementioned “Quandary” was whether to rescue the boat or stay inside my sodden tent, which would be immediately swept away without the weight of my body and my claw-like grip on the dock.

I elected to stay low, out of Zeus’s line of fire, and assess the damage later. The lightening was, in a word, terrifying.

This madness lasted one full hour. I missed Diane Rehm show.

As the lightening receded and wind abated, I emerged. The waterfront of the base was a shambles; kayaks, trash bins, signs, branches, dinghies, crackling, flopping electrical lines…any and everything not tied down was strewn everywhere. My boat was 2/3 filled with water, and the gear in it was drenched. I swept the hail from the decking of the dock (snow shoveling on the Potomac in June!) and spent the next hour or so bailing (boat and tent) and taking stock of my stuff… and my good fortune.

I was off at 5:50 AM; while I owe the Marines my gratitude for their hospitality and could have demonstrated it by sticking around to help with a gargantuan clean-up effort, I thought our “don’t ask, don’t tell” arrangement gave me a chit to simply depart quietly. In retrospect I wish I’d stayed to help out, but then this blog might now be completed from the brig (which, I am certain, is adorned with a proper lightening rod).

They say that storms come up quickly on the Chesapeake and now, I do, too.

And, to the Marines: I owe ‘ya. Semper Fi!