Awash

My entire second day on the narrow spit of sand dangling south from Little Tybee was spent in a howling wind from the north. I scoured the beach and the dunes for heavy timbers to anchor the tarp I rigged as a windbreak for the tent.  

The further I wandered, the better the timbers I found... the better the timbers, the heavier they happened to be. So trudging up and down the beach, alternating my loads from one shoulder to the other, I felt like a modern-day Sisyphus struggling against the wind and the sand.

The WX channel on my handheld radio declared measured wind speeds of 25-35 knots and gusts up to 45 - I’d argue it was slightly higher where I was but I didn’t have an anemometer to quantify my experience-fed suspicions. 

To be fair, every wind is 35 knots when you’re rigging up a tarp. 

Once I had a semblance of order, I cooked a hot meal, hot both with fire and habanero and jalapeno peppers. I packed wool base layers as part of my emergency kit and I didn't expect nor intend to wear them, but I had them on, plus almost every other item of clothing from my gear bag. The temperature fell from the mid-80s (F) when I set out to the mid-40s.  

As long as I stayed dry I was safe from hypothermia.  

I had it in mind that the fastest, most expeditious way out of the predicament I was in (stranded for the duration in a crappy location) was to portage Manu’iki’iki across the dunes to the marsh side of the spit and make my escape on the next high tide.

At dusk I undid the lashings holding the iokos to the wa’as and carried the amas and iokos across the dunes, stopping every so often to give my sore back and chaffed skin a break - I was beginning to suffer from all the timbers I’d scavenged that day.  

I then dragged the canoe across the dunes using crab trap floats I found in the tide line as rollers. When the rollers became untenable, I just dragged the canoe through the sand.

I left Manu’iki’iki next to a marsh mudhole in pieces mostly confident he’d be there in the morning. 

That night was slightly better than the night before in terms of thunderstorms and precipitation, but the wind picked up a couple handfuls of additional knots and buffeted the windbreak and tent mercilessly.  

With the wind came the familiar swirling cloud of sand in the tent - less of it than the night before, but in terms of losing battles, my great efforts to outsmart the sand was a brave and valiant but utterly failed effort.  

Growing up, we called this super-fine sand “sugar-sand,” as it has a grain and texture much like confectioner’s sugar. This small size allows it into every single imaginable opening (USB ports, stove burners, ears, etc.) but contrary to expectations, is exactly like a large grain of sand when it’s in your food and crunching between your teeth.

At one point during the night, my imagination led me to believe the sapling trunk I propped up with bamboo to form the frame of the windbreak might conceivably slide across the sand and drop that sapling pole on my head.

I was relying on the sheer weight of the sapling to hold the windbreak in place against the wind (it was about 100 lbs) but wind has a funny effect on sand: It scoops it out on the windward side, and deposits it on the leeward side (in this case, into my tent). It will undermine any stationary item, weight be damned.

I also had 120 square feet of sail in the form of a tarp lashed to the sapling. As badly as I wanted to stay in the sleeping bag carefully balanced on top of the slick and narrow Thermarest, the calculus just didn’t work in my favor.

So at about 0200, I was out in the dark fighting the goblins in my head by running lines to help anchor the sapling so that when erosion finally won its relentless war against me, it didn’t drop said sapling on my head and destroy both the tent and my sleep.

At 0700 Fleetwood called. He was monitoring the weather situation and he and Bill, both having spent years picking the bones off dead boat carcasses as marine salvors, were of a mind to come and snatch me off the island.

The problems with this were 1) the only way to reach me was from the ocean side of the island, and that ocean was pounding surf; and 2) I was fine, if not comfortable, and I didn’t actually need rescue. I would wait it out and then continue on with the trip I intended.

Unbeknownst to me, the storm front had stalled, but the forecasts still confidently declared the winds would die down to something reasonable by the end of the day.

I was convinced I needed a drill to fix my broken wa’a so I could escape that damnable spot - what I first named “Camp Storm Dune” and now called “Camp Windburn” - but I left my drill behind. I did, however, have several knives.

After a brief discussion with Fleetwood, I went out with a knife and dug a hole through the 1-½” wa’a by spinning the knife and gnashing my teeth.  

I dug from both sides and met in the middle, then lashed it with a piece of Dyneema and tensioned it to excess with a Spanish windlass.

Fixed!

Back at the tent making coffee, I noticed the area one dune south of me and the area one dune south of Manu'iki'iki had both been overrun by breakers while I'd slept.  

By taking refuge against the wind I chose the lowest spot behind the biggest dune. That low spot was actually lower than the areas that were swept over by breakers.

Down on my hands and knees and sighting from the tent, I saw there was only an inch or two of rise in the beach that prevented me from waking up the previous night in a foot of water had that meager rise been breached. 

The washout to my south now connected the mudhole to the Atlantic only a few feet from the high spot where I'd unceremoniously piled Manu’iki’iki’s parts.

This changed everything. I had to relocate.

Should I make a lateral move and carry all my gear up the beach? A quarter mile up, the tallest dune sported a lone palm tree and a tangle of beach briar.

Or should I load up the boat and escape across the marsh as I’d planned the night before, taking my chances that I'd find a better place altogether?

I went with “escape across the marsh” which meant I had to get it in gear, pronto!

I had no time to spare - the tide was three-quarters in. I did the fastest camp breakdown, gear pack up, and cargo loading imaginable and without a single look back, shoved off.  

A nearby hammock to windward looked inviting. As I kicked off, I pointed my bow windward and paddled like mad and was immediately blown south by the 35-knot north wind and into the thickest tangles of marsh grass I was trying to avoid.

What followed was a half-hour of curses, frustrations, and loudly-expressed and inconsolable angst; it was a mercilessly unfavorable situation, and my invective continued without interruption until I broke out onto a small creek with a false sense of relief.

I was out of the frying pan, at last!

Under the bare mast I discovered an interesting thing about Manu'iki'iki - he will simply lay ahull with the ama downwind. This is both useful to know and handy in a pinch in the right situation.

For those who do not know, you're laying ahull if your boat is broadside to the wind and moving sideways.

This was not the right situation to be laying ahull.

I paddled like hell on the starboard side, and alternatingly back-paddled on the port side, getting his bow downwind. We flew along, his narrow canoe shape like a water dart, hitting about 7 knots until it all went sideways on me, literally, and Manu’iki’iki would lay ahull again.

After a few minutes, however, I got us making way using the steering oar. I hadn’t rigged up the giant rudder for this jaunt as it is massive and unwieldy and I didn’t trust myself to keep it from fouling me up again as it did before, during the ill-fated knockback in the surf. And the thought of dragging it through the mud and marshgrass wasn't pleasant, either.

Seven knots brought me to the mouth of the creek where it dumped me into Little Tybee Creek in just a few short minutes.

Little Tybee Creek is usually a wide, gentle-moving body of water between tides. At high tide, it's a wide body of often still waters, darkened in places by zephyrs moving across its surface but overall a respite from the ocean swells that break on the beaches and bars nearby. At low tide, it's a network of small creeks wandering around sandpiper-covered sandbars and mudflats bejeweled with periwinkles.

This day it appeared deceptively flat and dangerous as the current and wind conspired to take anything and everything along at the greatest speed in one direction; the storm-wracked Atlantic was another mile down and visible as a dancing white froth.  If I went into that swift running current I would be in the washing machine in very few moments, and if that happened I wasn’t getting out of it in one piece.

On impulse and with an adrenaline-fueled sense of self-preservation I drove Manu’iki’iki up onto a raft of dead marsh grass at over five knots just before being swept out into the Atlantic.

I had no idea how in the hell I was getting out of this.

I'm going to leave it here for the moment so I can get this posted and I'll continue to write about what happens next for tomorrow, but if you think it couldn't get worse you'd be laughably and sorely mistaken.

So until tomorrow...