The McBride knack for sidestepping misfortune
Issue 118: Jan/Feb 2018
Sitting in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, four weeks after the eye of Category 5 Hurricane Maria missed us by a few miles, with no power or running water (and likely not to be any for six months or more), something our middle son said over a decade ago surfaced in my mind. “You guys have the best bad luck. Bad things happen, but you’re always okay.” Indeed, we’d suffered no personal damage in the storm, but the best example of the truth of Garrett’s observation is the storm story from his little brother, David.
Two weeks before Maria entered our lives, while we hunkered down as Irma devastated the Virgin Islands, David, his wife, and our grandson were evacuating the Florida Keys in anticipation of Irma’s arrival. Irma did pass directly over their boat/home in Marathon, Florida, as a Category 4 storm. From Atlanta, the couple watched news footage of houses floating out to sea and piles of jumbled boats in their Boot Key Harbor. They warned 5-year-old Ashleigh that their family’s boat might not be there when they returned, or that their things in the boat might be damaged. Among themselves, they tried not to play the “I wish we had brought” game.
When they were finally allowed back into Marathon, there sat their boat in true McBride best-bad-luck fashion, one of a small percentage of boats that were completely unscathed. As David said, “We lost nothing. Well, except my music folder.”
When David was 14 years old, Garrett moved off the family boat to start college, and we could no longer use the “we don’t have room” excuse to prevent his adding a guitar to his growing collection of possessions taking over the aft cabin on Eurisko, our 34-foot Creekmore. From that day, David has been collecting lyrics and guitar tabs of his favorite songs, and adding his original pieces over the years. As it happened, shortly before Irma struck, he had loaned his music folder to his best friend, Ben, a nearby liveaboard, who had also evacuated — without taking David’s folder with him. Of the 255 boats in Boot Key Harbor, only 40 survived the storm. Ben’s wasn’t one of them. In fact, Ben’s boat was missing. And with it, David’s music folder.
With all of the destruction around us (on his island and ours), it seemed a trivial loss, but one that broke my heart. That red folder had lain on David’s bunk for years before he moved out. I felt like a bit of his adolescence had been lost when the folder became a casualty of Irma.
Six weeks after Irma, David was working in the boatyard when a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) officer approached him. A fisherman had found Ben’s boat bobbing offshore, water over the sole, dismasted, and with blown-out hatches and a crushed hull-to-deck joint. After pumping the boat out, this officer had gone aboard to remove any personal papers and anything that might be important to the owner.
As he was out of the country, Ben directed the FWC officer to David. And here she was now in the boatyard with David.
“Is there anything you would like off the boat?”
“Well, actually, my music folder was aboard. It’s the only thing I lost in Irma.”
“What’s it look like?”
“It’s a plain red folder, tied together with a piece of string.”
She held up a finger, “Hang on.”
A few minutes later, she returned from her truck with his slightly soggy and moldy music folder. Though never submerged in salt water, it had been wet for a while. Some of the pages were stuck together and the ink had washed away in a few places. But considering a Category 4 hurricane passed directly over David’s house, I’d say that music folder represents some pretty good bad luck.
Connie McBride and her husband, Dave, raised three boys aboard their 34-foot sailboat, Eurisko, while cruising the Caribbean. After 15 years, they now divide their time between enjoying being empty-nesters and visiting their grandson, the third-generation McBride cruiser. You can follow their adventures at www.facebook.com/simplysailingonline.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
