A father and son bond deeply playing pirate
Issue 66 : May/Jun 2009
In 1995, my son and I towed our daysailer from Birmingham, Alabama, to Bahia Honda State Park, Florida, for a week of cruising in the Keys. The more I worked on Truth, our 13-foot 6-inch mahogany Blue Jay, to prepare her for camp cruising, the more excited Kyle became. One day I overheard my 12-year-old first mate tell a buddy, “Oh yeah, we’re gonna be pirates, kill people, and bury the treasure!”
After I stopped laughing, I realized that we could accomplish part of his plan. So, with the help of family and friends, we gathered treasure to bury on one of the islands and made a pact to go back and “discover” it when Kyle has a son or a daughter fit for the voyage. In the end, our treasure chest (a sealed PVC pipe) included Kyle’s rookie baseball card collection, my boyhood knife, various rings, and an assortment of time-capsulesque notes and clippings. Kyle’s grandfather even threw in a piece-o’-eight (his salvaged back molar, containing a huge gold filling).
Upon arrival at Bahia Honda, we stowed the pipe and a small shovel under the unbelievable amount of gear in Truth’s bow and set sail for Key West. We planned our original course along the inside path north of the Keys, with the idea that it would be safer to stay away from the open ocean. After 15 hours and a long night, during which we became absolutely lost among the many small identical-looking islands, we finally made it back to the park, dejected and ready to give up. Fortunately, a day of snorkeling and rest helped us regain our confidence. The next morning we took off again, this time down the outside of the island chain since this promised much simpler navigation.
Driven ashore
On our second day out, the perfect weather suddenly gave way to a violent storm that drove us ashore on a small island. Fearing for our lives, we sought shelter under a low-hanging tree. Even in the summer heat, the unrelenting rain was bone-shaking cold. At Kyle’s suggestion, we snuggled up against a rock wall to take advantage of the warmth still remaining in the stone. That got our blood flowing again. The next morning, we knew we would survive . . . and that this was the place we had been looking for.
We retrieved our time capsule and the shovel, selected a spot, dug a hole as deep as “the distance from foot to knee of a 12-year-old boy,” and buried our treasure. After making careful notes of landmarks and triangulated bearings, we packed our gear and sailed away. By sunset we had made it safely to the Key West bridge and were excited that such a crowd had gathered on it to welcome us. It was some time later that we learned of the local ritual of daily celebrating sunset at that very bridge.
Sadly, we lost our treasure log and beloved sloop in my 1996 Hurricane Divorce. Devastating as that was, Kyle and I still have our memories — and we still have our map. At Kyle’s insistence, we had created it from the log as soon as we returned home. Now that it has aged for more than a decade, we look on our ink-on-ragged-canvas treasure map as a work of art. It depicts an un-named land mass, a compass rose, a kid-coded key (“take 41 12-year-old steps directly . . . ”), and an “X” to mark the spot.
Our treasure map also bears a curse promising the wrath of God, Dad, and Lad on person or persons who tamper in any way with our belongings.
Prospects for recovery
Kyle has now finished college and has a degree in geology. He recently told me that our cruise changed the course of his life. He is now married and positioned to have a sailor of his own someday and is excited about the prospect of raising him or her on the true sea tales that belong to our family.
He looks forward ecstatically to the time, someday in the future, when his little sailor will have the sea legs to go back with us on another boat, to retrace our course, to use our map . . . and to bring home our treasure.
If it’s gone, yon pirates beware! We will pick up your nefarious trail and we will sail every river, cove, and ocean for as long as it takes to bring justice to you and our family’s riches home once more!
Jeff Carlton and his wife, Cheri, sail Sea Fever, their Pacific Seacraft, on Lake Guntersville in Alabama.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
