Jellyfish Jammed

In Folly Beach we have periods throughout the year when the waters are teeming with jellyfish. We get all kinds, but luckily our most frequent gelatinous invaders are cannonball jellyfish-which have no tentacles and therefore do not sting. My first time encountering swarms of jellyfish was in the Florida Keys and these were treacherously armed with poisonous tentacles. They were visible everywhere we sailed in the crystal waters of the keys, and kept us sailing rather than swimming. However there came a point when entry in the infested waters became necessary...

Pop Pop at the Helm and a young me by his side

I've had and continue to have a blessed life. I'm the baby of five kids and my parents put all of us through college. Upon college graduation, my siblings received as a graduation gift a set of Samsonite luggage from our parents. As I neared my undergraduate graduation from the University of South Carolina in 1991, I asked my Pop to take he and I on a sailing charter in the Florida Keys. My mother, siblings and I suspected that he might come down with Alzheimer's as he had begun showing early signs (unfortunately we were correct) and I wanted to spend some quality time with him. He didn't protest nor did he hesitate and went right to work planning the trip. There was no internet in those days, so it was more challenging than one might expect.

He contacted several charter companies and discovered that he and I would not be able to do a bareboat charter (renting a sailboat for a week for our private use), as we had no bareboat certification, which was required in those days. This meant we would have had to have a hired captain aboard. Since we were going to be required to have a captain anyway, Pop decided to enroll us in a program to get our bareboat certification. The 7 day program was run through Annapolis Sailing School and was conducted in Marathon, Florida, smack dab in the middle of the Florida Keys!  I was beyond excited.

Me at the helm conversing with Capt. Joe

It was a decidedly father and son adventure, as Pop Pop and I drove from his house on Lake Murray down to Marathon. We stopped midway in Gainesville to have a visit with his aunts (my great aunts), Anita and Lydia. They had immigrated from Bethlehem to Honduras, then to the United States, and I remember that they fixed us spaghetti and fried plantains for dinner. My first experience with fried plantains and I've been eating them ever since! (They used to make wonderful stuffed grape leaves as well!)

After leaving Gainesville, we drove his Ford Escort station wagon to Marathon, where we met Capt. Joe McKeag who would be our captain and instructor for the next seven days. We boarded the Morgan 42 and set out of Boot Key Harbor down Hawk Channel to Key West. After a night there (Pop and I roamed Duval Street and found a great little blues band), we rounded Key West and sailed up the Gulf side of the Keys to the back of Marathon then through the seven mile bridge and back to Boot Key Harbor. During our route, we anchored in a secluded anchorage or stayed at a marina each night, all the while plotting our course on paper charts (long before the GPS chartplotter) and enjoying splendid sailing throughout the days. The water was gin clear and we were inundated with an unending swarm of jellyfish the entire trip, morning to night, which made snorkeling out of the question. Besides the swarms of jellyfish, we could see sergeant majors and dolphins swimming beneath us as we sailed on occasion, but always jellyfish. And always lobster pots. Unlike the jellyfish, the lobster pots were a navigational hazard.  We had to keep a sharp eye out for these ubiquitous floats that were tied to lobster traps so that we didn’t run over one and entangle the propeller. 

For five days we successfully sailed and avoided these obstacles, however, on the sixth day of our trip as we were heading on the Gulf side of Marathon enroute to Faro Blanco Marina, Pop Pop was at the helm and ran over a pot (he was having difficulty throughout our trip, his boat handling and instruction handling skills were markedly diminished). The line fouled the prop and the rudder, so Capt. Joe and I quickly furled the sails and dropped anchor. We were seven miles from the marina and Joe was preparing to radio (no cell phones, it was 1991, remember?) a diver to come out and meet us to cut out the lines and free the prop and the rudder. 

I asked Joe if he wanted me to dive in and try to free us first. He said only if I really wanted to, but that he wouldn't recommend it as there was a three foot chop to the sea state, which would be difficult and dangerous conditions on it’s own,  but added to that, the jellyfish were EVERYWHERE. I was 22, young and fearless (foolish!) and I insisted that I wanted to try. So Joe gave me fins, a mask and a knife. I put the knife in my teeth, swashbuckler style, and went to jump in. As soon as I looked overboard, for the first time our entire trip, the jellyfish had not only abated, they disappeared. I jumped in the water, held my breath, guarded my head with my arm (the 20,000 lbs. boat was slamming down three feet every few seconds in the chop) and cut some of the rope from the prop and rudder. I went under several times and finally freed us. As soon as I climbed out of the water, and I mean immediately, thousands of jellyfish swarmed back engulfing the waters surrounding the boat. It was an unimaginable reprieve that may not have been on the scale of the parting of the Red Sea, but was no less miraculous to me even to this day. Capt. Joe was ecstatic that we didn't have to call in a commercial driver, so much so, he bought me a six pack of beer when we got to Faro Blanco Marina. 

Me, Pop Pop, Capt. Joe and another student whose name escapes me

At the conclusion of our trip, Capt. Joe took me aside. He said, "Your dad would never charter a boat without you, would he?" I told him that he wouldn't. He said that was good, because he didn't want to hurt Pop's feelings by not issuing his bareboat certification, but since he was assured that I would be with him, he issued Pop's certification along with mine. We never got a chance to go on a bareboat charter together, but I am grateful for that time we spent together.

On a side note, my wife and I hired Capt. Joe the following year to marry us aboard his boat in the keys and to sail us around for ten days for our honeymoon.  Maybe a future blog…