Plum Gut: A Memorable Course  

By Skip Bartley  

1990

The lore of Plum Gut is part of my childhood To this day I do not know which stories are fact, fanciful embellishments, or outright fictions. What I do know is that with every tide the Atlantic Ocean floods into Long Island Sound through a two- mile gap between Orient Point and Plum Island.

But with passing of years and dozens of passages through the Out, the lore receded and complacency displaced caution. It was in just that state of mind that I approached it some years ago.

It was 10 a.m. Saturday morning and if the wind held we would make little Neck Bay by 3 a.m. Sunday. With Dad at the helm and Carol tending the jib, I had just emerged from the navigation station. The wind, thirty knots or more, was fetching up out of the north, but Salty, at 45 feet and 26,000 lbs is nothing if not sea kindly, a remnant of a bygone era.

It was a moon tide and full flood. The water was boiling as we approached the lighthouse at Orient Point. The sweep of the tide caused us to alter course in a northerly direction, and the jib began flogging when we were a few hundred yards off the teapot.

We would power the old engine up for a few minutes until we came west, and I would run forward, drop the jib and secure it on the pulpit. Perhaps I had been told once about giant tide rips created by an opposing wind and sea condition; however, if any such recollection lingered it was ignored in a moment's arrogance. You don't need a harness on a sunny morning, and I had not gone overboard in twenty-five years of sailing.

It took only a second to release the halyard and another second to drop the jib on deck. Then I froze at the sight before me, as I began to dimly perceive the danger. At first I didn't even recognize what I was looking at: standing waves ten or twelve feet high, crests curling backwards, only feet from trough to trough. We were being swept right into them.

I knelt in the bow pulpit, both hands gaping the rail. The bow arose almost vertically until I feared we might pitch pole backwards. Then the world fell out from beneath me as she plunged into a trough. The next moments I found myself flying in the air and crashing on the deck. As I slid aft the terrifying realization came over me that I could neither move nor feel my left side. I was crying out for help, but all I could hear was the scream of the engine as the propeller came out of the water. The wave that carried me through the lifelines seemed almost anticlimactic when, suddenly, I felt myself being grabbed. I bumped against a stanchion and was spun around. I was on deck again with Carol holding me. We had shipped green water over the transom and we were riding that wave to the foredeck as Salty dropped into the next trough. What happened next will always remain for me inexplicable. Somehow, on that heaving deck, Carol was able to both hold me, open the heavy three by four wooden forecastle batch, lift me, and place me into the foc'sle.

As I lay on a pile of sail bags, unable to move, I stared up through a port hole in the hatch. The boat shuddered as she fen off the next crest; then I was looking up through what seemed like an ocean of green water. I kept calling out to Carol and straining my ears to hear some response. The only sounds that came to me were the pounding of the boat and the almost insane screening of the engine. I lay there for what seemed like an eternity, afraid to think and unable to move. Carol leaned over me and said," Your Dad's at the helm; I think the worst is over. Do you think you're badly hurt?" I could only think, I am alive! We're safe! You saved me.

My left arm was twisted into an obscene tangle inside my foul-weather gear. As Carol carefully tied my arm to my chest, I had my first taste of what real pain is. Carol dragged me out of the forecastle and through the galley and lashed me in a bunk in the main salon.  

Conditions were such that the Coast Guard would not attempt a transfer, so I just pretended to gaze at a folded chart Carol had brought me and bit a pencil. We were making for Greenport and my only choice was to wait for hours.

As Carol and Dad brought Salty alongside the pier opposite the East End Hospital, an emergency medical team was waiting. As I watched them come down the companionway, I was struck by the fact that each successive man was half again as large as the next. The salon was suddenly filled with these giants and their purposeful-looking equipment. Their leader, a friendly local bartender whose acquaintance we had made the night before, was on the radio to a trauma doctor in Islip. I must confess to having little remorse as they cut Jim McCann's borrowed foul weather jacket from me. My favorite cashmere sweater is another story.