Second Best
ACCIDENTS SOMETIMES LOOK LIKE PAYBACKS.
DOUG PIKE
“I feel the need for speed,” said every young man ever, at least once. With velocity comes risk, however, and risk can come from all directions.
A friend — call him Orville, because nobody knows an Orville except Wright, and that guy’s long gone — accepted an invitation a winter past to join two other guys on a really, really fast bay boat.
Rather than trailer to a ramp nearer their destination, the guy with the boat insisted they leave from 40 miles away so he could “pin some ears.”
They idled from the marina in gray light that cold morning. As the skipper distributed goggles and turned into the Intracoastal Waterway, he instructed everyone to zip up and grab something solid. Moments later, he whipped 450 horses into a full gallop.
The hull lunged forward and accelerated smoothly through 50, 60 and 70 miles per hour, then leveled just north of 80.
“It felt like my fingernails were being torn out,” Orville recalled. “I kept waiting for the console to rip out of the hull.”
But it didn’t. As they raced down the ditch at 80-plus, a hungry sea gull either didn’t hear or didn’t see the boat — and hit the windshield. Or, correctly, the windshield hit the bird.
“It sounded like a cannon went off,” Orville said. “The wind blew most of the feathers out by the time we stopped, but there was blood on everything and everybody.”
Not much they could do. So the skipper centered the wheel, shoved the throttle, and they were quickly back up to speed.
Even over the whining engines, Orville heard a thwop-thwop noise — and looked up to see a small, black helicopter keeping pace low to port. Behind it, gaining ground, was a blue light on a faster boat. And then a second blue-lit boat appeared out front. As they should, the fishermen stopped.
The men in the pursuing boats wore all black and, they announced, were with the Drug Enforcement Administration. And they were especially interested in anybody running that fast down the ICW at dawn.
There was trouble explaining all the blood in the boat until one of the fishermen found a little patch of feathers and skin still clinging to the hull. Tension eased a bit, but the enforcement guys wanted a closer look.
Heavily armed and with extras of everything they might need for a battle with real smugglers hanging from their belts, two young DEA officers boarded what turned out to be the second-fastest boat on the water that morning.
They poked and prodded, looked and questioned until all were satisfied that Orville and crew posed no threat to anyone, except maybe themselves.
The first of the DEA officers stepped uneventfully back onto the faster boat. As the second man followed, he somehow hung a shoelace loop on a cleat, teetered against his shifting weight, then tumbled headlong into the cold tide.
Orville and another fisherman instinctively reached down and each managed to grab a black boot, then an outstretched arm. Once the officer righted himself and was safely back aboard his own vessel, everyone fell silent.
A dry DEA man was first to crack a smile, which led quickly to a chorus of out-loud laughter.
Sopping wet on that cold winter morning, the unfortunate DEA officer held his composure.
“Thank you for your time, gentlemen,” he said officially. “Have a nice day.”
The fishermen all returned the thanks, but none of them had the courage to add, “You too.”