None of them -- Steven and Linda Rivelis, Karen Blood, Amy Randall -- has forgotten the man in the fishing boat who saved the day. But they still haven't bought him the bottle of rum that might make a sailor feel appreciated. So it's getting late in the year, you see, and September's good deed needs to be mentioned, even savored, before the whole thing is forgotten. Better now than never.
"I'm not prone to cosmic experiences," says Steven Rivelis. "But this was one."
It was Friday, Sept. 30, and the Rivelises and their two friends set off from Annapolis on a rented 30-foot sloop for a weekend of sailing. That same weekend, volunteers were trying to rescue the meandering manatee that had shown up in the Chesapeake.
The Rivelises, Blood and Randall had an idea about joining in the search. They sailed across the bay to the Chester River and, in late afternoon, looked for a place to moor. They chose a creek, despite the navigational difficulties it presented. "The charts for the creek were easy to read," Steven Rivelis recalls. "We thought we knew what we were doing." They ran the boat aground.
"We pulled out our sailing book and tried every tactic suggested to dislodge our vessel, but were unsuccessful," Randall says. "We were near the embarrassing and desperate point of calling the Coast Guard to rescue us. . . ."
When the good guy arrived in a power boat and offered to pull the sloop out of the sand. "He was a sailor; he knew how to sail. He just happened to be out fishing that day in a power boat," Steven Rivelis says. "He said he had pulled people out of the same spot in the creek before."
The man in the power boat tried towing the sloop with a line attached to its bow. When that failed, the line was fastened to other points of the sailboat -- four in all -- but none worked. Finally, as dusk came and the air chilled, the stranger in the power boat offered a last resort -- a tow at extreme angle from high on the mast. "He warned us that the boat would go so far on its side that we would be scared out of our pants," Randall says. (Steven Rivelis remembers the rescuer using much saltier language.)
"The boat was so far over on its side that water was coming over the edge and we were holding onto the opposite side rails and each other," Amy Randall says.
"The cockpit was perpendicular to the water," adds Steven Rivelis. "We were like cats clinging to the rail on the top side. The [rescuer] knew what he could and could not do. It wasn't a situation you could macho your way out of."
Finally, after an hour of towing, the boat dislodged.
"I love you!" Linda Rivelis yelled.
"The sailor stayed with us, then led us into the inlet, avoiding all the shoals," Randall says. "Then he sped off, saying he was late for dinner. We never got to thank him."
They never got their rescuer's name. But they did notice the name of his boat: "Manatee."
Bottom gazing
My buddy Frankie Sweetbreads ran to the pay phone yesterday morning with this: "I was just down at the Science Center, and I was astonished. I could see to the bottom of the harbor at the bulkhead. Must have been 15 feet deep where I was standing. You could see all that trash at the bottom, crystal clear."
Santa's helpers
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. . . On the northbound side of Ritchie Highway in Arnold, there's a pull-off area where pickups set up all summer long with hand-lettered signs advertising crabs ("Steamed Females"), shrimp, silver queen corn and Eastern Shore produce ("lopes" and "cukes"). This past Sunday, there was a lone pickup with a sign: "Power Rangers."
Unusual defense
A Tulsa, Okla., man, defending himself on a purse-snatching charge, had an idiot for a lawyer. He got the robbery victim on the witness stand, peered at her knowingly, and asked, "Did you get a good look at me when I took your purse?" He got hot when the victim identified him as the robber, accused her of lying, and
screamed, "I should have blown your head off!"
Pushing for a laugh
In "The Swan Princess," the Not-By-Disney animated film, the voice of Jack Palance is used as that of an evil sorcerer who turns beautiful Princess Odette into the white bird. Palance gives the character his usual breathless, overwrought menace. In one scene, he even does a one-handed push-up (a la Palance at the '92 Oscars). I was the only kid in the theater who got the joke.
Spare us, please
lTC
Gripe of the Month: People who list their fax numbers, without that notation, in the telephone directory. When you try to call them, the fax tone screams in your ear. Why, I oughta. . .
Whoops
A 16-year-old kid in St. Louis broke into a car and swiped a brand-new pair of pants with the $35 price tag still on them. So he took them to the store that sold them, to get a refund. Bad break No. 1: The woman he asked for the refund happened to be the store security chief. Bad break No. 2: She also happened to be the owner of the car and the pants.
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