Caroline

     More Letters From Paradise

              Caroline    
It is a wonder that what with all the sailboats around us here in Honolulu, that I had not thought of Caroline.  All of this happened some fifty years ago. 
I first saw Caroline when I was stationed at Coco Solo, Panama.  She was tied up to a large seaplane bouy.  She was about 32 feet long, constructed of wood, and had a raised cabin, with round brass port holes.  She was an old girl, needing some paint, and lots of work.  She was sloop-rigged, and her bottom was covered with barnacles, which I was later to find out. Her history was that she came from the East coast of the U.S., and had arrived here in Panama via the Panama Canal, brought through the locks tied to a passing freighter.  She was the property of two rich guys in our squadron.  My boss, Devore, had purchased a share in Caroline, and was eager to restore her to sailing condition.  In order to do this he needed help. That's where I came in. The prospect of sailing down the coast with a cargo of several cases of beer, some rum, and local ladies of easy virtue; who wouldn't enjoy a short sail?  The temptation was too much to resist.  I enlisted my paint brush.  Our planned destination was to have been Porto Bello, an old pirate hang-out in the 18th century, located somewhere along the coast.  I had not yet learned to sail, and I didn't know if Devore did.  But that didn't matter, you could always count on someone, when told the details of the coming voyage. 
Work proceeded well.  We painted the interior of Caroline, and were busy on her deck when Devore called to my attention that we were adrift.  Somehow we had become untied from the seaplane buoy.  I told him that it was not my boat, (this often said in boating circles) and he should go over the side, and tie us up.  He refused, saying that he couldn't swim.  I still don't know if he was not telling the truth, or that he was just chicken, because we had seen a couple of sharks around the boat earlier in the day.  This was a really big problem because the sails had been removed, and we were without an engine.  I knew this because the sails had been removed, and were currently in the photo lab where we worked.  What to do?  Drift on out into the Atlantic, or swim with the rope to the buoy, and never mind the sharks.  I reluctantly chose the second choice. I had not long been graduated from high school, and was a strong swimmer. I had earned my senior life saving patch, but I was scared silly.  And so, like Tarzan, with the rope in my teeth, I made an olympic free-style record, and made us fast again.  When Devore pulled me up over the side of the boat, my legs were ripped by the barnacles on the underside of the boat. 
The rest of the story is brief. Devore left for a 30 day leave back to his home on the West cast.  And one day soon after, Gene, one of the guys in the lab, who was also one of the photographers in our squadron, asked me what he should do to get even with Devore, something he was pissed about.  He felt that Devore should have to pay for what had been done to him.  I said in an off-hand way that he should sink his boat.  And that is just what he did. Devore returned from leave to learn that the Caroline had been sunk, and that a friend of his had had chains passed around the hull, and dragged the boat to the shore. Not long after that my squadron was moved to Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico.  And that was the last time I ever saw Caroline.