Pulling and Pushing

Jesus tells a parable about a good Samaritan.  You know the story.  As a college student working for my Methodist church one summer (back in the 1960’s), I “taught” the parable to a Sunday morning group of 7^th-8^th graders.   Nothing wrong with that.  Since we were using the historic little chapel as the classroom, I thought it would be good to act out the story.  Bad idea.  I figured that the aisle could be the road and the robbers could hide between some pews and the other characters could take a turn walking down the aisle and “passing by on the other side”.  Bad idea.  The three robbers got a little too enthusiastic about their role and the poor traveler got a mauling!  Bad idea.  While no blood appeared, I suspect there was at least one bruise from the experience.

Seeing someone in trouble and passing by on the other side happens a lot.  It even happens in the boating world, way too often.

Not yesterday (Saturday, January 21).

So, Marney and I were returning to the marina where we keep Azure Wind.  We’d been gone for five days and visited five different anchorages and had a wonderful time.  We were happily swimming, snorkeling, cleaning, fixing a few things, cooking on the grill, writing, taking photos.  The worse part of the week was the poor internet service on the channel islands.  It was a good week seeing places from last year:  West End/Soper’s Hole,  Jost van Dyke’s Great Harbor, Benure’s Bay on Norman Island, and Peter Island’s Great Harbor and Dead Man’s Bay.  On the way back we anchored outside the entrance to the East End Bay for a couple of hours to fill up our water tanks (love that watermaker).  Then we headed back.

The winds had picked up and grabbing the mooring ball became more of a chore than we expected.  In addition, the floating ball was missing and one of the two pick-up lines had gotten twisted around the other.  It was now shorter and became nearly impossible to reach and hold long enough to slip our dock line through and tie it off.  We ended up switching roles and Marney stayed at the helm and we eventually succeeded in securing our boat to the mooring.

While this was going on, another boat was leaving the dock and…got stuck in the mud about 150 feet away.  We couldn’t drop what we were doing, but glancing over periodically, we could see that the boat was grounded and not moving.  His propeller was stirring up the sea grass and mud and neither forward nor reverse motion was helping.  Turns out the draft of his boat was 5 feet 6 inches…Our depth reader was showing 5 feet of water.  For 6 inches, this boat was not moving.

While we were still working to grab the second mooring line, I noticed a small dinghy had gone over, and then a second.  They were trying to shove on the hull, but with no success.  As soon as we had our moorings secure, I took our dinghy and joined the effort.   By the time I arrived the plan had formed.  One dinghy would take a long line from the top of the mast and pull, trying to tilt the boat a bit.  The other dinghy would then push on the other side of the hull and nudge the boat into slightly deeper water.  With one pulling and two pushing, we made progress.  But it was only when a fourth dinghy arrived to join the pushing, that we succeeded.  The little boats sounded and acted like buzzing bees.  We pushers would edge our rubber noses to the side of the boat, and gun the engines just enough to hold a position and wait for the single boat on the other side to start pulling.  Like horses pawing at the Kentucky Derby, or speed boats waiting for the flag to drop, the noise itself was exciting.  The boat, tilting just so much, slipped off the mud and started moving again.  Back into the channel, the skipper said thank you to the four of us.  He went on his way…and we headed back to our respective boats…

…with a story and a memory and that sense of completion that comes when you help a stranger.

What if Jesus’ parable had gone this way:  So the first one to come by the one on the side of the road stopped and examined his wounds.   And then a second came by and, offered a drink of water.  And when the Samaritan walked up, why the others didn’t even notice that he was a Samaritan.  But together all three of them helped the victim back on his feet.

T’would have been a different parable.  T’would be a different world.

Fair Winds and Calm Seas

Dave