Conch Shell Sailor

On that beach at Panther Key over 30 years ago I first heard the cassette tape of a new ballad singer from Key West named Jimmy Buffett, while drinking Mount Gay rum at sunset. I've been a ParrotHead Phan ever since. Whenever I think of Jimmy in the old days, I remember Panther. It's still there, but now you have to share the island.

Thirty years ago you could anchor in these gunkholes and not see another vessel for days. Swim naked, sing loud, and unwind from what we thought of then as the stress of modern society. Little did we know just how much pressure civilization would later produce.

The flip side to gunkholing back then was that you were completely on your own. Few marinas, not many depth sounders or speedometers, no quick rescue, few LORAN sets and no GPS, no EPIRBs, and no one around to help. The rare boats with radios had huge UHFs-VHF was in the future. The UHF radio's box was the size of a large microwave, with vacuum tubes and sinister whirring noises. It worked well in good weather when it was warmed up, but who could you call? The emergency frequency at 2182 was monitored most of the time; but no one was close, so you had better figure out how to get yourself out of whatever mess you got into.

The lack of electronic gizmos didn't stop us. We sailed into gunkholes slowly and on the half-flood tide. Sailors used lead lines (I can still "swing the lead" from all my years of practice), took land bearings, dead-reckoned the vessel's position and eyeballed the speed. If you grounded and couldn't get off right away, you had a beer or two while waiting for a higher tide. Often the beer was cool, not cold, because there was no refrigeration and the ice had run out. Beer was kept cool by putting it in the bilge, the coolest part of the boat. A truly cold beer was a luxury to be relished.

But with all of that, we had a great time. After all, the whole point of gunkholing was, and still is, to relax. And that we most certainly did.

The Bridges of Lee County
In the mid 1960s a bunch of bridges were built in Lee County to satisfy the expanding population-the Cape Coral Bridge, the New 41 Bridge in Fort Myers, the Sanibel Bridge and the Big Carlos Pass Bridge between Estero Island and Black Island. The original Edison Bridge stood at Fort Myers, and there were old-fashioned, quaint-looking swing bridges at Fort Myers Beach, Matlacha, Boca Grande and Alva. Sailors could either get under or through these bridges, and did so with a certain joviality that is missing nowadays.

Bridge tenders would lean over as you transited and converse with you about where you were bound for or from, joke about the weather, or tell the latest saltwater gossip. Tenders and sailors became friends, many times greeting each other after a long voyage with real delight, swapping stories in the five minutes it took to get through.

Believe it or not, many times sailors wouldn't even have to signal for a bridge to open back then. The bridge tender would see you coming and just open it. There were no transit-time restrictions and very few boatmen actually sounded the official regulation opening signal. In fact, few of the old rag sailors had real boat horns. Most of them had sea shells they used to call to each other and to open a bridge. Conch and whelk shells. Conchs were the best, since they were usually bigger and had a louder sound.

Now I'll confess a little secret-I still use a conch shell to open a bridge even though my boat has a perfectly good horn. But a mechanical squawking noise just doesn't have the same soulful wail as a conch shell. Besides, it's fun to see the look on the folks' faces aboard the fancy yachts nearby.

Racing in Paradise
I felt the need for sea combat after reading my first Horatio Hornblower novel in '67. Since the Royal Navy wasn't defending our shores against Napoleon, I had no opportunity to emulate my hero. Until I discovered offshore racing.

Many of you may be familiar with offshore racing under sail. Modern racing is very regulated and extremely expensive. Occasional protests can descend into a litigation hell. Not so on this coast back then. It was simple, cheap and fun. In fact, the worst insult you could call a sailor-which would result in blood being shed-was "a sea lawyer." Protests were rare.

We started the races a little differently, with Bahama starts. This was a technique we picked up from the Exuma Islanders and their Out Island Regatta. Vessels were anchored abreast of each other on the starting line with their sails down. The start boat (sometimes one of the contestants) would yell out the countdown time and then shoot a shotgun, with the blast going out over unoccupied water. Immediately, all hands on every boat would simultaneously haul in the anchor and haul up the sails, to the accompaniment of shrieks of laughter, sailors falling overboard, and dire threats to crews of flogging or rum stoppage from giggling captains. Bahama starts were a great equalizer between rich and poor sailors. As I write this I'm laughing at the memories of those starts. Hilarious!

I started racing aboard the boats of two of the legends of the coast-Gene and T-Bone (a schooner captain) Whatley. Gene had a pretty 33-foot cutter-rigged boat named Fantasea.

My bunk was the quarter-berth-a coffin-sized hole filled with spare anchors, line, sails and me (I was much smaller then). The crew drank beer and rum and worked our hearts out for Capt. Whatley, even though he was benign and never threatened us. I learned a lot about the sea from Gene and T-Bone Whatley. Gene was also a champion conch-shell player and taught me the finer points of that art.

By 1970, at the age of 17, I had become the youngest offshore skipper on the coast, racing a 24-foot Irwin sloop, the Whistler. The entry fee for one race to Naples from Fort Myers Beach was a case of beer. Out of my sense of camaraderie I brought two cases to the skippers' pre-race meeting. A newly arrived sailor from a real yacht club someplace up North objected when he saw me. He said that I was too young to be an offshore skipper and certainly too young to be drinking, or even possessing, that beer. Gene Whatley told him in very plain language that he knew for a fact that I was man enough to go to sea, and to drink that beer, because I had done both on his boat. That ended that, and the meeting started when Gene sounded his big ol' conch shell. By the way, I beat the guy in the race.

Sunsets in Paradise
One thing hasn't changed in all these years-our beautiful sunsets over the Gulf of Mexico. Listen carefully as you watch those incredible colors magically appear across the sky, and in the distance you may hear an old seaman sound his conch shell, the traditional sailor thank you for another day on our waters.

And who knows? That seaman just might be yours truly, thanking God for allowing me to grow up in a place we call paradise, as a conch shell sailor.

Pine Island's Robert N. Macomber is a lecturer on maritime history and the award-winning author of the Honor series of naval fiction. His Web site is www.robertmacomber.com.