Bailing with a . . . boot.

           A brutally cold and blustery March day long ago, the Coast Guard Academy, New London, Connecticut; an intercollegiate sailing event, teams from across New England and the Mid-Atlantic, all foul-weather clad, bundled up as best as possible in those pre-dry suit days.

            Standing on the dock, jumping up and down trying to get warm, happy that a capricious puff had not flipped our little two-person dinghy into the icy Thames in the previous races, we waited to swap boats with those had finished behind us.  A number of boats were being towed in, having capsized and swamped, their crews unable or unwilling to get them upright and sailing again.  One boat came sailing in, bringing up the rear, the last place finisher, but a finisher none the less, and we could see that they still were half-full of water, the crew bailing furiously while the skipper struggled to control the boat. It was the Navy boat.

            Only when they drew right up to the dock did we see that the crew was not using the bucket that came standard with each boat – it had apparently been washed away when they capsized. He was using . . . his boot.  Standing in that freezing water, refusing to accept rescue, determined to finish the race and return under their own power to shore, he was bailing with his boot.

            At the time, I marveled at what I took to be Naval Academy discipline, assuming that the skipper, having sized up the situation, ordered his crew to take off that boot and bail.  But thinking back on it, I now believe I had it wrong, that the crew, on his own initiative, and understanding what had to be done, made that decision instantly and on his own.  And so now I marvel all the more.

            Yesterday I had a funeral for a local firefighter who over the course of forty years put his life on the line each and every day for the public safety, for folk he likely had never met, for what we used to call the “common wealth.”  As each day dawned, he had no idea if that would be the day he would have to put it all on the line, but he did know that this was something that he was called to do, and was ready to do.

            In our life voyage, we can be sure that at some point we, in our turn, will face our own stormy seas, that there will come those times when the capricious winds will threaten to lay us on our beam ends, and the icy waters will threaten to pull us under.  And so maybe the time is now, before it is too late to do anything about it, to ask, will we have the internal resources, the courage, the will, the faith, to pull off a boot, and bail?

------------

Luke 8:  One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” So they put out, and while they were sailing he fell asleep. A windstorm swept down on the lake, and the boat was filling with water, and they were in danger. They went to him and woke him up, shouting, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. ²⁵He said to them, “Where is your faith?”