Challa Saves the Day

Challa Saves the Day

By Ken Ely

One day, Challa, who was a very clever lad, was sailing with his Uncle Pete aboard their sloop, Naniloa. They were the only two aboard and were bound for Sucia Island, where they were to rendezvous with the rest of their family and its small fleet for a weekend holiday.

Challa’s entire family was a great seafaring family. They sailed in fair weather or foul. They sailed on the ebb tide or the flood. They sailed by light or by dark. Whenever it was time to sail, they sailed. Sometimes they read their charts, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they steered a compass course, sometimes they steered by the wind. Sometimes their anchors drug in the night, sometimes their anchors got stuck in rocks so that they couldn’t get them up (and then, of course, they would have to get new ones). All of the family had been aground at one time or another. A few of them had been dismasted. But whatever happened, they sailed with great style and were much admired and talked about by everyone – but not much copied by anyone.

If Challa’s family had a reputation in north Whatcom County, it was nothing in comparison to the reputation they had with the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard was not pleased with this famous family – and this was not because the family was forever calling the Coast Guard to come rescue them, either. The family, in fact, never called the Coast Guard. The family, in fact, liked the Coast Guard as little as the Coast Guard liked them. You see, the problem was the rules: the Coast Guard enforced the rules to the letter but the family obeyed the spirit of the rules – and they were a family of great spirit.

Now, the part of the family that always seemed to show this spirit to best advantage was the part that sailed in Naniloa. Yup, that’s right: Uncle Pete and Challa. They and their little ship were so famous for spirit in all that region of the Salish Sea that people sometimes got Pete and Challa confused with the boat! Naniloa was black, her emblem was a black turkey, and she was sometimes called The Black Turkey. And when people got a little mixed up, they sometimes called Uncle Pete, “Black Pete”, and when they got completely mixed up, they called Challa “Black Challa”.

Despite all their spirit, Pete and Challa and their famous Black Turkey were the least of all the family to be apprehended by the Coast Guard and given tickets with fines to pay. This was because they were the cleverest of the family. And that is why Pete and Challa were late leaving for Sucia Island: they were cleverly dodging the Coast Guard, who were ever on the look-out for the Black Turkey.

Uncle Pete and Challa had just crossed Alden Bank and were congratulating themselves for having given the Coasties the slip when an old gill-netter they were passing threw off its disguise and hailed, “Coast Guard! Heave to!”

The Turkey luffed into the wind, Challa put the fenders down, and the Coast Guard gill-netter tied alongside.

As the Coast Guard ensign stepped from the gill-netter’s work deck onto the Turkey, Uncle Pete demanded, “Whatever can your business be, good sir?”

“The registration numbers on your bow, sir, are not spaced according to Coast Guard regulations,” the ensign replied.

Uncle Pete looked at him in disbelief.

“What’s the matter,” Pete asked, “can’t you read ’em?”

“I can read ’em just fine,” the ensign returned, “but that doesn’t matter. They’re not spaced correctly. May I see your vessel’s registration, please?”

“Certainly,” Uncle Pete replied, and went below to get it.

The ensign looked the boat over and then studied Challa.

“You must be the boy they call ‘Black Challa’,” he said.

Challa answered respectfully but truthfully, “You have me mixed up with this boat.”

The ensign did not comprehend the reply, looked blankly at Challa, shrugged, and began writing the ticket he was going to give Uncle Pete.

Uncle Pete returned topside, gave the ensign the ship’s registration papers, and craned his neck to see what the Coastie was writing.

“Those numbers on the bow are going to cost you $50, Capt. Black Pete,” the ensign said, copying the information he needed from the registration.

When he had finished, he handed the slip back to Uncle Pete and requested a look-see down below.

Uncle Pete led the ensign down the companion way.

Once below, the ensign entered the head and began to inspect the valve-work and plumbing. He didn’t like what he found and he said so, telling Uncle Pete that the valves were to be wired either closed or open, depending, so that nothing from the toilet bowl could go out into the sea but could only go into the holding tank. Neither of the valves in Naniloa were wired in any manner. And that would be another fine: two valves at $50 each came to $100.

“Look, admiral,” Uncle Pete objected, “you can see by the sight-glass on the holding tank that we pump everything into it. My entire family fishes, sails, and swims in these waters. I have a degree in marine biology. Do you think I’m going to deliberately screw up the environment by pumping poop into it?”

Uncle Pete then triumphantly held up a quart plastic bottle.

“Besides,” he said, “we use this green stuff. A teaspoonful every time we flush. Keeps the little greeblies that eat poop alive and happy.”

“I don’t care about all that, Capt. Black Bart,” the ensign replied as he scrawled on his citation clipboard. “I just know that your fine is $150, so far.”

Looking up from his writing, he spied the fire extinguisher hanging in the galley and smiled.

“Unless we find that the inspection tag on that extinguisher is not current,” he added. “Then, it will be $200.”

He was just reaching for the extinguisher when Challa leaned into the companionway and said, “Excuse me, commodore, but your fishing cutter is sinking.”

Any doubt the Coastie may have had about the truth of this statement was dispelled by an excited cry from the gill-netter, “Hey, Skipper! We got a leak somewhere! Better get back over here!”

The ensign scrambled topside, where he addressed the yeoman that had hollered at him.

“How bad’s the leak?”

“Well,” the yeoman replied, considering, “bad enough that we’re sinking.”

The ensign abandoned his inspection and clambered back aboard his fishing cutter.

Uncle Pete and Challa stood in Black Turkey’s cockpit and watched with amused satisfaction while the Coasties searched for the leak. It wasn’t too long before the ensign found it.

“Ahhh!” the ensign blared. “The prop shaft’s gone! Water’s pouring in through the stuffing box!”

He looked over at Uncle Pete.

“How could that happen?”

“Did you throw her hard into reverse when you drew alongside?” Uncle Pete asked.

After puzzling a minute, the ensign replied, “Yeah, I guess so.”

Uncle Pete chuckled, “Well, if your shaft wasn’t held too firmly in its coupling, you prob’ly backed it right out of the shaft log. Should be a lesson to you: don’t go commandeering old fishing boats to harass honest sailors.”

The ensign looked at Pete in bewilderment as the water in his bilges visibly rose.

“But I would’ve thought the rudder or the shaft strut would’ve kept the shaft from backing all the way out!” he whined.

“Oh, the shaft’s prob’ly still there, all right,” Uncle Pete assured him. “It’s just not in the inner stuffing box seal, that’s all. And the outer one doesn’t appear to be any good.”

“Maybe you’d better try to plug the hole,” Challa offered.

“Yeah!” the ensign agreed, peering into the boat’s bilges.

He was standing in the fish hold, the water steadily gaining on his shins.

“But it’s too small a crawl space beneath the after deck for any of us to get back there to plug it,” he lamented. “In fact, the entire crawl space is filled with water.”

“Cut through the deck,” Pete prompted.

“I’ll have to!” the ensign said, seizing upon the suggestion.

To the yeoman, he shouted, “Pass me one of the fire axes!”

The yeoman looked helplessly back at him.

“We didn’t bring ’em aboard, sir. You were in such a hurry to get out here ahead of this Black Naniloa . . . “

Challa jumped aboard the sinking fishing boat and groped beneath the afterdeck to see how much room the crawl space afforded.

“I can plug the leak!’ he declared.

And without saying any more, he scrambled back aboard Naniloa.

Bolting below, he banged around a moment or two and emerged on deck again with a dried up dish sponge, an old stiff wash rag, some paper, and a box of instant hot breakfast cereal. After laying the whole mess on the engine hatch cover in Naniloa’s cockpit, he fished around in his pocket for his knife and, when he had found it, went to work. He laid the paper, of which there were three layers, down first, and over it he spread out the old wash rag. He then cut the dish sponge into a lot of long slivers and these he piled in a windrow along the centerline of the wash rag. Onto the top of the windrow, he poured the contents of the instant cereal box. Then he rolled the whole mound up very tightly in the old wash rag and folded the ends over so none of the bits and flakes could get out. Finally, he rolled the wash rag up inside the papers. Folding back the ends of the paper tube, he jumped into the bilges of the fishing boat, ducked under the after deck and into the bilgewater, and wiggled himself into the crawl space – which was difficult because his hands were busy pinching the ends of the paper tube.

He was not seen again for almost a minute.

When he shot back out of the crawlspace, he stood up and gasped for air.

“Got it!” he declared, when he’d gained his wind.

Everyone anxiously watched the level of the water in the old boat’s bilges. It was rising less rapidly! Pretty soon, it wasn’t rising at all!

Well, it was obvious to all what Challa had done and how clever he’d been. All extempore, he had created a plug that would expand in water! The slivers of dried sponge had swelled up quickly to hold the plug in the shaft log. The instant hot cereal had taken longer because the seawater was cold, but the flakes had expanded to many times their original size to form a glob through which water could move only very slowly. The wash rag had held everything together, of course, but it was too floppy to shove into the shaft log: the rolled up paper, however, had stayed stiff long enough for the plug to be inserted into the leak but had softened to expand with the swelling mixture of sponge and cereal.

“Now I suppose you want us to tow you back to Blaine Harbor,” Uncle Pete said to the hapless Coast Guard ensign.

“Yes, I suppose I do,” the ensign answered, because he had no other immediate alternatives, “but this is all very embarrassing, you know.”

“Isn’t it!” Uncle Pete rejoined.

Challa just grinned.

The Black Turkey Naniloa towed the fishing cutter back to Blaine where she was tied to the dock in front of the harbor master’s office. A gasoline-driven pump was put into the old boat to keep her afloat until she could be taken to Westman Yard and hauled out, for Challa’s clever patch was not permanent and would eventually dissolve and seep out.

Uncle Pete and Challa bid the Coasties a not-too-fond farewell and set out once more for Sucia Island and their rendezvous with the family fleet.

They were nearing Alden Bank again when Uncle Pete turned the helm over to Challa and went below to make coffee. After he’d put the water on to boil, he came back on deck. In his hand he carried the Coast Guard ensign’s clip board – the one the ensign had been using to write the ticket.

“Looks like our friend forgot this,” Uncle Pete said. “I wonder what he did with the citation he was going to give us.”

“It went back to Blaine with him,” Challa assured Uncle Pete.

“That was nice of him,” Pete said, only a little sarcastically, and he laid the clipboard on the engine hatch cover.

“He didn’t know he took it,” Challa said, smiling. "It was the paper I used to make the plug to save his old boat.”

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Copyright © July 1991 Kenneth E Ely