Popeye

I love to fish and when I was in the USAF I had an opportunity to fish in a protected lagoon where the water was so clear you could see down 50-75 feet. I was stationed in Bermuda and when I would take the bus to town I would always stop at a retired military persons house where they had converted their front porch into a small restaurant. Their house was on a lagoon that had an exit out to the ocean. The exit was about 12' wide and 25-30 yards long. They made a hamburger that was to kill for as it was a meal in itself and I always took that opportunity to enjoy a home cooked meal other than mess hall food.

I was told I could use their old wooden boat anytime I wanted to go fishing in the lagoon. I invited a friend and we got some bait and went to use the boat. We decided to hand line over the edge of the boat and we could watch our bait below us. Next thing we realized was the tide was going out and we were being sucked toward the exit of the lagoon. We started rowing hard but the tide kept pulling us out the inlet. The friend tried to use an oar to stop us but the old oar broke and next thing we knew we were out in the open ocean.

We used the one remaining oar to try to get back to land to no avail. Next thing we knew we were seeing a stove pipe type channel marker with the number 17 painted on the side of it. Later we learned that the 17 stood for 17 miles and marked a shipping channel. We tried to get to it but couldn't with one oar. When we looked at the island we only saw Bermuda when we crested a large wave. The old boat took on water and we used our tee shirts to bail. After we passed the channel marker we saw a freighter where one of the crew was using flags to signal us. They radioed the coast guard and when we saw the coast guard ship the guy who let us use his row boat had a power boat and got to us first and towed us back to safety.

Being caught would be a court martial offense and my barracks buddies helped me peel my tee shirt off and treated my raw back so I could continue to work. We escaped detection but my back took quite a while to heal. I was so grateful to my flight members for getting me through the efforts to discover who went to sea in a rowboat but unfortunately I was called Popeye the rest of my time on the island. Had that freighter not spotted us I expect we would have become a statistic. I am a good swimmer but 17+ miles was way beyond my ability.