It’s only a F’ing Wind—famous Last Words (almost).

(Excuse my f’ing prudishness, but some office computers reject the language of sailors).

After my first couple of winters in Canada I got to thinking—when falling leaves began threatening my Australian bones—what the hell am I doing up here?

So I packed my bags and headed for Florida.

I ended up in Coconut Grove, South Miami, where I managed to get a job as a sailing instructor at an outfit called Biscayne sailboats—owned by an eccentric old salt by the name of Alan Bliss.

Captain Bliss

Sailing was anything but blissful though at the Bliss establishment. Why the Coastguard didn’t condemn his entire fleet remains a mystery to me to this day. Almost every voyage involved a breakage of some kind.

One afternoon Alan, a couple of his cronies and me were standing on the dock swapping stories and quaffing beers. Business was slow because the weather appeared a little threatening, with the sky gray and scowly.

As we looked out across the bay, a ridge in the clouds developed a kind of tail that slowly extended itself down to the water and started coming toward us. “Waterspout!” Alan exclaimed, grabbing his cash box. “Let’s get out of here.”

Never having seen the likes of this before, I was curious. While the other three ran for Alan’s car, I held back.

“It’s a f’ing tornado,” Alan yelled. “Get in the car!”

With no experience of tornado’s before, I yelled back, “It’s only f’ing wind.”

Alan jumped into the car and sped off.

In front of the dock was a bunch of moored sailboats, the nearest perhaps 100 feet away. Behind them stretched a low island covered in scraggly Australian pines.

Path of the Waterspout

The waterspout appeared to be attracted to things that stuck out of the water. When it reached the island it paused to thrash around and uproot most of the trees, sending branches flying up into the air amidst clouds of sand.

It was then I realized that this was no ordinary wind.

Having virtually leveled the island, the tornado went on to attack the moored vessels—fixed keel boats of around thirty feet in length—instantly turning all of them over onto their beam ends and sinking about a third of them.

It was then I realized I should have gone with Alan.

Fortunately for me, the monster spied more attractive prey further up the dock. As I watched, it pounced on a two-storied houseboat of around forty feet in length. Plucking it rather delicately from between two other boats it sucked it some fifty feet into the air where it twirled it around a few times. Tiring of this sport, it dropped the unfortunate vessel sideways onto a wooden piling which skewered the thing right through.

When the spout moved off in search of other mischief, I ran up the dock to see if anyone was inside the houseboat. As it turned out there wasn’t. But a rather confused-looking German Shepherd poked its head out through a shattered window.

Amazingly, the two boats on either side of the houseboat suffered little damage.

The bay ended up covered with debris from wrecked vessels and it wasn’t long before small boats of all descriptions ventured out in search of treasures. As they picked through the wreckage, some wag on shore yelled, “It’s coming back!”

Well, you should have seen the thrashing of oars and paddles. The water was churned white.

I watched one guy desperately trying to get his small outboard started. He’d obviously left it in gear and was too panicked to take the time to put it in neutral. He must have propelled himself some twenty feet by pulling on the starter cord before the engine kicked in. 

Edited by Davina