UPSIE, or "Our Friends Press Their Luck" (2023, July 4)
- kenyon sprague
- Jul 7, 2023
- 12 min read
Many is the time, after having truthfully and accurately recounted the substance of a Sprague Vacation,™ that an anxious looking listener has commented, “my, what a disaster.” This response has always puzzled us, as right up to that point, we were thinking that we’d had a great time (though perhaps not the one we planned). Apparently, some folk seem to think that the only good vacation is a calm and predictable one. While I won’t deny that there’s some appeal in the concept of having received good service and a properly mixed drink while on holiday, I do question how memorable that experience might be. I am here hypothesizing that the inclusion (during one’s travels) of an UPSIE, or UnPlanned Stress-Inducing Event (Lori prefers the "oopsie" pronunciation over the "yoopsie" variant), can provide several advantages in causing one’s trip to remain easily recalled…. surely a positive outcome, wouldn’t you agree?
Since I’m already rolling, Hypothesis #2 is that experiencing an UPSIE, as opposed to an out-and-out disaster, tragedy, or death, may well be positively correlated with having favorable recollections of a trip or vacation. If the UPSIE resolves itself, then no harm, no foul, and the memories eventually (depending on recovery time) become golden.
So… last year our Ann Arbor friends JimO and Kat visited us while we were on our Mackinaw City trip in July. They brought their puppy and we all apparently had a good time (see Under the Bridge for proof). There were few mechanical failures of note, weather was unremarkable, and I don’t recall getting lost. All in all, without checking last year’s notes, I’m not sure what really happened other than vague recollections that fun had been had. There had been no UPSIEs. That may have encouraged JimO and Kat to press their luck and try to visit us again this year and also explains why I forgot the whole trip. We’ll see if that happens again.
Thursday, June 29. The ominous foreboding prior to this trip was all about me this time. While at a nice after-hours work event, I suddenly got chilled – an unusual sensation for me. I drove home pretty much immediately, and took a long nap. I woke long enough to take a COVID test (negative) and went back to sleep after vaguely promising Lori that I’d get up extra early to pack so that we could still leave at dawn and beat JimO and Kat to Escanaba (hereafter, Esky).
Friday, June 30. I didn’t get up early. We got on the road about an hour after JimO and Kat. Neither one of us did a very good job of packing, but we did succeed at filling the car with stuff that looked useful. The drive north actually went pretty well, Lori drove the entire way because I was still periodically shivering under a blanket and working on Free Body Diagrams over the phone with our intern regarding a piece of furniture that had tipped over in Biloxi. The Mighty Mac bridge was essentially invisible due to the thick smoke from the Canadian wildfires – is this another omen?
Since JimO and Kat were intentionally dawdling, we beat them to Esky by an hour and treated ourselves to a nap before they showed up. Lori’s was an hour, mine was about 4. I was increasingly fuzzy and feverish and tried to essentially quarantine myself onboard as much as practical, this was rapidly turning into an UPSIE (#1) for all of us. I slept hellishly that night, lots of fever dreams, couldn’t get enough oxygen, not sure if it was the smoke, or my own lungs.
Saturday, July 1. I woke feeling exhausted, but convinced myself I was more functional. We walked over to the Escanaba Yacht Club annual fundraiser Brunch, which was excellent, though a bit tricky for JimO to piece together the vegetarian option. Our local friend Mike was there, intent on getting us plugged into Esky high-society. He campaigned for us to join some Esky boats that were sailing up to Gladstone the next day to do some drinking. We agreed in principle, and I hustled back to the boat to attempt to get son Kent’s present to me installed and functioning in time for the town’s big fireworks event.
Kent had procured for me (and told me not to ask too many questions) a set of 40 fully programmable full-RGB DMX “festoon lights.” Kent promised me that this string of lights, if installed properly, could be programmed to do amazing displays and elicit gasps of wonderment from anyone within 3 miles with clear sightlines. After the lights, he told me I needed a black DMX controller box to drive them, and then hit up my MasterCard one more time for a smaller yellow box, that he assured me was what I really needed to fulfill my nautical-theatrical production fantasies. Besides, he got all this stuff for me at a “used-product” discount from recently closed-out shows. What could go wrong?
In this case, nothing. Kent had set down with me in a hotel room in Chicago a few weeks back, and programmed 6 of the 10 slots with interesting moving light programs, all using a borrowed laptop and without seeing the lights themselves. Despite his blind programming, most of the modules worked fine, and several of them worked great. I got them all running on the boat, noted the good programs, and took another nap.
I was awakened by several stern looking individuals who were essentially demanding that I demonstrate to them that I wasn’t actively dying. The required proof involved going with them to the local brewpub (Escanaba’s Upper Hand Brewery) and looking like I was enjoying a beer. They all enjoyed the beer, but I doubt that I was that convincing, especially when I asked them to swing by a drug store so I could check my vitals. My PulseOx was low, my BP, temperature and resting pulse were high, so I called my doctor. He said I probably wasn’t dying and that the fever ought to break soon. JimO and Kat were checking hotel availability, but didn’t bail yet on us ‘cause they felt sorry for Lori.
At sunset, I fired up Kent’s programs, and fed their output full-bore to whoever was watching. The locals got to see rainbow popcorn effects, strobes, color chasing, calm tasteful sequences, interesting patterns, red/white/blue patriotic themes as well as a bunch of random effects for good measure. Esky got their fireworks going right on time, and we again had the longest, most satisfying final horn blast to salute the grand finale. Satisfaction level=high.
At about 10:45, we took an afterglow stroll, and about got knocked into the water by three Sheriff’s deputies sprinting to their boat at the end of A-dock. They went tearing out of the harbor with their searchlight dancing over the water. A bit later, same thing happened with the DNR boat, and a little after midnight, a USCG helicopter was over the harbor and north with its searchlight, and presumably its IR imaging camera. We learned later that a dude fell off his boat 5 miles north, the boat on autopilot kept going till it hit the Esky city dock, waking his girlfriend sleeping below decks. A fatality during the fireworks would definitely be an UPSIE (#2), but not of our direct making. We retired not knowing his fate.
Sunday, July 2. I mostly felt better. Maybe I’m cured? Assuming I was, we prepared to leave for Gladstone. I noticed that my ankle was sore, but didn’t think much of it. Departure went fine, we were following Rubber Ducky, a very slow and squat motorsailer, and were followed by Hoopla, a fast 30’ racing sloop with 7 people aboard. We learned that the guy that fell off his boat swam to shore after 2 hours in the bay, arriving naked but alive. Everyone was real happy to hear that, because none of us wanted to be looking for a floater while heading north to Gladstone. We all are still wondering if his relationship with his girlfriend was going to survive the event.
There was medium wind, so we slowed enough that the sailboats could pass us as they tacked. It was fun to have them cut close by our bow and stern. Once we got to Gladstone (only about an hour), we anchored just offshore of the Gladstone Yacht Club, ‘cause their little harbor doesn't have any slips big enough for Perseverance. The Hoopla hove alongside our boat, and all 5 of us achieved a successful boat-to-boat transfer in mild seas. We got ferried into the harbor, leaving the Perseverance calmly on the hook, but where we could see her while drinking.
The Esky Yacht Club is a pretty simple 1000 sqft plain building set up like a midwestern church dining hall with kitchen. It has some neat historical photos on the walls, and concentrates on a few annual benefits and sponsoring its small but enthusiastic sail racing community. The Gladstone Yacht Club is all about drinking. Nice location, good view, and a no-nonsense roomy horseshoe bar with a dangerously competent barkeep. They were pretty strict about their no-dog policy though, so Bella had to give us lots of walks (I especially admired the Gladstone Log-Rolling practice facility off their lagoon) so that JimO and Kat could tag in to do their fair share of drinking.
We reversed the process to go home, only difference is that the sailboats were using spinnakers or running wing-and-wing before the north breeze, and we didn’t wait around for them much. We did, however, perform the obligatory close pass where the captain on the Hoopla chucked me a beer while underway. I successfully caught it from the aft deck (one handed, natch), and started to chug it, but realized he’d thrown me a real nasty extra-dark non-alcoholic. I hid my disgust, and fed the rest of it to the walleye once we’d gotten far enough away so that nobody could see me dumping it.
I finally roll down my sock to inspect my ankle. Damn. Looking like UPSIE (#3). Inexplicably horribly discolored outboard left malleolus. Exquisitely sensitive, hurts when loaded, hurts when poked, swollen, tight, tender. I haven’t seen something on my leg that looks this bad since stopping a 90mph line-drive with my shin a few years back. But I didn’t get hit! Looked for puncture marks from a spider or rattlesnake, nothing. Beats me, I rolled up my sock, and docked the boat back at Esky.
Davi and Lauren were there waiting for us having just driven down from the Keweenaw. I was adjusting docking lines and we were about all to greet each other when I heard a bunch of squawking/splashing and hollering near the boat’s entry gate. Suspecting, but not sure, I lurched up the side deck and grabbed a boathook, with which I knew I could easily snag the handle on to top of Bella’s doggie life vest that she had been wearing ALL DAY LONG. By the time I got to the area of the dock with all the loudest thrashing, I just leaned on my boathook and watched. Kat had immediately jumped into the water after her puppy, who had just shed her doggie life vest 1 minute earlier. Kat is a strong and experienced swimmer, and had her puppy in a Red Cross approved cross-chest side stroke tow that would have gotten an “A” from my old life-saving instructor. Bella was pretty calm, with her head well above water as Kat stroked towards the swim ladder just forward of the bow of the Perseverance. Neither of them ever got any closer than 40 yards from the sign warning of electrocution hazard from swimming, so that was apparently no danger. Shortly everybody was hauled out and flopping around as they wished. Davi strolled over to Kat, handed her glasses back and gave her a big wet hug. Kat concentrated on driving her pulse rate back into the green zone, and Bella was happily sniffing the shrubberies. UPSIE (#4) initiated and completed before any of us knew what had hit us.
UPSIE (#5) followed immediately as my dripping (from hugging the puppy rescuer) Davi informed me that “someone” had failed to pack Lauren’s luggage into their car 3 hours ago, and that Lauren was now a tad bit unhappy at having no clothes or toiletries. Lori got to work on defusing that matter through a combination of sharing her wardrobe and a quick trip to town for remaining necessities. Also, both Davi and Lauren had the hungry grumpies and were in danger of becoming hangry. Lori ordered pizza.
UPSIE (#6) followed hard on the heels of a very nice pizza dinner on the grass with me soaking my left foot in a stylish mop bucket full of ice water. Jim-O had just brought in the very last chair from the picnic setup when a still-flustered Kat announced something like “I left my wedding ring on the arm of the folding chair at dinner.” To which JimO responded something like “%$#@*&.” Now, my hearing is not great anymore, and JimO doesn’t really curse, so he actually probably said “no problem, I’ll promptly locate that in the fading evening light by dead reckoning my way back to the position in this featureless grass field where we were approximately eating.”
Regardless of whatever JimO may have said or not said, he actually did find Kat’s (very beautiful) ring in the grass before I was able to limp my way over with flashlights or retrieve our emergency metal detector from the engine room (don’t laugh, we use it all the time when we forget where we parked our boat in a crowded harbor, it picks out our steel hull from all the fiberglass ones in a Jiffy). Kat promptly resumed efforts at calming down her pulse again and may have had another drink.
Monday, July 3. JimO & Kat left in the morning to take their dog to nearby Kitchitikippi state park where you can ride a giant raft over a ginormous clear spring to look at giant brown trout. Our activities back at the boat were mostly domestic maintenance items, but we got some satisfactory work done. Davi and I launched the dinghy and confirmed that the outboard was running well. I returned the ramp that JimO had borrowed from the water plant construction site after UPSIE #4, and we deployed Kent’s lights with a tension modification by Lauren to make them compatible with a rotating radar bar. I spotted the Delta County Sheriff coming in and told him of our plan to operate Kent’s (patriotic) lights while underway at night. I got read back the actual lighting regulations (straight out of the USCG COLREGS book Ella gave me), but there was an asterisk somewhere that seemed to permit such operation on July 4 if we were otherwise in good standing and ship shape.
Tuesday, July 4. We decided to tow the dinghy back up to Gladstone because it was a short distance, and we were pretty sure we were going to be using it up there. We ran it out at the end of about 40’ of line, and it tracked quite nicely at 6.5 knots. Arriving noonish, we were the first boat to anchor off the beach, and got the hook set solidly in sand at about 12 feet in depth. As the wind increased, Davi launched our kite, which flew off the aft rail quite nicely for nearly 6 hours before the winds settled down. We got visited by both the DNR officer and the Sheriff’s boat, both looked us over and indicating at the lights, gave us a thumbs up. I had another visit by a guy on a jet ski who told me that he’d worked on building Perseverance with the Nesses, and also had participated in the epic scow towing adventure in 10’ seas 20 years back.
I sent everybody else out on the away party to check out Gladstone on foot, I stayed to make sure the boat didn’t drift as we were now amidst some serious whitecaps. Once the dinghy was back, we hoisted it back onto the deck for the return trip. Lori then challenged me to jump in the water and swim around the boat, a task shamefully not accomplished during our 2 previous seasons. She guilted me into it, and the water was actually pretty nice. We dried off quickly in the wind, but we both agreed that the “swim ladder” built into the hull of the Perseverance is only usable by very strong and agile persons… we need to find a better rope ladder solution to make it easier to clamber onboard from the water.
Once the sun had set, we ran through all the light programs, ending up on the patriotic one. The Gladstone fireworks were maybe a B-, but our lights and final horn blast were easily an A. The anchor came up easily by hand, and Lori waited for all the go-fast boats to clear out before we pointed south to follow their wakes. We ran the light program the whole way back, hopefully a great sight for all the cars streaming out of Gladstone and driving on the state highway parallel to us as they were all returning home to Esky. The full moon rose during our return transit. We tucked back into our wall slot at midnight just in front of an amusingly named sailboat from Chicago called “Spork.”
Wednesday, July 5. We all slept in, rained on and off all day. I think Lori still had a nice birthday. We had a nice taco dinner, took a walk over to see the damage on the “Tip Sea II” (crunched fiberglass around the bowsprit, this was the boat the guy fell off of, now docked 100 yards from us), and fed extra cake to the crew of the Spork before bed.
Thursday, July 6. Davi and Lauren returned north, leaving me to consult with medical professionals about my still angry looking ankle. The Esky hospital says I don’t have a bloodclot, leaving “spurious infection” as the remaining suspect, so I’ve started my antibiotics.
Conclusion: Not yet determined. JimO and Kat experienced six UPSIEs on their vacation with us, a large number. But four of the UPSIEs were simply adjacent to them (Man Overboard, forgotten luggage, twin JKS medical issues) and may have caused them lesser amounts of experienced stress. The fact that they were direct contributors to two of the bigger ones (Dog Overboard, lost wedding ring) may have an interesting effect on their likelihood of a return. Fortunately, 5 of the 6 UPSIEs have already resolved satisfactorily, if not advantageously.
UPSIE Description Resolution
1 JKS Virus Survived, did not infect others – no benefit
2 M.O.B. Guy swam to shore – great story
3 JKS Ankle Still Pending… (- no anticipated benefit)
4 D.O.B. Dog and Kat both survived, no injuries – great story
5 No Luggage Borrow/resupply – slight inconvenience, good co-operation
6 Lost Ring Found. Enhanced appreciation.
So… we will test these hypotheses in a spell to see if the UPSIEs enhanced or detracted from the vacation experience, and in either case, whether they increased recollection. We do this for science.
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