Coastal Event Memories

By

A. G. Kimbrough

Prologue
             

Chapter 1
             

Chapter 2
             

Chapter 3
             

Chapter 4
             

Chapter 5
             

Chapter 6
             

Chapter 7
             

Chapter 8
             

Chapter 9
             

Chapter 10
             

Chapter 12
             

Chapter 13
             

Chapter 14
             

Chapter 15
             

Chapter 16
             

Chapter 17
             

Epilog
             

The middle-aged woman opened a small drawer of a built-in cabinet. “Mom, what do you want to do with this old laptop?”

The older woman paused, and said, “Plug it in to see if it will still take a charge while we finish packing.”

Moving ashore, off the Wild Goose, after all these years, was hard. So many memories, of friends, lovers, children, and events filled her thoughts. It seemed like yesterday when her Dad took her by the hand and led her up the gangplank for the first time.

Her daughter placed the last box in the cart and turned on the laptop. “It still works!” She waited for Windows to open and looked at the screen.

“Is this your journal?” She asked.

Rebecca looked closely, and said “I haven’t done anything with it for years. I started it when we were driving out from North Carolina.”

“Mom, you have been worried about being bored, now that the Wild Goose is going to be scrapped. Please write your history. We have lots of records about the time before the Event, but no one in your generation has had time to record what happened since then.”

Rebecca protested that she is not a historian, her daughter countered with: “You are one of the last ones to have lived it. Your grandkids and the generations that follow need to know our heritage.

With a feeling of uncertainty, Rebecca agreed to start compiling her story.

The first memory of my Dad, Delbert Thompson, was a soldier, on crutches, who came to the door of our motel room. Mom’s current boyfriend answered the knock, and after a brief verbal confrontation, stood aside and Dad entered the room.

Mom was still in bed, and I stood beside her. She looked at me and said “Becky, this is your Daddy. He has come back from the war. I guess he is a hero, or something.”

That day was special. Dad took me on a ferry ride to Southport, and we ate hamburgers at little place in the harbor.

Over the next year, Dad took me every weekend for an adventure. He had a small apartment and worked as a cook on the night shift and a boat mechanic during the days.

I had just finished the first grade, and Dad was so proud when I graduated. He took me out for ice cream, and I almost forgot that Mom did not get up when it was time for me to go. When Dad brought me back to the motel Sunday night, no one would answer the door. After Dad got the manager to open it, he wouldn’t let me inside.

Our lives changed that day. Dad told me that Mom had been sick, and that she had passed away. We were the only one’s there for the brief service. Dad told me that it was time to move on and build a new life in California. We left the day after Mom’s service. Dad had an old blue van and it was crammed full with all our stuff.

The trip was long and mostly boring. Dad had loaded several books for me in his old laptop, and I quickly became immersed in the worlds that reading brought me.

Dad also showed me how to keep a diary on the laptop. He called it a journal, but I was happy to be able to record all of my private thoughts and feelings. I started writing a little bit every night before I went to bed.

Most of the time we would stay in campgrounds, where Dad would fix a tarp to the side of the van. We met a lot of interesting people. In Arizona, Dad helped an older guy fix the motor on his RV. The couple, Roger and Carol Dungan were nice and gave us some cookies. She gave Dad a card, and told him to give her a call when we were settled in Southern California.

When we finally arrived in Los Angeles, it was hot and smoggy. The next morning we drove on down to Long Beach, where it was overcast and nice and cool. Dad rented a small apartment and started looking for a job.

He went to work for a boat yard and I started the second grade that fall. One weekend, we went over to the Dungan’s condo in Seal Beach and had supper on their patio. The next weekend we returned except that Dad brought the food and cooked for us all. They had been on their first road trip in their RV when we met. They were getting ready to retire, and planed to spend a few years on the road in their RV.

That fall, they invited us to meet them at a beach campground to have Thanksgiving dinner. Dad agreed, if he could bring the turkey. When we arrived, there was another couple there. While Dad finished up with the food, I got acquainted with Doc Hanson and his wife June. They were about the same age as Roger and Carol, perfect for a precocious eight-year-old to be spoiled by.

On the way home, Dad told me that Carol had worked for the Doc for over 20 years, and that Doc was also retiring. He had ordered a big sailing yacht, and offered Dad a job. It would mean that we would live on the yacht, and sometime in the future, sail around the world on it. Dad would be responsible for maintenance and cooking, as the only full-time crewman.

We did not move aboard until the next Spring. The Wild Goose had been built in Korea, and sailed across the Pacific by a hired crew. It was immediately taken into a local yard for modifications and final fitting out. We had a cabin forward of the galley, and I even had my own tiny room.

Dad started home schooling me that fall, which was fine with me. The majority of the kids in my class had been Latino, and the Anglos had been frequently picked on. My red hair made me a usual target.

The next two years were terrific. The modifications to the Goose continued, we made several trips up and down the coast, and the next year, a run to Hawaii and back.  On most trips, Doc would have friends and family aboard. His Grandkids were about my age and we became good friends. Dad and I both took a SCUBA training program. He wanted to be able to clean the bottom of the Goose, and I wanted to be able to look close up at the fishes.

Doc was planning to depart on the round the world cruise in the fall of the next year. On one evening that summer I heard Doc talking to my Dad.

“I don’t know, the sunspot increases this year, the asteroid swarm close approach, the net bot predictions, the fat cats and bureaucrats building bunkers, the direct correlation between planetary alignments and big quakes, and the remote viewing predictions, all are indicating a major Coastal Event next year. I think we better get ready, just in case. If nothing happens, we can still make the world cruise, only a year later.”

My Dad agreed, and I was disappointed at the delay in my chance to see the world.

The Goose took another trip to the yard, and we lived in a motel for six months. During the spring of the following year, the holds were completely filled with lots of stuff that must have cost Doc a small fortune. The sunspot activities increased, and the Northern Lights were often visible in the sky of Southern California. Dad bought me a new laptop and I transferred all my Journal files to it.

Every night Dad would watch the news, and I could see that he was worried. The sunspot activities were still increasing and the asteroid swarm was still approaching. The “experts” were still predicting that it would safely miss the earth, although a few were saying that a few meteor strikes might occur on or around June 15
th
(Now called Day 0).

By June 10
th
the final supplies arrived and were stowed in the overloaded holds.

On June 13
th
, (now called Day –2), Doc arrived with all of his family, except his oldest daughter’s husband Eric Hall. He was on the Governor’s staff, and was still in Sacramento. We sailed that night out of Long Beach with 11 souls on board. They included: Dad and me, Doc and June, their oldest daughter April, her two boys Eric Jr. (my age), and Johnny (two years younger), their younger daughter Allison Jacobs, her husband Ben and their son Braxton (also my age), and daughter Heather (three years younger than me).

The sky that night looked like it was on fire, even through the overcast. April Hall had a call from her husband Eric, who told her that he would be waiting out the storm with the Governor, in a bunker under the Capital Building.

Doc set a course to put us over a hundred miles west of Catalina by the morning of the 15
th
  (Day 0). I remember even the satellite TV reception was noisy and hard to watch.

The next day (-1), we had to put all our electronic stuff, including my new laptop inside metal boxes. Dad even climbed the mast and took down the radar assembly. On the bridge, all the equipment was removed except a couple of boxes and one monitor. That afternoon all the sails were stowed, everything on deck was double strapped down, and two large sea anchors were set up on the bow.

That night, the Northern Lights were vivid colors and very bright. Every few minutes another shooting star would streak across the Southern sky. Around 2:00 AM, I was awakened by a loud crash, followed by heavy wave action. Dad told me it was just a meteor impacting a few miles away, He said to go back to bed, but I was too excited to sleep. I curled up with a blanket in a corner of the Bridge, where I would be out of the way, and still able to see everything.

The sun was not visible on the morning of the 15
th
(Day 0) It was dark and stormy, with bands of heavy rain showers. Dad said there were a couple of GPS satellites still working, and our system indicated a strong current was pulling the Goose Southwest at nearly 10 knots.

We were still monitoring the radio channels, but mostly static was all we were hearing. Throughout the day, the current and the wind increased. They started receding about 5:00 PM, and by 9:00 PM it was dead calm.

Around 11:00 PM, the current and wind direction changed to the Northwest. As both started to increase, Doc turned the bow into the wind and the two younger men set out the sea anchors.

By 6:00 AM, the wind was over 90 knots, the rain was a solid sheet of wind driven water, and the current drift was nearly 30 knots. The Goose groaned and shook as a multitude of waves crashed over the bow. We were taking on water, but the pumps were keeping up with it.

The fury continued for 48 hours before easing. As the wind and current died down, the rain continued harder then anyone one board had seen. The static had faded away, but we heard no transmissions on the radio.

Life on the Goose continued, we fixed meals, ate, cleaned up, tried to study, or amuse ourselves, and understand what had happened to our world. I think the adults, particularly Mrs. Hall, had it the hardest. We kids were confident that our parents would somehow make it all right.

The rain continued, and the GPS indicated that we were 400 miles West of San Francisco.  On August first (Day 48), Dad replaced the radar antenna, and set the jib. We slowly started making our way East.