The Sub

Barbara and I were married and ready to have our second child. I was attending my senior year at the University of Loma Linda studying physical therapy, and I was thirty one. Barbara was working as an R.N. doing Private duty. We were buying a small house and had very little money to spend. One of my professors was a physicist. It was close to my graduation time and the Seventh Day Adventist Professor told me he needed to sell his ford station wagon. He said he hated to sell the car because it was a very good car. He said he had used the car to take his family on short drives and that it always ran perfectly. He said he would sell the car to me cheap. I said I was too short of cash to buy it. He went to the Loma Linda Bank of America and they loaned me the money giving me credit on my name only. I was happy to get the car because there was plenty of room for my two children and all the stuff we might need to carry.

He had recently built a sixteen foot outboard and wanted me to buy it because he knew I loved to skin dive in the ocean. He showed me how he had used plywood to build the boat with waterproof compartments. He said the compartments would keep the motorboat from sinking even in a rough ocean storm. It was an open boat with no cover, and he was very proud of the boat he had designed and built in his back yard. He had used his skill as a physics teacher to design and build the boat. It was extra wide and the bottom was an inverted V shape to allow water to pass through to the heavy outboard motor behind. The doctor of physics told me it would pull a skier more than thirty miles an hour. He said you could stand on the side of the deck, and it would not tip over. He said he was only willing to sell it cheap to me because he was too old to use it.

I told my four younger brothers about this safe and powerful outboard, and they decided to help me buy it. We intended to use it for water skiing and fishing, and we bought it just before I graduated and moved to Garden Grove. We brought it home and parked behind my mom’s house in Anaheim. When we tried the boat out at the ocean we noticed that it leaked water into the waterproof compartments. We positioned the boat so that most of the water would run out on the ground when we got home.

One day I decided to drive the boat from Long Beach to Catalina Island where my boss Mike Sulsona was camped out with his wife near the boy scout camp. It was foggy that morning, and I had forgotten to bring my compass. As we chugged out through the harbor Barbara felt seasick, and she took a pill that made her feel sleepy. The fog covered us and it started to rain, so Barbara covered her head with a blanket. She said, ‘”Lets turn back, John. We cannot see the island, and you don’t have a compass. You don’t even know where you are going, and it’s twenty six miles to Catalina. Besides, I feel sick from rocking around out here.”

I said, “Don’t worry, Barbara. I heard an airplane fly overhead. I know it is headed for Catalina, and we are going the same direction as the plane. Besides, I can see the angle of the wave swells coming toward us, so I know what direction we are going. If I angle the boat a little to the right of the swells we will head into the middle of the island. Don’t worry. I know how to find the place. When we get close enough to see Catalina I will head toward the north end to find the cove where Mike and Betty are camped. Just relax and let me handle this boat.”

I lit a cigarette and continued to speed about ten knots over the waves. The speed caused spray to fly in the air and some of the salt water came into the boat. I slowed down to five knots to keep Barbara from getting so wet. After a half hour I heard another airplane flying to Avalon and knew I was going in the right direction. After two hours we got rid of the fog and it stopped raining. But the boat was getting full of water in the waterproof compartments, and we were forced to slow down even more. I could reach over the side of the boat and drag my hand in the water. The water was almost high enough to spill into the interior and sink us. I could see the island. I threw my fishing line in the water and trolled behind the boat. Barbara was still sick and she didn’t know what was happening. I fished because I didn’t want to think about what was happening. Then we ran out of gas. I checked my extra tank. It had a hole in the bottom. All the gas had run out and spilled into the boat. It was a wonder my smoking hadn’t caused a fire. So, there we were drifting about a mile from Catalina. Luckily, Mike Sulsona my physical therapist boss was able to see us drifting. He drove out in his twenty five foot cabin cruiser, threw me a line and dragged us to the little cove. We lowered my anchor, threw our sleeping bags, food, skin diving equipment, and all our other gas soaked stuff in Mike’s dingy and rowed ashore.

That night we cooked the fish we had speared and other goodies on our camp fire. Mike had a ball making fun of me and named my boat The Submarine. He said it was lucky he happened to be looking out there in the water when we ran out of gas.

That night Barbara and I slept in my smelly gas soaked sleeping bag. The next day Mike was lucky and grabbed a couple of legal lobsters from under some rock ledges. I don’t eat lobsters, but everybody else did. I ate rock fish I had speared. We spent the rest of the weekend having a very good time, watching our campfire, and gazing at the stars at night. On Monday we packed everything in Mike’s boat and pulled my boat behind us. We drove home to Long Beach early in the afternoon, and my Sub floated all the way because we drove slowly. It took about four hours to cross the channel.

That was the last time I drove that boat to Catalina. However, we were able to use the boat for water skiing at back bay near Newport Beach. We also used it for skin diving at places like off the jetty point at Newport jetty. When the boat carried a lot of water, it lay low in the water making it easier for us to climb in and out of the water.

Not long after I graduated from college and went to work as a physical therapist I learned that the motor in my station wagon was worn out. I told a friend who had graduated a year before me He said he knew the professor and that he had heard the man complain many times about the trouble he had with the station wagon. I needed the car, so I bought a new motor for it.

I learned a lesson from the man who sold me the boat and the station wagon. Never trust a man because he is religious. From then on my brothers referred to our boat as The Submarine. We kept it for several years and actually had a lot of fun with it.