Man Found Dead in Marsh

by Jim Hollinger

Illustration Joseph Buchanan

Chincoteague is a barrier island just off Virginia’s eastern shore, the narrow portion of the so-called Delmarva Peninsula. For centuries, Native Americans hunted and fished the large area they called Gingoteague, which today includes Chincoteague and Assateague Islands. Chincoteague supports a small quaint town, while Virginia’s Assateague consists of a national refuge that protects wildlife, bird migrations, and accommodates herds of wild horses which have been there since the seventeen-hundreds. The indians are gone, but clean tidewaters still support shellfish harvesting.

Boats may be seen in every other Chincoteague backyard. Seaworthy boats will venture out the Chincoteague Inlet for ocean fishing. Larger boats may cruise the Intracoastal Waterway through Chincoteague Bay, west of the island. Sometimes deep keels become temporarily stuck. Regularly, 100-foot-plus trawlers and draggers come in from the ocean to unload and lay over at the town waterfront.

Kayak paddling between the islands and through the marshes is popular and attracts great human migrations especially during summer months. Sailboats are rarely seen, but old photographs reveal a one time large dependency upon them. Sailing canoes, sadly, may be on the way out.

Three hours ago I started a simple cruise onto Chincoteague’s Oyster Bay. The motivation to do this began even earlier when I was standing by the bay, coffee in hand, hypnotized by a gentle east wind which was blowing ripples in my direction. Each tiny wave reflected the golden morning sun. I was seduced by it and knew I had to go sailing this day.

Water and sunshine still raise lively feelings within me, but truth be known, I no longer sail as I once did. Age is more than a number, but at 84, I sometimes feel old, over-conservative and over-cautious. And there are other small details in the picture I wish I could ignore: balance, sight, stamina, plus other ailments I try to forget. Many things I forget without trying.

My other boat, the West Wight Potter-19, has remained on its trailer for the past two years. I’m less confident sailing it single-handed as I once did. With a daggerboard in shallow water, it requires attention and effort. “Sell it, Dad,” my kids say. But they live many miles inland and just don’t get the lure of the seas. I cannot bring myself to give up the Potter. One day I may have a spurt of youthfulness, and will badly crave getting well out beyond the grip of land.

There is a man, possibly my age, I don’t really know, who lives near a small town on the west side of the Delmarva Peninsula, next to the Chesapeake Bay. He has retired a small cabin sailboat to his front yard where he can gaze past the mast to the restless bay waters beyond. The boat sits in high grass, tilted as if still heeling. With winds blowing the grass, and clouds scuttling overhead, the boat often appears to be moving. The man may dream he is still out there. Dreams are important to old men. Even the Bible says old men shall dream their dreams.

Canoe sailing from my house, on the other hand, is easy. I can slip the canoe off the dock and into the water with lee boards and rudder already in place. Then the two-piece mast with sail can be plugged in from dock level. The canoe is ready to go. I toss in bottled water, float-cushions, a long paddle and a bailing can. Also, some cordage for emergency, and boots—when I remember them—in case I want to slop around in the shallows. Personal attire is sunglasses and an old straw hat. I give little thought to survival needs. After all, bay watermen are known for saying, if you really get stuck out there, you can always walk in for a sandwich.

Age has made me careless, but coffee makes me overconfident, and today the float plan formed quickly in my mind: I’ll sail from my house which borders Oyster Bay, and with a mild southeast wind on my port beam I’ll head toward Assateague Island, passing through Morris Island Creek and onto the Assateague Channel. Then heading south on a usable wind and a departing tide, I’ll travel the length of Morris Island, steer clear of the large south-end marshes to enter another pass-through, returning back to Oyster Bay and to my home where I will clean up and then drive to Margaret’s for my day’s reward of supper. It was easy. I had done it all before. Yet there could be a little problem with this final pass-through: In bucking the late tide. I could risk being late for supper.

Putting the concerns of time aside, I sailed out on a good breeze. Clearing Morris Island, and at about 100 yards off Assateague Island, I held up in the wind, looking for wild horses on the refuge shore. Occasionally I have spotted a group, always a harem of one stallion with mares, part of the larger herd, cavorting in the shallows. Had they been there, I would have lingered to watch. They were not. I turned back to the east side of Morris Island to take a look at the several derelict water shacks rotting there, and to poke into the clear shallow pools within the adjacent marsh. Sugar Shacks, the old hunters called them. Asked why, the answer usually was, “You could take your sugar out there, and you know...” concluded with a body gesture. The Sugar Shacks much more frequently lodged fowl-hunting parties, but had been condemned by government in an act to preserve and extend Assateague Island as a preserve for all game—except the human game. The shallow pools are navigable by shallow draft vessels only, the beauty of kayak or canoe. My sailing canoe with pop-up lee boards and rudder can go most anywhere a six- inch depth is available.

Oyster Bay and the Assateague channel do not provide great sailing in the usual sense. There is little charm there for owners of larger boats. There are many shoals, clam beds and oyster rocks. “Rocks,” the name given to the build-up of shell, often over many years, that can result in a hard blow to boat bottom or motor prop. The local crab and shell fishermen refer to the bay as skinny water, which you to learn to know by venturing out on a low tide to see where the deeper tide channels actually exist. The only waterway marks are an occasional sapling or PVC pipe spiked in the mud to indicate a shoal or to provide a visual target, something to aim for. If motoring, your advantage would be in using a fisherman’s crab pot floats as a guide, or better yet, follow him in his daily course. It’s hard to believe that schooners once found their way from the Atlantic ocean to Deep Hole, a harbor for the earliest settlers and still the informal name for the earliest settlement on Chincoteague.

Both Chincoteague and sister island Assateague, are coastal barrier islands, sandbars, largely formed by storms, and which remain vulnerable to storms. Chincoteague is believed to have formed over 2000 years ago. Assateague, the newer island on the ocean side, receives the brunt of storms, and tends to migrate to the south and west due to sand erosion by wind and water, and the redepositing of sands at extreme margins. An intracoastal waterway is still usable west of the barrier islands from Ocean City Inlet to the Chincoteague Inlet. For 65-miles south of Chincoteague to Cape Charles, the Inside Passage as it was once known, is hopelessly lost within a maze of huge marshes. Shoals and lack of funding for maintenance has rendered Charts and navigational aids useless.

But now, this day, I had been careless in spending my time in explorations. I arrived at the big marshes at the south end of Morris Island later than I had planned. I did not want to be late for Margaret’s offer of a good supper, but a solution was still at hand. I had not told Margaret that I would be doing a random sail this afternoon. She would be expecting me to come driving my car. But if delayed, I could simply sail directly to her house, also on the bay, eliminating driving time. Appearing on her dock unannounced, I might be viewed as an unwashed waterman, but over a couple of her special rum drinks, and after I regaled her with tales of adventures on the water, I should be warmly received. This possibility should have been discussed beforehand—unfortunately it wasn’t. But the dear friend is a widow, and as I am a widower, we do share some affinities, and sometimes even tolerance for shortcomings—usually mine.

Rounding the very large south-end marsh toward the pass-through, and still thinking ahead, another shortcut came to mind: My tidal advantage was near an end, and the pass-through current at this stage would be against me. I remembered a gut that crossed through the marsh, one which I had used once before. It was wide enough, I recalled, so that I had even partially sailed through it. Its snake-like convolutions required some extra paddle power, but once through it, I would be back in Oyster Bay and reasonably close to my destination. However, the problem in locating a gut has always been in finding its entrance. There are no markers. And at the narrow end, the one I was seeking, the opening would probably not be seen unless I came directly upon it. But I saw an opening that had some promise. It appeared narrower than I remembered, but it was floatable and I believed it might provide a through passage.

With the wind dead-astern, the sailing canoe was easily nosed into the marsh gut. Sitting cushioned on the canoe bottom, my body weight was the necessary ballast, but high marsh grass at either side limited my view, and the curving waterway revealed less than 30 feet ahead. It all was shaping up like a mystery tunnel in a theme park. It was not a Tunnel of Love. We moved forward.

Usually I’m not morbid in my adventures, but I was feeling vulnerable; getting a bit tired, the sky was darkening and a number of doubts were entering my mind. One that amused me could have been expressed in capital letters: MAN FOUND DEAD IN MARSH! Ha, ha. With no one to hear, I laughed out loud. What a great headline for the Chincoteague Island Beacon! It was the kind of excitement we islanders lived for. And being a free advertiser-newspaper, everyone would be grabbing double copies! Ha, ha.

Well into exploration, my hopes began to fade when I found the lee boards had begun to collect grass. The dropping tide occasionally had the aluminum canoe bottom screeching on clam shells, and the hull was bumping on oysters bedded at the sides. I was regretting I hadn’t brought boots. I might have waded forward to look for improvement, but with sandals, the uncertain depth, suction of the muck and sharp broken clam shells, my bare feet would be at risk. Using the long paddle for support, I stood up in the canoe for the view ahead.. A couple stabs of pain reminded me of my arthritic knees, and I could only see a narrowing width in the curving waterway. It was discouraging, but turning the canoe around now was out of the question. I could no longer stay the course. I sat down and, remaining calm, tried to logically think my way out of the problem. The earlier jokey thought, about a man being found dead in the marshes, came to mind in an unfunny way.

In this new situation, the once friendly wind had become a foe. I tried to drop the sail but the hoops were binding to the mast under sail pressure. Standing up close to the mast for support, I clawed them down, one at a time; they had always been too tight. Then I sat down, gathered the sail and boom, and using the sheet, secured the bundle to a thwart. I could see I was going to need as much clear space as possible for movement forward and aft.

The next problem was the rudder. It was hinged to pop up, but was now securely planted in mud. I had never imagined the need for manually raising it. I had to shimmy out over the small triangle of deck to lift it out of the mud, and to secure it with my emergency twine. There was little chance of tipping the canoe over as the lee boards were also now seriously stuck in the mud. Bending over, I worked them free, raising each to a vertical position, and hand-tightened the nuts to hold them. It was strenuous. I had to sit and regain some energy. Was I getting paranoid or was my time really running out?

Standing, I used the paddle to push and pull against the mud bottom, and against the more solid sides of the gut, first one side, then the other. To keep the canoe movement balanced, every effort from one side required a counter effort from the opposite side. Every effort to move the canoe in reverse direction was difficult, and progress was short, tedious and tiring.

Finally, I got the canoe back to the original gut width. We were now floating freely but there was no possibility for a turnaround. I needed to back- paddle an additional 50 to 75 feet. Getting beyond the obstruction of the grass at last, I released the rudder and leeboards to the water and scraped off the mud using hands and paddle. Then I unleashed the sail and raising it to the wind, guided the canoe to the pass-through. The outgoing tide was close to ending, and was somewhat being equalized and subdued by incoming currents. This was a relief because with the channel so convoluted, the sail would only be productive for a limited part of the course. Near exhaustion, but with the best strokes I could muster, we finally reached Oyster Bay.

In sight of Margaret’s dock, I could see she was waiting there with binoculars, flashlight and a towel. “I guess I’m late,” I yelled ahead, still pressing into the paddle for the last few yards to the dock.

“Well, I was sure you’d forgot,” she said. “I should have known it could only be you messing around out there in that damned marsh.” I was trying to get my mind around the story I needed tell her, and still had to pull the canoe up onto a mud embankment because the dock was just too high to be easy. With no apparent sympathy, she flicked the flashlight on, picked up a nearby hose, and did some brusque water shots at the mud on my feet. I can appreciate the feminine touch, but this didn’t seem to be it. “I’m going inside,” she said, “ the news is on.”

Many minutes later we sat on the sofa holding hands, and stared at the action on TV. With a pathetically pale rum drink and my bare feet on the coffee table, I could see that little had changed in the world situation; leaning back, I found there were better images in my head, including a reverie of how it all could have been done differently—plus some thoughts of the future, which included buckets of clams and oysters. Still later I awoke to someone roughly shaking my shoulder. “You’ve been snoring,” she said. “Supper’s ready.” •SCA•

For years, Jim Hollinger wrote instructions for the big boats, including aircraft carriers. Finding he had become a virtual large-craft advisor, he had to “jump ship” in order to write about canoe sailing, and that no prior experience could help an old man stuck in the marsh.

(As first appeared in issue #94)