Triumph!

     The other day the doorbell rang and there was Tucker with a smile as wide as all outdoors.  He was holding something I thought at first glance to be a campaign sign.  It was the right shape and size – a long stick-like part and, on its end at right angles, a rectangular piece that should have had writing on it.  But it was blank and the whole thing was a little ‘off.’
     For just a moment I felt totally disoriented.  And then he said, “I found it!  I found the rudder!” and my view came back into focus.  This was the rudder that had come off his son Clark’s boat a few weeks back when the two were out sailing together.  Since then, Tucker had ‘walked the bay’ whenever he was here – searching, searching, searching.  Now, he had found it!
     Talk about the proverbial needle in the haystack!  Even though our tides are sometimes low enough that you can walk clear out to the channel a mile from shore, judging where something fell into the water is quite a trick.   Things look different when you’re wandering the bay at low tide – not at all the same view as from a boat when the tide is high.
     Tucker had gone out the very next day and looked, but the tide wasn’t terribly low.  Not to mention all the eel grass out there now.  Things can easily get covered up or camouflaged.  On the plus side, though – although the rudder blade, itself, is wood and might float away, the long metal piece that it is attached to is heavy.  Tucker was certain it was just lying there, if only he could find it.
     And he was right!  It was just about as far out as he had thought, but a little south of the area he had been concentrating on.  “And then I thought I saw a piece of something white,” he said.  “Could it be?  The closer I got to it, the more possible it looked.  And… there it was!  Just the tip of the blade showing through the mud and eel grass.”
     A new rudder costs $400; a used one about half that.  But I don’t think it was just saving the money that pleased Tucker so much.  It was that feeling that, against high odds, he had found the rudder!  He was at one with the bay.  “Bay Karma” his son calls it.