PELE

When I hauled out over at Southpoint back in May  there was a vagabond steel sailboat lying against the haul out dock. White in color, some of the paint was flaking off, leaving splotches of red primer underneath. At first I thought it might be a worldly tramp, the salty survivor of storms and stories, until I began to look closer and started noticing the odd lines, not quite right, the haphazardly rigged stick, and the lack of deck gear. The name Pelé was scrawled across the bow and stern as if painted in afterthought, without template or benefit of straightedge. Sort of like poorly done graffiti on the wall of a filthy restroom in Matamoros.

I was curious about this boat, and later found out from my friends Kay and Jimmy (Bueno Bye) that it belonged to a rather eccentric individual who had welded it together in his backyard in Edinburg Texas. Jimmy told me that the boat had no interior, no head and no engine….it was simply a gutted hull. He also told me that the owner was stone crazy, and talked about taking it on an around the world circumnavigation.

For many months, Pelé lay along the dock there at Southpoint, until I assume the owner ran out of money to continue paying the rent.

Then one day, we noticed Pelé sitting on a very shallow part of the Laguna Madre called Mexiquito Flats. Years ago, while fishing from a shallow draft skiff in the ankle deep water of Mexiquito I had the unnerving experience of helping  guide a big old Chris Craft cabin cruiser to deeper water through the maze of barely discernable deeper water that drains this tabletop. The yuppies that had mistakenly run up there were grateful that their mistake had been resolved without incident. Boats drafting more than about six inches just don’t get into this area on purpose…..and so I wondered how Pele came to end up there.

The last time I saw Noe from Fish Tales, he told me that the guy had charged out of Deadpecker Hill at the Port Isabel Y under full canvas, having never even sailed anything before, just kept blasting northeast till he finally grounded out……

When I saw the boat, the canvas was tied sloppily to the boom, jib strewn in a heap on the foredeck. A little punt was tied to the stern, and it looked as if a head were just visible above the water doing something to the hull…..

A couple of weeks ago we had our first heavy norther move through the area accompanied by wind gusts over fifty. The wind and water rise from the storm broke Pelé free, unseated her anchor and pushed the derelict across the bay, snapping off the poorly stepped mast in the process.

It came to rest just south of the Coast Guard base on the edge of the channel that runs along the west side of South Padre Island, mast jutting down into the depths. We’re constructing a boat ramp facility just south of that, and the guys doing the work told me that he came in one day in the little punt to go uptown for whatever it is that he does, just grinning from ear to ear. Said that riding out the blow was “fun”.

I believe I would’ve used other adjectives.

I noticed today that he had somehow managed to get the mast to the shoreline of the Coast Guard property, where it lays subjected to inundation at high tide. I wonder why he didn’t haul it just a little bit further inland to terra firma, but obviously it’s a question I won’t ask.

So for the time being, Pelé clocks around on its poorly set anchor, it’s captain generally ashore doing god-knows-what, rotting punt tied to the mast, a disorderly conglomeration of cables, wires and line.

I’m pretty sure that his circumnavigation plans might be on hold till he figures out how to restep the mast. At least he’s one step closer to the outlet of the jetties and freedom. One thing’s for sure; 

This story is far from over.