While So Long bobbed at anchor on Long Island Sound, a cell of hot air down in the Caribbean was fixing to make a name for itself as Hurricane Cleo, a storm with 160 mph winds and no intention of making landfall.

Cleo, So Long and I met 50 years ago, and only one of us survived. With the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina upon us, and many cities evacuating to avoid Hurricane Gustav, it seemed a good time to tell the story.

HAL WEIDNERThe vessel So Long, before she was sent to the depths by hurricane Cleo's waves and wind.

So Long had seen 20 years of hard service as a Norwegian pilot cutter before she came to the States. In July of 1958, she was anchored near Northport Yacht Club on Long Island Sound. Her owner, a Norwegian named Ruddy, had been trying without luck to sell her. I had worked at the yacht club for several years to stay near the water. Raised in the Midwest, salt water was a case of love at first sight for me and I jumped at the chance to sail her back to Norway.

So Long was unique among the other yachts, a bulldog among greyhounds. She was 32 feet long and beamy. She carried huge baggy wrinkles on 5/8–inch stays and shackles that had come from a destroyer. They had little trouble supporting tree trunk masts. The massive rudder looked like it had come from a river barge. So Long was a heavyweight.

But so was Cleo.

TROUBLE FROM THE START

Soon after we launched, So Long lost her auxiliary engine hurtling down the East River as she swept by the United Nations building. We tied up at the Brooklyn Naval Yard and had her single sideband radio checked. A radioman from a nearby destroyer pronounced the gear beyond repair. We did have a radio for getting the time signals from Greenwich so we could shoot our latitude.

We knew that no rescue would come even if we could get off a Mayday, so we said a prayer, threw the Statue of Liberty a kiss and headed west for Falmouth. Two days out of New York we passed the Queen Mary headed into Manhattan. Playfully, I slowly lowered our flag and raised it again. I then saw a crewman run out on the stern of the Queen. He went to the jack staff and dipped the Union Jack, to return our salute. I was so thrilled I yelled like a madman and danced around on deck. Someone in their wheelhouse must have been watching with binoculars because to this the Queen gave a sprightly whistle.

CHARLES HATCHERThe author pictured in 1983 while working on a hydrographic vessel named Cisco in the Great Lakes.

By Aug. 15, we were reaching the midpoint of our course in the fan of the Gulf Stream, 45N 44W. The warm water glowed, making our wake light up like skeins of neon tubes. We rigged out twin headsails and brought their sheets aft to quarter blocks, then attached them to the tiller, which gave us some self–steering and relief from standing at the wheel. We also sent up our square sail to the head of the mainmast. Without using our fore and aft sails we made our top speed of 6 knots.

One day while sitting in the cockpit, looking astern, I saw a huge fish leap almost straight out of the water and smack back in with loud splash. It looked like a shark, but I'm wasn't sure. Then, I noticed that something was wrong with the taffrail log, which we used to record milage. I pulled it aboard and saw that one of its three blades had been almost sheered off. Thinking about how a fish could tear–up a 3/8–inch thick blade of solid brass made my teeth hurt.

Before long, the storm was punching up the middle of the Atlantic, sending ships on both sides scurrying back toward shore to let her pass. So Long, however, was dead–centered in Cleo's path – 1,500 miles out of New York and 1,500 miles from England, playing chicken with a Category 5 hurricane.

MEET HURRICANE CLEO

Disturbing signs surfaced. We experienced large ground swells, saw the moon wearing a green ring and felt the winds increase to 55 mph. It was exhilarating and we made all of 6.5 knots per hour. We took some confidence from So Long's hefty build with oak beams of 6–by–8 inches that were meant to defeat the ice. We liked to think of her as our floating tank.

What we should have done was to go below and ride her out under bare poles. We were needlessly wasting energy and later we'd pay for it.

In the middle of the ocean, I suppose, all sailors love their ships. In the gales we took time to try how So Long lay to the wind. She appeared to ride comfortably with her bow up and her tiller down. She would not lay closer than 55 degrees to the wind. She did, however, like her storm trysail; we agreed that this was to be our fallback if we got a real blow. Besides, Joshua Slocum, who circumnavigated the globe solo in the late 1890s, had recommended it.

Hurricane Cleo announced herself around midnight Aug. 17. Her center was traveling more than 700 miles a day in our latitudes. We had gotten used to the moaning in the rigging. On this night, however, the rigging began to shriek and we feared we were in for a real blow. We headed So Long up into the waves, buttoned down and went below to ride her out. This worked for a few minutes. The waves just rolled over us. But for some reason these seas were acting like waves coming ashore on a beach; they curled early and the tops broke off and seemed to fall straight down. We had a mile of water beneath our keel, so this wave pattern was puzzling.

HAL WEIDNERLower Manhatten. One of the tugs pictured in this photograph was returning to port and grabbed the author's film bag to mail these pictures back home.

After we got knocked down and stayed down for several minutes, we began to question our strategy. We later discovered that the dingy had broken out of her chains and was resting, upside down, on the head of the mainmast. We decided to try running off before the wind. I stayed at the helm while Ruddy went below to make repairs. The air was full of water. The wind's relentless shriek was terrifying.

During any given minute, dozens of lightning bolts stabbed down around us, illuminating the chaotic seas. I headed So Long downwind. She took off like a speedboat. At the helm, I could hear the approach of each chasing wave as it hit our wake. The roar of the wave began and increased to a sound like Niagara Falls and then, as the blue water came down, it began to hiss as well. The water slammed down from on high, driving me to my knees and plastering my chest to the wheel.

UP, DOWN, OVER, REPEAT

These incredible sleigh rides lasted only a few minutes before So Long either veered off course or buried her nose in the wall of water ahead. We rolled over numerous times, pitch–poled, and lay over with masts across the water. I spent a lot of time in the water, but the deep trough between waves gave me a quiet pause to clamber back on board. Seeing the ship's keel pointing straight up and the bilge bobbing up and down like she intended to stay that way could not have been more disheartening. Then suddenly she rolled, up came the masts, and Ruddy was hanging like a fish caught on a helluva rod.

HAL WEIDNERRuddy imitates the Statue of Liberty as So Long sails out of New York Harbor on its final journey.

Our masts were too heavy on top and the bare poles were acting like sails. We pitch–poled again. A bigger–than–ever wave reached further than usual and dropped the sky on us. We went way down under water, still with a lot of speed. So Long popped up, but our masts had separated and were dragged along with us, threatening to become battering rams. Ruddy was bleeding from his forehead. I thought he'd been washed overboard, but he had been pitched headlong while below. We went at the rigging with cable–cutters and hatchets, clearing it away.

I had prayed to be allowed to see the sun once more. When the first light of day showed us the ragged seascape, I was thankful but daunted by the prospects of drifting north–by–west towards Greenland in the current – on a floating island without fresh water. The sea–lanes were far to our south. The deck was fitted with a lift pump, but we had doubts about our ability to pump forever. We pulled up on the pump handle while a column of water spilled off the deck; we pushed her down for a refill. So Long was more than half full of water and we could not make progress. We were both sick from swallowing salt water and now the hull flipped and snapped back at every wave.

PUMPING FOR OUR LIVES

But the sea had moderated and the wind had lost its teeth. We dived into our flooded cabin for cans of food and amused ourselves guessing at their unlabeled contents. We both wore lanyards strung with tools, a can opener for each of us. The first can was Heinz Cream of Mushroom Soup and we felt better after passing the spoon back and forth a few times.

HAL WEIDNERSo Long and her crew in New York.

Neither of us dared talk about our probable fate. Such a conversation seemed impolite. We pumped on. By now we knew that our little ship had opened up and was filling at least as fast as we could pump. Ruddy had seen the planks opening earlier but couldn't stop it. We kept a line weighted with an empty soup can hanging down the companionway to measure the water's height inside the hull. We could not make headway. The wind had dropped off to a breeze, but the slop of the high seas continued to bounce us around in attempts to wash us off.

We saw an unusually high wave and both yelled, "No!" We threw ourselves over the open hatch and tried to find some kind of grip. The wave drove us apart and nearly filled So Long to the gunnels. We pumped like demons and got the level back to the bottom of the soup can. On it went.

That night we saw the lights of a cargo ship passing to the south. This was a surprise. Why were cargo ships taking such a northerly course? Then we hit on a happy thought. They had turned back and now were trying to make up for lost time by sailing the shorter, northerly course. This filled us with hope of seeing more ships. The next day was mockingly beautiful. The sea was almost flat and a warm sun allowed us to take off our boots and wiggle our toes in the sunshine.

HOPE FLOATS

We managed to keep our little table of wood afloat and perched on it like ants. A plan took form. If we saw another ship, we would fill one of our sea boots with lamp oil, place it on the bow, and set it on fire. Part two of the plan involved diving down and ripping the mirror from the head to flash an S–O–S in the ship's direction. Then we waited for a long shot.

The next morning, we had the good luck of finding a can of tined beef and another of peaches. Out of nowhere a tiny bird appeared and perched on our bow; its little sides heaved like bellows. Ruddy threw it a small piece of beef and the little bird snatched it in his beak, straightened its neck, and choked it down –– all in a flash. We threw him some more and he gobbled it up.

HAL WEIDNERFree of the East River, traffic heads out NY harbor.I turned to look behind us and saw a city block of glistening houses. We both had had our share of hallucinations, so I closed my eyes for a minute. Then, I heard Ruddy yell, "It's a ship, a great big ship!" It loomed on the horizon. She would be passing us as close as two miles. Ruddy got busy with the boot fire and I dove down and tore off the mirrored door.

The boot burned beautifully and sent up a large smudge. By the time the ship came abreast of us she looked 10 miles long. We waved our arms, we cheered, we flashed, we danced. She was moving fast and clipped right on by; slowly she began to sink on the horizon and we sent our curses after her. I could not stop following her with my eyes. I suddenly recognized a change–she was getting longer. She was turning.

The Pacific Conqueror, a brand new Greek cargo ship, drifted alongside. The crew had seen us. Their Captain, up the previous night, had left orders to awaken him if any strange object was sighted. His steward had told him that they saw a fishing boat. "There are no fishing boats out here!" the captain had replied.

The Greek crewmen pulled us up on deck, wiped the grease from our faces and sat us down. Then, they gave us each an opened Heineken beer–all without saying a single word. In that short time, So Long had gone under and Cleo had blown herself out.

Hal R. Weidner came to Ann Arbor two weeks after his rescue to study at the University of Michigan. He served in the Marine Corps during the Viet Nam War. Later, he graduated with a PhD. and taught at Washtenaw Community College for 36 years before retiring. He recently authored the novel Heart of War, a sea story in the tradition of Patrick O'Brian.