How a Person Should Be

Hi, thanks for coming to my Dad’s memorial

I’m Billy… My dad is Bill.

Most days, in my life, like at work, I’m Bill, but when I am around my Dad, I’m Billy.

So right now, I’m Billy.

Welcome and thanks…

HOW A PERSON SHOULD BE.

My Dad spent his whole life teaching me how a person should be.

If you know me well, right now you’re saying yeah.. arguable. maybe keep working on that.. not quite there yet.

KIND

My dad thought that a person should be KIND

He always said you should always be kind to other people because you never know what they’re dealing with in their life.

You might not know that my dad and his dad never got along.

I don’t really know why

Probably,my grandfather Bill had some of my qualities, You know…. acerbic, abrupt, judgmental, impatient, sarcastic, crass…

skip generation Ropp family male attributes.

Growing up We’d see grandpa Bill and Barbara maybe once a year at Christmas, maybe not. Not nearly as much as the other grandparents. pretty slap dash.

When his wife Barbara died it became clear that grandpa bill was ill

Altzheimers. What a blow.

Grandpa Bill was wicked smart… structural engineer. chairman of the Structual Engineers association, pioneer of seismic engineering in California…. Patent holder,

a genius. And he was losing his mind.

No hesitation, no questions, my Dad took care of him for the rest of his life, Tended to him, made sure he had a good place to live, took care of his finances, visited him several times a week.

GENEROUS

A person shouldn’t be greedy, a person should be GENEROUS.

My Dad taught me that money isn’t everything, it isn’t even really most things.

He thought Money is nothing but a symbol that you traded for value, And that value is the real currency.

My dad believed you should make money by providing value and that those who made money and did not provide value would eventually take your money.

CURIOUS

Who remembers my Dad as gentle Hawaiian shirt wearing, easygoing guy?

Well none of you have seen him in his MANIACAL pursuit of lobster.

BLIND AMBITION ruthless and single minded,

recklessly OBLIVIOUS to collateral damage… laws…

a brutal taskmaster…

when it came to catching lobster

think of Elmer Fudd and bugs bunny, only with lobster… that was my dad.

HYDRATED

Evidently, A person should be WELL HYDRATED,

My dads lifelong obsession with 7 eleven is legendary in this family.

at least one of these slides occurs in hawaii, 7 eleven is hard to come by in hawaii.

It’s currently under investigation whether he bought it there or deliberately packed it.

My money is on “packed it…”

There are also a lot of theories about the contents of the Big Gulp cup. Current conjecture is iced tea. Runners up include Diet Coke and crystal light.

WELL READ.

My dad was a voracious reader for as long as i can remember

For years, he and I exchanged Barnes and Nobles gift cards on Father’s Day.

Same amount, same store, every year, and it’s every bit as ridiculous as it sounds.

Pre-internet age, when I was ten or twelve, he used to read actual books, you know, printed…books, every night.

Not boring high brow literary stuff,

real classics like Dirk Pitt, Clive Cussler, Fletch, Macdonald, Michael Crichton,JACK RYAN Tom Clancy….

Pulp supermarket paperback page turning wholesome goodness

So My Dad would finish reading them and then pile them up on the floor next to his bed, hidden under the bedspread in a stack.

When the stack reached the height where it was gonna fall over, he’d scoot that stack down toward the foot of the bed, and start a new stack.

Sorta Like a Book stack conveyor belt…

Cool!

As a youngster, you know, I tested it and found out I could steal em from the second stack on without getting caught.

Not sure he ever knew, I think I was a Michael Crichton completist at age 14, because of him.

HANDY

A person should be HANDY,and RESOURCEFUL

My Dad fixed things with his hands. All his life.

He’d show you how to fix things,

he’d lend you his tools, fix things for you.

He taught me how to fix things from a young age… and he told me that you didn’t have to swear at things while you fix them, but it usually helps.

My dad knew how to express his emotions to inanimate objects.

He had working man hands. Strong grip right to the end.

CONSIDERATE

A person should be a gentleman, always CONSIDERATE

My dad was genuinely concerned about the comfort of people around him.

Two or three days before he died, mostly unconscious, Mindy and I were watching him for the night. sleeping over at his place.

He had needs, needed, help..

We were fussing over him in the middle of the night. He seemed uncomfortable, should we move him, turn him over, maybe he needs meds..

He raised his hand, opened his eyes and spoke what turns out to be his last words to me and my sister. “You guys go to bed…”.

Stop fussing over me and go to bed. Concerned about us right down to the finish line.

TAKE GOOD CARE.

A person should take good care. Especially off the things they love

My Dad was married to my mother for 57 years.

They’re almost the only people I know who still liked each other after that long.

He took good care of our family.

My dad was a lifelong landscaper and gardener.

He took care of plants and peoples yards and gardens.

As a kid, he’s teach me plant ID. The names of the plants and trees around us.

When I was a teenager, i was pretty on-brand teenage indignant,

I used to tell him straight to his face that I would NEVER grow up to be a be landscaper and nobody who mattered gave a rip about plants and trees and that I had no respect for him…

Now I can’t think of a single better thing to be to encapsulate all of my dads qualities

MY DAD WAS HOW A PERSON SHOULD BE.

when I find a spot in life where I’m wondering how I should act, which is often, a lot,

How a should a person be…. I think of my dad. Think of what he would have done

My dad gave me that.

Thanks dad. I’ll miss you, I love you.

(Maybe 1984)

My Dad and I are diving this morning. We are in about 30’ of water at Emerald Bay, Catalina, Indian Rock. It’s beautiful. The sunlight is still bright at this depth, today it’s casting random alternating shafts of light through the overstory kelp forest. Everyone is out in force, a subfusc bat ray languidly patrols the perimeter, schools of Catalina Bluefish just hang out in formation, red and black Sheepshead drunk-swim about like the village idiot they are, bright orange Garibaldi, self spaced every 20 feet or so, seemingly placed as color pop along the rocky bottom.

God is a spectacular interior designer. It’s mesmerizing.

There happens to be a small octopus proximal to us, maybe 8 or 10 inches in overall length, just a baby. My dad spots the little guy first. He’s just hanging out a few feet away, presumably tending to his daily baby octopus chores.

Dad taps me, pantomimes, “watch this…!” then reaches out to grab it.

My Dad has always been a relentless bully to all forms of marine life. No matter what it is, if it’s sitting there minding its own business, it was my Dad’s sworn duty to poke, grab, disrupt, irritate or otherwise molest, at least until it abandons its post.

Perturbed, the octopus emits a couple clouds of ink, swims a few feet away, settles down and resumes its octopus chores.

This is unremarkable. Poke, squirt, squirt, swim away. I’ve seen this progression before. My Dad will keep after this poor little guy until he darts out of view.

Ho hum. Business as usual.

At round four or five though, to my astonishment, the affronted baby octopus turns and goes on the offensive. Truly a David and Goliath moment. All ferocious beak and tentacles set to attack mode as it charges my Dad and promptly plasters itself to the front of his face mask.

Ever seen the movie Alien? My dad is playing John Hurt’s character here with a face mask full of octopus. Immovable.

Point! Baby octopus.

Respectable move! Not a bad strategy. Disable your opponents vision….

My Dad, tending to his lack of visibility, tries picking and prying at the tentacles with his fat fingers, but is outmatched badly as the dexterous little guy simply moves the one or two being picked at, plenty of purchase with the six or seven other tentacles. The baby octopus is determined to hold fast. This highly choreographed dance goes on for a few minutes.

Presently, my Dad shifts tactics and grabs baby octopus by the mantle (sack of organs that most would think was the animal’s head). Cheap move on Dad’s part. Kinda like resorting to hair pulling. He manages to get a good grip on it and yanks hard…

Too hard evidently, the strap on my Dad’s mask being more elastic than the little guy’s grip, this served to flood his mask.

Point! Match! Baby Octopus.

*Afterword*. No fathers were actually harmed in this encounter. Inconvenient, disorienting and uncomfortable as it is, mask flooding is something that divers are taught to deal with as routine. (Octopus still won)

(Maybe 1984)

Lake-like, I think. The usually rough Catalina channel is dead calm. No wind.

Motoring out to destination San Clemente Island with grandma Lorraine, Willie Dostal, my Dad and me aboard Alleluia today. We are casually redoubling the east end of Catalina. San Clemente is already visible about 20 miles away, this is my first trip there. I’m thrilled. It’s a beautiful day.

San Clemente is the stepchild of the Channel Islands. For years it’s been used by the military for target practice. Equidistant, Catalina as mainland, Catalina and San Clemente, way beyond Loran C range, It’s a little too far to casually sail there. There are no public commercial facilities. Instead, there are big bad rules about visiting it or going ashore at all. You have to go get a permit of some kind to land there and even then, you may be denied if there are scheduled operations during your planned visit. This, is a stark contrast with Catalina which is comparatively rife with commercial facility. No mooring cans, no Scout camps, I don’t even think there are emergency services there. But for goats and top secret military stuff, it’s more or less uninhabited.

It is also the fabled land of the lobsters. “They crawl across the bottom there!” All you want, yours for for the taking.

This trip is scheduled for a week or a little more. Alleluia is not terribly comfortable for four people, but it’s not *too* bad. Willie is outdoorsy, not scared of a little camping and the rest of us are family. The big challenge on long trips on the Alleluia is the refrigerator. Specifically, the problem is that there is none.

The strategy is simple. You fill the small-ish stainless steel ice box full of as much block ice and maybe a little dry ice as you can and once it melts, that’s the end of it.

Our goal for this trip is to get as much lobster as we can. My Dad, Willie and I will dive and catch it and my grandma will stay on deck and pack it and prepare it.

With little fanfare, apart from being strafed at low altitude by a pair of navy fighter jets, we successfully anchor and over the course of the next several days, experience the “lobster-palooza”.

These things are everywhere! The fables are true! Just crawling across the sand bottom. We easily take the, um, legal limit each day we dive.

So many lobsters! My grandmother, almost as passionate in her pursuit of lobster as my Dad, can hardly keep up. We eat lobster everything, lobster scrambled eggs for breakfast, peanut butter and lobster sandwich for lunch, barbecued lobster tacos for din, lobster protein drink for pre-dive energy, lobster everything everyday.

As quickly as the lobster accumulates, so does the ice deliquesce.

Lobster and all crustaceans, even when fresh, come with a small amount of bacteria as part of the deal. Normally it gets cooked out. When it starts to spoil though, it smells a little like bleach to me.

Towards the end of the week, the lobster keeps coming and the ice is gone. My lobster taco smells like it has Clorox salsa on it.

I cannot think of a way of preparing lobster that we haven’t already done at least twice.

Thankfully, nobody got sick, although I notice nobody’s was eating the lobster meat either.

As we motor back, same lake like channel, I’m pretty sure I’ve just received a life time supply of lobster.

(circa 1984)

“I can’t believe we are doing this”, I remember thinking as the boat’s fiberglass hull rhythmically pounds on the light chop of hurricane gulch in Long Beach harbor.

My Dad, Willie Dostal, my lifelong friend Jason and I are in the Boston Whaler, a small 13’ tender with a 40 horsepower outboard motor, Think of it as a pickup truck for the ocean. We are smoking a trail towards the Long Beach harbor breakwater in search of, what else, lobster. It’s cold, it’s late, dusk.

I’m nervous.

All of our gear, tanks, wetsuits, buoyancy compensators, are banging away on the floorboards of the whaler as we speed towards the breakwater. We’re going fast, maybe 30 mph. It’s cold.

If Cambells made Spinach soup it would be the exact color of this water…. This is the time of evening when daylight passes the relay baton to pitch black dark night… Moonlight is nowhere to be found.

This will be my first night dive, I think Jason’s too.

The Long Beach breakwater… One HELL of an uninviting place for any kind of dive. The breakwater is nothing more than a pile of huge basalt boulders that converts the untamed Pacific Ocean outside into this opaque green veggie stew in the harbor.

More than once, I’ve spotted rabid outcast junkyard-dog blue sharks patrolling this place during the day, A lot more than once… I’ll bet they positively teem here at night.

I’m nervous.

The plan is to start the dive at dusk and and surface after dark. We will descend down the anchor line to the base of the breakwater and then, using our dive lights, scour the snaggletoothed crevasses between the basalt boulders for the big granddaddy of all lobsters the we are certain must live there.

We anchor in about 45 feet of water, my Dad and Willie quickly gear up and unceremoniously jump in and are gone.

Jason and I exchange pensive looks… “that’s IT?” Dude… this is CRAZY. We have a rope tether and a single dive light between us. After a little more ruminating, we have come all this way, so we reluctantly gear up and jump in.

The dive was a terrifying waste of of time, somehow both paralyzingly frightening and totally uninteresting at the same time. In near zero visibility on our descent, we lost the anchor line almost immediately. Jason has the only light and every time I glimpse the line, he aims it frenetically elsewhere. Every time he aims it elsewhere, I could swear that I saw a shadowy silhouette of the rabid blue shark patrol. Nonetheless, we descend to about 20 feet, “look around” in the poor visibility afforded by the green harbor broth, wash, rinse, repeat, we never even made it to the bottom. We resurface in less than ten minutes.

we clamber back into the whaler and strip our gear. It’s pitch black. What a lousy dive.

Waiting. Pensively. We see no telltale bubbles. No sign of Dad or Willie.

Ten minutes, twenty. Seems like hours. It’s really dark and cold. We are…. Anxiously waiting.

Willie surfaces with no catch, boards, strips his gear and joins in our waiting focus group. No words are exchanged.

We are now aggressively waiting

Maximum bottom time on our tanks is only about 40 or 45 minutes…

Ahem. Waiting.

Dad finally surfaces and flips his mask up…”OH MY GOD!!!”

What? Shoot… the blue shark brute squad is coming for him?

“THIS THING ALMOST KILLED ME!!!”

the largest granddaddy lobster I have ever seen or even heard of is slammed down on the floorboards. The only catch of the dive.

To this day I have never seen a larger lobster.

(circa 1975-1988)

Growing up on a sailboat was the best. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. From amongst my first memories on the catamaran, to a long happy childhood spend on one or the other, or the other, (or the other) boat, usually at the marina.

It’s also boring. Mindy and I are perpetually looking for something to do at the marina. There’s nothing to do.

Marinas are generally shallow and the tides can affect your ability to see the bottom. During low tide, we can see a bunch of red harbor crabs down there…

I wonder if we can catch ‘em?

Enter the “lobster” trap, or, the lobster trap that really wasn’t. A gift from Dad, presumably so Mindy and I could occupy ourselves in some way other than stomping on the deck or running barefoot up and down the docks.

This is a “lobster” trap of a variety that is the pariah of marine biologists, conservationists and pretty much decent people everywhere. I think they have since stopped selling them based on either a legal ban or maybe just social responsibility. The principle is that you put bait in the trap and lobsters climb into it through some kind of one way only entry, and can’t get back out.

All fine and good, unless it gets lost or abandoned, in which case it continues to lure, trap and kill lobsters and other things in perpetuity.

Whatever. At age seven or eight when we got it and in full possession of your average seven or eight year old’s sense of social responsibility, I thought it was the greatest thing in the world.

A plastic grate, about a 30” diameter disc for a base, in the center a small removable cage (kitchen) designed to hold the bait, usually cat food, sometimes fish guts, or everyone’s favorite abalone guts… mounted to the perimeter of the base was a sort of dome/cage which formed the volume of the trap (the parlor). At the top of the dome cage was a passage approximately six inches in diameter, this was lined with long flexible plastic prongs that faced inwards. Think of the tire spikes that allow you to drive into a parking lot, but cause severe tire damage if you try to back out.

Put some bait it that thing, tie a line to it and throw out over the side. Leave it overnight, pull it up in the morning and see what you got. Fun!

The “lobster” trap transcended three of our family boats.

Nada Mas was a Colombia 28, a 28’ all fiberglass sailboat/sloop. (Pre Dostals) It was moored in Marina del Rey. I think we got it when I was five. I definitely remember the exact day we decided to sell it in favor of a power boat though. A miserable 14 hour upwind transit from Catalina back to Marina del Rey marked my father’s temporary sailing apostasy. Foreswearing all sailboats from now on…

Fun Hunter, a Hunter 36; wood hull 36’ long powerboat with twin brute, stinky, loud gas engines. Antithesis of sailing. Our nickname for it was the Stinkpot. It also came with all kinds of problems. Valuable lesson learned at early age: Dry rot and wooden boats are a thing to avoid. I think we acquired Fun Hunter when I was about eight years old. We moved to Fleitz Brothers Marina in San Pedro when we got it. Sorry to leave Marina del Rey, but happy to gain… Dostals!… Mercifully, it was but a little pink taster spoon of powerboats. Blech! Maybe a year.

When we finally sickened of the wreek of the engines and the Sisyphean task of dealing with the dry rot, we sold Fun Hunter and got Alleluia, a Mariner 31, fiberglass hull with wood deck and cabin. Back to sailing, this was a spectacularly stunning 31’ ketch. An integral part of our family until quite recently. I was *so* glad to get back to sailing, we all were.

The “lobster” trap transcended all of this.

Whenever we went out or even if we just stayed in the marina, it was my job to bait and set the “lobster” trap.

Ever productive, in service for maybe a dozen years, we caught everything in that trap and we studiously ate what we caught. Harbor crabs by the gross, innumerable count and variety of fish, sheepshead, calico bass, opaleye, mackerel, a 4’ long leopard shark, even a pair of incensed and ill tempered swell sharks (didn’t eat those…)

The single most bizarre “lobster” trap catch has to be the moray eel.

Aboard Alleluia, we were anchored above a shallow sandy bottom at White’s Landing in Catalina. My Dad had managed to pry loose a couple abalone, at that time vanishingly rare, on a free dive a few days before, so we went with abalone guts as bait.

From the moment we threw the trap in the water, we could tell the abalone was a hit. Everybody came out in schools for it, including a lone moray eel.

Apart from maybe big predatory “Jaws” like sharks, Moray eels are easily the most terrifying of the local marine animals. Although technically a fish, they look like snakes. But not just any snake, these things have girth, huge fat muscular snakes about six inches thick, long bodies that look and behave like Duane Johnson’s biceps. They range in color from rotten plum purple to the exact fake Halloween green of a witch’s skin. They have evil little satanic eyes and a mouth full of snaggletoothed, flesh slicing teeth… Also, they breath with their mouth open. Not to say that this mouth breathing habit is any kind of empty threat. They are indeed ill tempered, aggressive biters.

To pile on, they have something called a pharyngeal jaw, which sounds like something dreamt up by Stephen King or Wes Craven or M. Night Shyamalan… It’s an entirely separate set of jaws and needle like teeth located in their throat… they use this as a sort of warranty to assure they can swallow anything they bite.

Fun fact! they always occupy the exact same dark crack or crevice as the lobster you are trying to grab with your hands.

These guys are definitely the demons of the sea.

Normally reclusive cave dwellers, it is odd that a moray eel would come out across a sandy bottom and swim directly into our “lobster” trap, but that is exactly what I watched it do.

Unsure of what to do next, I hauled the trap to the surface with the eel and at least a dozen other fish inside. A trailing stream of fish by the hundreds chase the trap to the surface attempting to get at the delectable abalone treat.

Pre internet days, we consult an actual printed book (the novelty, oh how quaint) and find out that if properly prepared and if caught under certain conditions and in certain locations, moray eel can be quite good eating.

The moray eel was understandably furious about this turn of events and was definitely communicating this via body language. I think we should just take the trap out of the water and put it on the deck for a little while, give him some time to calm down before we open it. A few hour cooling off period.

Several hours later, although out of the water the entire time, the eel is still squirming, slithering and to my horror, enthusiastically biting the plastic cage. My Dad and I agree that if we don’t open the cage, the other dozen or so fish in the trap will go to waste. We manage to wrangle the trap back to the cockpit, open it and allow the thoroughly pissed off creature to fully occupy the small rectangular cockpit while we clean the other fish. Maybe *now* it will calm down.

Fish cleaning done… and moray eel still exuding murderous hate at us with every pore of its being, my Dad engages the eel with the filet knife. An epic struggle later, my dad has managed to behead the beast.

The disembodied head proceeds to snap at the filet knife, while the eel body, also showing no sign of discouragement, continues to slither and creep and generally prepare to attack. Horrific.

We did finally manage to subdue the head and prepare the rest and cook it. As I recall, tastes like chicken. I could have sworn I saw it slither in the pan.

To this day I still have the occasional nightmare about that guy coming for me.

To the best of my recollection, in spite of the otherwise prolific efficacy of the “lobster” trap, we never once managed to catch a single, actual bonafide lobster in the thing.

How I became Billy (circa 1978)

I used to be Willy. Especially when I was in trouble.

“Willy, stop stomping around out there.” My Dad yells.

I’m eight or nine years old and I have learned exactly how to irritate my Dad now. I’m good at it.

We are aboard the Alleluia, family boat, in its slip in Fleitz Brothers Marina, San Pedro. Exactly like we are every weekend. We come here every weekend.

What a flea bitten dump of a marina. You have to cross an active railroad spur just to get to the place, which after crossing, it is advised that you then cross your fingers that no train comes. There is a dusty, dirty bulk ore loading facility just past the marina. If a train comes you could be stuck at the marina for hours while the train loads it’s cars.

All days at Fleitz Brothers Marina are the same. The sky is mucoid grey overcast which has the effect of making the water a sort of murky silver mirror. The floating docks are decked in dingy splintered lumber, probably dating back to the original installation sometime in the 1950s. They look as if they could inflict a life threatening sliver from 100 yards away. The marina never bothered to replace the decking that failed or broke, instead they nailed a thin piece of sheet metal to span the gaps, secured it with roofing nails…. Both of which may have been galvanized at some point, but have since promptly rusted into a tetanus rich Petri dish

Make no mistake, this is not the erudite Connecticut yacht club rich Kennedy establishment most would connote with the word “marina”. Exactly the opposite. This is the wrong-side-of-the-tracks, thug version. The average boat at Fleitz Brothers was a horribly neglected once “pleasure” craft, but now, if not sunken or partially so, certainly sad, pathetic, derelict and ignored. Try to imagine “boat junkyard”

Here, on this weaponized surface of sun bleached brittle decking and rusted out steel patches with protruding rusty nails is where Mindy and I would run around barefoot all weekend. Whee!

We spend every weekend at the boat.

Every. Single. Weekend.

Our job is to run on the docks and irritate the grownups. We are good at it.

The boat next door to ours is an Islander 32, a well maintained sloop named Domino. It belongs to the Dostals, Willie and Lynda and their son Ricky, lifelong friends.

Willie Dostal is perhaps the coolest, calmest most collected man on the planet. He’s my Dad’s best friend. Willie taught me how to fish. Lynda, his wife is the best…. She taught me how to surf on the tiny 12” high waves in Avalon harbor and she wields something called a “coke leffel”. All my life, I don’t know what it is, but it sounds terrifying. Ricky is our younger buddy, pretty soon we will show him how to run on the docks and irritate the grownups.

Dostals are here some weekends. Mindy and I love it when they are here. Not sure if Dostals are here today.

Anyways…

Stomp-stomp-stomp

All you have to do is walk on your heels a little to elicit the response

“Dammit, Willy… knock that off…!”

Thisss fun! Watch this…

Stomp-stomp-stomp

“Willy, what did I tell you… if you do that again i’m going to…”

Stomp-stomp-stomp

“WILLY, DAMMIT….”

Willie Dostal, evidently present this weekend, pops his head above deck and coolly says… “yes…? Everything ok Bill?”

Oops. This isn’t going to work, my Dad realizes…, My name, henceforth, Billy.

(circa 1972)

“Bii-iiii-iiiillll!” the single syllable name somehow stretched into three, “We have to go get him…!” My mom wants to come get me.

“Well Carroll, first I need to get the boat back up… My hands are a little full right now…”

I am laying on my back and I am wet and I am all bulked up with some weird puffy jacket that they make me wear sometimes. I am four years old. Or maybe three. I think that they are fighting.

“What am I supposed to do, I’m all strapped in… I need to go get him” my mom says plaintively.

We are on the “hobbycat”. It’s a sailboat. My dad always seems mad at the hobbycat. Sometimes my dad gets mad when we drive the car too, but not like the hobbycat. It runs on the water and it’s blue and I like it because my sister is not allowed and it goes really fast. I don’t know where my sister is.

Blue is my favorite color, I like to go fast.

Today we brought the hobbycat behind the car and my dad drove it down into the water and almost drove the car into the water.

It leans though. I don’t like it when it leans. Also I don’t like this jacket, they only make me wear it on the hobbycat.

When it leans a lot my dad gets really mad and my mom screams.

Just now we were going really fast it was leaning really far and then it tipped over and now I’m laying on my back and it’s wet. And my dad is really mad.

“Fine, Carroll, you hold the halliard and I’ll go get him…”

Amongst my earliest lucid memories, sailing or more correctly capsizing the family catamaran, (a blue 16’ Hobie Cat) in Marina del Rey. This particular gusty day, I was laying on the mainsail on my back in a stiflingly huge life preserver after the boat capsized. My parents were arguing about whether they should unstrap from their harness and come get me or right the catamaran first.