Seven Stages of Grief

When affected with bad news- lay-offs, illness, football playoff loss- it is common to feel tremendous grief. Trust me, I know; my boat recently sank. Everyone deals with this kind of stress differently- alcohol, drugs, late night 1-900 calls, jaywalking, human trafficking, grand theft auto, lawlessness. Some people might try to avoid this and call a therapist. I, personally, have always been a do-it-yourself kind of guy. If you're like me, you hate calling for help. Fortunately, there is something called the "Seven Stages of Grief" to help us understand the emotional roller coaster that follows your loss. Now, I should mention I'm not a licensed psychologist, but like I said, my precious, precious boat sank, so I'm pretty sure I know the stages.

Contrary to popular belief, the first stage isn't panic. That's the second stage. The first stage, as many of you should know, is to admit you have a problem. Be brave! Take a stand and say, "Hi, my name is _____, and I have a problem!" This should actually be quite easy, but there are several excellent indicators of a problem in case of ambiguity. If, while at the helm, you are wondering who has the right of way, you or that snapper on your starboard side, that's an indicator that something is amiss. If your anchor line, no longer under tension from a floating boat, is gleefully dancing around in the surge like a cockerspaniel off its leash, that's a sign of a problem. If normally you enter your boat like a bull walrus attempting to board a lifted Ford F-Superduty, but now you smoothly descend into your captain's chair- problemo, pilikia, big trouble. Congratulations, now that you've calmly identified your problem, it's time to kick it into Stage 2.

Begin panicking. At this point, panic is the only emotion that will motivate you to collect the twenty objects floating away in twenty different directions, eighteen of them defying long-standing laws of physics in an effort to elude you. A calm and sensible mind will see an entire ocean-going vessel headed for the abyss and forget about the $3 water bottle headed down-wind at 5 kts. But by panicking you can channel the energy of a hallucinogenic mongoose and retrieve that water bottle, as well as the spare wesuit, gas tank, two coolers, and dry boxes full of valuables (veritable modern day treasure chests!) setting sail for exotic corners of the earth. After all, these provisions will be essential for your next stage, which is to concoct knuckle-headed schemes to retrieve your boat.

Hopefully you've been concocting far-fetched ideas since the first moment of crisis, greatly overestimating your ingenuity as well as your raw strenth. Now, at Stage 3, you get to cling like a refugee to the raft of wreckage you just collected and lay out the details for the brilliant idea you've schemed up to save the day. I personally was inspired with an epiphany from the heavens to make a floating pulley out of a cooler, a gas tank, and miles of rope swinging in the current like the arms of anemones attempting to snag some shipwreck survivors. It would have worked too, if only we had one more person, a carabiner, and there was no such thing as gravity. In the end, if you ever hope to move to Stage 4, you will need to cease with your inane efforts and call someone who knows what they're doing. But don't rush this! As you all know, it is important to futilely toil at length before even considering looking for help. Yes, you face insurmountable odds and certain failure. But that didn't stop them from making laws banning cell phone use while driving, and it shouldn't stop you from tying knots you just invented to produce a bridle so that the extreme force you're imagining your biceps producing will be evenly distributed on the boat's transom. Of course, inevitably you will have to seek help from someone who knows what he's doing.

So I called Mike Hatcher, unparalleled gun craftsman and second only to Robert Ballard in his wrecked boat expertise. He, of course, had my boat floating and towed back to the dock in the amount of time it took me to recover from being shocked by my submerged battery, which at that point had become a chemistry experiment. The revelation of your boat actually floating, right there, on top of the water, is cause for great euphoria, an indicator that you've arrived at Stage 4. Adding to the excitement of that amazing sight is that in order to revive your drowned motor, you'll need to pull apart its every piece for cleaning. I had always wanted to pull the whole thing apart, carefully separating pieces to preserve gaskets, then prying them apart with a screwdriver when that didn't work, just to see what was inside. Up to this point though I had always refrained, since everytime I worked on my motor I seemed to end up with an extra bolt or nut I couldn't quite place, causing crossed fingers and some of my longest breath holds as I hoped for the motor to start when leaving anchor at a remote corner of the island like Kaena Pt. But now there was no choice but to tear it apart, the sooner the better! The excitement! Until you don't have the right wrench to get the bolts out of the intake manifold, the ones on the starter bracket seem stripped, and the flywheel won't budge, even at the urging of a hammer. Alas, it is time to end that wonderful period of optimism and excitement and move beyond the jubilation of Stage 4 into the despair of Stage 5.

Despite your best eforts, you will fail to fix your boat, because it sunk, as in went under the ocean, a very unnatural place for your motor. Agony and despair are a given at this point. Unfortunately, the more you love your boat, the more it will cripple your life. I am an overprotective parent and my boat is my only child. I moped for days wondering how this could have happened, thinking, "I thought bad things only happened to good people." Eventually it got so bad I decided to call and ask for help; my boat was headed to a mechanic. This was only as a perfunctory exercise, since I was sure if it could be fixed I would have had it fixed by this point. I mean, I had already done everything the Evinrude Shop Manual, common knowledge, and Google could recommend to fix the carburetor and starting system. It turned out it was a bad power pack. I was way off.

Your boat fixed, you finally arrive at Stage 6: the stress and uncertainty of venturing back out in the high seas. Leaving for distant reefs on your resurrected boat is like using a parachute you purchased at a recently deceased sky-divers estate sale. To your ears, every noise from the motor sounds like Uncle Buck's backfiring Mercury coupe, and every ripple looks like a ship-swamping tsunami. But you must press on if you ever hope to reach Stage 7 and end your grief.

In Stage 7, my personal favorite stage, you will finally return to normal. You will once again dedicate all your free time, and most of the time you should be working, to cruising on your boat, searching for fish. You will finally put the ordeal behind you. Although you may still need to call friends for help. After all, you can only eat so many fish yourself.