Water Skiing with Lizards & Snakes at Olongopo Beach.....
Or Trolling for Tuna with live bait.
By: Dave Beekman, FT-3 USS Terrell County LST 1157, 1958 - 1960
Now living in San Diego Ca

Background… Picture this….. (then throw the camera away…)

We 'Navy guys' had these 'God Awful' dark blue wool 'regulation' bathing suits... Sailors on 'Liberty' were forbidden to wear anything else..... (no wonder the girls would not be 'seen dead' with us...) Used to go to Mission Beach Plunge.... Under roller Coaster..... Roller coaster is still there but it scares the 'B'Jesus' out of me so I never went on it... Reminds me of a ‘Sea’ story... Got a minute?  Ok....

Here goes.... My old Navy Days as I remember the good times in Subic Bay…

Seems I had always wanted to learn to water ski but growing up in Tucson 50,000 miles from the nearest body of water, never had the opportunity. (Now that has all changed…) For a while my ship was stationed in Subic Bay Philippines (Olongopo was nearest city..) to get things fixed we sailors were too lazy or too dumb to fix…. Civilians kind of took over when we got ‘stumped’ trying to fix a cannon or got too big a hole in the ship to fix it with a piece of plywood… So, we had time on our hands….

Idle time is the downfall of most sailors being that Olongopo was so close but lucky for me one of the ship’s officers had come from an ‘upper class’ family that had access to speed boats, skis and water on summer vacations and was eager to find some ‘boat people’ that would drive the Captains Gig while he water skied…. He had even brought his own water skies and towrope…

(Officer’s Quarters has a lot more room for stuff like that than Enlisted 3’x 1’ x 1’ lockers.)

Rule #1.… ‘If it don’t fit in your locker you can’t keep it… (That probably explains why Enlisted men had to keep girl in Sea bag for 6 entire months deployment…)

I have no idea how the Jr. Officer, a Lieutenant Junior Grade – LTJG, with water skis got access to the Captain’s Gig (personal boat) but I was not going to ask any questions when he was looking for ‘volunteers.’

(Later on I learned the Navy Motto:.. keep your mouth shut and don’t volunteer for anything.’)

So off we went, me ‘driving’ and another Enlisted guy to keep the diesel engine running at full speed…. These Captain Gigs don’t go very fast as they ‘push’ a lot of water and create a huge ‘rooster tail’ of water behind going only about 25 –30 MPH..

It was this ‘rooster tail’ that was to be my downfall (literally) when the Jr. Officer got tired and it was his turn to drive and my turn to ski… I’ll have to say it for this guy (the LT JG) he was fair about the whole thing letting us Enlisted guys take turns at killing ourselves…

Down until now the matter of water safety had not concerned me as it was the LTJG that was at risk behind the boat, but I did think it a little comical the way his Mae West* life jacket seemed to weight him when he was trying to get up on two skiis with our diesel engine ‘screaming’ as fast as it could go.

I did not give much thought either to the ‘report’ that the ‘deadly’ water snake, the Habu, had been sighted in Subic Bay and to look out while swimming as the ‘byte’ was deadly. (almost as deadly as the girls in Olongopo…but that is another story…)

To make matters just a little more frightening, several large lizards (about 3-4 feet long 50-60 pounds) were sunning on the beach where we would land when finished skiing.

Later we found out these ‘Komodo Dragons’ had no teeth so we had really nothing to fear…. (Oh Yeah ?)

Well, I strapped on my Mae West… (life jacket…please !) and proceeded into the water, all the time watchful of lizards and snakes, to put on my skis. You do this while floating in a ‘sitting’ position… Meanwhile the Captains Gig idled about 25 yards away with the LTJG at the wheel wearing a ‘sardonic’ smile on his face…

‘Thumbs Up’ was the agreed to sign the skier gave to ‘give it the gas’ and pull him out of the water…. And ‘pull’ they did and ‘fall on my face I did…. And got a dose of seawater I will never forget, as I did not have sense enough to let go of the towrope handle…

Subic Bay was clean by the standards of Hong Kong bay so I did not even think of having my stomach pumped….

We tried this several times to no avail… I just could not get up with the Mae West on… (maybe the LTJG had a secret about how to do it but he was not sharing it with me)

Finally I just gave up on Mae West and decided to ski without a life jacket…. (I had just bought life insurance from some ‘shyster’ that visited the ship so what’s the problem…)

Hey, That’s better… Got up on two skis first try… Hey! This is great… It feels like riding on top of the world; on 2 skis… In fact, it was like ‘riding on top of the world’ because the ‘rooster tail’ now looking a lot taller than it had while I was driving, was right under me and so tall, about 3 feet, that if I fell off I would surly drown…. Remember we are out in Subic bay, water about 75-100 feet deep, ocean swells coming in, slight chop…No life jacket… Yikes!

Later when I had had enough, I gave the ‘universal finger across the throat ‘ sign to ‘Cut the Motor’ the LTJG brought me near the beach (where the lizards and snakes & girls from Olongopo were) to make my landing… I guess everything would have been ok but for I ‘hit the sand’ going a little too fast after I let go the tow rope and almost tore a hole in that beautiful Navy issue regulation bathing suit… Later the LTJG explained the ‘sardonic’ look he had while pulling me along…. Seems he had learned to ‘troll for shark’ on those summer vacations…

And that’s the truth… as I remember it....

* Footnote… Mae West had been a Hollywood movie star with an ample amount of… shall we say… ‘Bosom’ (as my grandmother used to say in polite company..) and when a sailor donned his ‘May West’ lifejacket, it looked like he had an ‘ample amount of ‘bosom’ as well… (We didn’t have girl sailors aboard ship in those days so we could only dream about Mae West…)