A freakish, mid-winter day warming in to the mid-50s, led Susan Ann, Julie, Ann, Phil (the titular owner of a 21-foot. sloop which was older than it was long) and I to a slip at Starkey Marina on Beaver Lake outside Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

  Blue-water sailors tell me waves come in sets of three. Eureka weather seems to come in sets of two -- two weeks of triple-digit heat; two weeks of rain every afternoon at 4 p.m.; two inches of ice on every horizontal and vertical surface in town; and the respites which follow every dualistic, statistical spike.

  The Ozarks have four seasons: autumn, ice, spring and hell. And then ...

  Birds chirping, sun shining, we raised sail at the dock before being driven below deck as hail near' filled the cockpit.

  As quickly as the frozen rain fell, it left. Blue sky welcomed song birds as we bailed sleet overboard and foolishly cast off.

  The run out of the harbor before following southerly winds was rapid. Turning into the predominate westerly, we hardened up and set a tack north-north west into an iconoclastic clime that teetered somewhere between spring and fall. What an unbelievably pleasant mid-winter day.

Too good to be true

  The unbelievable rapidly became more apprehensible as the entire western half of Beaver Lake disappeared behind a white-out curtain which was heading east, fast.

  The first time you see something like a familiar chunk of the Ozarks disappear, it may take a moment to focus your mind. The same thing seemed to be happening to my big-eyed, silent sailmates.

  When the front wall of the squall hit, we were caught under full sail with a huge Genoa up, close-hauled to the northwest. Before we knew it, we slewed 90 degrees to starboard and were bobbing beam-on in unprecedented, for Beaver Lake, 3-foot. swells. I thought the center board had been ripped off. A look aft revealed the rudder had been snapped off like a matchstick.

Too true to be good

  The wind, pelting rain and hailstones were ignored as the rudderless sloop was driven toward a rapidly approaching, boulder-studded shore. Susan Ann instinctively scooched to the foredeck and brailed the jib as Julie and Ann scandalized the main, the boom crashing into the cockpit.

  Slowed, but still on a collision course with an uninhabited island, we stole time to take stock. It was mid-winter. I was the only person wearing survival gear. The other four on-board could only last a few minutes in the chilly water. Julie and Ann went into the cabin and appeared to meditate on their mortality as Susan raised enough of the Genoa to give us headway ... toward the rocks.

  The fourth, and last, time we failed to tack away, with the rocks hard on our bow, we stuck some paddles in the water and, thanks to Susan Ann's sail-handling, we wore off downwind and back east toward civilization.

  Temporary salvation sometimes resembles a plan and our respite moved Julie and Ann out of the cabin to duct-tape paddles to the shattered rudder-post when the next puff caught Susan Ann with too much Genoa up. The 40-knot cats paw drove us downwind so fast the 2,500-pound. sailboat launched off the top of a 3-foot swell, caught air under her keel and crashed down like a rolling Orca.

Sweet salvation

  Leaning over the transom, holding the paddles-for-rudder contraption in this maelstrom, Julie and Ann, with Susan Ann's facile jib-tending, put us into a cove where the bow finally crunched safely on shore. Julie jumped on land and said, in a very soft shout, "Help!"

  Nothing happened. She and Ann walked to the nearest house. A stone inscribed in Gaelic announced "All Are Welcome."

  Inside, a man writing thank-you notes to friends who had attended his late wife's funeral looked up from his desk and asked, "May I help you?"

  We were saved.