A Mile Down (24 page)

We reached the mouth in about ten minutes, the big rollers coming in, spray hitting the rocks on the western side. We weren't ready for this. So I turned around, back into calmer water, and did circles for about twenty minutes while I helped stow.

I have never left for sea so unprepared. We had our basic items stowed, and I had completed all of the maintenance and systems checks in previous days, and Donna had bought provisions, and we had enough diesel and water. So it was safe to leave, and we were seaworthy, but it was almost dark, none of my crew had ever been on a passage or at sea at night, we still had various little items inside and out that weren't organized or stowed very well, and we were all exhausted. Not a good way to begin almost three days at sea.

And the seas hit us right away, then built through the night, the wind howling. We were blasting into large waves, the spray covering the entire boat each time. Everyone except me was seasick, so I had to pull double watches at the helm and be on call the entire time. It was a long night.

The daytime was easier for the crew, and we were making almost ten knots, which is what we needed. We had to average at least 8.5 knots for me to catch my flight to California. If anything went wrong or we didn't steer well or the seas increased, I would miss my flight and wouldn't be able to catch another flight until the next day, so I'd miss the rehearsal dinner. But if I couldn't get on that flight the next day, if there were no seats available through standby, I'd miss the wedding.

As soon as it was dark again, though, Stephen and Donna couldn't steer. Donna would stand there at the helm looking calm and poised. And she'd be sixty degrees off course, taking us to Europe. Stephen was even worse. He tried hard, and I spent a lot of time tutoring him, but he kept getting disoriented. He would see the compass dial start to spin to the left, so he would turn to the right. This was backward. He did it over and over, spinning us in a circle each time.

I tried to make it simple. “Steer to our heading,” I said. “Forget about how the dial is moving. Find 250 degrees. That's our course. Just steer toward it. Just like lining up a car on the road.”

But it didn't work. He kept steering exactly the wrong way. Instead of making almost ten knots on course, we were now averaging only 7.5 knots, which meant I would miss my wedding.

So Galen and I took over. No more Stephen or Donna at the helm. I didn't have an autopilot, and this meant Galen and I would have to steer around the clock for the next day and a half, alternating with ninety-minute watches. I also needed to check all the boat systems, so I wouldn't sleep more than half an hour at a time. I had done it before, on other passages, but I hadn't begun those trips so tired.

Everything went fine, however. The seas and wind died down, we stayed on course and made good time, and it looked like we were just going to make it.

THE DARK MASSES of the small islands around us, cut out against the stars and lights on Tortola, were a pirate's landscape, and the night air was moist and warm, tropical but not stifling like Trinidad. It was cooler here, with a fresher breeze. I had a beautiful ninety-foot yacht, a promising business, and the freedom to cruise these islands with Nancy for as many years as we wished. It was a good feeling.

I crossed through the pass and the channel and slowly entered the bay at Roadtown. There were a lot of lights, and everything was unfamiliar. Avoiding reefs, shallow water, and boats at anchor, I found the small entrance into the marinas, but once we were in, there seemed to be almost no room, especially after being at sea.

A ninety-foot boat with a 21.5-foot beam and nine-foot draft in a small harbor at night feels very large, like a great whale come into a pond. The harbor was actually capable of accommodating larger boats, of course, but it felt like I had almost no room to maneuver. I found Village Cay Marina to my port side, made a ninety-degree turn, and proceeded cautiously into a slip on the inside of their fuel dock. It was about 4:30
A.M.
, and I was going to be able to attend my rehearsal dinner and wedding.

We were married by one of my lenders, a Dominican friar. I'm not Catholic, but Nancy is. The chapel was part of a monastery, rarely used for weddings, the high-backed pews facing inward toward the aisle, their dark wood ornately carved.

Dave, the friar and also my friend, was funny during the ceremony. He said he wouldn't presume to tell us about storms at sea but carried on with his metaphor anyway. The entire event was much more emotional than I had imagined. Somehow I had thought I would just breeze through it, but the truth is I had difficulty not sobbing at various points, especially when we left the altar to greet our parents and my mother whispered in my ear, “Your father and I are both very proud of you.” Bringing my father into this, especially with my uncle Doug standing there beside my mother, was overwhelming. One of the saddest parts of my father's death has always been the thought of all that he has missed. Twenty-one years of experience and memories. And each time I thought of him during some important event such as this, my wedding day, his absence hurt just as much as the first day I had lost him. I was thirteen again and didn't have a father.

In the limo, Nancy and I both admitted surprise at how emotional the ceremony had been, but then we moved on to the reception and just had fun.

The next day we opened presents at Nancy's parents' house, with a lot of relatives and friends in attendance. Then we were packing three seventy-pound boxes, right at the baggage size and weight limit, because I was flying back to the Virgin Islands that evening. We packed all those sheets and towels, small carpets, appliances, bar guides and cookbooks, everything we'd need for charter. Nancy would be flying a day later and also bringing three boxes.

Our guests for the first charter had written on their preference sheets from the broker, “WE ARE HEAVY DRINKERS.” They had a list of ten or fifteen special mixed drinks they wanted in quantity, so we bought liquor at four different shops (to find specialty items such as Grey Goose Orange) and groceries from more than half a dozen stores. Eleven adults plus four crew for five days. We were grateful to have charters. Most boats were having a lousy year because of the recession. We were the rising stars, the new boat with no direct competition because of the number of staterooms. It was gratifying to see all of my hassles in Turkey, Spain, Gibraltar, and Trinidad finally paying off.

This first charter group was easy, which was good because we didn't do everything perfectly. I wasn't really a bartender yet, so Bobby, the man who was paying for the charter and had invited his friends to help him celebrate his fiftieth birthday, made the drinks with great flair. I kept the bottles and ice and glasses coming and watched closely. Captains are expected to be good bartenders.

We also had a rigging problem, and again the guests were gracious. We had a lovely sail one morning across the channel on a beam reach from the Baths to Marina Cay, but when it came time to furl the sail, there was a lot of resistance. During the paint job, we had removed the headstay and let it hang to the side, and apparently this had broken one of the connections. It had been hidden by the sail wrapped around it, so the problem had not been visible, and we hadn't tested the sail on our way from Trinidad because we had only motored. I couldn't repair it now, with the sail out, underway, and guests aboard, and I was worried that we wouldn't get the sail furled or that we might rip it.

As I was distracted by this, standing above the winch to look over the pilothouse at the foil, holding the line in my left hand, a large gust of wind filled the sail, and the line, which I was holding too high above the winch, came free. I grabbed for it, instinctively, but this was not a good instinct, especially while wearing fingerless gloves. The rope burn across four fingers of my left hand was extreme. Only a few patches of skin were completely missing down to bleeding, exposed flesh, but all four fingers looked like deformed wax. They were white, especially after I dunked my hand into a bucket of ice, and the pain was intense. I did get the sail furled, and brought us safely into an anchorage, but that was all I could do. I felt awful for the guests. It was a putzy bit of sailing we had just done.

By the end of the five-day charter, my fingers were healing, despite my fears that they'd be permanently deformed, and the trip was considered a great success. Bobby gave us a $2,000 tip, wrote us a lovely card, and gave glowing reviews to the broker, who sent a note of praise to the clearinghouse, who then passed the note on to other brokers. I was embarrassed about our problems with the roller furling, but we were well on our way to a successful business.

There had been one small conversation with Bobby, however, that I would never forget. It was late in the trip, after he had asked about my business and plans, and he was wishing me well. He was a handsome man, likeable in every way, and he meant only the best, didn't mean to insult me, certainly, but he said, comparing my desires to succeed in this business to his own desires years before as he was starting his own business, “I know what it's like. You're nobody, and you want to become somebody.”

This comment made sense in terms of the business. It was a new business, even if it was my second go. It was true that I hadn't made a lot of money yet, even to pay off my debts, and that I was new to the brokered charter industry. But he wasn't talking only about the business, he was talking about me, about who I was, about my worth as a person. And I objected to being limited to this business and this role as captain. I had taught at Stanford and Cornell. I had been published in the
Atlantic
Monthly.

I didn't share these thoughts with Bobby, of course. But I realized that even if I succeeded wildly in this business, it still fundamentally wouldn't mean anything to me except financial freedom. It wasn't how I measured who I was, and it never would be. I would always feel somewhat alienated in this role of captain or small business owner. I was a writer and a teacher. That's who I was. I needed to start writing again soon.

The second charter was easy, a fun ten days. I practiced my skills as a bartender, enjoying it, and the kids performed skits at night on the large aft deck area, their parents lounging on the cushioned poop deck. Everyone called me “Captain Dave.” It didn't feel like a job at all.

Immediately after this charter, however, when we went into the clearinghouse office in Roadtown to pick up our mail and news, we learned that a hurricane was headed our way. It would probably pass south of us, but it could swing north.

This presented an uncomfortable situation. We were too late to run away from it, and we didn't have good options for weathering a hurricane in the Virgin Islands.

I finally decided to anchor in North Sound on Virgin Gorda. The sound is expansive and almost fully enclosed, like a big lake, most of it forty-five to sixty feet deep. We'd be completely exposed to wind, but we'd be protected from big waves, and we could drag on our anchor all over that bay and not hit anything.

As it turned out, the hurricane tracked far south of us and we never had wind more than thirty knots. We would have been fine anywhere in the Virgin Islands. But the experience drove home the fact that we were exposed up here during hurricane season. Nancy and I talked it over and decided to head south. We would island-hop through the Antilles for a month, spend another month in Trinidad working, then sail back up in time for the November charter shows. We had wanted to take a break and relax in the Virgin Islands for these months, but worrying about hurricanes did not promise to be very relaxing.

We returned to Road Town to make some arrangements and take on food, water, and diesel, then set off for Nevis, our first stop. It would be the longest leg, about eighteen hours. We passed between Peter Island and Dead Chest Island just after sunset and were blasted by thirty knots of wind, heavy rain, and swells about twelve feet, leftovers from the hurricane that had passed farther south. If we continued on to Nevis, we'd be pounding directly into this the entire time.

I decided this suffering was pointless. We weren't on a schedule. I turned around and anchored for the night in Great Harbour. We left at noon the next day, the conditions much improved, and made Nevis the next morning. A spectacular volcanic mountain rising from the water, its slopes dense jungle. We anchored in light blue water just down from the Four Seasons. Our view was of undeveloped beach, then several miles of palm trees, then jungle leading up to the volcanic cone. It was our honeymoon, finally.

We zipped ashore in our new dinghy and walked a few boardwalks to have ice cream and window shop. Then a driver took Nancy and Stephen and me halfway around the island, showing us landmarks, monkeys, mangoes, and jungle. We stopped at several plantations that are now bed-and-breakfasts. Nancy and I fell in love, at least for the day, with gingerbread architecture.

Late that afternoon, after we had changed at the boat, Stephen dropped us off on the beach with the dinghy and we walked into the Four Seasons. We joined the other honeymooners in the pools and hot tubs and took in the gorgeous sunset. It was one of our favorite things to do, crashing resorts, and this was a coup.

The next day we cruised the western shores of Dominica and Guadeloupe (lovely as long as we didn't look too closely), and then it was on to Martinique and St. Lucia. Stephen left us to fly home to Trinidad, as planned, and we found out we had a new charter from Ed Hamilton, the most important broker in the market. If we ran a good charter for Ed, we were set. We would fill our twenty weeks every year with no problem. And it was a short, easy charter, for the Young Presidents' Association. Ed didn't tell us who the group of ten men were, but we found out, and we felt flattered they had picked us over the seven-million-dollar, eighty-five-foot performance catamaran they had been on the year before. The charter was coming up soon, at the end of October, just before the charter show, and we were looking forward to it.