Once Upon a Gypsy Moon (8 page)

The mouth of
the Cape Fear River is a wide, forlorn, and featureless place where the land of North Carolina points its southeasternmost end to the sea. A few well-to-do residents, tired service workers, and returning vacationers taking the private ferry to Southport from Bald Head Island looked with passing interest at the thirty-two-foot sloop making her way, alone, toward the open ocean. The sky and sea were a continuous pale gray. Here, in a deep shipping channel that requires constant vigilance against shoaling from swift, swirling tides, great ocean freighters come and go.

There is a feeling of desolation to the waters around Southport that holds no welcome. No brightly colored little sloops filled with laughing children dither back and forth among the sandbars there. People and ships pass through these roads quickly and with determination to be somewhere else. It is a place between places—like a graveyard in the evening—that urges one not to linger. I, too, was eager to be away. I hurried along until I could look back and see the sweep of the Oak Island Light in my wake. I was at sea at last, again.

I passed through a gentle chop at 1700 hours on my way to the outer channel marker and took a bearing on Frying Pan Shoals, to stay well off. I was headed 197 degrees magnetic, just west of due south. Flying at first only a working jib to starboard and then only her main, the
Gypsy Moon
hiked up her skirt, put her shoulder down, and ran at six knots on a broad reach. This point of sail is where she finds her heart. With the wind whipping at her heels, she pulls like an old racehorse who hasn’t forgotten the thrill of the chase, even if she can’t match the younger fillies for speed.

As night set in, a light rain began to fall, and I headed for the shelter of the cabin. I was still on the uphill slope of the learning curve on how to use the Monitor self-steering wind vane, which in the early stages of the voyage had been only so much ornamental steel hanging off the stern. Once I understood the rather mysterious incantations of line tension, vane direction, and sail trim necessary to make the thing work, it proved itself an amazing device capable of sailing the boat on a straight and steady course for days on end without my bothersome interference at the helm. What the Monitor clearly could not do, however, was steer a straight course dead downwind. And in the norther blowing that day off Southport, dead downwind was where I needed to go.

The electronic autopilot, which gobbles power but respects neither the speed nor the direction of the wind, was my only respite from an unending rain-soaked vigil at the helm to keep the boat on course. So, with the sail nicely trimmed and tight, I set the autopilot to the compass course dead off the wind and went below to enjoy the wonderful peace of a warm cabin in a boat moving well at sea.

It was a short-lived peace. As I sailed through the night under the stoic guidance of the autopilot, running from gusty weather and rain, the waves rose to about four feet high. The stern would ride up the front and slide down the back of each successive roller, and the autopilot would fight against the boat’s instinctive wish to turn and face the wind. As the wind strengthened, so did the forces bearing on the autopilot, which groaned and creaked and clattered from its effort to get the
Gypsy Moon
to the church on time.

By late afternoon on the second day, the log recorded “high winds, rough seas near Charleston, 28 miles northeast.” It was time for a sail change. I’d known I was doing the “safe” thing when, during the preceding summer in Annapolis, I had arranged for a sailmaker to cut and sew a storm trysail and for a rigger to rivet a stainless steel external track to the mast on which to hoist it, but I never thought I’d need the thing. It’s very old-school. Only one boat in a hundred carries a storm trysail nowadays. I felt good about having one, but in truth, I thought I’d have about as much use for it on the open sea as I would a bomb shelter. Wrong again.

When the waves rose to five feet, I mustered the storm trysail on the cabin top and tried to recall exactly which end went where, as the stiff, thick new sail spilled from its bag and scudded along the wet decks. Up in its tracks along the mast it went, pulled by the main halyard, until it snapped open in the freshening breeze with a loud
craa-ack
and came to a disorderly salute. Though only one-third the area of the mainsail, when caught by the wind the trysail violently jerked its outhaul line, which I held tightly in my hand. I discovered that I lacked the strength to tie it off. I had forgotten to rig a block and tackle to use in making the line fast, but I could not simply let go of the reins of this wild mustang and let her run.

After standing there stupidly for a moment, with my arm jerking back and forth in the air like a conductor’s baton in the 1812 Overture, I formed a plan. I made my way to the cockpit, ran the line once through a wire bail on the end of the boom, and ran the free end back through the grommet on the clew of the sail, then back through the bail on the boom. With this, I immediately had more authority over the situation. Shortening the line, I pulled the flailing canvas until it was tight and all was suddenly quiet. With her sail area thus reduced, the boat’s motion slowed and eased. However, the clatter and clacking of the gears in the autopilot continued unabated as it strove against the pressure of the waves on the rudder to keep the boat and her crew on a straight and narrow path.

There was a
yearning that followed me to sea and was my constant companion on bright, idle days and long night watches. Alone though I was, I was always accompanied by my thoughts: assorted hopes, fears, and regrets. They rolled on in an endless stream in my mind along with the sound of the ocean.

Inches from where I laid my head to sleep, the water coursing across the outside of the hull sounded like a babbling brook as it rushed to become a part of my past. I cherished the memory of it. I suspect we would all better use and savor our time on Earth if we could sense each moment of our lives slipping astern with the same constancy and clarity as a sailor knows the passing of his ship’s wake.

The thoughts of those idle hours turned always to another. I knew not who she was or even who she might be, but I yearned for her with an ache that had lingered for decades. I have learned to ask God for my longings, however disinclined He might be to grant them. And so I prayed to God as I had so often before for that prize that neither effort nor merit nor money nor my compulsion for planning and organization could attain. I wanted the Big One. With heaven yet beyond my grasp, I wanted what on Earth would be its closest foretaste. I prayed that God would help me find a good woman with whom to share my life. I remember the very moment and the supine posture from which this prayer was lifted heavenward. It would be the first of two petitions on this passage.

We are all wounded and alone in some way, but the ebb and flow of daily life in cities and towns filled with people has an anesthetic effect. There is no greater sense of being truly, completely alone than what is to be found in a small boat far out at sea. It clears the mind. It places a man apart from everything and everyone and gives him a profound sense of his own smallness, though not a sense of insignificance. Away from the neon and the rush, far from Walmart, out of earshot of the chattering of pundits and politicians, eventually there is only God. When God is your only companion, either there is an awkward silence or there is prayer.

American pop culture has long celebrated the steely-eyed loner who does not pray but, rather, stoically endures life’s hardships. He is ever the hero of song and the silver screen. I have never found him in my own character, but I put my young son to sleep each night for many years to the tune of “Desperado.” Sung and played however feebly on my guitar, the words of this song still rang true: “Come down from your fences…and let somebody love you, before it’s too late.” When I began this voyage, I had been trying to come down from those fences and find someone for so long that it seemed I might be destined to become the drifter pitied in that song.

But yearning that becomes desperation is a dangerous thing. Desperation is the father of many orphans. With no small difficulty I had learned to choose patience and deliberation over desperation in my own life, after my divorce, as I began to pursue the dream of finding a true partner and friend. That, too, was a journey.

Along that pilgrim road, I had to learn to cut away stagnant, static, and sometimes toxic relationships, eventually acquiring some considerable skill with the blade from frequent and dispassionate use. I learned to say “no thanks,” “not yet,” “no more,” “good-bye,” and “good riddance” and to value my innermost desire over concern for someone else’s disappointment. In time, a trail of bruised and broken hearts—my own among them—lay in my wake. But no one can live long by that sword.

To avoid becoming submerged in my solitude and to find some greater purpose for my voyage (or perhaps it might be fairly said merely to appear to do so), months earlier I had written to the rector of Christ Church in Nassau to propose that when I sailed into his harbor (triumphant and covered in glory, I must have seemed absurdly to suggest), I would be pleased to be employed in some needed manual labor to benefit the church. I received no reply, I am not surprised to say. Bahamians are not aborigines in need of my beneficence. But I was undeterred at the time. This small mission, though it would go unfulfilled, gave me a brighter star to follow.

The wind was
rising. The temperature was also falling, even as the
Gypsy Moon
forged her way farther down the coast of South Carolina. The night sky was spitting a cold, uncomfortable, and occasional rain. The drops flew in like random sniper fire from some unseen assassin hiding in the darkness above. The electronic autopilot continued its loud lamentations as it kept the rudder braced against an unruly following sea.

It was late in the evening when I finally saw the sea buoy marking the entrance to the Fort Sumter Range. With the task of keeping sure footing in the cabin getting harder as the boat pitched and rolled, I had not bothered to chart the hour in the log. But I knew I was making good time—the northerly breeze had seen to that, scudding me along at a constant pace with the following waves pushing me faster still. Southport was now nearly 130 miles to the north. The
Gypsy Moon
had stretched her legs and run once again like a teenager in love.

Fort Sumter Range is the name of the channel leading into Charleston. Big ships line up far out at sea on a straight line leading to two lighted range markers—a shorter one in front and a taller one behind—erected onshore. The markers serve the same purpose as the sights on a rifle. When the lights of the range markers line up, the helmsman can be assured that his vessel is aimed down the deep middle of the channel. The helmsman’s task is then to keep the two range markers perpendicular in his sights as he shoots his vessel shoreward, like a bullet through a barrel. If the lower range marker appears to move to starboard below the upper marker, he knows the ship is drifting off course into shallow water to port, and vice versa.

I was seventeen miles out on the range from Fort Sumter at the point where I crossed the channel, heading south. Seeing the flashing light of the sea buoy passing so close abeam was a faintly startling reminder of the Hand of Man that I had left behind seemingly long ago, although in reality it was only the day before. I looked down the range as I crossed it on a perpendicular course and saw the lights of the channel markers line up like an airport runway. That was a path to safety and comfort, I knew. Although I was as safe as a babe in his cradle out on the open ocean, I was also at that moment as uncomfortable as one in a wet diaper long overdue for changing.

But to be warm and ashore in Charleston was not the mission I had undertaken back on the Magothy River in August. There was nothing stopping me, and I would not stop. The boat held her course. The waves and wind, though a bit too rough for comfort, were merely a spate of winter weather and not a storm at all. With renewed resolve, I watched Charleston fade astern and looked over the chart for the course ahead.

Below Charleston, the continental United States begins the gradual eastward sweep that brings the coastline and the western wall of the Gulf Stream ever closer, until in Florida the stream flows as close as a mile offshore. The Gulf Stream, which runs from south to north, is the mortal enemy of any wind that blows from north to south. Where the two converge they do terrible battle, kicking up steep and confused seas. A man on a small boat should no more want to sail through the middle of such a contest than to try to separate two warring cats. I certainly wanted no part of this altercation, which, I was well aware, was taking place some thirty miles to the east.

With no crew other than my own two hands to help me remain on a southerly course, I was dependent on the herculean efforts of my electronic autopilot. The wind vane is a marvelous device with a single limitation: it cannot with any effectiveness keep a vessel on a due-south heading in a north wind with following seas. Only an electronic mind that knows its heading (and has a gear ratio strong enough to hold it) can do that job. So far, the wheel autopilot had been whirring, clacking, and grinding at that task in the cold rain with greater determination than I could have summoned from myself or any human helmsman.

I lay down for a few winks of sleep as the ship settled in for the long slog. Not long after I had closed my eyes, I heard the sound of breaking plastic and stripping gears as the electronic autopilot entered its death throes. The machine had yielded at last to the relentless power of nature. Control of the helm was lost. The robotic arm of the autopilot frantically whirred its warning that the boat was off course, but that warning now went unheeded. I jumped up and ran out on deck.

As soon as her electronic taskmaster had breathed his last, the
Gypsy Moon
followed her heart’s desire to turn and face the weather. She was now headed northeast, shoulder down and hard on the wind on what would have been a wonderful course for Ireland, had it been my intention to visit the Auld Sod.

Out in the open cockpit, the chilling rain and blustery wind that had been a mere spectacle from the vantage point of a dry cabin were now a considerable annoyance to me as I made preparations to implement Plan B. I would deploy the Monitor Windvane, I decided, on a mission to do something as close as possible to what it could not, which was to sail due south. Setting the vane for a course just east of south, I adjusted the lines and hoped for the best. When the boat finally kept a manageable heading to the southeast, my spirits rose.

I could zig south by southeast for several miles, I thought, until I felt the whips and lashes of the Gulf Stream, at which point I could zag back west toward the calmer waters of the coast. But ere that thought was through, the boat overcame the correction of the vane and began backsliding into her old vices. She was now offering to compromise on a due-easterly heading in response to my demand that she head south, pleading like an insolent teenager that I should let her go to Africa if not to Ireland. This would not do.

Again and again I tinkered with rudder line tension, vane angle, sail trim, and supplications to the self-steering gods as I sat in the tossing, rain-slicked cockpit, miles south of Charleston, well offshore, loosely draped in a leaking ten-dollar raincoat that was more symbolic than actual shelter against the elements.

Finally, the vane held the boat on a southeasterly course for more than a few moments. I waited expectantly for her to veer off again, but she did not. It appeared that I had found that magic “groove” in which sails, hull, and rudder work in a cacophony of cross-purposes that drive the vessel in a single intended direction. Contented with this effort and congratulating myself for not giving in to the weather gods, I retired again to the warmth and shelter of the cabin against the cold night.

I was exhausted. Sleep, when it does come in periods of rough weather, is fitful at best. As I lay down to rest that night in the belly of the whale that was my little ship, I became accustomed, as I usually do, to the motion of the boat on her heading. Lying prone in the six-foot four-inch pilot berth that runs along the port side on the ship’s stern quarter, I was below the waterline. My body rose and fell and swayed from side to side—more gently because I was low in the ship’s center of gravity—in unison with the hull moving through the waves. On this broad reach, with the wind coming over her port quarter and her sails set to starboard, the ship plunged forward with a regularity that recalled the nodding head of a child’s rocking horse. By the repetition of this motion I was lulled once again to sleep. Two hours later, by the unmistakable interruption of that motion, I was shaken rudely awake.

It was sometime near four in the morning, I can only guess. I had long since abandoned the niceties of log-keeping in these troublesome hours. I awoke to find that the wind and seas had risen a notch higher. Together these forces had broken the will of the self-steering vane, and the
Gypsy Moon
had returned to an easterly imperative. It was Africa or nothing, my headstrong ship was telling me. There would be no southerly heading that night.

I was not prepared for a fistfight with the Gulf Stream, where I was clearly headed. Nor would such a contest have been to any purpose, for I would only be stopped still by that current, if not carried slowly backward to the place from whence I had come. Time and again, I tinkered with the wind vane, collapsing for a while in the pilot berth until the flapping of sails and increasing angle of heel signaled the ship’s renewed objection to my command.

This battle of wills continued until dawn, when I finally hove to the boat under a gray sky. Taking my position, I saw that I had come some twenty miles south of Charleston. I knew I had to return there to seek shelter, and a wave of regret overcame me that I had not turned back many miles earlier, when the autopilot had first failed.

I remember the feeling of defeat in that moment. I had no delusions of grandeur or heroic fate, but I had harbored the private conceit that my voyage in some small way enjoyed the protection of God’s providence and mercy. It seemed contrary to His plans and mine that I should be foiled in my effort to reach Nassau, headed as I was on a mission of charity to the church there. Perhaps in that regard God had taken my altruistic intentions no more seriously than I had taken them myself.

Who, after all, was I really fooling? I had only to look in the mirror to see a spoiled, self-involved, middle-aged man in the throes of a midlife crisis, running from an adulterous affair, a failed marriage, and a failed career. But I could also look in the mirror and see a hopeful eleven-year-old boy, finally realizing after forty years the dream of that day when an unbroken horizon would meet a stalwart ship and a man with the freedom and the will to take her there. I did not judge the man or the boy, and I prayed that God would not judge either.

In that hour I prayed, too, in a way that I had not before. Lying in my bunk, stymied in my efforts and feeling quite annoyed with the whole situation, I lifted to the heavens a prayer of a single word: “Why?” It was the second petition of that passage.

I knew not to wait out there on the open ocean for an answer. God sometimes seems in no more of a hurry to read my letters to Him than I am to read His letters to me. But as St. Paul teaches, we see the contours of God’s plans now only as through a glass, darkly. What my eyes could not see, and what I did not know, was that my prayers had a single answer, and that answer was already at hand.