by Erik Orton
I wrote in my journal:
“I think we’re going to make it home to the U.S. I think we’ll see friends and family as we travel up the East Coast. I think we’ll pull into VA, somewhere near Occoquan, or the Potomac, or the Chesapeake. We’ll sail up the Jersey Shore and into New York Harbor. We’ll motor or sail up the Hudson. We’ll anchor or tie up at the Dyckman Marina. We’ll be home.
“We won’t starve. We won’t be homeless. We won’t die. Eventually, we’ll have money to pay for the things we need and want. Karina will probably go to college. And things will roll on. We’ll see how it goes. But for now, I’m sitting here, at anchor, the blue and green water rolling past, the sun coming up in the east, the trade-wind breeze cooling the morning, the flag flapping in the breeze, the dinghy lapping off the stern. My hair is long, but clean. It’s blond. Blonder than it’s been in a long time. When it’s not trying to beat me up, I really like the ocean. I still think I’ll want a stone and wood home with a fireplace, but I’m happy with this for now. I’m a fortunate man. I’ll try to be more grateful.”
It felt good to be grateful.
Before heading out the next morning we hiked to the Bubbly Pool. It sounded like the right place to take a bunch of kids, and it was close. The short hike was through the tidal neck that separates Jost Van Dyke from Little Jost Van Dyke. Beyond the neck, the Bubbly Pool was a little cove of rocks encircling a small, sandy beach. The incoming waves pushed through a narrow opening in the rock that churned the water into white bubbly sea-foam. When the tide was high, it would send geyser-type spouts of water high into the air and fill the round cove like a fizzy swimming pool. But it was low tide, so there was a small puddle of water and some water swooshed in, but nothing too dramatic. All the Fezywigs cozied up in the little pool and had fun splashing and taking goofy underwater pictures. In the midst of our silliness, another family walked in from the surrounding brush and surveyed the site.
It was a handsome couple with two young children. Charterers. Plus the family had a guide with them, a large, gregarious man with a handlebar mustache and long, bushy beard. I’m sure he could tell a mean pirate story.
Having arrived, the family looked underwhelmed with their destination. The guide tried to explain, “At high tide the water can shoot as high as twenty, thirty feet into the air! And . . .” He was trying to sell it. It probably would have been better for them to come at high tide rather than imagine it.
“How long are you sailing?” I asked.
“Four days, three nights,” the father replied.
“Nice,” I said, nodding and smiling. But inside I kind of felt bad. Four days and three nights is better than no days and no nights, but I felt like they were missing out. Every moment of their trip was going to be in the company of some expert who was a complete stranger and whose goal was to get as big a tip as possible, and maybe a good review on his website. Maybe that’s a jaded view, but I was glad we had the luxury of stumbling and fumbling as a family. It was a more difficult and scarier path, but more rewarding.
* * *
1.Dry bag: a rubber bag with an opening that rolls over itself and clips shut to keep out water. Used in a sentence: “Hey, Emily, I need to transport the original Declaration of Independence to shore. Just to be safe, can I use your dry bag?”
2.Knot: I mostly say “knots” to sound nautical, and that’s what our speedometer showed. Sailors used to measure speed by tying a rope with knots at even intervals. They would drop it in the water and see how many knots they passed within a certain time interval. That was their speed in knots. One knot is actually 1.15 mph, so they’re almost the same thing. But if I said we were going 4.6 mph, it just wouldn’t sound as cool.
3.Preventer: a line that prevents the boom from being thrown from one side of the boat to the other in case the wind shifts. I used a spare line, wrapped it twice around the boom, and tied it off to a deck cleat amidships.
4.Jibe: shift sails from one side of the boat to the other when the wind is coming from behind the boat. Not to be confused with a dance move. This was no time for dancing.
Chapter 12
Amazing and Unexpected
Northwest of Tortola, British Virgin Islands
5 Months aboard Fezywig
EMILY
“Hey!” Erik said, “I’m picking up AT&T.” We could see the U.S. Virgin Islands across the channel. Everyone on the boat was required to check in on Saint John, which was annoying after the casual policies in the other islands.
“Should we bring spoons?” Karina asked. What the heck? We celebrated our first day back on U.S. soil with ice cream for everyone, playground time, and a social media splurge. But we couldn’t play all day. We still needed to get out of the Caribbean before hurricane season. We needed provisions and charts for the Bahamas. We could get both in Benner Bay, Saint Thomas.
Erik headed toward an empty T-slip at one of the docks. There was a well-maintained catamaran with yellow trim ahead of us already tied up. As we got closer, the couple aboard saw us coming in. They hopped onto the dock and waited to take our lines.
“Thank you, that’s so nice,” I said, tossing the woman my line. “We’re making a quick stop for food and charts.”
“It’s a long walk around on foot, but a shortcut across the water,” the woman said. “I’m running to the grocery store before we take off in about thirty minutes. Can I offer you a ride?”
Her name was Rebecca. She took us to Budget Marine. The guys were helpful and efficient. Erik found our charts and got some advice, and we moved on to the grocery store. I thought Rebecca would be long gone, but I ran in to her on one of the air-conditioned aisles. We were both freezing. And it turned out we both knew Silverheels: Ken and Lynn, our first mentors in Sint Maarten, who had given us a giant mixing bowl and lots of great advice. Small, small world. She gave us a lift back to Fezywig. Rebecca and Mike finished crewing a charter and had to head out again right away. Before they left, Rebecca gave me their boat card: Zero to Cruising.
“Hey, I know you guys!” Erik said. “I read your blog. Your article on buying a boat out of charter convinced me to do the same thing.”
“Really?” Mike said. “I’m so glad that was helpful to you. It was nice to meet you. Good luck out there.”
“What a small world,” Rebecca said. Erik gave them one of his business cards and helped them cast off their lines. We were right behind them heading out the channel.
“I wondered why they were so helpful,” Karina said. “They were cruisers.”
ERIK
We turned west. Our next anchorage was Culebra, an outer island of Puerto Rico and the last island in the Virgin Island chain. It had been good to be in familiar territory, but I knew it couldn’t last. The airport on Saint Thomas, where we’d landed with our friends on our second trip to the BVI, was the last familiar thing we saw. We knew we were heading back into the unknown.
It was a gorgeous downwind sail to Culebra. We sailed wing-on-wing, with the waves pushing us forward for a solid three hours. When we turned up into the main bay at Culebra, the sailing only got better. The entrance narrowed, keeping all the waves outside. The water went lake-flat, but the wind stayed brisk. We sailed a mile in fifteen-knot trade winds on a perfectly flat lagoon. I was in sailing heaven. The beautiful, tucked-away island of Culebra welcomed us in.
Everything was quiet. Everything was calm. We passed a man who was rowing his dinghy far from shore. His outboard motor was tipped up out of the water. I called out and asked if he needed help. He didn’t. He was rowing for the pleasure of it. This was a good sign.
It was so peaceful I didn’t want to break the silence by starting the engines as we pulled into the anchorage. We simply turned up into the wind, dropped the anchor, and drifted backward on it.
It had been about a week since we’d left Saint Martin. We still missed ou
r friends there. They were our tribe, our people, our new comfort zone. The BVI had been a good place to transition. But more uncertainty loomed ahead, and I could feel it wearing on me. This was where I had to step up. It was now really up to me—no wingmen, no mentors at my side. I had to be the captain.
Emily and I went to shore to scout things out and take care of official business. We needed a special decal to make our boat officially registered in the U.S. We waited for border patrol at a small black cafe table outside the airport in Culebra. We were keeping an eye out for an official-looking border patrol guy. Then Emily saw him. Black baseball cap. Black sunglasses. Black short-sleeved button-up shirt. Black pants tucked into thick black boots and a black holster housing a black gun at his hip. “I think this is our guy,” Emily said. I snapped the laptop shut.
As I filled in our paperwork, Emily and the officer talked about Spanish poetry. Gabriel García Márquez was his favorite, but of course he read Neruda. “Who can deny Neruda?” Emily asked rhetorically.
“I’m happy to fax your application,” Officer Border Patrol said. Suddenly, Emily’s seat scraped against the cold tiled floor and I looked up from my binder to see the officer wielding a serrated buck knife. “It’s for removing staples,” he said. He submitted our application and rattled off a list of his favorite beaches. In typical island style, this errand had filled almost the whole morning.
On our way back to the dinghy, I noticed a sign for a library. We’d seen enough beaches this week. After lunch, I brought Emily and the kids to the library. It was two trailer homes set parallel to each other with a trellised patio in between. On one side was the library itself. The other side was divided into two parts: a fifteen-seat movie theater and a sewing/craft room. Half the library trailer was a small computer lab. I was going to need that. The other half was covered in carpet and lined with fun books and games, all preceded by a sign: “Shoes Off. Naked Feet, Yes!”
The kids tossed off their shoes, settled on the floor, and dug into the shelves of books. As much as I wanted to relax with my kids and read a book, I couldn’t. I had things to do. I was the captain.
We were closing in on a deadline. In a few days our insurance would be null and void. If we weren’t outside the “hurricane box” by July 15, our boat would not be covered if it was damaged by a named windstorm. We couldn’t afford to have that happen. This all meant we either had to be north of Jacksonville, Florida, a thousand miles away, within the next forty-eight hours—which wasn’t going to happen—or else have a provision in place. To get the provision we had to provide a planned route and itinerary, including hurricane-proof anchorages and our hurricane boat preparation plan. If our insurer approved the plan, they would—for a not-too-small fee—extend our coverage within the hurricane box for an additional thirty days. I sat at the picnic table on the patio with the charts spread out in front of me, my hands knit through my hair and my eyebrows scrunched together.
Emily and I both readily admit sailing comes more naturally to me, as do navigation and technical know-how. She checked in on me from time to time, but I knew I had to tackle this project solo, and part of me resented that. I missed my cocaptain dads with stuff like this on the line.
I did my best to piece together the distances and locations based off the charts we’d purchased the day prior, but I had no firsthand knowledge and no one to ask. It was all theoretical.
Emily came and sat next to me for short spells. She looked up “how to anchor amongst mangrove roots” and other such nonsense. “How many docking lines do we have?” she would ask. I couldn’t believe it. What I wanted to say was, “Can’t you see that doesn’t matter right now?! The insurance needs an itinerary, not an equipment list.” But what I said without looking up was, “Six,” and I got back to work. If there was a hurricane, we’d anchor the boat and get off. I didn’t care if it sank to the bottom, as long as it was insured. Emily thought she was saving our lives. I thought she was being irrelevant.
It was a cool day with a nice breeze, but I had sweat on the back of my neck and I kept grinding my teeth. Eventually the library closed and we went back to the boat.
That night a storm blew in. The clouds covered the moon and the wind howled all night. Emily and I lay in our cabin, glad we were at anchor and not out on open water. I sat up to peer through the side hatch. There was a fair bit of chop in the water, and I could see the boats around us bucking into the wind as they pulled tight against their anchor chains. I pulled up the blankets around me and pushed deeper into my pillow. We turned off the lights and went to sleep.
The next morning I walked up on deck, stretched, and took in the beautiful morning. I looked around, thinking to myself how unique this place was and how much I liked it. It wasn’t a wide bay. All the edges felt close and snug but not too close. Then I realized things looked different than they had the day prior.
I walked around the boat trying to figure it out. Emily was now awake and came up on deck. The kids were dozing in their beds. The boat that was behind us was in the same place. We hadn’t dragged in the night. But everything else felt like it had moved.
A voice called over from the boat off our starboard side, about fifty yards away, “Good morning!”
“Good morning!” I called back. It was a large-bellied gent in his sixties with long shocks of blond hair blowing up in the wind.
“You dragged anchor last night,” he called across the water.
“We did?” I called back.
“Yeah, we were up in the night shining lights on the boat and shouting. We didn’t think anyone was on board.”
“Wow.” I looked at Emily. We both blinked.
“We had our fenders out because we thought you might hit us,” the big-bellied man called out.
“I’m really sorry about that,” I called back. “Is everything okay on your boat?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. That was a lot of wind. You and the boat behind you were both dragging. I’m glad you didn’t drift all the way back to the seawall.” Fortunately the anchors for both our dragging boats had caught and reset while we were sleeping.
“Wow. Me too,” I said. “Thanks for looking out for us.”
“You’re welcome. Glad you guys are okay,” he said. By now his wife had come on deck and we all waved to each other. All’s well that ends well.
Emily and I sat down in the cockpit. “Wow,” I said. For a third time. “Maybe I should have set the anchor better. It seemed like such a calm spot.”
“It was,” Emily said. “That was a lot of wind last night.”
I looked out over the water and realized I was grinding my teeth.
After breakfast we went back to the library. Emily and the kids went to the books. I sat at a picnic table on the covered patio, logged on to the Wi-Fi, spread out my charts, guidebooks, and laptop, and resumed work on my first-world bureaucratic project.
It was Friday, and everything had to be in place by Tuesday. I knew they wouldn’t do anything with it over the weekend. I had to send it off that day to have a hope of being covered. The deeper into the project I got, the more I looked at the library where my family was relaxing and squinted my eyes. My mouth tightened, and I scowled at my mostly empty spreadsheet. I didn’t know how to ask for help, and even if I did, I wasn’t sure what kind of help they could offer. I went for a walk. Emily joined me, but we didn’t talk much. When we returned, the librarians had brought out the puppies.
Alongside the library were several orphaned puppies in dog crates. The librarians cared for them, and it was bath day. Eli and Lily laughed as they and a few Puerto Rican kids washed and rinsed the wriggling dogs. There’s not much of a language barrier when it comes to washing puppies. I smiled a little bit.
We stopped by our neighbors’ boat on our way home for dinner. The big-bellied guy with wild blond hair and his wife came out on deck.
“Hey, I wanted to apologize again for
causing any alarm last night,” I said as they leaned over the rails on their boat.
“No worries. We’re glad you and your boat are okay,” Don said. We’d learned that they were Don and Janis. From there, as sailors often do, we got to talking about weather. They had recently sailed down from the Bahamas and had charts, routing info, and weather forecasts. Hallelujah.
“You’ve got an ideal weather window starting on Sunday,” Don said. “Chris Parker says it’s the kind of weather window you only get every few months.” Chris Parker is a weather guru. Sailors pay to subscribe to his weather reports via email. I hadn’t subscribed, but I wanted the info.
“Would you mind if we swung by later to look at your charts and ask you a few questions?” I asked.
“Not at all,” Janis said. It was set. I breathed easier knowing we could talk later that night. On the way to our boat, Eli complained about getting wet from the seawater. Didn’t this kid appreciate this amazing experience we were giving him?! I resisted the urge to throw him overboard. Alison put a pot of water on the stovetop and played ukulele in her cabin while she waited for it to boil. Since I hadn’t had a chance to read at the library, I grabbed a book and went to the bow to unwind.
I had settled in when Karina asked, “Dad, where’s our dinghy?”
You gotta be kidding me! I thought to myself. I’d just gotten comfortable, but I got up and went back to the stern. Our dinghy was gone. Emily was the one who had tied it off. She must not have tied the knot correctly. It was a basic knot. How hard is it to tie a bowline? I grabbed the binoculars and scanned the bay off our stern. I spotted it half a mile away, pressed into the mangrove bushes. I clenched my teeth.
I flagged down a guy going past in a motorboat. He was going to pick up some people, but he’d swing by on his way back. I walked into the kitchen. The water was boiling. I looked in the pot. Almost all the water had boiled off. “Alison!” I shouted.