The Cure for Anything Is Salt Water: How I Threw My Life Overboard and Found Happiness at Sea

by Mary South

  congratulation that was almost as comical as it was icky. It was a little like being forced to watch your colleagues in a very unsexy orgy. Okay, you do me, then I'll do you and you do him, then he'll do her. As much as I wanted someone to acknowledge my many months of hard work, I felt even more keenly the need for a very hot shower, Silkwood-style. I was in a contamination zone and felt panicky about getting out.

  During the next coffee break, I calmly pushed through the ballroom exit doors as though I was going to the restroom with everyone else, walked past the banquet tables piled with spring waters and caffeinated beverages, through the densely carpeted lobby with its obscenely expensive floral spray and softly piped music, and out onto the hard and dirty midtown sidewalk. I remember standing still, looking up at the blank gray sky and buttoning my jacket against the fall wind. My heart was racing and I felt a prickly, intense flash of recognition. This was the same sensation I'd known in dreams, when I was being followed or chased. I wasn't just skipping a boring late-afternoon meeting. I was escaping. I stood on the sidewalk and felt my soul slipping into the crowd, walking fast, faster and finally sprinting away. And that's when I realized I had just quit, that I wasn't going back, I was done and utterly free.

  This is the most honest explanation I can give for why I woke up one day, a 40-year-old book editor with virtually no nautical skills, and decided to throw away my old life, buy a boat and go to sea. Fortes fortuna adiuvat was our family motto. And Fortune does favor the brave but-let's face it-I also had nothing to lose.

  CHA PTER TWO

  If wishes were fishes the ocean would be all of our desire.

  -GERTRUDE STEIN

  So, I was going to follow my salty bliss.

  Once I'd made up my mind, it all began falling into place. Actually, it was sort of like pushing a boulder off a cliff: after the first shove, everything else seemed inevitable.

  The house went on the market and I quickly found a buyer. I started sorting through my belongings and paring things down for life aboard a boat. Oh, yeah: a boat, I still needed to find a boat.

  My obsessive online wanderings, previously symptoms of a fantasy life gone awry, were about to pay off. Although I still had plenty to figure out, it was absolutely amazing how much I'd already absorbed. And if I knew only one thing (though some would call that an overestimate), it was that if I was going to sea, I was going in a trawler.

  There has always been a great divide between those who motor and those who sail. I could try to delineate it for you, but it is probably best compared to the ancient schism between those who wear briefs and those who wear boxers, or those who cook and those who bake. It's personal, essential and somewhat mysterious. Aesthetically and spiritually, I had always been drawn to the romantic simplicity of sailboats. Yet I recognized that being a great sailor takes not just a thorough knowledge of basic seamanship but a whole new vocabulary and years of understanding the wind. Mystique aside, it's a much more complicated proposition than running a powerboat. My respect for the sea, as well as my innate laziness, left me with no doubt that a powerboat would be easier to master-or at least skipper with competence. And since I loved the lines of a salty-looking workboat nearly as much as a classic wooden sailboat, a trawler it would be.

  Trawlers, which were originally fishing vessels that trailed nets, come in many sizes and shapes-for instance, the rusty shrimp and scallop hunters off the U.S. coast; the large European, Scandinavian and Baltic boats that catch tuna, mackerel and anchovies, and even the ruggedly adorable crabbers off the British Isles. But you probably know them best as the gaily painted wooden souvenir miniatures, sold in every seaside town from Apalachicola to Wellfleet. Of course, these kitschy tributes to a town's fishing heritage, usually painted bright blue or red and adorned with minuscule lobster traps or nets, have as much in common with their real counterparts as George Clooney does with a real captain of a swordfish boat. They're mere Lilliputian replicas of the R-rated originals that go to sea and stay at sea until the holds are full of fresh catch, no matter how rough the weather.

  Somewhere in between these two extremes, you will find modern trawler yachts. Made of fiberglass, wood or steel, they may have a single engine or twins and their fuel capacities and ranges vary wildly. Their looks are deceiving, too: some of them are the spitting image of their blue-collar relatives, and some resemble the love child of a fling between a naughty tug and a slick cigarette boat.

  True trawlers always have one thing in common: a full displacement hull shape. A displacement hull is just what it sounds like: the bow literally plows through the water, smoothly sweeping it aside as it makes way. This form of travel is slow but economical, and it's the most important reason (of several) that trawlers are often capable of ocean crossings. While their working-class cousins toss relentlessly in 15-foot swells for weeks on end, slowly depleting their fuel tanks as the fish fill the hold, today's trawler yacht has adapted the same slow engine and fuel economy to the purpose of exploring the world in comfort and safety.

  In the last few decades, recreational trawlers-once spurned by sailors as little more than houseboats because of their engines, amenities and limited coastal range - have undergone a kind of revolution. That's due in large part to the development of smaller trawlers with ranges of over 3,000 nautical miles, built to withstand any kind of sea conditions.

  These vessels are as capable of circumnavigation as a sailboat yet far more comfortable and reliable-that is, dry and independent of the wind's whimsy. They are mini-ships with salty pedigrees that lure lifelong sailors into warm, comfortable pilothouses as a form of luxurious graduation rather than sissy shame.

  My needs were basic: I wanted a boat that was handsome, fuel-efficient, and most of all, seaworthy. The catch was, I had to be able to afford it-and that very conveniently ruled out 99 percent of the trawlers on the market. In other words, I was not looking for a boat but for a miracle.

  Every morning I logged on to www.yachtworld.com (and several other sites) and perused their thousands of listings like a woman possessed. The pickings were slim. If I could afford it, it was thirty years old and a call to the broker inevitably revealed expensive "issues" that needed to be addressed before the boat was fit to splash. If it was absolutely perfect, it was generally a half million dollars more than I could dream of spending. At points, I became so discouraged that I started considering bigger compromises. Maybe a motor sailer.

  Maybe a classic wooden sailboat. Or maybe just a very large inner tube.

  One day when my efforts were starting to seem hopeless, I tried entering something different in Yachtworld's search engine fields. I had been looking at Nordhavns, Krogens, Fishers, Cherubinis; at steel, fiberglass, wood; at sailboats, motor sailers, trawlers. But on this morning, I haphazardly tried out the word "custom," and a secret cyber-wall swung wide open, instantly revealing a dozen listings I hadn't seen before. One of them sent me into immediate orbit: a 40-foot custom steel trawler in Pahokee, Florida.

  At first glance, the boat seemed way too good to be true. Shady Lady was only thirteen years old. Photos suggested that the interior was positively spacious-and good-looking, in a utilitarian way. (Even a lot of the luxury trawlers have interiors that look like fancy RVs or tacky 1980s condos.) The listing details claimed two staterooms, two heads, a pilothouse, a big salon with a galley in the corner, a walk-around engine room with workbench (virtually unheard of on a 40-foot boat) and plenty of outdoor deck space. Fuel capacity was 750 gallons, which gave this boat a cruising range of over 3,000 nautical miles. Its tanks held 400 gallons of water. And it was at the high end of what I had decided I could afford-roughly one-quarter of the price of a used 40-foot Nordhavn.

  A call to the broker revealed that Shady Lady had been on the market for a few months and that the owner was also the builder. A master steelworker, Mel Traber had built the boat for his retirement, with the design assistance of the legendary Phil Bolger. Since I'd become a fanatic researcher, I already owned a copy of Bolge
r's book, Boats with an Open Mind. I rifled through the index and found Shady Lady on page 392. She was featured as an example of a rare trawler design by Bolger, whose cult following consisted mainly of sailors.

  I saw only two immediate drawbacks to this boat. I had originally hoped to find a vessel capable of circumnavigation-not that I was deranged enough to attempt that, but I liked the possibility of it. Bolger's text revealed that Shady Lady was designed for going as far offshore as Bermuda, which is about 600 miles out. Unless I added paravane stabilizers (the large outriggers that you see on many fishing boats), she would roll a bit too much for the kind of continuous and serious swells an ocean crossing might entail. She also lacked other equipment that would make her ideally suited for a transatlantic crossing: a backup (or "wing") engine, a generator, a water maker. Most of this could be added if I had the money but for now, I would have to limit myself to coastal cruising if I bought this boat.

  My other hesitation was that despite liking almost everything else about Shady Lady's lines, I had some aesthetic concerns about the stern. In the small online photo, which was difficult to see, its rear end looked big, high, square. Lots of junk in the trunk. Bootilicious. Packing much back.

  I tried gently quizzing the broker about this but it was hard to be subtle.

  "Ummmm. I really like the looks of this boat-it seems great-but the. . .ummm, stern. Is it kind of. . .ungainly? Boxy? Ummm, I guess what I mean is. . .butt-ugly?" His stiff reply was, "I don't know. It looks fine to me," in a tone that implied I must have some kind of sick derriere fetish to even notice such a thing.

  I knew I needed to get down to Florida right away and have a look but my house closing was just a few days away and I was only about halfway through my packing. Though I was a veteran itinerant, who had never lived anywhere for more than two years until I moved to New York City in my mid twenties, I loathed the process. Usually, I got away with just jamming everything into trash bags at the last minute. But since I was moving aboard a boat, I tried to embrace the minimalist fantasy wholeheartedly. I had visions of myself with nothing but a couple of pairs of khaki shorts, a closet full of crisp white button-down shirts, no more than two pairs of worn TopSider sneakers and an array of baseball caps that would take my outfit from daytime casual to. . .well, nighttime casual.

  But it was just a fantasy. When push came to shove, I found I was appallingly attached to nice things. I couldn't part with a couple of designer suits, even though I hoped I'd rarely have to wear them again. And though I'd already read my many hundreds of books, I couldn't discard them. (Me parting with my books was like a mechanic parting with his wrenches, a chef parting with his knives, a soccer player parting with his legs. As a seasoned editor, I also knew these awful analogies were indicative of my desperation to justify keeping the books, and that seemed reason enough.)

  Rising above my fondness for the Hefty-bag method of packing, I carefully filled several plastic boxes with things to make my trawler feel more like home: all my nautical books, my favorite kitchen stuff, fancy glasses, an Hermès tray, a silver ice bucket, some framed family photos-all these were separated, wrapped and marked BOAT. I even packed a fancy electric espresso maker and a drip coffeemaker. (Shows how much I knew: unless you have a generator aboard, only 12-volt appliances work when you're away from the dock.) It was psychologically tougher to let these material things go than I had ever expected: they were the small rewards I'd provided myself as compensation for my wage slavery, and I clung to them like a life raft while I bobbed between the two shores of present and future, home and boat.

  I had infrequent but intense moments of feeling I was in way over my head. Despite my nomadic childhood (or maybe because of it) I had always felt a deep attachment to at least a sense of home. I remember walking through my loft like living room with its high ceilings and exposed stone walls, looking at the stacks of books on the floor and my art leaning against the walls and feeling a sense of panic. Sure, I hadn't liked it here, but I had made it a lovely residence. All I knew about the next one was that it would float-and that wasn't much to go on. I had no job, I was about to have no house, I still hadn't found a boat. I had jumped into all of this without any kind of backup plan. Every other accomplishment in my life had been part of a sane, linear progression.

  Now I faced a series of unknown what-ifs. What if my house deal fell through? What if I couldn't find a boat I could afford? What if I couldn't handle a boat? What if I got sick or ran out of money? All I could do, I realized, was surge ahead, clear one hurdle at a time, and keep on believing that I would be okay.

  It wasn't much of a game plan, but it was what I had. And so, two days before my brother Tom was scheduled to help me with what was bound to be a nightmarish move, and three days before my closing, I got on a plane to see Shady Lady in Florida. It was clear that I would probably not get much sleep over the next four days if I planned to get everything done. But maybe, just maybe, this was my boat.

  S K I P, T H E M AR I N E B R O K E R , picked me up at Palm Beach International Airport, and we headed out to Pahokee, which is on Lake Okeechobee, about 45 miles inland. As we headed west, the endless strip of hot, white, palm-fringed highway and fast-food joints gave way to orange groves and flat farmland that was virtually uninhabited.

  Pahokee itself, or at least what I saw of it, was just the way I'd pictured central Florida. Lots of ranch houses with jalousie windows, trailer homes with hurricane shutters, and small cottages with front porches that had long since lost their paint. I had the distinct feeling that people ate black-eyed peas and played the banjo out here. Men in overalls sat on front porches in rocking chairs, waving away flies while hounds slept at their feet. Okay, maybe I made that last part up. But I was pretty sure a girl could buy moonshine in this part of the world. Looking around, there was no way to miss that this piece of Florida, away from the touristy coastlines, was still the deep South.

  I caught a glimpse of Lake Okeechobee flashing like tinfoil beneath a bright sky. It was staggeringly big, hence its imaginative name, derived from the Seminole Indian words for "big" and "water." The second largest lake in the United States, right behind Lake Michigan (the other Great Lakes are shared with Canada), Lake Okeechobee is better known today as "The Bass Capital of the World."

  Less than 15 feet deep, it has a circumference of 150 miles and covers an area of 730 miles, or almost half a million acres. On this hot, hazy day it was impossible to see a shoreline, and its flat, naked expanse stretched out, shimmering, like a bright dead sea.

  It was probably just as well that I didn't know anything about my family's connection to the area until days later, when I had returned to New York and was telling my brother Hamilton about the trip. "Oh, Lake Okeechobee. That's where Hamilton Disston did all that drainage." He was vague on other details, but a little research revealed that this part of the world had been well known to my ancestors-actually, more like owned by my ancestors. In the 1880s, Hamilton Disston (my great-great-grandfather's cousin and best friend and the man for whom my grandfather, father and brother are all named) became obsessed with the idea of draining the Everglades. A wealthy Philadelphia toolmaker, Disston bought 4 million acres from the state of Florida for 25 cents an acre, instantly becoming the largest landowner in the United States, with over 6,000 square miles of Florida to his name. Yet today, when I visit the Sunshine State, I am forced to stay at a Days Inn and eat at Denny's like everyone else. It seems so very, very wrong, doesn't it?

  Disston, who became known far and wide as the Drainage King (eat your heart out, Michael Jackson!), dredged canals connecting Lakes Kissimmee, Hatchineha, and Tohopekaliga. He also deepened and straightened other lakes that formed the headwaters for the Kissimmee River. He blasted out the waterfall of the Caloosahatchee River and connected Lakes Bonnet, Hicpochee, and Lettuce by canal systems. Disston's projects drained a total of 50,000 acres, increased agricultural lands and created a navigable route from the central Florida town of Kissimmee to the Gulf of Mexi
co. He also established a large sugarcane plantation in Osceola County and founded the resort town of Disston, which is now known as Gulfport.

  Despite these successes, the panic of 1893, the repeal of Grover Cleveland's sugar-growing incentives and several freezes in a row brought Disston's development dreams to a crashing halt. Though he was officially reported to have died of heart failure, it was widely known that he shot himself in the bathtub of his Philadelphia mansion.

  I was amazed that all of this had been completely unknown to me. Finding my boat here, in the unlikely place of Pahokee, now seemed like more than geographic coincidence. It seemed fateful. Rather than focus on the billions of dollars that 4 million acres of Florida would now be worth, or the lasting ecological damage my ancestors had ignorantly wrought, the eternal optimist in me decided to see this coincidence as a positive omen about the boat and a rare chance to feel like a relative financial success. After all, the $28,000 I had once drained from my own 401(k) now seemed like a small drop in Big Waters.

  We reached the marina, and Skip pulled his new SUV into a parking lot beside a flotilla of other SUVs and American-made pickup trucks. When I opened the door the crisp chilliness of the cab instantly wilted in the midday heat. We walked down a short slope to the no-frills dock, locked behind a chain-link fence and gate.

  And there was Shady Lady. She looked all wrong for that spot-too distinctive, too majestic, way too salty. I experienced an immediate joy that overpowered all common sense. I hadn't even been aboard yet-she might be a disaster. But something in me knew right away that this was my boat. The first thing I did was walk to a nearby finger pier and gaze across at her stern. It was all right. Not svelte but certainly not the clunky eyesore I had feared. While the broker unlocked the boat, I climbed aboard and checked out the decks. They were white and almost blinding in the harsh noon sunlight. There was plenty of space at the bow, which was high and solid-looking. Side decks with hand railings stretched back to the stern, which was big and open, with room for a table and chairs. You could have a dinner party for six back there and still have room for a wandering mariachi band. There was even more deck space above the salon, where a hard-bottomed dinghy lay, lashed to one side.