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

by Mary South

  "What the hell, Mare," he said. "I've got nothing better to do. And I need the sea time. It'll be fun!"

  And so, the odd couple were going to make a three-week, 1,000-mile-plus voyage, with only each other for companionship. Oh, dear. Our classmates started taking bets on who'd be murdered first.

  CHA PTER FO U R

  The sea hates a coward.

  -EUGENE O'NEILL

  June 23, 2004, was a beautiful day, on its way to being another scorcher, but it was still too early to be hot. I was hanging over the railings of the boat with a can of navy blue paint, writing BOSSANOVA on the gray, sun-bleached hull. John was doing some final errands. We were getting underway today, and I had waited until the last minute to put the new name on the bow-though I had managed to letter the stern the night before. My original plan had been to repaint the entire boat soon after I closed on it, but the unexpected bottom job at the survey had cleaned out my coffers. The truth is, I didn't even have enough money to buy vinyl transfer letters, let alone have a professional do the fancy job the boat deserved. I'm not sure why I had thought waiting would solve anything-it's not like I was planning on getting any richer soon-but I guess I dreaded doing what I knew was going to be not such a great job. I wanted to narrow the window of embarrassment for the Bossanova.

  I had also procrastinated because changing the name of a boat is considered extremely unlucky. A couple of my close friends had begged me to keep Shady Lady. Their rationale was that it was so not me that it was hysterical. They later confessed to a darker desire to order me a Members Only jacket with Shady Lady embroidered on it. Very funny-and it sums up exactly why I had to go with a new name. I remember sitting in the Hinckley office and hearing somebody bark out over their handheld VHF, "Yeah, I've got Mary here from Shady Lady"-every guy in the room turned a hopeful, salacious glance my way only to find not a wanton hussy but a cringing tomboy-and at that moment I knew that the old name had to go. Besides, she just felt like a Bossanova to me.

  I'm the kind of girl who will cross a street to avoid walking under a ladder and who has practically driven into a ditch to avoid the path of a black cat. It's not so much that I believe these superstitions-I just don't see the point of tempting fate. With this in mind, I exhaustively researched boat renaming ceremonies designed to take the bad juju out of the occasion. The Internet offered up countless rituals claiming to protect you from your own personal Poseidon adventure. Some demanded that you perform the renaming with the boat in the water, others insisted it be in dry dock. Some called for champagne offerings, and others for red wine. One stipulated sailing backward for 200 yards, and another predicted bad luck until you'd run aground three times. It was impossible to determine which ceremony was best, and in the end I just borrowed from a couple and created my own. I figured that if I respectfully asked Neptune/Poseidon for a blessing on my boat with a pure heart, the ritual itself could be safely improvised.

  I did embrace the widely held notion that renaming a boat is a two-tiered process. It just made good sense. Lore has it that Neptune/Poseidon keeps a ledger with the name of every boat recorded therein, and the first thing you have to do is purge the old name from his ledger and his memory. It also seriously pisses off the Big Guy of the Deep if you bring anything aboard with the boat's new name on it until you've eradicated the old. In this respect, I inadvertently screwed up-I did have a couple of e-mails on my computer that referred to the boat by its new name. I also had my running papers aboard, including my Coast Guard documentation with the new name of the vessel on it. But I guessed that the deities of the deep would be willing to let these tiny transgressions slide. After all, they're probably not computer-savvy enough to tap into my hard drive and I did have a legal obligation to keep the paperwork handy.

  I began my ritual by first removing every trace of the vessel's old name. This was harder than you might think. It meant not only peeling the old lettering off the bow and stern, but painting over the ring buoys, removing all of the old documentation, maintenance records and ship log. (I mailed them to a friend to keep for me.) Finally, as I took a happy look around the salon, satisfied that I had eradicated every reference to Shady Lady, I saw the previous owner's cruising card pinned to the bulletin board. His name and contact information were superimposed on a photo of the boat, and when I squinted, I could see Shady Lady written across the bow. I left the card but blackened out the lettering on the boat photo with a Sharpie, hugely relieved that this crucial detail had not slipped by me.

  The next thing I did was gather the dogs in the salon and give a little speech, praising Shady Lady for her years of faithful service to Mel and asking Poseidon to erase her esteemed name from his ledger. Then I thanked him and raised an icy margarita in his honor. I also gave each dog a Sausage. We all savored the moment.

  Then, I asked Poseidon to record the new name, Bossanova, on his ledger. I asked him for his blessing on this name and implored him to keep the boat and all her passengers safe. I closed by hoping he'd help me be a captain worthy of my vessel and of his constant protection. I raised my glass to him again and then I turned and toasted all four directions of the wind, just to be safe. The dogs looked at me expectantly (which is pretty much how they always look), so I obliged with another treat. They looked at me expectantly three more times. Smart and greedy!

  Later that day, after I had painted the name on the stern, I went forward with another margarita, splashed it liberally across the anchor locker and bow and over the side into the water. Then I officially pronounced the vessel Bossanova and drank the remainder of the cocktail. I knew the margarita was an unorthodox alternative to the traditional blessing with good champagne but, in my mind, the quality of my offering was what mattered. And I make a mean margarita.

  All in all, I was happy with how the dogs and I had welcomed Bossanova into the world, but I was decidedly not happy with my hand-painted lettering job.

  I am not a vain girl. Sometimes I go days without even glancing in a mirror, and then when I finally do, I think nothing more than "Yup, that's me, all right." A friend once described my rumpled sartorial style as "home from St. Andrew's for the weekend," and I noticed recently that all my childhood photos showed me wearing khakis and navy blue sweaters, an urge I still have to fight daily. But I felt real pain whenever I failed to keep Bossanova looking good. I thought my boat was gorgeous. I was proud of her and I felt a duty to keep her looking her best.

  The new name looked awful. A couple of guys stopped to tease me about it on their way up the dock to Storm-Along, a beautiful motor yacht with lots of varnished wood and a distinctive inky green hull with matching upholstery. This vessel, which they were busily making repairs to, was not much bigger than mine but was probably worth well over $1 million. The nice thing was that-and this happened all the time-these same guys had stopped by the day before to say how much they liked my boat and to ask me all about her. So, I took the ribbing good-naturedly and prayed they wouldn't see the stern. I felt deeply ashamed, like I was sending my kid to school in filthy clothes.

  Honestly, it really was a minor disaster. After I had removed the old vinyl letters that spelled out SHADY LADY and painted over the area with a rectangle of fresh gray paint, I thoughtfully eyeballed the shadow of the previous name's outline, whose gluey ghost still peeked through, ever so faintly. I figured that if I kept the same letter spacing, it would look pretty good. A nice theory, but when I stepped back to have a look, I had somehow crammed all the letters together on one end. It was completely lopsided and looked like someone with significant learning disabilities had taken a stab at it-with her foot. My friend Julie later coined a name for my hand-painted font: Retardica Bold. I vowed to repaint it while underway-it was too embarrassing to imagine arriving in Sag Harbor like this.

  John came down the dock, brandishing an air filter triumphantly. The previous owner had run Shady Lady without one for more than ten years and never had a problem. I had absolute faith in Mel's advice and I also subscribed to the mott
o If it ain't broke don't fix it. But there was an obvious basket attached to the engine that cried out, in its naked emptiness, for a filter. Clearly the manufacturer had intended one. Chapman had also drilled into us the importance of keeping dirt and foreign bodies out of the engine. With two broken-coat Jack Russells aboard, I had dog-fur tumbleweeds if I didn't sweep on the half hour. So I decided to err on the side of caution.

  The filter had been easy enough to find at NAPA, but installing it was a bear. The bolts on the holder had ossified from disuse and John had a tough time getting them off. Once he had the filter installed, he couldn't close the bracket again. But he used a few small pieces of wire to keep it in place. We decided that a jury-rigged filter was better than no filter at all.

  At this point, I was pretty determined that nothing was going to keep us from getting underway. The week before, I'd been trying to do some small maintenance to prepare for our trip. The raw water strainers, which supply cooling water to circulate around the super-hot diesel when it's running, needed to be cleaned. They were black with gunk from the boat's trip across the Okeechobee Waterway to Stuart and its subsequent lingering soak in the murky Manatee Pocket. Wrestling the tops off the over tightened strainer lids had caused the handle to crack, and some temporary leaking, which disappeared when the system was pressurized, alarmed me enough to order a replacement. In the end, I just kept the new one as a spare because the old one continued to function.

  But waiting for the part had delayed our departure by two days. Even now I suspected there were a few things we'd overlooked or forgotten in our preparations, but I also felt that we were as ready as we'd ever be. No doubt there is always one more thing you should do, but we weren't going to. It was time to head out.

  And so, at 1130 hours, as John cast off our lines, I backed us out of the slip and powered us to starboard in a tight circle. I headed the Bossanova up the Manatee Pocket and toward the Intracoastal Waterway, and as we passed the channel into the Chapman docks, I sounded the horn. It was John's first time out on the Bossanova, and only the third time I had taken the boat off the dock myself. I felt elation, giddy excitement. But in the back of my mind hovered a subtle, fluttering sense of irresponsibility, swatted away by sheer determination. I didn't really have enough experience to be making a journey like this, and I knew a million things could go wrong: terrible weather, disastrous mechanical problems, contaminated fuel, running aground. I wasn't really prepared to handle any of these scenarios.

  But I focused on the here and now: Stay in the channel, watch your rpms, check the oil pressure, watch for traffic astern, monitor Channel 16. . . .What a beautiful day. Oh my god, we're underway and I am the captain of this beautiful little ship. It's a dream come true.

  Halfway up the pocket, I planned to stop and fuel up for the voyage. This would be the very first time I docked my boat solo, and even though I'd merely be coming alongside an open bulkhead, I held my breath. I didn't want to mess up-it would seem like a bad omen. Adding to the pressure was a Coast Guard patrol boat, already at the dock for refueling. A posse of young Coasties in uniform eyed me skeptically as I made a 180-degree turn and brought us alongside the fuel dock. Perfect. I had to remind myself that seeming too happy about it would be very uncool and totally blow my cover as an ancient mariner.

  Three hundred and sixty gallons of diesel fuel and $600 later, John and I headed back up the pocket and into the Intracoastal. We anchored that day at 1910 hours, at Pepper Point, otherwise known as Mile 935. My logbook shows readings from the engine gauges throughout the day and notes the times at which we passed the Fort Pierce Inlet and Vero Beach. After a few days, this kind of overly meticulous logging fell by the wayside and we recorded major events, weather conditions and anchorage spots. Of course, I still monitored the engine gauges with great regularity, but everything continued to look stable and I stopped writing it down over and over, like a big nerd.

  Our first night's anchorage was a deep spot outside the ICW channel. We knocked off around 1830 that evening, and once we had securely anchored and shut down the engine, we sat on the stern with a couple of cold margaritas and toasted a fantastic first day. The air was warm and held that magnificent pinky golden hue particular to summer evenings. John and I felt not only a deep sense of contentment but also relief.

  The scenery that day had been gorgeous and ever-changing I kept a couple of guides handy in the pilothouse, and from time to time, I tried to identify the beautiful vegetation and wildlife we encountered. We passed by mangrove islands shaded by oak trees, red cedars and cabbage palms. I spotted what I thought were prickly pear cacti, covered with beautiful yellow flowers. Sea oxeye daisy, mangrove, saltwort and spartina grass lined the banks. Wading birds, including shorebirds, ospreys, cormorants, brown pelicans, roseate spoonbills and wood storks, watched us slowly passing, rarely perturbed enough to fly away. There were dozens of dolphins, a couple of manatees, and plenty of people fishing from the banks. It felt sleepy and peaceful as we chugged along through our first day without even a hiccup. After all those months of sitting in a classroom, we were finally experiencing what had drawn us to school in the first place. We were really doing it! And we seemed to be on top of everything.

  Of course, we had no way of knowing that very few days would be as uneventfully successful as our first. Even the very next morning, shortly after we left our anchorage at 0715 hours, we started noticing some problems with the VHF radio that would plague us through most of our trip. I suspected it was battery-related. The diesel engine was fitted with an alternator that charged the batteries and allowed the essential electronics to run off their stored energy while underway. I had wondered if my batteries needed replacement even before we left the dock, but a marine electrician had tested them, swapped out some old wires for new ones and declared them absolutely fine. Now, though, our first radio check of the morning showed a pathetically weak signal. But as the day wore on and the alternator continued sending power to the batteries, our signal seemed to recover. Maybe our radio was fine after all.

  The second day was memorable mostly for a far-off view of Cape Canaveral that was thrilling in the early dawn light. All we could see was the profile of the launch pad, silhouetted against the pink morning sky. It looked majestic, though distant. At eleven o'clock, we could make out a little more detail in the midday sun but by one o'clock, we had run out of enthusiasm for it. Around three in the afternoon we started to actively avert our gaze, looking at anything but the Space Center. And at five o'clock, when Cape Canaveral seemed as far away as it had at seven-thirty that morning, we became slightly unhinged and took turns hurling insults at its taunting immobility. Nothing deflates a sense of accomplishment like watching the same landmark go by. . .all. . .day. . .long. The contentment of the first day was already being invaded by a teeny, tiny, vaguely itchy realization that it was going to be a long trip at this rate.

  In the late afternoon of day two, we stopped at the Titusville Municipal Marina for ice and then motored on for another few hours. It was earlier in the evening than we had wanted to stop, but the route ahead looked like a slow and twisty one through an area that some dimwit had enticingly named Mosquito Lagoon. I later learned that this spot had been rotary-ditched back in the 1950s in an effort to control the mosquito population. From Jupiter Inlet in the south to Ponce de Leon, which was still north of us, this was all part of a 156-mile-long estuary called the Indian River Lagoon, the "Redfish Capital of the World." It claims to be the U.S.'s most diverse estuary, with over 400 species of fish, 250 species of mollusks and 475 species of shrimp. At Mile 860, though there was nary a mosquito in sight, we were being bombarded by the big black horseflies we'd been warned to expect in North Carolina-obviously, ours were precocious. Maybe they'd killed off the mosquitoes. We pulled outside the channel and into an area where the river widened, in an attempt to outsmart the little buggers. It worked.

  When we went to bed we shut everything down, and in the morning, it seemed as though the batteries
had held most of their charge overnight. The VHF radio was again working beautifully, which was imperative if we were even going to think about venturing into the Atlantic. The VHF is often your only (and always your most important) means of communication aboard a ship. It's the source of vital weather updates, special notices of military maneuvers, and warnings for unscheduled bridge closings or dangerous objects afloat. It's also your lifeline to help. In case of a mechanical failure, a fire, a medical emergency-anything that might cause you to summon immediate help or abandon ship-the VHF alerts not just the Coast Guard but everyone aboard a boat within a 20-mile radius of your situation. It would be unthinkable to go offshore without it. Even hearing it fade and die as we ran the Intracoastal the day before had made me anxious. Its miraculous recovery was excellent news.

  A few hours later in New Smyrna, after our slow meander through the twisty area we'd avoided the night before, the landscape had completely changed. We were motoring through a suburban neighborhood of ranch houses with screened-in pool rooms and condos with views of the Intracoastal. Ahead of us, a bedraggled sailboat putt-putted along at a tortoise's pace. Its deck was cluttered with jerry cans and drying clothes; a battered inflatable dinghy bobbed along in its wake; its hull was painted in a patchwork of faded colors.

  This boat looked like it had dragged itself halfway around the world and was now officially exhausted. After a while, at a very wide point in the channel, I signaled that I was going to pass. We were happily waved ahead, but within a few seconds we felt a sickening thump.

  Mariners always say that the only people who haven't run aground in the ICW are liars.

  Still, it wasn't until I had powered us off the shoal, fifteen minutes later, that I was able to joke that I was glad to get that little tradition out of the way. Of course, I could afford to laugh.