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

by Mary South

  Sometimes, if John was on watch, I'd take a chair out on the bow and bask in the sun or watch the water for wildlife and other boats in the distance. But I never ventured far from the helm or escaped the present.

  Today was another peaceful day with good weather and no mechanical problems. We reached the approach to Charleston around 3:00 p.m. John struggled against the usual afternoon waves that kicked up, getting progressively worse and becoming a strong beam sea as we got closer. We were eager to get ashore, and had plans to join our friend's son for dinner, but I decided we had to adjust course to minimize our roll, even though that would take us out of our way. That helped postpone our rocking, but when we finally entered the channel, we had run out of avoidance techniques. I took the helm. We were really rolling from side to side now.

  Complicating our rough ride through the channel entrance was a wicked current running against us. We should have been making about 8 knots on our way in, but we were running around 3.5 knots. Not only were we being tossed from side to side, but we were going to be tossed from side-to-side for twice as long as we would be normally.

  Samba and Heck were now each trying to occupy the same cubic foot of space in the very corner of the settee. It would have been comical if they hadn't been so terrified. (And these are two tough little Jack Russells, the breed they send into holes on the South African savannah to flush out hyenas!) I explained in soothing tones that everything was fine, but they were definitely not buying it. Why couldn't we be in a normal house right now, with a normal yard, where we could chase normal cats and disobey a normal mother? I imagined them wondering poor little guys.

  Down below I heard a massive crash and said a small prayer that my tiny flat-screen television had not been broken.

  I snuck a glance behind me and it looked like backstage at the Steel Wheels tour. The salon was littered with my possessions: obviously, I hadn't done a good enough job of stowing and securing. The television was lying on its side, a good eight feet from where it should have been. If it still worked, it would be a miracle.

  I finally felt my temper fraying. I was tired and I was fed up with fighting nature. John had the sense to steer clear for a few minutes while my seething turned to simmering and then blew over.

  As we passed through the jetties, the waves flattened out a little, but we continued to combat the strong current. Charleston Harbor is one of the busier American ports, and we stayed alert as several large cargo ships passed us by, both coming in and going out. I braced us for wake and angled the bow into it as these vessels passed. We were fine.

  Then, coming up behind us on our port side was a massive container ship from the Evergreen line. The aptly named Ever Racer appeared to be going much faster than the other ships we'd encountered. John got on the VHF and tried to raise their bridge but got no response. The Ever Racer just barreled by us. I was ready at the wheel, and John positioned himself to let me know what was coming. We had one large wave of wake. I steered us over it on an angle and we did fine. Then John shouted out that we had another coming our way. Again, we were ready, and it was big but manageable. John took another look and said, "Whew. We're clear, Mare," and then, as we both relaxed a little, we were suddenly up on the edge of something big that came from nowhere.

  I was at the helm and doing my best but we were riding right on the crest and I could feel that I had absolutely no control. It all happened very, very fast, and there was no real time for panic. We were heeled over at a 35-degree angle to the water-John could probably have reached out and touched it!-and I thought, This is it. We're going to capsize in Charleston Harbor. I felt a stab of anxiety about the dogs, who were not wearing life vests, though it didn't occur to me to worry that we didn't have them on either. I had a quick mental image of the Bossanova, rolled so far over that she took on water through the pilothouse doors and swamped on her side. I imagined being towed to shore, the engine ruined by water. I even felt a flash of shame, though I knew it wouldn't be our fault. All of this ran through my head in a split second and I knew only luck might save us.

  We did not capsize. Somehow, we managed to race down the face of that wake at a terrible angle and then right ourselves. The Ever Racer sped ahead without any indication that they had almost capsized us.

  I was furious, absolutely fuming, and I have to admit, I couldn't let it go. I felt that we'd narrowly avoided the worst possible fate, through no fault of our own, and I wanted that boat to pay. I thought seriously about calling the harbor master and reporting the vessel, but in the back of my mind I feared we'd wind up in the nautical version of one of those trucker movies. You know, where the psychotic guy in the eighteen-wheeler is terrorizing a couple on vacation. I could just imagine us being chased up the coast by some salty freakshow who'd gone 'round the bend from all those years on the high seas. I decided not to risk it but I remained livid. It was hard not to be when we'd come so close to disaster. Weeks later, when my anger had abated, but not my desire for revenge, I looked up some online facts about Ever Racer.

  She was part of the Evergreen Marine Corporation, a fleet of 150 container ships with a combined capacity of four hundred thousand 20-foot containers. The company's biggest claim to fame was a record fine of $25 million from the U.S. government for the deliberate discharge of oil waste into the Tacoma River. The bully who almost swamped us had a gross weight of 53,358 tons, and her speed was 23 knots. That may not seem very fast but the no-wake zone in a harbor is generally 5 miles per hour and a ship like this can take up to 4 miles to come to a full stop. So, you can see why any extra speed in a slow zone could be incredibly dangerous. I toyed with starting a campaign to have all boats wear big stickers on their sterns, like tractor trailers, with an 800 number for filing complaints. But out on the sea, might was more or less right.

  Despite the near capsizing, we chugged safely into the Charleston marina and tied up at twilight. Unfortunately, we were accidentally put in a slip that needed an adaptor to deliver 30-amp power. One dockhand waited with us and I walked the dogs while another dockhand searched for an adaptor. . .and searched. . .and searched. They couldn't locate a single adaptor and were profusely apologetic for having put us in a slip with 50-amp power. They did have an open 30-amp spot on the other side of the marina, if we wanted to move.

  It's difficult to explain. We really did need to recharge our batteries overnight. But I simply couldn't bring myself to fire up the engine, cast off the lines, move the boat into a new slip and tie up again. I just did not want to be on that boat for another minute that night.

  The dockhands offered us some complimentary ice to help keep our perishables cold until morning. John and I said,"Sure, thanks," and sat in a silent, exhausted heap on the dock in the dark. This time, our close call had not left us feeling elated or triumphant. We were worn out. Depleted. Sick of the struggle to get from one place to another safely. After a while I said, "John, I can wait for the ice. Why don't you go grab us a table for dinner and I'll be right up."

  I didn't have to ask twice. John got up and said, "Mare, I'll take you up on that. I really need to do some power-drinking but I'll save you a seat."

  When I finally made it up to the marina hotel, it was after ten o'clock. I had dreamed of an uneventful arrival in the late afternoon, a great berth and a VIP greeting from a couple of dockhands waiting to tie us up and escort us to the marina manager, who had invited us to a barbecue with his family.

  The slip was not great, the manager was gone and the sunset barbecue was long over. Of course, the kitchen had closed, too, so there would be no dinner. But John had already made fast friends with the young bartenders, particularly the female ones, and was buying everybody shots.

  When I parked myself next to John in a warm, safe place where one television above the bar was broadcasting headline news and the other showed a baseball game, I was happy. Not jubilant-just delightfully relieved. John bought me a shot; no Domaine Ott had ever tasted as good. Three days of narrow escapes had finally taken their toll,
and John and I were both suffering from cumulative fatigue.

  The bartenders arranged and rearranged a large squadron of single-serving airplane-size bottles on the counter behind them, just beneath a big plate glass window with a view of the harbor. Apparently, in South Carolina, this was the only bottle size that bars were allowed to carry. I could imagine that some good-old-boy who had a lock on the importation of minis also had a lock on a couple of key legislators. It was the silliest thing I'd ever heard of. And yet I ordered another one. John was regaling our new friends (in an increasingly loud voice) with the story of our near-disaster earlier that evening.

  "Yeah," said two of the barkeeps, almost in unison, "we saw a container ship coming through here today that we noticed was going way too fast." We didn't need independent confirmation, since we had almost rolled out there, but it was nice to know that these people, who watched the traffic day in and day out, had observed our reckless nemesis.

  I decided soon after to call it a night and go back to the boat and the dogs. I slept like a log, and never even heard John when he returned. In the morning, as I made coffee and John emerged bleary-eyed from his stateroom, I suggested that we take a day off. John looked like he was going to weep with gratitude.

  " That would be excellent," he said. "You read my mind. I just think that after the last few days, we could use a little R&R."

  I tallied our hours underway and saw that we had run for seven hours on Wednesday, twelve on Thursday, seventeen on Friday, twelve on Saturday and twelve and a half on Sunday. No wonder we were fried.

  After a long walk around the marina complex with the dogs, and lunch at the bar with John, I did some laundry, enjoyed a piping hot marina shower and sat by the pool in overcast weather to do some reading.

  At one point, I looked up to see the Ever Racer heading back toward the Atlantic. Still infuriated enough not to care that I looked like a raving lunatic, I ran to the end of the pier, jumped up and down to attract the bridge's attention and then raised my middle finger defiantly. There. That would teach them to mess with me.

  That night, I rejoined John at the bar. He hadn't left it since they'd opened at 11:30 a.m. and he was in a great mood. He'd been watching baseball, drinking beer, and flirting with the pretty bartender from the night before. I feared that a certain amount of denial was at work, and that when we had to push off the next morning, John would cling to a piling and wail as we pulled away from the dock.

  But he was stoic. He looked a little grim, and perhaps hungover, as he manned the lines and I backed us out at 0800 hours. We had conferred on the best way for me to maneuver us out of a rather tight spot.

  The Bossanova has a left-turning propeller, which means the boat pulls to starboard when you are in reverse. I had this in mind as I planned our exit, of course. But the "prop-walk," as it is called, was augmented by the strong current, and suddenly our stern was swinging powerfully toward the dock. I had to turn the wheel hard to port and really hit the fuel to correct us in time. Some idiot on the pier shouted hysterically-as though that would help! But we powered away in time to avoid a collision with the concrete fingers. Still, it was extremely embarrassing and a tense way to start the day. Once we were back in the river, the strong current that ran against us on the way in was running with us as we left Charleston, so we were exiting the channel into the vast Atlantic in less than half the time it had taken us to fight our way in.

  Neither of us felt sad to see Charleston slipping into the distance behind us. It was the scene of our closest call so far and our day off there had been more of an emergency Band-Aid than a fun vacation. It was good to be back aboard.

  CHA PTER S IX

  O, God, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small.

  -ANONYMOUS

  Burrells Inlet, South Carolina. If you're ever in the neighborhood, stop by. Tucked back behind a strip of shoreline north of Pawley's Island and south of Myrtle Beach, it was one of the friendliest places we visited. We had headed in a little early, after a blessedly uneventful day underway. The inlet was easy to run and opened onto a serene and gorgeous landscape-the late-afternoon sun setting lush patches of wetland ablaze with light. It seemed like we had entered another world, a secret spot that was amber and languid. After Charleston, which had been both difficult to get in and out of and very expensive, we were ready for a harbor that was distinctly not commercial. We had found it.

  As we pulled into the little marina we'd found for the night, a small crowd of people came out to watch us tie up.

  Most of them had beers in their hands, but they were young and old, tattooed and preppy. A little boy hung around his father's knees and peeked shyly out at us. As I went below to make sure the battery charger was on and everything looked good in the engine room, I heard John talking to the folks on the dock. He had secured the lines and then immediately dipped into the cooler of Bud Light he kept on deck. Now he leaned against the hull with one hand and punctuated his conversation with the beer in his other. John knew the answer to every question about the Bossanova as well as I did, and it made me laugh to hear him-mostly because I could have sworn I heard a swell of proprietary pride behind his expansive responses. Listening to him now, you'd never guess that he was a fan of cigarette boats and Carolina-style sport fishers.

  Every time some slick Miami Vice-style boat whizzed past us, John would grow positively misty-eyed as he watched it fade quickly from the horizon. But I suspected he was starting to fall for the slow and shippy Bossanova. Maybe it was the sturdy way she'd carried us through some rough spots where a fast, planning race boat would have bounced around like a toy. Or maybe it was just another case of Stockholm syndrome.

  It's hard to believe two people could spend as much time with each other as John and I did without getting a lot more intimate. Though we spent long hours in the pilothouse together, our unspoken agreement to avoid topics of dissension eliminated most conversational avenues. We whiled away the hours talking about Chapman pals and incidents, telling each other funny stories about our friends, planning our voyage strategy and listening to any kind of music we could agree on, which usually fell in that middle ground that neither of us loved.

  The most personal things I ever found out about John were these: right after college, he got married and shortly thereafter divorced; and his previous career was so stressful that before he'd turned 30, he had high blood pressure and terrible insomnia. Both of these revelations surprised me. The John I knew now was a happy bachelor and as fun-loving as they came-a throwback to the Rat Pack. There was something innately good about John, something irrepressibly bighearted that balanced out his many less-enlightened qualities.

  But ours remained a friendship built entirely on our seafaring adventure, our Chapman bond and mutual but affectionate scorn for our highly divergent world views. It occurred to me that maybe we recognized and liked in each other the will to walk away from other people's idea of success. We both knew how to relax and enjoy life, too. Whatever it was that bound us, it was working. We were getting along great, despite all our differences, long hours and constant companionship. On later, shorter voyages with people I knew much better, I found my nerves somewhat frayed by familiarity in such close quarters. John and I were a working crew, and we got along like two people who had a job to do but wanted to enjoy it as much as possible. It was oddly ideal.

  While John continued to field questions from new fans of the Bossanova, I snuck off with the pups for a walk around the neighborhood, which was about one city block wide, with a main street running down the middle, ocean on one side and wetlands on the other. I sat for a while and looked out at the Atlantic-it seemed so different from this perspective. Here was a beach like the ones we visited on family vacations with our Hi-C and sandy sandwiches, where the seaside smelled like coconut suntan lotion, and the sound of the surf as you dozed off battled with the regular ponks! and occasional laughter of a couple playing Kadima. Here, the ocean was content to mute its destructive force by sending its qu
iet tide as an insidious invader of the sandcastle you'd worked on for hours. It was lovely, but it bore no resemblance to out there. A good reminder that it's all about perspective.

  After I put the boys back on the boat, I joined John in the bar above the little store at the marina. It was a small, quiet, nondescript joint, with a magnificent view of the sun setting over the wetlands. Country music played on the jukebox. To my left was a guy of about 22, with spiky hair and multiple piercings. The bartender was a young lady with a midriff- baring shirt. The fellow at the end of the bar, to John's right, was an older man in a striped golf shirt. John had a couple of beers and I had a couple of vodkas, and we chatted with our barmates, who were, like people we met almost everywhere we went, intensely curious about the Bossanova and our journey.

  When the sun had set, we thought of food and bed. I went home to the boat and the boys to see what I could throw together, and John decided to try the seafood place down the way. In the morning, we picked up a few staples at the little store and paid $40 for our dockage. It had been a wee spot of lazy heaven-easy to get to, laid-back and welcoming-a great change from our recent urban challenges.