by Mary South
Later that afternoon, the skies darkened just as we reached Cape Fear, and we decided to put in to Bald Head Island for the night. At first glance, we were happy with our choice. The island was home to a resort community of tastefully fancy houses-mostly large, shingled variations on Victorian. There were two restaurants-one formal, one informal-and a place to do laundry. There were no cars allowed on the island-everybody got around by golf cart. It seemed quaintly luxurious.
When we got up the next morning to another dark sky and a lousy forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, otherwise known as NOAA, we decided to stay put and get some chores done.
Since we were low on supplies, John and I rented a golf cart to go to the island's supermarket. It was chock full of flavored coffees, $10 sandwiches with sundried tomatoes on ciabatta, embroidered baseball caps and organic Angus steaks, but it was notably lacking in the small basics which couldn't sustain a 200 percent markup. The nearby hardware store sold expensive teak lawn furniture and huge stainless steel grills, but not the batteries we really needed. Just one extra day was wearing away Bald Head Island's scenic patina and revealing a place that seemed more like a stage set than a real town. Suddenly, it seemed that every other golf cart conveyed a blond family in madras shorts and a golden retriever (who was invariably named Max). I found myself pining for the pierced kid from Murrell's Inlet. That afternoon, when the skies cleared and the rain stopped, I felt restless. I tried to focus on being productive, but the day had a wasted quality. I didn't want to be hanging around an expensive marina, twiddling my thumbs. I was ready to go back to sea.
The following morning, the weather was lousy again. We listened to a marine forecast that promised intermittent storms all day, but we decided we just didn't want to forfeit more time. We agreed we would go out but stay close to land and keep a constant watch on the weather.
A few miles offshore, we realized we'd made a mistake. The sea was rough, the skies were dark and we were going to be running in the vicinity of the infamous Frying Pan Shoals, a long line of submerged but treacherously shifting sand and rock that extends 20 miles offshore and sweeps up the coastline. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all, so we hightailed it back toward land. Our compromise was to run in the relative safety of the Intracoastal Waterway for a day or two.
Not long after we turned back, we heard the Coast Guard on the VHF. A pleasure boat named Spring Fever with a family aboard was taking on water off the Frying Pan Shoals. The Coast Guard asked repeatedly for latitude and longitude but the boat's GPS was down. We could imagine how scared they were, 15 or more miles offshore in lousy weather, in need of immediate assistance but with no real idea where they were.
In a situation like this, the Coast Guard has a very specific drill. They run through a series of questions for the captain in distress: What is your exact location? Could you please describe your vessel? How many people are on board? Is anyone injured? Is everyone wearing a PFD (personal flotation device)? Are you or your vessel in immediate danger? How much water have you taken on? In this instance, as in others, we could sense the frustration of the boat owner, not from what he said (because we could only hear the Coast Guard's side of this conversation) but because we could hear the Coastie trying to calm him. Sir, I understand your GPS is not working. But do you have an approximate idea of where you are? Could you check the GPS again?
Is it still not working?
Okay, first, let's admit our sinking boater was an idiot if he knowingly set out with a broken GPS and without taking bearings to mark his position on a paper chart. But the Coast Guard dispatcher's persistence was maddeningly robotic. If he didn't get an answer to any one of these questions, he just stayed on it, asking repeatedly. I later recognized that there was probably a method to this madness. The dispatcher is maintaining constant communication and asking for specific information from someone who might otherwise be hysterical or trying to do too many things at once. On the other hand, it's probably infuriating to describe the exact color of your vessel as you watch her hull sink beneath the water. . .
John and I were amazed by the distress calls we heard over the VHF. It was both compelling and upsetting because these were very real emergencies at sea, and never very far from our location. We heard something dramatic almost every single day we were underway. There was a 90-foot fishing vessel that had taken on four feet of water in the engine room. There was a man overboard. There was a pleasure boat swamped at an inlet. There were several Maydays that the Coast Guard sought more information on after losing all contact. There was a fire. There was a captain who had a heart attack at sea.
We even heard the Coast Guard alert mariners to a plane that had crashed into a bay. John and I took bets on what could possibly be next: an outbreak of shipboard leprosy, a spontaneous combustion, a boat being used as a crack house?
It was frustrating that we often had no idea how these emergencies were resolved. Imagine the suspense: it's a real life-and-death situation, but you don't get to know the ending. VHF action aside, the Bossanova and her crew had a gray and dreary day on the ICW. We ran from 0815 to 1800 hours, taking turns at the helm, as the day slipped slowly away, then anchored off the main channel near Mile 246.
I T ' S ODD T HAT T H E longest love relationship of my life is also the one I think of the most dispassionately. Or maybe that's not odd at all. Laura and I had probably wrung every ounce of emotion from our partnership long before we came to an end.
I was 28 when we were set up on a blind date. We met at a cozy bistro in the West Village where we drank too much red wine and ate pâté. She was three years younger than I, pretty, a prep school and Ivy League graduate, a champion athlete, well-read, relatively up on current events. What wasn't to love? We hit it off and six months later, she gave up her charmless studio in Brooklyn and I gave up my charming studio on Perry Street and we moved in together.
Laura was a struggling singer-songwriter and a highly paid tutor on the side. She really didn't have much money, but like many performers, she pampered herself: healthy foods, long sessions at the gym each day, summers in the country. On the one hand, she professed to adore me. On the other, she would often claim she'd kill herself if she didn't make it as an artist. It's not a statement that falls on the beloved's ears ringing of adoration. I tried to make her see that her life was happening right now-not when she got a record contract-and that it was really pretty damn good.
We had close friends and family. We had a dog we were both besotted with. We had weekends in the countryside where we cooked great meals, watched movies, went hiking. And, oh yeah, we loved each other. I thought that should have some small value, at least.
I did everything I could, of course, to help Laura professionally: rallied my friends to attend every show, helped address invitations, used whatever contacts I had to get people of influence to hear her. She wasn't the next Joni Mitchell, but Laura had as much talent and dedication as many people who make it-it just didn't happen for her. And she had a stardom clock ticking away just the way some women have a baby clock. Laura believed that if she didn't make it by the time she was 40, she wasn't going to make it, and 40 was no longer terribly far away.
I knew I could never replace the success she wanted, so ours was a strangely un intimate love-sometimes companionable, sometimes stormy, but it seemed as though all of our emotional exchanges, whatever their flavor, happened across a chasm of space between us. To be fair, I didn't react well to Laura's increasingly hysterical demands on my attention. I had no idea how to make her feel whole and I grew to resent the fact that my best efforts were obviously not good enough.
I realized at some point that though she loved many things about me-my sense of humor, my career, my looks-Laura really didn't love me. She loved a hologram of me, and that was why I felt so lonely, so far from her.
We broke up after four years. Three months later, we got back together. Things were different, though not necessarily better, and two years late
r, we broke up for good. Six years of my life, and until last year, when I saw her, I felt only friendliness, kindness, a topical interest in how she was doing-not that I didn't go out of my way to help her, subletting her my cheap apartment when I went to Pennsylvania, giving her comments on her proposal for a book about not making it as a singer-songwriter and introducing her to agents.
I could say more about the lousy things she's done since then, but I will take the high road. I still don't understand how I could have spent so much time with someone who clearly cared only for herself. Never mind. I don't even want to know. The main thing is that although I will no doubt make plenty of other mistakes in my life, falling for a narcissist won't be one of them. Thanks to Laura, I've got antibodies galore.
T H E N E X T D AY T H E weather was better, and we continued through North Carolina, up the ICW past Morehead City and Beaufort, which both teemed with small watercraft. My good friends Frank and Barbara Sain had offered me a free mooring in Beaufort and I'd heard it was a wonderful town to explore. But we passed by far too early in the day to justify stopping, especially after two days off. We'd now been underway for twelve days and we weren't even halfway to Sag Harbor. North Carolina was starting to seem endless.
We took Adams Creek, the cut that runs between Beaufort and the Neuse River, and enjoyed the smooth ride of the big channel. We saw two huge tugs with barges, but almost nobody else. Toward the end of the afternoon, we opted for an anchorage that one of the smaller guidebooks mentioned. It was off Adams Creek, at Green Marker 9. The channel markers in that area had been moved around, but a range marker was clearly indicated on the chart and still exactly where it should be. So we knew we were in roughly the right place.
The anchorage was tricky to get into. No one else was there, and it was littered with fishermen's floats, so we proceeded carefully, checking the chart and choosing a bearing off the lower range marker that showed plenty of depth. Once in, we tried repeatedly to anchor but the bottom was nothing but a powdery silt that wouldn't hold our hook. Defeated, we decided to get back into the ICW and head for Oriental, since we still had plenty of time before dark.
I was at the helm. As I turned us around, I glanced at the crab pots again, looked for the range marker and angled back the same way we had come in. Or so I thought. We were making our way out slowly but confidently when I suddenly thought, Uh-oh. Did I choose my bearing off the low range marker or the high range marker? Unfortunately, the nearly simultaneous shudder beneath our boat indicated that I had aimed for the high range marker. We were aground. Really aground.
And this time, no amount of powerful maneuvering could free us. For fifteen minutes I revved the engine and turned the rudder-hoping that what had worked in New Smyrna would work again, but we were well and truly stuck. Overconfidence had made me casual in a situation where I should have known better.
At first, I kicked myself. Part of it was ruining a good record. Of course, we could sit and wait for the tide to come back and float us free but the days off had put us behind schedule and we didn't want to lose more time or end up trying to find a safe anchorage in the middle of the night. I called Towboat U.S. on the VHF, and John and I decided to relax while we waited. I was only mildly annoyed with myself. Nobody's perfect and I had been a little careless. It was a very valuable lesson learned and luckily no harm had been done.
As we waited, a rowboat with an old man and a teenage boy approached us and circled curiously. "Hey, you run aground?" the younger of the two occupants called out.
"Yup, looks that way," replied John good-naturedly. "Our own fault."
"Yeah, well, happens all the time in here. You need a tow?"
"We do but we've already called Towboat U.S. Thanks a lot, though" said John.
"You sure?" The young guy in the rowboat tried again.
"We could pull you off faster in Shrimpboat U.S.," he said, flashing a gap-toothed grin, "probably cheaper too. $50. How 'bout that? We could do it right now, no problem. You'd be on your way."
John and I had seen a fleet of big shrimp boats, lined up in the adjoining cove. But I was glad I'd already called Towboat U.S. For once, I hadn't let my optimism get the better of me-I had chosen the unlimited tow option on my insurance, so being pulled off wouldn't cost me an extra dime. But more meaningful than the money, Chapman had drilled into us the danger of offering or accepting a tow from another vessel. In the wrong hands, it could turn into a disaster. A poorly chosen line will sometimes break under pressure and cause a serious injury when it snaps. Or a cleat will tear loose, damaging the boat and hurling a metal object with great speed and force at the nearest bystander. If you're a good Samaritan who tows a boat in trouble, you could nonetheless wind up with a lawsuit for any injuries to the other guy's boat or passengers, whether you caused them or not. The same is true if you accept a tow from a friendly bypasser, of course.
And that's even before you got into the issues of salvage towing. Under maritime law, there are incidents in which a troubled vessel at sea becomes the property of its rescuer. Likewise, a ship that has been abandoned-even for reasons of life and death-can become the property of whoever tows it to shore. Some boaters vacationing in less developed parts of the world have gone ashore for lunch only to return and find their unattended boat has been cut from its anchor line and set adrift so it can be "salvaged." It's always better to use a professional towing service if you aren't in dire trouble.
We waved as our locals rowed off in disappointment. And I wondered if they had perhaps moved the markers around to bring a little extra business into their part of Adam's Creek.
Was that banjo music I heard? Before my imagination could get too carried away by what a night trapped aboard in this anchorage might be like, we heard Towboat U.S. calling to say they were a mile away.
A few minutes later a red towboat entered the cove and circled us. The mustachioed driver introduced himself as John Deaton and explained how he intended to get us off the bottom. At first we were incredulous. I had given the dispatcher the Bossanova's measurements, emphasizing that she was steel and weighed 30 tons. But the boat that circled us now looked tiny-more like a ski boat than a tow boat. It was about 20 feet long, fiberglass, with a covered center console and big twin engines. A large stainless steel pole was set through the aft deck, obviously for tying to a tow.
I expressed some doubt, and Deaton grinned. "Don't you worry," he said. "These engines are very powerful, and before I tow you, I'm going to use them to float you loose. Watch this."
He tied us to his tow pole and backed right up alongside us. With expert turns of his boat and big engines, Deaton started blowing sand out from underneath the Bossanova. It was not, I suppose, unlike how I'd gotten us off the shoal in New Smyrna, but the engines were much more powerful and directed. Deaton worked for about five minutes, and then we felt ourselves floating free again. He pulled us forward about 100 yards, and then had us cast off the tow line.
"Ok," he said. "You follow me out of here. Where you folks going anyway?"
We said we intended to stop in Oriental for the night.
"Good idea," he said. " That's not far, about 5 miles ahead.
There's a big fireworks display tonight for the Fourth of July. We do ours a night early. It's going to be awfully crowded, but you can probably find a spot to anchor and watch. I'll make sure you're okay getting out of here, then I've got to run on back to town. I'll have a look and let you know if I see any space for you. We can handle the paperwork for the tow back in town, okay?"
It was fineby us. As we approached Oriental about 45 minutes later, John Deaton came back on the VHF. "Bossanova, Bossanova this is Towboat U.S. Come back."
"Towboat U.S., Towboat U.S. This is Bossanova."
"Yeah, Bossanova. Switch and answer Channel 9."
"This is Bossanova, switching to Channel 9."
Once we were on a less-trafficked frequency, John Deaton came back and said, "Yeah, Bossanova. Here's what's happening. There doesn't look to b
e any space at all in the harbor. But me and my brother have a marina, and we have a spot for you for tonight if you want to tie up there. There's no toilet or shower, though. Just a place to dock."
We had a shower and toilets with holding tanks aboard, so there was no problem. I hoped it wouldn't cost us a fortune, but I didn't feel like we had a lot of options this late in the day.
Deaton gave us directions. We had to look for a narrow channel off to port, shortly after we entered the harbor. Follow the markers carefully, staying to the starboard side because it was a little deeper there and we were just going to make it, with our 4-foot 9-inch draft. At the end of the channel was a kind of tricky turn to starboard and then almost immediately after that another hard to port. We should take the third slip on the right.
His directions were good and the channel was exactly as he described. At the end, where the short tricky turns began, was a clubhouse of some sort with a big deck. There were plenty of observers celebrating Saturday afternoon on the Fourth of July weekend as I brought my little ship perfectly through the turns and smoothly into the dock. Even I was a little impressed with myself as people shouted out Beautiful job! Nice work! It was one of several moments on the trip when I recognized the pride I felt at becoming competent. (Of course, these people didn't know I had run us aground about two hours earlier.)
Over the years, I'd seen books I edited stay on the New York Times bestseller list, get great reviews, sell as many as 10 million copies. This satisfaction I felt from bringing the boat in flawlessly was infinitely more real and thrilling. It seemed perverse, but as Emily Dickinson first said, and Woody Allen said much more infamously, the heart wants what it wants. We tied up in our slip across from the clubhouse, and a whole new group of onlookers approached to congratulate me on my boat handling and to ooh and ahh over the Bossanova.