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

by Mary South

  I'm sure, too, that all the generous cheers I'd received for my docking efforts had slowly melted my defenses. There's a great sense of camaraderie among boaters and it was infectious. One day I had not one but two conversations with men I had just met, who asked me all about the Bossanova and concluded our conversations by saying, "You're my new idol." I don't know about your life, but idolatry doesn't come along all hat often in mine: twice in one day ran the risk of ballooning my ego past the bursting point. And the fact that these were admiring men was especially heady.

  I think men were often surprised that I could handle what was really a small steel ship, that I had the courage to bring her up through the Atlantic and that I had the "balls" to get a gritty workboat instead of a cute fiberglass replica. The Bossanova intrigued people everywhere she went, but she also gave me a lot of sea cred.

  But it wasn't just my tickled ego that was feeling good-I was happier and more relaxed than I'd ever been. Several times over the summer when I was out with friends, someone I hadn't seen in a year would say, "Wow! You look so different." At first I assumed it was just the extra Pennsylvania pounds I had lost, but whenever I pointed this out, they'd say, "No, no. It's your face. You just look really happy, peaceful." I was, of course, but I couldn't help wondering how I must have looked before. Did I grimace? Scowl? Sneer?

  After Moishe and I had chatted for a while, I went about my business and left him to his work. He made a trip back to the marina for a tool he needed, but after about an hour and a half, he emerged from the engine room to say I should be all set. The wires were replaced, the new solenoid was attached. Now was the moment of truth. We set the battery switches back on, I went up to the pilothouse, turned the key and pressed the starter button. The good old Bossanova coughed deeply and then chugged back to life. God, I loved my little ship.

  Moishe's guess at what had caused the fire was only slightly more scientific than mine. Some cables that were held aloft near the alternator had slid off a brace, and two live wires had somehow jiggled against each other. In other words, it was just a freak accident.

  I was grateful more damage hadn't been done, but I dreaded the boatyard's bill. It's common knowledge that there is no better way to go bankrupt than boat ownership, though I comforted myself with the fact that I was pretty close to bankrupt already, so it wouldn't be the same agonizing fall that it would be for, say, Donald Trump. The solenoid had already set me back about $200. I wondered what Moishe's hourly rate was and whether the trip to the marina and back had been on the clock. In the end, the total was about $150-much better than I'd feared. And Rick, the owner of the marina, wound up offering me a great deal on a slip that had just opened up. I am a lucky, lucky person.

  My first week back in the New York area, I scheduled lunch with an old publishing colleague so I could give him a full report on my trip. We were meeting at a power lunch spot for media types. I got there first and sat down at my friend's regular table. Parading by me was a veritable who's who of New York. I was never really a part of this scene, even in my publishing heyday. I'd have a lunch somewhere like this when I had to pull out all the stops for a celebrity author, and back then, I'd just be amused by it all.

  Today, as I watched former Mayor Dinkins go by and Regis Philbin come in and Liz Smith be seated near the network honchos and other media elites less familiar to the public, I felt. . .tired. It would be too extreme to say my soul curled into the fetal position, but it definitely pulled the covers up over its head. I hated being there. Something had happened. Some last slender thread that had kept me a part of the buzzing Manhattan media scene had snapped. I couldn't see this venue as anything but a hotbed of vanity, and while I'm sure that the food was delicious and everybody there was very talented at what they did, I felt turned off by the palpable conviction that there was a lot of important stuff happening here. I missed the dolphins.

  Clearly, I was finished as a book editor. My old life, even if it had been available to me, was not something I could comfortably wear anymore. I brightened when I realized that nobody was going to make me go back. When lunch was over, I'd get in my car and return to the boat. And tomorrow, I'd get up and do some freelance writing or pick up some of the decorative-painting work I sometimes did, for a sliver of what I used to earn but twice the satisfaction. By the time my friend arrived, I had come to terms with my own willful underachievement and gleefully embraced my lack of ambition. Arrghhhh, matey, I greeted him. At least in my own mind.

  A few nights later, before I moved into the slip at the marina, I had planned to meet my friend Manuel for dinner at the Beacon restaurant, which overlooks the cove where I was anchored. I had spent the day painting with my friend Jay, and we knocked off later than I'd expected. I decided not to go back to the boat but to shower at Jay's and dash to T.J. Maxx for something to wear that was casual but not splattered with paint. I had lost weight in the last two months and needed some new pants anyway. After a mad race to get there on time, I arrived breathlessly in blue jeans and a white man's shirt. It wasn't chic but it was me.

  Manuel, of course, was looking as elegant as ever in white jeans with a silk shirt and a cashmere sweater tied over his shoulders. We kissed hello in the bar, and he said he'd been admiring my boat while he waited. "You moved it, didn't you?" he asked.

  "Yes, but I'm amazed you can tell." I'd motored a hundred yards away and reanchored in compliance with local laws that prohibited staying in one spot longer than seventy-eight hours. "You're very observant," I remarked, turning to behold my baby. . .who was nowhere in sight. My eyes scanned the water and there she was-several hundred yards from where she'd been, and up against the North Haven shoreline!

  "Oh my god, Manuel. That is not where I put her. She's dragged her anchor-I've got to go. I'm sorry."

  Three minutes later I was in the launch with Matt and we were flying out toward the Bossanova's new resting spot. Matt had heard on the VHF that the harbormaster was also on his way. This was very embarrassing, and I was hoping to get aboard and take control of the situation before he had to. I couldn't believe this-how had it happened? When I'd reset my anchor, I'd tugged on it very hard and it was definitely holding. Also, I'd been sitting securely in the same spot for two days. Why would the anchor break loose now?

  As we approached, I saw an older, very Greenwich-looking couple in a rowboat. They had a springer spaniel with them. The man had on a kelly green cable-knit sweater; his wife was wearing a matching one in yellow. She half-stood and called out to us.

  "There are dogs on that boat," Muffy yelled in an apparent state of high alarm.

  "Yes, I know. They're my dogs-that's my boat," I shouted back.

  "Oh. . .well, they've been barking. Do they need food?" she asked.

  What? Do they need food? Hello, lady. My 30-ton steel boat is floating, uncaptained, across the cove, and you're focusing on whether my dogs are being properly fed?

  "No, they have plenty of food. They're fine," I responded through gritted teeth. It hadn't occurred to her that they might be barking because they were drifting across the cove?

  What's the matter with people? My terseness must have communicated itself, because Biff moved his pipe to the other side of his gin-flushed face and began the row back to shore.

  As I clambered aboard the Bossanova, it became clear to me that no damage had been done. The boat wasn't aground or even up against the shoreline. By the time the harbormaster arrived, I had already hauled up the anchor and motored farther off. He motioned for me to follow him, then pointed to a spot for me to reanchor. I pulled ahead, pointing the bow into the wind. As the boat was pushed back, I dropped the anchor and paid out the line, making sure I felt the familiar tautness that indicated the anchor had grabbed bottom.

  Back in the launch with Matt, I realized suddenly that this was the very first time I'd handled my boat without someone else aboard. I had taken the boat out and brought it into the dock every single day on our three-week trek up the coast.

  But
even though I was running everything, there'd been comfort in having John there-another set of hands for the lines, another pair of eyes and ears for the horizon and radio. Deep down, despite our weeks at sea, I had secretly and subconsciously doubted my ability to handle the boat solo. I looked down at my still pristine white shirt. The bottom of the cove was coated with a dark green clay that was sloppy as hell. I'd managed to haul the anchor, move the boat, reset the anchor and head back to dinner in under forty-five minutes, without getting anything on me. Yes, what had started out as an embarrassing incident now definitely felt like a small, albeit embarrassing, personal triumph.

  Bouncing over the water on the way back to the town dock, I was happy and relieved. Sooner or later, everyone drags anchor. I had that out of the way now, and I'd been lucky enough to have it happen in a quiet, empty cove. As Matt and I talked, I also figured out what had happened: there was an unusually high tide that day and the extra length of line required to reach the bottom from the (now higher) bow had been just enough to break the anchor from its hold. So that's why it held for two days and then gave up. I knew it was always better to err on the side of too much line rather than too little (unless you're close to other boats and can swing into their paths, of course), and I had sloppily underestimated as I paid it out the last time. I wouldn't do that again.

  A few days later, I was at my slip and fondly eyeing the Bossanova. She desperately needed a new paint job, and I was feeling falsely flush with the extra money I was making painting with Jay. I talked to Rick, who agreed to haul and block the Bossanova so I could paint her in his yard. Boatyards generally do not allow do-it-yourselfers because they prefer to charge you obscene amounts of money and do it for you. I was absolutely thrilled by this act of kindness, because otherwise the Bossanova could never have been painted.

  I decided to go with a navy blue color for the hull and to paint the rub rail bright orange. The navy seemed classic and had always been my favorite color. I also thought it might have the same slimming effect as a little black dress. The bright orange was jaunty and a nice reference to the internationally recognized "safety orange." Orange would be a nice nod to the Bossanova's salty, working-class lineage.

  And so, a few weeks later, Bossanova was hauled out in Rick's Travelift, a giant sling on motorized wheels. I had warned him that the boat weighed 30 tons according to the survey, which was the exact weight limit of his lift, but he seemed unfazed. "Yeah," he said. "I bet it weighs less than that if you're not all loaded up with fuel and other stuff." Rick knew his boats, so I believed him.

  Now, as they hoisted my baby out of the water, you could cut the tension with a knife. Rick was mopping his brow and cursing under his breath. There were some creaks and groans. The pilothouse roof just barely fit under the forward beam of the lift. But Rick was right-the weight wasn't an issue so much as the width and depth of the vessel. Out of the water, the Bossanova was shockingly large-it was easy to see why she was so roomy inside.

  The Travelift moved the boat into a spot behind the large corrugated metal hangar where smaller boats were stored, and the guys propped the boat up with a series of metal jackstands that leaned beneath the waterline of the hull.

  The next day, I borrowed my brother Tom's grinder and went to work on a couple of rust spots. The Bossanova had some flaking rust around her old stern davits but was otherwise almost rust-free. After I'd ground them down, I treated these spots with sticky rust-inhibitive primer. Then I sanded the entire hull with medium-grit paper using a palm sander. When I was ready to prime, I used WillBond, a liquid-chemical bonding agent, to tack all the sanding dust off and give the surface some extra bite.

  I stirred a dark blue tint into the white primer, which resulted in a garish aquamarine hue. Oh, well. I taped the rub rail on the top and bottom and then rolled the entire boat with primer. When I was finished, it looked like some insane Caribbean fisherman's wet dream. More than one member of the peanut gallery stopped by to say I should leave it that color. I thought about it-it was certainly festive looking but it was just too much. The Shady Lady could have carried off this party dress, but I imagined the Bossanova as classic yet sporty. No loud Hawaiian shirts or tube tops for my beautiful boat.

  Instead, I was shooting for ruggedly handsome. A bright sky blue would seem like the raised middle finger of a high school misfit with a dyed blue Mohawk: Hey, look at me: I'm intentionally ugly.

  I left the boat to dry. Luckily it didn't rain until the following day, when the primer had already had a chance to harden. I took advantage of the weather and busied myself with painting the salon and galley interiors. I replaced the off-white with a slightly warmer putty color, while I listened to the downpour drumming on the steel overhead. It was a wonderful sound-like rain on a car roof but richer, deeper.

  After the Bossanova had another day to dry in the sun, I went back and rolled the hull with dark blue-this time I skipped the sanding, which just seemed to scratch up the primer coat. Instead, I used more WillBond to reprep the surface before I applied the paint. The following day, I gave it another coat of navy blue and slapped orange paint on the rub rail. Voila! The Bossanova had been transformed. The whole project took me about four working days and $800, including the haul and launch. The swell of pride I felt as I watched her being lowered back into the water wasn't even marred by seeing the belts on the lift scraping the fresh orange paint off the rub rail. No big deal. That's what rub rails are for.

  All I needed to do now was put the name on the stern properly

  I was having an amazing summer. Happy in my part-time work, enjoying the boat, still savoring the triumph of the big trip. I was on top of the world.

  Sometime this week, in the middle of August, I met Lars. I was still painting the boat and I'd quit early to go to a dinner party on the beach.

  Even before the sun had set, you could see it was going to be a gorgeous starry night. A big grill was going, covered with sweet corn, lobster, chicken and hamburgers. A bar with an endless supply of expensive rosé was well-tended and miniature crab cakes with aioli were being circulated by cheerful college kids with summer catering gigs. A long table was set for about thirty and a bonfire had just been started. I was tanned and relaxed, with friends, awed by the beautiful night, deeply aware of my good fortune and glad to be alive.

  "You've got to meet Lars," my hosts had said. They'd just returned from a day of sailing with him and seemed slightly giddy. "You guys will love each other, he's been a captain for years, you will have so much to talk about. And, wow, is he a chick magnet! But don't worry-we already warned him about you."

  Experience led me to expect a guy who had gracefully passed middle age-an old salt with a slight beer belly and a wind-burned complexion whose "chick magneticism" derived more from the twinkle in his eyes, acres of charm and great sea stories than from an Adonis-like physical presence. So I was shocked when someone said, "Mary, this is Lars." I had already noticed him standing alone at the bar in khakis and an Icelandic sweater and wondered vaguely who he was. He was good-looking in a young Bobby Kennedy way.

  We chatted through hors d'oeuvres, sat beside each other and talked all through dinner and then moved to the bonfire and outlasted the caterers and most of the guests while we continued the conversation with the last bottle of wine. We talked about my experience at Chapman, my trip up the coast and each place I had stopped along the way. He told me about his years as a first mate on a research vessel that was mapping the ocean floor, about running a 90-foot boat for a Hungarian businessman, about overseeing the construction of the friendship sloop he was captaining that summer.

  I knew he had a girlfriend. He knew I was gay. But he asked if he could come see my boat and we wound up kissing in the pilothouse. We left the clichéd trail of clothes on the way to the stateroom and got very little sleep.

  I've been gay my whole life. No question about it. I like men, I have many male friends, I had plenty of romantic opportunities with men available to me-my heart just felt d
rawn to women. Living in Manhattan and working in publishing, I'd been able to be myself. I didn't advertise my love life, but I was open about it. Like everyone else, I kept a photo of my beloved on my desk. On Mondays when people talked about their weekends, I talked about mine, too. Consequently, everybody knew I was gay, even most of my acquaintances.

  And nobody seemed to care, which was as it should be. So on this particular morning, it was pretty darn odd to wake up with the usual two fur balls wedged against me and this. . .man in the bed. He was naked, sound asleep and crowding me over toward the edge of the mattress. When I looked at him, I felt fond but puzzled. What was this about, I wondered, grabbing a robe and moving to the forward stateroom for more bed space, and perhaps some mental space, too. I couldn't fall back asleep, so I stared at the ceiling and mulled things over.

  When I first realized I was attracted to women, I told myself it was a phase. I was just doing some open-minded experimenting. Complete balderdash, and I knew it even then. When I had accepted that this just seemed to be who I was, I tried explaining to myself (and sometimes others) that I was totally open to the idea of men, but so far hadn't met one I could fall for. At some point-though this seemed technically true-the absolute consistency of my behavior made it pretty clear that I was just. . .gay. And I was comfortable and happy with that. My parents, who were very liberal in every way, were nonetheless dismayed. My father said he worried that life would be harder for me, but I think my mother was just appalled, even though she's always tried to be accepting.

  I hate all the misunderstandings about homosexuality. It's not a "choice" any more than heterosexuality is a choice. It's certainly not a "lifestyle." And it's about so much more than "sexuality." It's about romance and intimacy and love. It's about where your heart wants to go, not just your lips and. . .other parts.