Just after 6 p.m., I looked up from where I was rowing on the port hull and saw a frigate bird perhaps a hundred yards above the boat. And twenty minutes later a gannet. They were the only birds other than storm petrels that we had seen since the coastal waters off Morocco.
The sky had cleared, and at about 7:30 p.m. I got up out of my seat and, for the last time, at least from the boat, watched wistfully as the sun threw a spray of soft gold from behind a distant bank of clouds and then cannonballed into the Atlantic.
In the cabin, Angela had cobbled together a version of chicken soup made, I think, of an envelope of powdered stock and a few packaged chicken breasts that she had kept squirreled away in the recesses of her pantry. When I had eaten mine, she stuck her head out of her quarters and, as she had done so many times during our weeks aboard, informed me quietly that she had a last cup of hot water if I wanted it for coffee. Which, as always, I did. Alas, I had already consumed the last of the fifty or so packets of Vietnamese instant that, with a titch of codeine, had been an addictive and treasured feature of my snack packs. “I’ve got one left,” she said. “It’s for you.” She tossed it to me and handed me my hot water, and I mixed it and sat there in the dark, thinking about where I had been and where I would be tomorrow.
At this point, we knew who was going to be in Port St. Charles to meet us. I had wanted to bring my children to Barbados but had found the logistics difficult—the kids had school and work schedules, and nobody had a clue as to when we might arrive. Plus Barbados is a premium tourist island, and flights and hotels can be expensive, particularly on indefinite stays with uncertain arrival and departure times. As it turned out, my friends Margie Bettiol and Doug Flegel, who had many times welcomed me to their wilderness home when I had writing to do and needed the isolation, had flown down from Thunder Bay. And Trish would be there. She and Steve’s wife, Janet, along with Nigel’s girlfriend, Kim, were already in Barbados—later that night they would phone the boat from where they were partying at a seaside nightclub.
So I was excited—was far too restless to sleep. I was also feeling a trickle of self-satisfaction. I had survived, had done what many had told me I could not do, what I myself had occasionally doubted I could do. The feeling, I admit, was not very convincing, particularly in the shadow of my now desperate desire that these awful stresses be over.
If I was feeling a deeper ambivalence, it was about the completion of an endeavor that while it had nearly killed me had also, paradoxically, become a part of me, that I had become addicted to, and that some profoundly sane (or profoundly disturbed) aspect of me was reluctant to see end. If it had taken gumption to get on the rower more than eighteen months ago and eventually to face the sea, it would take every bit as much to get up out of my rowing seat some thirty-six hours hence and disembark for good from Big Blue.
We rowed hard on the 10-to-12, and at midnight, when I rose from my seat and turned to the bow, I experienced a deep, childlike satisfaction. There, in the distance, rising off the horizon, was a great green arc of illumination, the glow above the city of Bridgetown—a light that, for me at that moment, was as lyrical and mystic as the stars.
Ten times on the next watch (and then the next) I turned and stared at it, until finally dawn erased it, and we were left peering into the haze above the horizon, looking for our first glimpse of land.
During the night, a flying fish had hit Ernst in the teeth, giving him a slightly swollen lip. For all of us, it was the final evidence, the cartoon confirmation, of the degree to which David’s fishing efforts were irresolvably jinxed. “What does it saying about his skill,” pleaded Ernst, “that for seven weeks they iknore his line and are now trying to jump directly into our mouths?”
For breakfast, I ate a handful of stale peanuts, then crawled into my bunk. But couldn’t sleep—so pulled my shorts on and went back out on deck. As I stepped from the cabin on to the bridge, Steve was standing there, explaining to Dylan that on the way into Port St. Charles he intended to be right where he liked to be, which was to say “leading from behind, ready in the background” should his guidance or direction be required, as some of us imagined it might be. Even so, it struck me as a curious thing for him to say, especially since he had so recently and resolutely declared himself outside of the boat’s direction and command.
Ironically, Angela had told me the previous day that she intended to be “large and in charge” as we came into port—“not like Tarfaya,” she added, obviously still haunted by her unexplained, perhaps inexplicable absence when we most needed somebody “large and in charge.”
At around nine o’clock I took out my notebook and attempted to condense a paragraph or two on the meaning of where we were and of our long weeks at sea. But the more I fussed with it, the more frustrated I felt at trying to reduce something that was essentially irreducible to a few manageable sentences. In some part, it seemed, I had lost my enthusiasm for attempting to unravel the complexities around me—was more aware than ever that the over-examined life is not worth living either. Which is not to say there were no decipherable lessons, but only that their meaning was not as neat or germane as it had seemed in the projections of several months back, when I had not rowed a stroke.
If one of those projections more than others had maintained a presence in my consciousness, it was the significance of living boldly, of embracing a degree of risk, as we add years. I had by no means turned back the clock during our weeks at sea. If anything, it had turned me back. But for a few weeks I had at least stared it in the face. And in that I took a small measure of pride. If I had proven anything about what was possible for those who refuse to accept the Verdict— to “go gentle into that good night,” as Dylan Thomas famously put it—I had proven it only to myself. I had gone, I had not croaked, I had returned. And for the rest of my life I would carry with me perhaps not the messages in any speakable sense so much as the immensity, the imponderables, of an experience that I would never have had if I had accepted conventional wisdom and avoided the risks inherent in such a journey. And in the deepest recesses of my awareness, it was enough.
Perhaps the only other thing I could say about the lessons at that point was that in a way they had been unlessons. It is one of my longstanding themes, and I think a reliable one, that inner progress is at times less about accumulating than about letting go and clearing out assumptions. The voyage had given me a chance to see myself free of most of what was comfortable and assumed about my life. I am talking about everything from safety and privacy and a measure of circadian order to social standing and professional credibility. For nearly two months, I had lived on the margins of chaos—had observed myself vulnerable and for who I am. And who I am not. And had observed those around me in the same compelling state. And had treasured the view—as well as the confirmation of what is needed in a life and what is not. For me (if I may risk an indulgence) those needs include a connection to the planet, the more intense and varied the better (a need not just endorsed but redefined by the expedition); and a sense of community to balance off my need for independence; and a purpose, or several of them, particularly of the sort that are born and nurtured in the depths of the imagination; and enough risk to keep the juices flowing; and the freedom to think and act; and a boatload of patience; and another of forgiveness, both incoming and outgoing; and a range of defenses, most especially those that preserve me from myself.
What I don’t need at this point in my life—more accurately, what I don’t want (heartily confirmed by my weeks at sea)—is orthodoxy, conformity, contrived goals. I do not need “management,” although many would disagree. I am, perhaps needless to say, a less-than-sterling candidate for a row across the ocean.
AT ABOUT 11 A.M., as I rowed behind Ernst on the port hull, Sylvain, who had lingered on the tramp after his watch, announced at stentorian volume that he could see land, could see Barbados. Dylan appeared with the video camera and ordered him to see it again—for the first time, so to speak. He was to see it with t
he cry “Land ho!” which Sylvain, who is no actor, delivered with approximately the zip he might have applied to declaring that a skunk had appeared in his backyard.
As it had thrilled me the previous night to see the lights, it thrilled me now to see the mountains—although at first I could not see them, for the simple reason that I was looking for something subtler, for some sort of spider-line that I imagined would rise a speck at a time from beyond the curvature of the sea. Instead, they emerged whole out of the sun-silvered mists, a long north–south band of greeny cliffs, more impressive and alluring than anything I had anticipated.
As the day passed, they got bigger, looked more like actual countryside, and I could not keep from glancing at them, or staring, several times drifting into a contemplation of the travelers who had seen them from the ships of other centuries. It was a sight that at this distance had not changed, at least not much, in ten thousand years. I am perhaps misguided to suppose that my own crossing of the Atlantic, with its lumps and lesions, its waves and weather and anxieties, gave me a better understanding of what the early sailors and their subalterns (if not their slaves) had faced. Many of them never saw land again. Or arrived sick or with a leg amputated, or beaten up for insubordination, or mutilated by pirates.
At this point, my own deteriorating carcass was more fragile and depleted than I have perhaps let on. I was down thirty-five pounds from my skeletal norm (was in other words at burial weight). I had broken not one tooth but three, and in the absence of my normal infusion of 222s was experiencing such intense pain in my left knee and hip that in order to step from the tramp up to the bridge, a difference in height of perhaps eighteen inches, I had to hoist myself with my arms, unable any longer to count on the muscles in my legs. The wound on my shin was a brown and swampy stain, no longer a scab but not exactly skin either. I have debated even mentioning that on the previous night my exhaustion was such that during the pre-dawn watch I fell asleep on the rowing seat, waking only as my face crashed into the gunnel, which ripped several inches of skin off the orbital bone at my left temple. Sylvain joked scornfully (at least I assume he was joking) that I had inflicted the wound myself so that I would “look tougher” when we arrived in Port St. Charles. While I have not spent a lot of time over the years attempting to look tough, I will admit that at 135 pounds, limping and with broken teeth, I would have welcomed a little toughening in my appearance. There are photos of me during those last days—ribs showing, skull prominent—that I refuse to circulate, having heard enough people joke that, compared to most corpses they had seen, I looked great.
Big Blue, too, was ready for the infirmary. Apart from the cabin cracks, the metal-and-cord fasteners that held the tramps in place had begun to disintegrate. Eight or ten of perhaps 150 of them had given way entirely. The wind-powered generators had quit, and several of the sliding seats had broken down. The holds were full of garbage.
I could go on. However, as an antidote to this rather despairing litany, I might mention that not long after we returned from sea, I noticed on a popular boating website that our beloved if eccentric rowboat was said to resemble some elaborate, whimsical Lego construction. In elucidating our peculiarities, the site compared Big Blue to the more conventional rowboat Hallin Marine.
What caught my attention about this smirky comparison was not so much the fact of it as a pair of accompanying video links, one showing Hallin’s durable and remorseless crew, the other offered as evidence of the “interesting” and eccentric nature of Big Blue’s crew—to wit, a six-minute film made by the director Kelly Saxberg, featuring my personal and implausible self in training to row the ocean. Imagine my joy in discovering that I was no longer merely a misfit on his way to the library but had become a poster boy—a poster geezer—for all that is unlikely and idiosyncratic about an unlikely sport that seduces normalish human beings into rowing the Atlantic or Pacific!
I hasten to add that Hallin’s crossing of the Atlantic happened in a world-record thirty-one days, twenty-three hours—a record broken exactly a day later by Sara G, another three-seater, which crossed in thirty-one days, thirteen hours.
It hardly needs emphasizing that our own somewhat inflated ambition to set a record ended well over two weeks behind the world mark. Our time, according to the Ocean Rowing Society website, was forty-seven days, eighteen hours, from Tarfaya—more than fifty-two days from Agadir. If there were regrets among the crew, they were at this point overshadowed by a welter of realizations and acceptances—of the fact, for example, that the boat, with its all-but-crushing tonnage of provisions and equipment, was far heavier than anticipated and didn’t surf as we’d hoped; and of the vagaries of the Atlantic winds and weather.
Quite beyond the fact that our toothbrushes had handles and our watch changes were a trifle sluggish, there was also the rather embarrassing recognition that we were unable to rebuild our flawed boat in mid-ocean, or calm the waves, or redirect the wind as Christ had done at Galilee. Or for that matter that we were unable to row more than twelve hours a day on limited sleep and nourishment. In other words that we were mere human beings against a rather resolute opponent in the Atlantic Ocean.
Nor were we able to transform on the fly the often grisly little minstrel show that was ourselves. I for one would not have wanted to. As I have implied many times or said outright—and despite our occasional antipathies—I loved these people, I cared about them, I believed in them. And at least a few of them believed in me. They were funny, they were tender, they were fierce. Some, at times, would have torn one another’s throats out, torn my throat out—but in the aftermath would have stitched it back in and begged for forgiveness. Much has been said (indeed much of it by me) about our failures. Yet to this day, I would like to meet the crew who, under any captain on earth, could have brought Big Blue across the Atlantic, amidst the conditions we faced, more than half a day quicker than we did.
WHEN DARKNESS settled on the last full day of our journey, we were still nearly twenty miles out. The lights along the coast came on hazy at first, as if seen through silk, more a glow than separate points of light. But as we got closer, individual lights began to emerge. Before long, we could see street lights on the slopes and bluish industrial lights along shore, could see bright white headlights and red taillights going up and down the hills. I was rowing behind Dylan, and the two of us gassed away about what exactly we were witnessing. When he put his iPod in, I began thinking about my children, wishing they were in Barbados, as Sylvain’s were. Part of me envied his good fortune.
Between watches I lay on my bunk, relaxing fitfully but unable to sleep. While for the first time in weeks it was easy to get up out of bed, the rowing remained a challenge to the end, a battle against unexpected cross-currents.
We rounded the north point in the wee hours, and as the sun rose were moving tenaciously down the back side of the island, a land mass of about 300 square miles, twenty miles from top to bottom. Close up, the shores were a tangled version of paradise—high, verdant banks, atop which slave owners from another century had developed sugar cane plantations and built pastel-colored mansions.
At 9:55, when I came out of the cabin to row, I got a surprise that at any point during the past fifty-two days I would have welcomed but did not welcome now: basically an order from Angela that I should go back to bed and wait. The current was so strong against us that she wanted what she called her “300-watt rowers” in the seats. However, I could not bring myself to go back inside—was far too restless. Plus, I wanted to be present and ready when the call came. In short, I wanted to be rowing when we arrived in port—not for the sake of those waiting but for my own sake. In effect, I wanted the most out of these last couple of hours aboard.
For now, David was in my seat, stroking hard, as he had not done in weeks because of his damaged knees. But he was tiring, having more or less relinquished his fitness during a month of inactivity. Just six feet down, we could see the ocean floor passing at a snail’s pace as the tidal current flu
shed up the coast into our prow: starfish, sea urchins, bits of coral from the reefs farther out. At one point, a good-sized stingray rose in an explosion of sand and swam lazily into deeper water.
Somehow Tom, who is an exquisite oarsman but whom Angela did not consider a 300-watt man, had insinuated himself into the mix of rowers, and Angela asked him now if he would give up his seat to Liam. When he lingered, Liam leapt out of the shadow of the cabin and began screaming at him, frantically and profanely, to move damn it, to get up, to get out. The fuss had barely resolved itself when Angela, who was standing on the bridge, began scanning the shoreline, talking about going ashore right here and now. I could barely believe what I was hearing. Her thinking seemed to be that the rowers were tiring, that if we began losing ground we might gradually be carried away to the north or west. She may also have been thinking about Liam and Ernst—“Ernest,” as she called him—whose flights were scheduled for early in the afternoon. My only thought was what a terrible heresy it would be to go ashore just three or four miles from Port St. Charles, to forego recognition for our voyage when, despite the current, we were moving steadily south at pretty close to a knot and a half.
“See if you can find a place to land,” Angela said, handing me the binoculars from the controls shelf, explaining that for some reason she couldn’t focus them.
I trained them along the shore and after a few seconds said, “There is no place; it’s all rip-rap—it’ll tear the boat apart.”
Little Ship of Fools Page 26