Dove

by Robin L. Graham

  MARCH 21 [1968]: We anchored Big Dove beside the little lighthouse outside Cat Cays harbor in the Bahamas and immediately went diving for crayfish. Speared five in no time at all. The tri-maran Tahata came over and the couple aboard, Leo and Joy, didn’t know how to spear fish. I showed Leo some pointers, but you can’t learn to spear fish overnight, so we gave them our lobsters.

  MARCH 24: Got a whole bunch of lobsters this morning and Patti made a stuffed lobster dinner. I told her I’d only married her for her cooking so she threatened a galley strike. We shared our dinner with two new friends from the yacht Kaelu. In the afternoon I speared a big moray. It wiggled off the spear and chased me. My pulse went up to about 200. But I learned not to attack monsters in their own environment.

  MARCH 25: Arrived at Bimini and immediately went diving. It’s an absolutely new world down there under the surface. I was sort of cruising around looking at the fantastic colors when I found myself facing a lot of teeth. It was one of those ordinary sharks you see in an aquarium. While the shark was deciding which of my legs he was going to have for breakfast I leaped onto a rock ledge and yelled to Patti to rescue me in the dinghy. How we laughed. Boy! I still get nervous when sharks are around.

  APRIL 13: Glorious sail to Nassau. Big Dove is a dream. She loves light airs and when the wind is up she moves at six to seven knots where Little Dove would sail at only four or five. Saw two whales mating right in front of our bow. Patti saw them first. I released the wind vane and changed course. You don’t argue with whales at any time. I know of four cases of boats being charged by whales. Patti was so fascinated that she didn’t understand the danger. I told her how world-circling sailor Alan Eddy had had a hairy time in the Indian Ocean when his thirty-foot yacht Apogee ran over a sleeping whale. Alan told me how his boat was immediately attacked by twenty whales. They struck low down in the way they would hit a shark in the liver. The fact that the Apogee survived with minor damage gave me more confidence in Dove because she was made by the same company. Anyway, Patti and I just sailed right past the colossal lovers who just lay there spouting and having a good time.

  APRIL 20: Glad to be out of Nassau. It’s an awful place, everything so expensive and full of tourist traps. Even parrot fish sell in Nassau for two dollars and more a pound, and conchs, which we eat when we’ve got nothing else, sell for twenty-five cents each. Conchs are as common as coconuts—and it hurts to pay for coconuts.

  APRIL 22: Last night was so balmy that we decided to sleep in the cockpit. About two o’clock we were awakened by a weird sound. We had anchored in a narrow cay. Slipping past us was a 150-foot boat with no lights. Suddenly a searchlight swept across the water. The boat stayed there for fifteen minutes. Then it reversed out of the cay and disappeared. The whole scene was like something out of a mystery thriller. Everyone knows there are smugglers here and I’ll bet this was a smuggler’s boat. I wonder how safe we’d have been if they’d known we had watched the operation. One of our friends warned us not to know too much. Weird things are going on all the time. One guy found a beer crate and broke open a bottle. It was filled with hundred-dollar bills. Paradise Island is said to be liked by the Mafia. Okay, let them have it. We’ll find our own.

  APRIL 23: Sailed to an unoccupied island and found a citrus grove with oranges rotting on the ground. We helped ourselves. The fruit is very bitter but it makes a terrific drink.

  APRIL 26: Arrived Spanish Wells. Many of the islanders have the same name and are fanatically religious. I tried to buy some beer and they looked at me as if I were the devil’s sidekick. As Patti and I walked down a street of small stores we felt a hundred eyes watching us. We had the feeling we were going to be stoned any time, medieval fashion. I kidded Patti that she was going to be burned as a witch and offered to buy her a broomstick. We were glad to be back on Dove. Been trying out Gandalf [the wind vane] and it’s working well. Dove now scooting at six knots in an eighteen-knot wind, and we’re trailing a dinghy. Patti’s in the dinghy, not for punishment but because she’s trying to take photographs. She’s holding on like fun as the dinghy planes over the water. At any minute I’m going to have to rescue her.

  APRIL 29: Arrived at Rose island. Went diving and speared a grouper for breakfast. As I was trying to get the fish aboard a shark circled and gave me the once-over.

  Patti made some salt water bread. It’s really good. Here’s her recipe.

  One tablespoon of dried yeast, one tablespoon of sugar, four cups of flour, one and a half cups of seawater. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the salt water, then mix in the flour. Put the mixture into a well-greased pan. Let it stand for two hours to rise. Cook covered on low flame for half an hour on each side in a heavy pan. Eat when hot.

  Now we’ll have bread all the way to Saint Thomas in the Virgins.

  Been teaching other yachtsmen around here how to navigate. I’m always amazed how little some people know about sailing. A lot of inexperienced people go cruising before they know what they’re getting into.

  APRIL 30: Patti had a bad pain in her stomach. I remembered when my appendix started to explode in Polynesia, and I dashed around trying to find a doctor. Eventually found a nurse who says Patti’s okay. I’ve been teaching Leo and Joy and Bill and the others how to navigate, and Patti too. She’s getting quite good. Just collected another cat and called him Gollum [another Hobbit character]. It’s a strange creature which likes its comforts.

  Patti sometimes kept up our tape recorder diary. On May 20 Patti recorded:

  This is me, Patti, speaking. Robin is up the mast trying to mend a broken halyard. For the past ten days we’ve been sailing through wretched weather to the Virgins. The Tahata, which sailed out with us from Spanish Wells, was demasted and Dove is really taking a pounding. When one squall hit us Robin thought the wind reached sixty knots. I was really scared especially when the genny halyard broke. I’ve just hoisted Robin up the mast in the bosun’s chair. The first time he went up the mast without my help. I was in the cabin. I called to him and when he didn’t answer I came up on deck. No sign of Robin. Honestly I thought I was going to die of fright. I figured that he could only have fallen overboard and here I was sailing along in Dove at quite a good speed. I was just wondering if I could turn the boat around by myself when I heard Robin shouting down from the spreaders, and asking what was the matter. I told him if he gave me a fright like that again I’d throw him to the sharks.

  Anyway, I’m beginning to understand what Robin has been through when he sails alone. We’ve got tons of canned food aboard but it all seems so blah. You look at a can and it just looks like a can. How we long for fresh food again. Robin can work up some enthusiasm when he opens a can of oysters. Not me! Canned oysters in a rough sea—aagh!

  It’s good for us to know bad weather and rough sailing. It makes us appreciate the good days when the sea looks so marvelous that you want to drink it. I mean, life would be pretty monotonous if the sky was always blue. That sounds like a cliche, so how else shall I put it? I think both of us are suspicious of having life too easy. You know, everything too pretty. We’ve talked over our future sometimes, and it’s pretty vague, but neither of us wants to spend the rest of our lives in Polynesian fashion—endless days of eating and swimming and parties and laughing. Both of us want to know the seasons—winters as well as springs and summers. I understand why Robin enjoys a storm. He likes the risk and danger.

  It’s now slashing with rain. The raindrops are coming in at us like angled needles. We’ve collected a lot of fresh water off the sails and in the upturned dinghy. A gal’s got to have a bath sometime, and it looks as if mine’s coming up pretty soon.

  My next entry on the tape was May 16, 1969. I recorded:

  We’ve just sighted Saint Thomas in the Virgins. This is our sixteenth day at sea, and it’s sure been a long and tiring trip, in fact one of the worst I’ve ever had. Patti was a bit seasick but she’s better now. The cats are having a ball, though Kili is usually scared of bad weather. Fili doesn’t see
m to mind the weather either way. Gollum loves the storms. He comes out on the deck when it’s raining, sticks his nose in the air and sniffs the wind. I hope we’re going to have fun in the Virgins. Patti deserves some fun for the way she’s taken this stormy trip. See you later….

  We did not make another tape for several weeks, because when we reached the Virgins I flew off at once to Barbados to sail Little Dove back to Saint Thomas. It was weird sailing the little boat again. She seemed like a toy after Big Dove, and I couldn’t imagine how I had managed to sail her most of the way around the world. The distance from Barbados to the Virgins is about five hundred sea miles and as I’d not brought along my sextant, I had to rely on dead reckoning for navigation. The danger was getting too close to shore. When I was off Montserrat the wind died altogether and I fell asleep at the tiller. When I awoke the wind had picked up and I found I was sailing directly for a reef half a mile ahead. Another few minutes of sleep and Little Dove would have had it—and me too probably.

  I brought Little Dove into Saint Thomas on the evening of June 11—two days earlier than I had expected. Patti was busy sewing in the cabin when I jumped aboard. I pushed open the companionway door, and found myself looking right into a pistol. There was a finger on the trigger.

  “Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” said Patti as she lowered the gun.

  Patti had had reason to be scared. In the previous months there had been a number of muggings and rapes in this area. She had not been expecting me for at least another day so when she heard someone jump aboard she was sure it was one of the muggers. Patti’s aim looked pretty good to me so I was glad she didn’t shoot at sight.

  We spent a month cleaning up Little Dove, stripping off the Atlantic barnacles and then repainting her. With her brightwork polished and her hull and decks glistening once more, she looked prettier than she’d ever been. We tied a red “For Sale” sign to the poop deck rail. I felt like Judas. Here was this little boat which had carried me so far through hell, high water and sometimes close to heaven, and now I was selling her for pieces of silver—or greenbacks, I hoped.

  We left Little Dove in Saint Thomas and sailed Big Dove out to explore the Virgins. Here are some more quotes from the tapes:

  AUGUST 6: We’ve decided to stay out in the Virgins until the hurricane season is over. In Puerto Rico they have a superstition that if the avocado crop doesn’t do well it will be a bad year for hurricanes. They have had a really bad avocado crop. I don’t go much for superstition—but just in case they’re right we plan to hole up here anyway. Actually there was a warning a week ago, and we scooted into Hurricane Hole off Saint John’s, Big Dove towing Little Dove into good anchorage. I put out all the ground tackle we had, but fortunately Hurricane Anna missed the Virgins and we were okay.

  We managed to sell Little Dove for $4,725. I wonder how she will like her new owner. Just hope he’s good to her. Patti and I sailed Big Dove round Little Dove in a last salute. We were really sad, and so we went over to a small hotel and listened to a Calypso singer.

  AUGUST 20: Arrived Leinster Bay and went diving. We dove among the reefs and then Patti got her first lobster and a fish with her new spear gun. I bought her the spear gun because she can’t use the hand sling. The hand sling is too hard for her to pull back. Patti absurdly pleased with her shooting, of course, and she claimed the fish tasted much better than anything I’d caught. Two sharks are now snooping around the boat, but they don’t bother us too much. In the evenings we read aloud to each other. We’re very happy.

  AUGUST 22: Radio warning about Hurricane Donna coming our way, so we decided to get closer to Hurricane Hole, which is pretty well protected. We eventually pulled into Dead Man’s Bay, arriving just at dark. Whole bay is filled with craft waiting for the storm. I powered around looking for a place to anchor. Most of the places were about forty feet deep and that would mean putting out too much chain. Not many boats carry heavy chain, but I believe in putting money into anchor gear instead of into insurance. I find it close to impossible without an anchor winch to pull up three-eighths-inch chain when it’s forty feet deep. So we anchored in the lee of the point and it was really nice. Storm failed to arrive so we went diving next morning. A huge shark moved up on me with all its teeth showing. It wasn’t after me at all but chasing some silver fish about a foot long in a feeding frenzy. Anyway, I wasn’t going to wait around and see if that brute wanted a change of diet.

  AUGUST 24: Some people here at a place called The Bitter End in Gorda Sound are building a resort. They have found a really lovely spot and they’ve hauled in all the material they need. Basil Symonette, one of the resort owners, asked me to help them build the place, so I’ve decided to do that and earn some money while waiting out the hurricane season….

  Our taped record stopped for a while because for the next few months I became a landlubber, helping to build the resort at The Bitter End. Just as in Darwin, I found I was quite useful with my hands, and was able to put in walls, windows, tile bathrooms and that sort of thing. Dove was anchored out in the bay, and when Patti’s household chores were done she would join me. She was useful with a paintbrush and she planted a garden. There were no union rules, so when we felt like it we took time off and went fishing or cruised about. I took my work seriously not only because it paid well but because I saw it as experience for the time when I planned to build a home of our own. We would know just how to build our home when the time arrived.

  With the hurricane season over, I made plans to sail the thousand miles to Panama. We found a ship, the Lurline, sailing for the Canal on November 20 and after getting Patti aboard and arranging to meet her in Porvenir, one of the San Blas islands, I put to sea again.

  Fili and Kili were my only passengers because Gollum had found another owner. When Gollum was missing a few days before we were due to sail, we made inquiries and learned that he had been seen in the house of a millionaire—one of those beautiful, white-walled cliffside places with soft-footed servants and fountained swimming pools—the whole works. Gollum was probably curled up on a tasseled cushion and had no intention of returning to the discomforts of life at sea.

  In the Virgins I had installed a freezer which ran off the engine and while I watched the Lurline sail west I made my first iced drink and then told the tape recorder:

  Saint Croix now on my beam and I’m making about six knots. At this speed the gunwales of Little Dove would be awash…. I’m really confident about this leg of the voyage. Big Dove’s a good boat and it’s exciting to be sailing once again.

  In the late afternoon a small plane swooped low over Dove and the National Geographic man aboard presumably took pictures. Then a heavy rain squall hit and I stood naked on the deck to take a bath. All seemed well until I lit the stove to cook an enchilada TV supper. There must have been a kerosene leak because the flare-up singed my eyelashes. Soot was all over the cabin and there was no Patti to clean it up. A bachelor’s life, I decided, was not for me.

  I opened up the ports to get fresh air and was immediately hit by another squall. The genoa had become snarled up, and in the time that it took me to untangle it the cabin was soaked. I’d obviously been too long on land.

  Fire and water—what next? I asked the tape, and had hardly put the question when I saw a ship on collision course. I pulled over the tiller, threw some four-letter words across the water and took some comfort in the idea that troubles only come in threes. But not for me. Next day Gandalf broke—the wooden oarlike blade that goes into the water. That would mean a delay at the Canal, for I hate to steer myself and I had no intention of doing so in the long Pacific haul to California.

  Big Dove had a useful inboard engine so when the wind dropped I was able to power at four or five knots. By the time I reached the San Blas islands I had used up all my fuel. I anchored Dove off a beach at Porvenir just eight days after leaving Saint Thomas. My taffrail log recorded 1,099 miles. The straight-line distance from Saint Thomas was 139 miles shorter, but you can�
��t always sail in a straight line. I rowed ashore and looked for Patti. The only hotel seemed the obvious place and I was just climbing the front porch when out she came—flying.

  Patti had arrived only a few hours before, because the S.S. Lurline had called at other ports along the route to Panama. She had flown from Panama in a private plane. She had had a wretched sea voyage and had been sick every morning. She had consulted the ship’s doctor and we were still embracing on the hotel steps when Patti told me the medical diagnosis.

  “Guess what. Robin—it looks like you might be a father.”

  The right thing for me to have done was to have shouted hallelujahs, to have handed out cigars and dashed off to buy a diamond clasp or something. Actually her news felt like a kick in the guts. I was suddenly sick with fear for her. Sure I’d had my biology and hygiene classes at school, but what I thought of was my mother’s story of my own birth.

  I had been a Caesarean baby, and when I was quite young my mother had told me how she had nearly died in giving me life. She could hardly have guessed the effect this disclosure would have had on her small son. I was left with a horror of childbirth.

  Patti completely misunderstood my alarm. She pushed me away and studied me, her eyes troubled.

  “Oh, Robin, I thought you’d be so thrilled with the news. When we talked about having children you always seemed so excited. Oh, honey, I just don’t understand you.”

  “No,” I said, “it’s not that at all. It’s hard to explain. I just…”

  “You don’t want the baby, do you?” insisted Patti. “Let’s at least be honest.” Tears welled up into her eyes. “Anyway, I don’t know for sure yet.”

  Above our heads the wind was swinging a bar sign in about three languages. The sign wheezed like an old man with asthma. I just didn’t know what to say. Thoughts tumbled around my mind. One part of me was jolted by the idea that I could create life—not an unpleasant one at all. But the other thought was that Patti was going to pay a horrible price in pain and sickness. Perhaps she would die, I thought.