Sea Change

by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy

  Our backgrounds are completely divergent. Troy is a fundamentalist Christian Republican, and he brings those core values—belief in God and in the redeeming qualities of hard work, good judgment, and an open heart—to everything he does. Even under the most trying and chaotic circumstances, Troy was always grateful for a cup of peanut butter under the stars, and able there to find joy in everything.

  Troy gave me enormous confidence and a sense of pure fun as we headed toward the Golden Gate Bridge, finally under way.

  6. A Bad Feeling

  The Shapes Arise!

  Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western Seas

  and in many a bay and by-place,

  The live oak Kielsons, the pine planks, the spars,

  the hackmatack-roots for knees,

  The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds,

  the workmen busy outside and inside,

  The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger,

  the adze, bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.

  —Walt Whitman, Song of the Broad-Axe

  Things happened in Monterey Bay that should have caused me to give up the trip.

  It all started out harmlessly enough; first, the sea lions.

  In fifth-grade science class, our teacher often showed us documentary films. I loved these movies, especially the ones about seals. Many were shot using 16mm cameras, and projected on the tiny Da-Lite tripod screens that always swayed one way or another, giving us a skewed view of the animal world. When I grew up I wanted to go to Monterey Bay and film the seals, and sea lions, too! I could not believe what a magical place California seemed to be.

  I had never seen a wild seal in my life. (Before I was born, my brothers and sisters had had a pet seal named Sandy that escaped so many times, he was finally given to the Washington National Zoo. I went to visit him in his imprisonment off Connecticut Avenue whenever I could get a ride, but was never precisely sure which seal was Sandy.)

  When I finally turned eighteen and had my own driver’s license, I drove across the United States with my brother Chris. We rode straight down from San Francisco to spend the day at the Monterey Aquarium. I vowed to return one day in a boat.

  Thirty years later, as I slid Valkyrien into Monterey Harbor, I was no less amazed by the seals and sea lions than I had been as a child. They were absolutely magical, and looked to me like creatures from a fantastical world where movement onshore was difficult and lumbering, but swimming in water became an experience with zero gravity and no boundaries.

  In Cape Cod you could rarely see more than a few feet through the turbid ocean. But in Monterey, visibility was practically endless. Sailing in the Bay was like cruising through a gigantic aquarium completely overstocked with fish and birds and seals and sea lions, although with surprisingly few people (at least in winter).

  We grabbed a mooring to save money on dockage fees that first night in Monterey, and the following morning Troy and I tried starting the engine. The first time it turned over strongly but did not start. This was typical on Valkyrien. It usually took a few tries. We waited a bit, then tried again. This time, the engine made a horrible sound and immediately stopped turning over. I checked the oil level and it was completely fine. I tried a few times more, but the battery merely smoked, as the lead terminal posts melted down.

  I knew then that we had, potentially, a huge problem. The engine appeared to have seized up; if we could not get it to move, the entire engine would have to be replaced. There was one last possibility—something might be caught in the propeller—so I needed to check that before becoming utterly dejected.

  I dove into the clear, cold water and swam down to see if any detritus was jammed in the prop, but the propeller turned freely. Back on board, I looked in the engine compartment to see if anything had stuck the driveshaft. Then I climbed down the companionway and tried to turn the engine by hand. It wouldn’t budge. I looked at the exhaust pipes and noticed for the first time that they had been installed on the cheap. The engine was mounted below sea level. The exhaust had a long run, and the pipes ran straight—with no steep elbow to drain backflow.

  There are several ways diesel engines with through-hull, raw-water cooling systems can create reverse suction through the exhaust pipes. Troy and I took a few pieces off the engine and realized quickly that seawater had entered the block through the exhaust, causing the engine to seize. We would have to tow Valkyrien to a working dock.

  The currents even within the inner harbor of Monterey Bay are terrifically strong, and our Boston Whaler barely moved the Valkyrien shoreward. We had moored less than half a mile from the slip, yet that short ride took us nearly an hour before we landed at Breakwater Cove Marina, not realizing that Valkyrien would remain there for a month.

  Troy advised me to give up the trip. He told me again that he had a bad feeling about Valkyrien. Later that day he caught a bus home to LA, making it clear he never wanted to step foot aboard the boat again. I hoped he would come around.

  I remained determined to continue the journey, and knowing Troy, felt confident that if I really needed him, he would return. If I had not been sure that Troy would come back, I probably would have given up in Monterey.

  In addition to the problems with the engine, many of Valkyrien’s other systems had deteriorated to the point of near failure. Both of her toilets (called heads) leaked. The forward head did not work at all when we bought the boat, but rather than pay for a new one, we just used the nonworking head as a space to store supplies.

  At Monterey, unfortunately, the single functioning head failed. The usual way to find out a head is not working is to use it. We learned after leaving San Francisco that the rubber gasket seals for the hand pump had hardened up from not being used for years. Sewage, under intense pressure, regularly sprayed out of the top of the pump casing so that when flushing, we had to crouch and lean way back to avoid getting sprayed in the eye. Because the compartment for the head had very little room, it was tough to pump and, at the same time, duck away from the dark liquid that spurted out. After every use, the fetid water that sprayed around the room because of the malfunctioning pump had to be wiped down. It was a nasty business.

  Cleaning the bilge on most boats is a notoriously difficult and loathsome job. The bilge is the compartment below the floorboards, and is the deepest and most difficult compartment to reach, much less clean. If any of the sewage hoses leak, as was the case in Valkyrien, the gross fluids would gather in the bilge and slosh back and forth, caking the entire interior of the boat beneath the boards in feces and urine.

  By crawling throughout the head, reaching through passages covered with a particularly filthy grime, I labeled each of the hoses leading from the head and the holding tank, sticking on variously colored tape to identify the different hoses all along their run. The pump, of course, ultimately failed completely. I am continually mystified by my capacity to withstand all sorts of disquieting and discomfiting situations. I can be fairly comfortable sailing through a full gale, yet I am almost completely overpowered by the mere idea of dealing with feces. Especially human feces. I got better at it on this trip, but when I first confronted that head, filled with feces left there by some unconfessed crapper, I felt nearly despondent.

  The fact is, I have some weird version of OCD which allows me to be perfectly comfortable when my own office or home is in complete disarray, so long as the disarray is caused by me. If the detritus belongs to others, I cannot stand it. I’m not sure how, then, I’m able to travel on a boat, sharing food and quarters for weeks on end, side by side with a crew of filthy, stinking men. I guess I love being on the water so much that I can sublimate my phobias.

  7. Jasper

  Oh, what a tangled web we weave . . .

  —Sir Walter Scott, Marmion

  During the sail down to Monterey I had also become increasingly concerned about the condition
of Valkyrien’s masts. In Monterey I took out an advertisement on Craigslist for a carpenter. I asked potential hires to detail their carpentry experience and at the end, to explain how they would create a butterfly joint and a beveled lap splice on a vertical stud. I ended with: “If you don’t know what these terms mean, please do not reply.”

  I got a few replies from carpenters who said they would not work for me if their lives depended on it, but felt compelled to reply because they thought my ad so arrogant and rude. Frankly, I agreed with them. I needed to quickly cut through the clutter and find someone who not only understood the kind of carpentry required, but who was also willing to work with someone like me. The overbearing post covered both issues.

  One carpenter replied in the most poorly written dribble I had ever read. Every single word was spelled incorrectly. Even when he used the same word more than once in a single sentence, he spelled it differently each time—a mad kind of phonetics that combined kindergarten spelling with all of the odd rules we learn in second grade, spelling fish “fesh,” or “fsh,” and then, later, “phish.” His wild orthography was utterly unselfconscious and unique.

  Rather than being put off, I was intrigued. The author likely suffered from some form of profound dyslexia, and since I knew that dyslexics often make up for deficiencies in one area of the brain by excelling at others, I hoped that the author of the note would turn out to be a man with a profound visual mind who was also great at carpentry. Unemployed, and with an uncrowded schedule, the carpenter, named Jasper, met me at the dock beside Valkyrien that same afternoon.

  Jasper never asked me how long we would be away or how much he would earn. The only thing I knew for sure about him was he had never been sailing and wanted very much to sail aboard Valkyrien. I saw him as an odd but valiant adventurer with a strong sense of loyalty. Vicki saw his determination to sail aboard Valkyrien as reckless. She encouraged me to hire crew who knew how to sail.

  I have always been extremely reliant on my wife—not so much for the ordinary things that any of us might expect from a spouse, but for things intangible and inchoate. We have been together for more than thirty years, and I count on Vicki’s love and faith to carry me through each and every travail I face. When I embarked on this adventure, I had no idea how often and for how long Valkyrien would ultimately take me away from Vicki and our children.

  Despite my wife’s misgivings, I wanted to hire Jasper, and Jasper badly wanted to join the trip. But another Craigslist applicant, also extremely qualified, practically begged me to choose him. I could only afford to pay one person. I hated to turn away a hard worker and to disappoint a young man yearning for adventure. I needed someone who was willing to do dirty work. And Jasper quickly proved himself in this regard.

  Earlier in the day the unthinkable happened aboard Valkyrien. Somehow, despite the hoses from the head having been completely and visibly disconnected, and a large sign stating in block letters broken—do not use, someone had defecated in the toilet again. Interviewing the two men together, I raised the issue of the filthy toilet as an example of the kinds of unpleasantness they might have to deal with as boat boys aboard Valkyrien.

  Neither seemed too fazed by the prospect, so I was no closer to deciding which of them would best be able to deal with the reality of a long trip in a leaking boat down to the tropics. While I continued to talk to the two men together, trying to decide which one to hire, Jasper, without explanation, drifted away from the conversation and disappeared belowdecks without saying anything, and I thought, “I wish he could concentrate on this right now because I really like this wacky guy.

  A few moments later he stood up in the companionway, holding the filthy toilet over his head (which was the only way it would fit up the stairs). Feces dripped down his arms and onto his shoulders as he walked heavily along the deck, then off the Valkyrien, up the gangway, and into the men’s room on the dock. All the while carrying the toilet. He remained in the men’s room for about 45 minutes. Then he came out, wearing only his underwear. He had washed the toilet, cleaned his clothes, and showered. The formerly filthy head sparkled clean as new.

  I hired Jasper then and there, and that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. In the end, of course, Vicki was right. My life would be so much easier overall if I accepted the wisdom of my wife. But, it seems I am destined to insist on making my own mistakes and learning by experience. Jasper, it turned out, would be intimately involved in some of the greatest disasters of my life. I am not saying that he caused them, but I am also quite sure they would not have happened if Jasper was not my friend.

  Jasper showed up at the boat the first day with his own climbing harness. Shorter than most men, he moves with force more than grace, like a man injured in a series of accidents, determined to walk on his own. His head is shaped like a rectangle, perpendicular at its sides and the top nearly perfectly parallel with the ground. His smile gives away his fundamentally boyish nature.

  I asked him to take a look at the weak spots in the mast. He looked me dead in the eye and asked if it was safe. How the hell do I know if it’s safe? I thought. You’re the one with the climbing gear. But I said, “Yes, it is totally safe.”

  Without another word Jasper tied himself into the main halyard and began hoisting himself up.

  I asked, a bit weakly, “Don’t you want to check it out for yourself a bit before you go up?”

  Jasper looked straight back at me, only slightly confused, and said, “Why would I? The captain is always right.”

  I discovered later that Jasper had spent a grand total of ten days of his life on a boat. He’d briefly worked for an engineer on a steel commercial fishing rig. The engineer had taken Jasper under his wing and taught him a hell of a lot about big diesel engines. He also taught Jasper the axiom, “The captain is always right.” Jasper did not understand that the engineer was passing on this cliché as advice about how to act on a boat. Jasper took him literally. He never questioned a single order I gave while aboard.

  Jasper has a photographic memory for everything he has ever seen. He could not add or subtract reliably or balance accounts, but he could take apart and put back together any diesel engine, without a manual, even if he had never seen it before. He knew not only what it should look like, but what it must look like.

  He had essentially been abandoned as a child to fend for himself. An odd neighbor taught him how to recognize the bark of the Pacific yew tree, which he could cut and sell to a nearby vendor who resold it at great profit to a local pharmaceutical company. Researchers determined in the 1960s that yew trees produce what is now called Taxol—a powerful anticancer drug. He lived for the most part outside of the official economy. He heated his house with a woodstove built out of a discarded oil tank he had retrieved from a junkyard. Jasper used windfalls—trees he found felled by storms near roadsides—for powering the stove. Several times highway workers nearly had him arrested. Eventually they became fond of Jasper and would call him when a really good tree came down.

  Jasper was possessed of the oddest charm I had ever known. I used to go regularly to a hardware store near the harbor in Los Angeles. The store had a gigantic sign over the central cash register that read in black block letters do not even think of asking to borrow anything. Everyone who worked at this shop was famously rude. One day, as Jasper and I walked through the store, he picked up various items. The employees told him to put things down. Jasper ignored them. Jasper’s behavior attracted the attention of every employee, and they gathered about him, watching. The customers—used to the confrontational style of shop employees—also grew acutely aware of the budding strife. I became so uncomfortable with the tension that I walked out of the store, leaving Jasper to suffer the consequences of his actions alone.

  Twenty minutes later, he walked out of the shop carrying a gigantic cutting tool, the pride of the store. I immediately considered how far I could distance myself from him before the police
arrived. A moment later the meanest of the managers came running out, holding a long length of chain. “Hey, Jasper, you better take this, too, in case you need a longer piece.” Somehow Jasper had broken through the icy facades of men that captains and sailors alike had avoided for years. The manager actually told Jasper to keep the tools overnight, and offered him a ride back to the boat. Sourcing tools and hardware is one of the most difficult jobs in a long sea voyage. I realized instinctively that if Jasper came along with us, we would find everything we needed, no matter what.

  As if to accentuate the dubious nature of my choice, when Jasper reported for duty the next day, he carried at his side a large, curved, carbon-steel, double-handed Japanese sword (his most expensive and prized possession). Before climbing onto Valkyrien Jasper asked my permission to step aboard while carrying a weapon. I looked at him, with as serious an expression as I could muster, and told him that he could, but that it must be stowed immediately. Jasper proceeded to the main mast where he strapped his sheath tight to the base. I asked him why he was tying his scabbard to the mast, and he looked at me, a little confused by my question, and said in deadly sweet earnest: “So that I may defend my captain to the last.” In fact, I would be profoundly sorry that Jasper wasn’t with me later in the trip when the pirates came.

  Oftentimes, in the middle of conversation, if seated, Jasper would lay his head down on top of a table, or if we were standing, he would simply lie down on the floor and shut his eyes. A few moments later he would be snoring, and often a bit of drool would slip out of his mouth, slide over his lower lip, forming a tiny puddle. The first time he did this I thought he was making fun of me for being boring. I realized quickly though, that he had fallen deeply asleep. He might lie still like this for ten minutes, or ten hours. Then, if I were still around when he woke up, he would continue our conversation at the exact point where he had left it. I asked him about his narcolepsy and he said to me genuinely, “What is narcolepsy?” I let it go.