I watched Maxey knowing that he would surmount all of this.
Looking back now I am horrified that I sent my son on such an errand. I have never asked Maxey to do something that I would not readily do myself. But I do not wish him to do all of the things
I am willing to try. And I am glad now that I have passed beyond the asking.
Maxey leaned down, then straddled the bowsprit. He tightened his legs around it and tensed his thighs, then stretched his arms over the sprit and locked his fists below it. I saw him lift his head and take a giant breath as the bowsprit dove into the water and disappeared with him on it.
I held my breath with him, as he disappeared under the water. I counted slowly to myself: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 . . . It felt like a full minute, but was probably closer to fifteen seconds before I saw him again, still clinging to the bowsprit as it lifted up and out of the water. I saw Maxey take a quick breath, then shimmy his way farther out toward the end. He grabbed another breath before plunging once again into the green and black water, vanishing below a lion’s mane of frothy white.
Again I counted and watched. I checked my knife. If Maxey fell in, I would cut the towline and jump into the water. Theoretically he would rise up somewhere quite close to me, and we could then follow the towline to the Whaler and climb aboard. After we got the Whaler going we would pull close to Valkyrien and convince Jasper to jump overboard.
It wasn’t a very good backup plan and it was our ONLY backup plan. I hoped to hell we wouldn’t need to try it.
Maxey made it out to the first jib, then smartly climbed beyond it to the furthest sail. He knew we would need at least two jibs and that the first one, when up, would block his retreat.
To raise the outermost jib Maxey needed to release the halyard clipped to an eye on the bowsprit, then lift it up to the head of the jib and clip it back on. This would almost certainly require the use of both hands, and he would need to be submerged several times just to get the halyard clipped on. Even with the halyard on, his job was only half done. He would then have to shimmy back down along the bowsprit and release the sail ties holding the jib. The knots we used on the ties were designed to be released with one hand, but Maxey carried a knife just in case.
I watched as he climbed out and over the first jib, then, gripping the bowsprit with his thighs and feet locked, he unclipped the halyard. As Valkyrien lifted atop a wave, Maxey deftly locked the halyard down to the top of the sail. Then he shimmied his body in reverse, pulling off sail ties as he slid backwards.
With each tie that he removed, the jib began to rise more freely and whip back and forth with a sharp towel-snapping sound, striking him on the top of his head and across his shoulders. To protect his face, Maxey kept his head buried in the parts of the sail that were still tied. Unable to see, he moved only by feel, taking a gulp of air whenever he sensed the tip of the bowsprit going under.
I could feel Maxey’s powerful determination as he strained to lock his elbows and knees tight to the bowsprit, his forehead down, dragging along the wood. He slithered aft around the inner forestay and deftly clipped on the number-two jib, then released its ties and inched back to the bow. The bow, which had at first seemed an absolutely terrifying place as it dove below the sea into each trough, two or three feet deep below water running down the decks, now seemed as safe as home base. Scuttling along the deck to the foremast, Maxey quickly pulled each jib the last of the way up, cleating off the halyards to the belaying pins on the fife rails.5
The change in Valkyrien’s attitude was immediate. She began to respond to my steering. As Valkyrien lifted atop a huge wave I turned the vise-grip over and over, to port. Valkyrien’s wheel took eight and a half turns to move the rudder from full starboard (all the way to the right) to full port (all the way to the left).
The huge schooner, flowing down the wave with her forward sails all full, obeyed her rudder and turned slowly to the left, finally coming through the wind and back into the waves. We slogged our way, slowly, lumbering back toward Monterey. We made it around Point Lobos and soon after, I began to catch glimpses of the green fairways at Pebble Beach above the rocks.
The seas calmed only a little as the afternoon wore on, but I knew we would make it back. I sent Jasper below to run the bilge pumps and try to figure out how to get the engine operating again.
I had wanted Maxey to see Big Sur from the sea. I had also wanted my son to experience the dangerous side of sailing. Most fathers seek to protect their children from unsafe conditions, but I consistently put my son in harm’s way. At the time I thought the experience completely worthwhile, formative, instructive, and reasonable.
Now, though, sometimes at night, just before I fall asleep, I think of Maxey struggling on the end of the bowsprit to save a decrepit boat, and my body shudders. I fear the side of me that forced him.
* * *
5. Halyards are the ropes that run up and down the mast and are used to raise or lower the sails. The fife rail is a sort of tiny balcony that wraps around the base of the mast. The balcony rail is holed every five inches or so, and a wooden peg, called a belaying pin, is stuck in each hole. The pins are used to tie the halyards in place.
12. Experiential Sailing
I want to run away . . . and I want to stay. Amen.
—From “The Hymn of Jesus” in the Acts of John
Darkness came early that time of year, and we sailed downwind into Monterey Bay in falling light. As the seas flattened out inside the Bay, Jasper got the motor running, and I drove Valkyrien into the flat water between the breakwalls. Maxey brought the jibs down and tied them well, and I turned the boat back toward the marina.
We were tired and cold and fairly miserable, but glad to be alive and on a floating boat. I gave her a fair amount of throttle as I prepared to make the left turn to the dock. But when I turned the vise-grip to the left, I heard the sharper sound of metal against metal, and the pressure came completely off of the rudder. Valkyrien did not turn at all.
I pulled the throttle back to neutral, then slipped it into reverse, with the prop still spinning forward. Valkyrien was making nearly 6 knots, and headed straight toward the eastern breakwater. And she would not turn!
Maxey looked up at me as though I had lost my mind. I leaned down and tore the cover off the gearbox, exposing the worm gear, which torques the rudder to either side. The black disc and screw looked almost brand-new, with thick grease covering everything. I spun the wheel back and forth and everything seemed fine, except that when I got to the halfway point, all of the tension came off the rig.
It took me a minute to realize that the arm on the right side (the arm that pulls the rudder to the right) had come unbolted. The bolt was a full inch and a half thick, and had fallen into Valkyrien’s bilge, submerged below the worm drive. If I could not get the bolt back in place, I would not be able to turn Valkyrien left, and we would hit the breakwater.
I reached down but could not get my fingers to the bolt. I struggled further and smushed the side of my face against the thick grease on the edge of the worm. My fingertips brushed the bolt, but I could not pick it up. We raced on toward the breakwater and I shouted to Jasper. He rushed up with a huge screwdriver, which I jammed into the bolt holes, temporarily attaching the arm to the rudder post, and turned the wheel hard over.
The rudder responded, but Valkyrien was not turning quickly enough. Because the propeller was spinning in reverse, it was removing water pressure from the rudder that normally causes the boat to turn. We were continuing on straight toward the rock wall.
The only way to get the boat to turn away from the wall was to give her full forward throttle. But by this time we were only a boat length or so from the rocks. It would be a very risky maneuver to accelerate the huge schooner directly toward the break wall. Especially when the boat was refusing to turn. If I did not floor it, Valkyrien would certainly hit the rocks. If I floored it and she m
ade the turn, she would be fine, but if I floored it and she did not turn quite enough, she would be totaled.
I grabbed the throttle and floored it—full force forward—headed straight at the rocks. For the third time that day, Maxey looked at me as though I had lost my mind.
For a long moment she did not turn. But as she gained velocity, the water pressure against the rudder slowly forced the stern away and the boat began to change her path. We slid past the break wall, so close we could clearly see the submerged rocks only inches below Valkyrien’s side. We passed by, unscathed.
That night we tied up to the dock back at Breakwater Cove Marina. My friend and colleague from The Pearl Coalition, Bob Nixon, stood waiting at the end of the pier, grinning, wearing his trademark green sweatshirt and yellow Camp David hat and shaking his head. I had called Bob on the cell phone to give him an accounting of our trip thus far. Nixon had been filming a shark show in San Francisco. He rented a car and drove straight down Route 101 to see us.
I teased him, asking if he was visiting friends in need or merely checking on his investment. Bob had rented a hotel room, which we shared that night with Maxey. All of us slept well.
Nixon is my oldest friend and the finest storyteller I have ever known. Bob left school to study falconry under the legendary British falconer Phillip Glasier, and later convinced me to become a master falconer. Bob makes environmental documentary films, and has won six Emmys and been nominated for an Oscar. Bob is a true adventurer. He has made films in the most uncomfortable deserts, jungles, war zones, and urban environments around the world. He worked on several films with the legendary primatologist Dian Fossey. Dian agreed to give Bob the rights to make a film about her life, but instead of money, she made Bob promise to spend a year of his life doing conservation “on the ground.”
Bob coproduced the movie Gorillas in the Mist, Dian’s life story, and a few months after its release Bob moved to Washington, DC, to build a grassroots environmental group to clean up the Anacostia River. Bob committed to spend a full year in Anacostia, that was more than twenty-five years ago, and he is still there. The Anacostia flows through the poorest neighborhood in the nation’s capital, and was perhaps the most polluted river in America. He worked with about twenty young people from Anacostia each year. During the first ten years, twelve of his volunteers were murdered in drug- and gang-related violence. But alongside Bob, the team continued to work, and pulled more than seven thousand tires out of the river. Together, they began the long and often frustrating process of cleaning up a neighborhood and changing their lives.
Bob learned the story of the Pearl from residents in Anacostia. He became involved and enticed me in. Five years later, we found ourselves on the end of a wharf on a stormy winter night in Monterey Bay.
For some reason, my unconscious mind brings songs and poetry into my head that reflects my thoughts, feelings, and concerns. When I was a child my brothers and sisters and I were forced to memorize a poem or present a biography each Sunday night. I retain bits of some of these poems, which come out now and then to let me know what I have been thinking. If I’m missing someone, I may notice that I have been humming “Oh My Darling, Clementine.” On darker days, words from Hamlet’s first soliloquy come up fairly often (“Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon ’gainst self-slaughter”).
I noticed that the night before departing on a trip, that I was humming the second phrase from the old Roy Rogers song, “Happy Trails” (“Until we meet again”). Most of the time I don’t catch it; a tune or some words will come into my head, and move off as softly as they appeared.
That dark night in Monterey Bay, as the rain pelted down, I kept finding myself humming Louis Armstrong: “Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky . . . stormy weather.”
The following day, the marina authorities asked us to move to a slip. We spent only one night in that docking space. The marina had built beautiful slips, much more rugged than the wooden docks we were used to on Cape Cod. Sixty-foot slabs of reinforced concrete formed the sides of each berth. Iron cleats, each more than a foot long, were sunk into each corner of the slip.
The only available spot was the berth that lay closest to shore, just on the edge of a steep subsurface hillside. The depth reduced sharply, from about 26 feet in the marina to nine feet deep on the outside of the slip, and only two to three feet deep on the inside at low tide. I worried that in an extreme low tide Valkyrien would lay aground even inside the slip. The marina authorities assured me though, that the slip could more than handle her draft.
At the time I thought the worst thing about the slip was the danger of running aground while landing. Valkyrien drew around eight feet, and she would be only a few feet from a hard grounding at all times while berthed there. To my surprise, entering turned out to be the safest thing about this slip. The unusually steep grade, combined with the Pacific swells that made their way into the harbor, made for a surprisingly dangerous evening.
We tied up with some of our strongest two-inch lines about an hour before the tide turned at dead low. I asked Jasper to climb to the top of the mast to check one more time for rot and to make sure that all of the halyards were running easily through the blocks. He put on his harness and tied his knife to the outside of his belt. I had never spent time with someone who not only always carried a sharp fighting knife, but also kept it at the ready. Jasper found constant uses for his blade.
Of course, I was concerned as hell about him climbing up the mast after all of the stresses we had put on the boat the day before, but Jasper was certain it would be fine. When he got about three-quarters of the way to the top, though, the tide switched direction.
The boat keel rested only a couple of feet above the seafloor, and at that moment of tide and current change a sharp wind blew in, led by a gigantic swell. The shape of the breakwaters actually steered the swell directly toward the beach behind Valkyrien. As the first line of swell passed below us, it lifted the floating dock, and Valkyrien, and as the wave met the topographical rise on the seafloor, it stood up tall, turning Valkyrien almost on her side.
The mast, with Jasper near the top, leaned over so far on its side that Jasper swung out and dangled over the top of the boom of a different boat, berthed beside us! As the wave passed, Valkyrien’s lead keel righted her quickly, catapulting Jasper out in the other direction.
The huge lines holding Valkyrien to the dock tore at their cleats. The bowline, with a breaking strength of well over ten thousand pounds, tore apart, snapping loudly. The two pieces slingshot in opposite directions.
Valkyrien turned her hull first to the right, then back to the left, like Gulliver, tearing his bonds when he first awoke, surprised. She pulled the gigantic cleats out of the reinforced concrete. The cleats, ripped from their mountings, clattered across the little pier, then swung, striking the side of Valkyrien as she leaned the other way. She rolled back then, and another shrug, sundering the concrete floating dock on the opposite side of her slip.
I looked up at Jasper, horrified. I thought the mast would snap and he would fall thirty feet onto the boom and deck of the neighboring vessel. Instead, just as the Valkyrien spun across centerline, Jasper released the halyard holding him up and dropped to about eight feet off the deck. He gripped the line hard then, stopping himself with one bounce. Jasper reached his right hand across his stomach and in a smooth motion, grabbed his knife in midair, flipped it open with a snap of his wrist, and deftly cut the line holding him to the mast.
Jasper fell hard to the deck, landing on his back. He tumbled across the deck, and suddenly, almost like a cartoon character freed from gravity, he jumped nimbly to his feet and leapt down to the concrete dock. Jasper is strong and stocky. I knew he was capable of feats of great strength, but he is not elegant. I will never forget that moment. Jasper achieved one of the most graceful performances of athleticism under pressure I have ever witnessed.
When he
looked up and saw the genuine concern and absolute admiration in Maxey’s eyes and my own, Jasper seemed embarrassed.
That first night in the slip, a gale blew in and brought with it a storm of rain, lightning, and sharp thunder. We moved quickly to tie Valkyrien with longer lines around nearby pilings rather than the cleats. It raged all night, as we took turns on watch through the darkness, making adjustments to the lines as the tide came in or the wind changed direction.
All of us, including Bob, found it an exhausting night. I called Vicki from the marina and told her about the storm. It was difficult to impart the sheer fright we felt when we all thought Jasper was going to die, falling from the mast—and that somehow this nighttime storm was almost worse than the wild day at sea. I kept imagining the Valkyrien breaking free of the slip and absolutely crushing the relatively puny fiberglass boats crowded in narrow berths all around her.
I felt two distinct forms of fear in those days. The first occurred more rarely, but was absolutely raw, cutting through my skin—the fear of harming my son or my crew. I rarely consciously worried for my own safety back then. The second type of fear was more insidious, and it was related to my fear for the Valkyrien’s safety. Despite her nearly dilapidated state I had become so involved—mentally, physically, and spiritually—in the endeavor that I began to weigh danger differently. I took risks to get Valkyrien south that I would not take today.
I had invested all of myself in this voyage. Imagine driving an old Ford along a beautiful mountain road, to your mother-in-law’s home, with your children in the backseat. Snow begins to fall, and becomes a blizzard. At some point you realize driving is too dangerous, so you pull over somewhere safe to wait out the storm. Perhaps if you’d known a storm was coming, you would have canceled the trip, or waited until the roads were cleared before you would pass.
Sea Change Page 8