Sea Change

by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy

  We stared at the birds, amazed, but knowing that each moment the birds flew, the sun sank. After several minutes the entire mad avian collection drifted off toward the horizon and disappeared, leaving us in total quiet. The sun always seems to fall more quickly in the tropics, especially when you are on a small boat in a big sea, far from shore. Darkness approached.

  Bob and I wondered whether Jasper and Kit would turn Valkyrien inland to look for us, or stay on the course where they were supposed to meet us. We knew that with nightfall, fear would be telling them to head inland. I said to Bob I don’t think that is how Jasper operates.

  So we stayed on our course, and as the stars began to appear overhead, we saw Valkyrien’s sixty-eight-foot mast on the horizon. We made it to her side with a few miles of fuel to spare and poured the new, clean oil into the engine, which made everyone happy.

  A day or so later I dropped Bob in Manzanillo and he caught a flight back to Washington. I sailed on with Jasper and Kit. Vicki and Wes would join us three hundred miles down the coast at our next port of call—Acapulco.

  Dehydration occurs astonishingly rapidly when sailing in the tropics. One of the first signs of advanced dehydration is lightheadedness, and difficulty reasoning. Quickly following the onset of these symptoms comes paranoia, distrust of shipmates, and a strong sense that drinking anything will make matters worse. During the first few hours after one rehydrates, a flu-like nausea can become so overpowering that even walking is difficult.

  I had ordered Jasper and Kit to put aside three two-gallon bottles of water each morning, which we then mixed with a huge portion of powdered Gatorade. We put our names on our respective bottles, and every few hours each day we would check in with each other, showing how much we had drunk. I took dehydration very seriously, but it amazed me, despite my precautions, how quickly any one of us would become completely unreasonable about fluid intake.

  Jasper grew bitter and argumentative after only a few hours of not drinking. One day he told me that he was busy working on the engine, and would drink when he climbed out of the darkened compartment. By late that evening he flat out refused to drink anything. Kit and I yelled at him, to no avail. I slapped him as hard as I could in the face, but this also had no effect. Finally, I punched him very hard, and he agreed to drink if I would promise not to hit him again.

  I immediately assented, and we watched through the night as Jasper finished a gallon of water mixed with electrolytes. The next morning, fully hydrated, Jasper apologized to both of us. After that, we made a solemn pact that if any two people ordered the third (even me) to drink, he would have to drink until the other two said “Enough.”

  This worked well until we were approaching Acapulco, and Kit refused to drink any fluids at all, no matter how we cajoled him. We drove straight up to the fuel dock. Kit, confused and dizzy, stepped off Valkyrien and walked down the pier without tying any lines. I tied up the bow and rushed after him.

  When the dockworkers saw Kit in his disoriented state, they insisted on calling for an ambulance. I knew that Kit just needed to drink something, so I threatened him.

  “If you do not begin drinking immediately, I am going to leave you here, and you will have to find your own way home. You will likely be arrested and spend at least one night in jail.”

  Kit looked overjoyed at this news.

  He said, to me in absolute earnest: “Really, Max? Thank you so much! This is really good news! So, I don’t have to get back on the boat as long as I don’t drink any water, right?”

  I said, “No, Kit, that is not right. You must drink the water, and if you do not drink it now, Jasper and I will force you back on the boat and we will never let you off again.”

  Kit looked crestfallen, but managed, despite his haze, to see the determination on our faces and began drinking. By late the next morning, he was back in his right mind, and we had a few laughs about it when my wife Vicki and my friend Wes finally arrived, at the dock in Acapulco.

  19. Vicki and Wes

  Come live with me, and be my love.

  —Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

  As Valkyrien nudged against the fuel dock Vicki stepped aboard and threw her arms around me. The thought of falling asleep with my wife in my arms for the next few nights gave me an extraordinary feeling of peace.

  Wes had flown from Los Angeles with Vicki. Wes and I met many years ago when Vicki and he were teaching fellows at Harvard. Wes grew up in Norman, Oklahoma, and his kind demeanor and openhearted accent belied a keen intellect and incisive wit. Wes had shaved his head for the trip and arrived looking like his Cherokee ancestors (minus the scalp lock). Two of my greatest friends in the world are Oklahomans descended from Cherokee who won full scholarships to Ivy League colleges.

  At Harvard, Wes won the Rockefeller scholarship and used the funds to travel to Ghana, where he worked for a year in a small village eating fufu, a sort of soupy mixture that is also used, unadulterated, to repair leaking gas tanks or popped tires. A year of eating fufu might have been tough, but Wes will readily confess that his three days aboard the Valkyrien, apart from the company, was the worst trial of his life.

  We set sail again the morning after Vicki and Wes arrived, our crew consisting of the two of them, Kit, Jasper, and myself. A strong wind came up that night and waves crashed over the bow, socking the foremast beneath a couple of feet of water. The waves rolled fierce, though nowhere near as steep or as tall as the gigantic Pacific waves we had encountered near Monterey.

  Working in the dark, I reset the sails and tried not to betray my alarm. I did not realize at the time just how miserable our guests were. Vicki, sick with the flu and violently nauseous, never complained. And Wes, more stoic than any man I know, never let on that he was concerned. They both displayed extraordinary stamina and calm. Most people would have been terrified beyond action. The rain and wind, combined with the lightning and thunder and the fact that the seas south of Mexico offer little hope of rescue in an emergency, made for a scary crossing.

  The following morning we skirted the northwestern edge of the Gulf of Tehuantepec and landed at Salina Cruz, in the far south of the Mexican Coast. Salina Cruz is a town that should not be missed by anyone who savors visits to landfills or the scent of dead animals left to rot on dusty roads. Salina is entirely artificial. One hundred years ago some officious bureaucrat determined that Salina, a blank spot on the map, would be a good place to construct a port city to serve as the Pacific Coast station of the new national railroad crossing Tehuantepec. The government built seawalls and port facilities in the early 1900s, but the hoped-for bonanza of cross-continent shipping never materialized, and the Mexican government has deferred maintenance on most of the port. Built to be a great rail terminus, it has become literally the end of the line.

  The harbor had no facilities. We pulled up to a “pier,” little more than a collection of half-submerged boards tilting in various directions as we stepped across them.

  Vicki and I walked together into town searching for fuel, to little avail. The sadness of the vacant streets, abandoned buildings, and short-haired starving dogs spilled into my heart the doom that is particular to the tropics and keened my awareness of the emptiness I would feel at Vicki’s departure. I needed to find fuel, but I knew that once we had filled Valkyrien, Vicki would return home.

  I never know what to do during the hours before Vicki leaves. Demented butterflies flit around in my stomach, bringing with them a slight nausea and nervous energy. This feeling sneaks up on me. I walked along, fully intent on finding fuel, and suddenly realized that my sense of well-being had nearly collapsed. I have left Vicki so many times for travel, and yet every time before I go I become completely afraid. It is similar to the anxiety that some of my friends feel about taking a flight. I have a vague sense that without Vicki something will go wrong. I can experience this sense of Vicki’s absence anywhere in the world—i
n a storm at sea or at a Broadway play. When I am with Vicki I feel grounded, in the present. Vicki brings to me a contentment, and I need our connection. And yet I continue to get back on the boat. My restless soul carries me away.

  We walked along the narrow streets that day in Salina and watched the smoke rising in varied locations from the burning of rubbish. Finally we located a small truck stop and paid a group of men to bring us a collection of fifty-five-gallon diesel drums. They rolled the drums along the street, 18th century style, then down the dilapidated dock.

  We pumped the fuel through the smallest hand pump I had ever seen; filling a single drum required hundreds of strokes. We took turns pumping, and concentrating on that tedious work, I lost track of my surroundings, lulled in the tropical heat. I did not notice as a dozen Mexican military guards, each carrying an assault rifle, marched down the pier until they climbed aboard Valkyrien. The guards stopped our fueling and clambered all over the decks, searching for drugs. (I don’t know who would ever smuggle drugs south from Mexico, but I did not ask.) They were polite, as we were in turn, and after looking at a lot of papers, they allowed us to continue on our way.

  Vicki and Wes remained with us long enough to run satellite checks on the weather and ensure we were well-provisioned for the last portions of the trip (southern Mexico was more than halfway to the Panama Canal). Wes, a master on any computer, checked every major weather service and the cruising websites, and he also asked the locals about possibilities for heavy weather. Conditions sounded ideal.

  It was with a great measure of sadness that I watched Vicki and Wes feel their way along that ramshackle dock. They headed home as I made ready to embark again, south. Vicki had been so encouraging about this undertaking, urging me to continue on, but I don’t think I had ever wanted to give up the trip more than I did while watching Vicki make her way down that rickety pier.

  I had been away from home too long. I missed my children, and the Glide. I missed sailing around Nantucket Sound. I feel comfortable in New England. On Cape Cod I am surrounded by family. I know where I am off Hyannis Port, even at night, because I recognize the cadence of so many channel markers—six seconds on the light at the end of the break wall; the Morse code on the HH Buoy, four seconds of red on the old bell at the entrance to the channel. Hodges Rock, Hallets Rock, Half-Tide Rock, The Spindle. For someone new to the Cape, these are all navigational hazards to be reckoned with—dangers lying, partially obscured. But for me they are the welcome signs that I am home. I had been away now from waters I knew for a long time. Each day we sailed anew into unknown seas, with unrecognized dangers. I wanted to go home.

  I reasoned with myself that the trip was nearly over. As an experienced sailor, I never quip “What could go wrong?,” but I figured that the rest of the trip—through the warm tropics, with a proven engine and good sails—would go more smoothly. Within eight days we would be in Costa Rica, and I would be able to fly home for a couple of weeks, after which Vicki would fly down with me and our children and we would sail together into Panama. Lonesome, standing alone beside that stinking dock in Mexico, I figured I could stick with it after all we had been through.

  I had no idea that the trip was about to get much worse.

  20. The Gulf of Tehuantepec

  In the tropics one must before everything keep calm.

  —Joseph Conrad, Marlow in Heart of Darkness

  The passage across the Gulf of Tehuantepec is the most treacherous section of the coastal trip to Panama. The Gulf is one of the windiest places on Earth, at least during the winter months. Cold fronts moving across Central America are funneled into the mountains between Mexico and Guatemala and are essentially slingshot across the bay. Winds often blow 20 knots, but during weather events, which are not infrequent, they may blow 40 knots or more, causing huge westbound waves to drive out to sea, hammering sailboats hundreds of miles offshore.

  Experienced cruisers with blue-water boats will tell you that 250 miles out at sea is the minimum safe distance. I knew Valkyrien was a strong boat, but I would certainly not cross the ocean with her, and I would not sail her that far offshore. The next best choice was to sail the entire bay while staying about a quarter-mile from shore. The wind jumps a little bit at the beach, creating a narrow line of safe navigation that winds along the edge of the shoreline, where the water is just deep enough—at thirty feet—for sailboats.

  La Niña had been active that year, which somewhat weakened the effects of the gigantic wind tunnel, and we did not begin this portion of the trip until late March—well after the windiest days of December through February. According to the reports Wes had gathered, we had a safe weather window, and so we headed off along the Gulf shore with the wind steady at about 20 knots. That is a hell of a lot of wind when you are sailing, but was considered fairly calm for the Gulf of Tehuantepec.

  Nevertheless, the narrow band we sailed along the coast was really the only smooth line on the long haul across the bay. Just a kilometer or so further offshore, winds were gusting over 30 knots as we sailed along that desolate desert shoreline, past the tiny fishing village of San Mateo del Mar. Most young people have left the villages along the Gulf for life and jobs in Oaxaca. The old ones remain, living as subsistence fishermen, in simple poverty. They care for their boats and tiny homes, eating their own daily catch.

  I looked across at the villagers staring out at Valkyrien, each of us perhaps thinking of the lives of others, and I was happy with my choice to continue the journey. Valkyrien beat hard, her sails pulled tight to stay on the safe side of the wind line. The wind blew beautifully strong, beckoning on a heading that would keep our course on a perfect reach directly across the bay. This was precisely the wind and weather schooners were designed to sail. I stared out at the rolling waves. I wanted to sail with that wind. I have never shied away from a fresh breeze. On Cape Cod when the wind is like this, we say, “It is blowing like stink out there.” And it was blowing like stink.

  I turned the wheel right a bit, falling off, to a broad reach. Valkyrien cruised out of the narrow band of calm and into the wilder seas of the Gulf of Tehuantepec. The next five hours were perhaps the greatest sailing I have ever experienced. We crowded on sail, and Valkyrien swept along well over her hull speed, often making 14 knots. The sail felt more like a Nantucket sleigh ride, with the stars overhead, and eight- or nine-foot waves that allowed Valkyrien to surf but never took control of her.

  With the advent of Doppler and even newer forms of satellite radar, weather prediction has improved stunningly over my lifetime. Nevertheless, some storms, particularly in storm-prone areas, are not efficiently predicted.

  This was one of those times.

  A few hours into our dark crossing, about twenty-five nautical miles from the Guatemalan border, the sky turned absolutely black, and rain fell in thick, driving sheets. The heavy rain was followed a few minutes later by thunder and sizzling zigzags of lightning, first on our starboard, then, suddenly, everywhere.

  We were surrounded by powerful lightning bursts whose thunder shook the frames of Valkyrien to her keel. People think that it is the mast that holds the sails, but the mast is really only there to stiffen the cables. The stays and shrouds, comprised of stainless steel, are what really hold everything together. Without these stays, the whole boat will break up.

  The short, almost inconspicuous cables that tie into the sides of the bowsprit are essential. If these cables fray or come loose, the entire rig—both masts, and all of the sails—can come tumbling down. If you lose one of the cables, you lose the bowsprit. Without the bowsprit, you lose the forestay. And if you lose the forestay, then the masts will begin swaying forward and back, like a wedge, digging themselves deeper into the boat and trying to split her apart.

  For this reason extra-strong cables are used on the bowsprit. Many bowsprits on older sailing boats are buttressed with thick chain—the same size the boat uses to hold the anchor. And these c
ables and chains are secured to the ship’s sides in a manner that makes it nearly impossible for them to come loose. In carpenter’s terms they are “through-bolted,” which means that instead of screwing in an ordinary eyebolt, the carpenter actually drills a hole entirely through the wall. Then she forces a huge metal bar, threaded at both ends, through the hole. Finally, the carpenter slips thick stainless-steel washers over the bar and then slides oversized stainless nuts on either end, and tightens down fiercely on the threads. The double bolt holds the rig precisely in place. The only way that bolt can come out is if the washers literally fold in on themselves, against the nut. A heavy stainless-steel bolt, washer, and nut combination can hold the engine onto a 747.

  Unfortunately, instead of using two double-thick stainless-steel washers, which cost a few dollars each, our carpenter Jerry had chosen the cheapest, thinnest washers he could find. That night off Guatemala, the jibs pulled hard, bending the bowsprit to starboard, like a taut bow. I thought to myself, My God, if that thing snaps, we could lose the whole rig.

  That evening, and into the night, the jibs pulled against the bowsprit, and the sprit in turn pulled against its cables. The cables pulled against the through-bolts. And the through-bolts pulled against those cheap Chinese washers.

  In the midst of the storm, in the dark, at the bow, and unbeknownst to all of us, the washers slowly worked themselves into a bend, then suddenly folded up about an hour after dark, and ripped through the holes drilled into the side of the gunwales. A gigantic cracking BOOM! raced across the ship, like the sound of a double-barreled shotgun fired right beside me.