Sea Change

by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy

  I turned Valkyrien west.

  Troy said, “Oh, good, we’re turning around. That’s a good idea. Good decision, Max. Tough one, going back and all, but I agree with you—it’s the right thing to do.”

  Instead of turning all the way around, though, I just headed west, out to sea, to deeper water. I could see Troy growing agitated.

  “Is there something in the water here, Max?” he asked politely. “Is that why you are taking so long to make the turn?”

  “No, Troy, we’re not going back.”

  “What do you mean, we’re not going back? You heard that guy. Something terrible is about to happen! It sounds like there’s going to be an earthquake or something. Maybe a tidal wave! We have to get out of here, quick!”

  “Well, the word in Spanish for earthquake is terremoto, so that may be what he was saying.”

  “Well, let’s turn this boat around and get back there, quick.”

  “Troy, you know that if there is an earthquake coming, and the fishermen already know it, then we have very little time to prepare. We would never make it back to port before it hits.”

  “What if it is something else? A storm or a hurricane?”

  “Troy, if we were back in the estero, that would be fine. But by the way he was shouting I don’t think we have more than five minutes. We’ll never get across those sandbars at night, in a storm, on a falling tide. The safest place for us to be is in the deepest water we can find—and out there is where the deep water is, so that is where we’re headed.”

  Troy knew I did not like to give explanations for my decisions, so he understood how important this issue had become.

  “Troy, it’s time to start tying down everything you can. Take below anything that cannot get wet. Bring the big pump first, and wrap it in a tarp. Tie it down well so that it can’t slide. And then get on the rest of the stuff.”

  Midnight. No waves. No wind. About ten miles offshore, I saw another light, and turned the wheel left, changing our angle slightly south to pass close by. An empty boat, illumined by a single 12-volt bulb, came slowly into view—a lone wooden canoe, apparently adrift in the night. I sailed over to this coffin-like bark, which somehow had become, in my mind at least, more menacing than a rocky shore.

  As we passed by, a few feet from this dugout, I saw the tiny white light had been taped to the front of the canoe. In the shadow of this light, pinned by his knees into the bottom of the boat, lay a lone fishermen, holding on and braced tight. This man knew that he would never make it to shore in time. Even if it filled with water, though, his little boat, cut from the trunk of a tree, would continue to float. His best chance was to stay with that boat.

  I pulled up beside him and he said, flatly, without excitement, as though he were pointing out a wild animal grazing: “Terremore.”

  I still had no idea what that meant.

  “Big wind, rain?” I asked in my awful Spanish.

  “Yes! Yes! Much, much wind, much, much rain. Terremore.”

  I learned later that terremore is a unique word, used only by the indigenous people of El Salvador (and sometimes Guatemala and northern Nicaragua), to describe what we would call a white squall, which is a fierce biting storm that can rise out of nowhere, almost without warning, except to those who fish for their lives outside the Gulf of Fonseca.

  I stopped Valkyrien next to this fisherman and talked with him quietly as the storm built around us. The fisherman made it clear he thought we would die, but conceded that there was now nothing to be done. He refused to come aboard Valkyrien. He felt badly that he couldn’t at least take one of us in his dugout canoe, knowing I guess that a tender reed can sway in a breeze that will knock down an oak. He figured we would sink while his boat would fill with water, but remain on the surface. He lay back down below the gunwales of his canoe as we motored away. He did not watch us.

  The storm hit us hard about fifteen minutes later. It came in and struck us in the face like a straight right from José Torres. Rain smashed us. The biting downpour tore at my eyes. Troy handed me a scuba mask, which I quickly slipped on. I considered using the snorkel too (wearing it upside down), because so much water traveled through the air—a mix of sea foam and rain. It was difficult for me even to breathe. The sea roiled, confused. Lightning crashed all around the boat, and waves struck us from various directions.

  Less than half an hour after it had begun, the storm departed. We were left, the two of us, standing together by the wheel, soaking wet and unnerved. But Valkyrien had been well prepared for the storm and, aside from taking on a lot of water as she pitched from side to side, Valkyrien rode strong. Six hours later, the real storm began. A Terremore, it turns out, is a white squall that can last for days.

  27. A Bit of a Situation for Troy

  There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.

  —Willa Cather, Thea Kronberg, The Song of the Lark

  The storm that hit us off of the Gulf of Fonseca and drove us to Costa Rica was the worst I have ever been through. The stays came loose, masts shifted back and forth. Mast frames cracked and pulled out of the deck. Without sails, Valkyrien dipped violently from side to side and fore and aft. She tipped so much during this storm that her sides dipped into the ocean. Later, as the storm progressed, the entire safety rail would bury beneath the water, first on one side, then the other.

  Gradually Valkyrien’s starboard side would rise out of the sea, lifting water across her deck and pouring it down and off the other side through generous scuttles. Then she would tip below on the port side. As the storm wore on, she began tipping so much that after the bulwarks slipped under, she continued to roll, until finally even the pin rails submerged below the sea. I am not saying that the pin rails were splashed by waves—I mean, they were fully submerged.

  I looked at the pin boxes—wooden contraptions attached to the side stays, about three feet above the pin rails, that hold rows of belaying pins in place. Eventually she began tipping so far that these boxes also were going under.

  We slogged for thirty-six long hours, tossed and buffeted in the heart of the storm like a bathtub toy. I knew we stood a good chance of tearing out the masts if we tried putting sails up in that wind. It was a challenge just to move about the boat. We tied two lines down the length of her belowdecks and cinched them tight, making a kind of flexible balustrade. She tipped so hard that we walked on the walls as often as we stepped along the floors.

  If I were in the galley and needed a tool from the bow, I would begin by crossing along the floor, and then as the boat tipped, I would switch to walking along the wall (which had become the floor), and then as she righted herself, I would walk along the floor again, and then as she continued tipping, walk along the opposite wall.

  In the first gusts of the terremore, virtually nothing fell. But during the ensuing thirty-six hours, nearly everything came loose. Though we kept the gas-fired pump and the emergency generator and other “big things” tied down seven ways, the small stuff knocked around everywhere, rolling back and forth, up the walls, along the floor, into the bilge and back again, over and over. Dark, dirty water climbed out of the bilge into our bunks, soaking everything with a putrid foulness. Diesel fuel leaked out of the six gigantic storage tanks in the main saloon. It mixed with the bilge water and the fresh seawater which poured in more and more rapidly as the storm raged and Valkyrien’s seams continued to open.

  The diesel fuel for the most part sat in a thin film on top of the bilge water. As the boat turned over and back, the diesel ran highest up the walls and was first to enter our bunks. It soaked our shoes, and penetrated our exposed skin. My feet swelled so much that they barely fit into my sneakers. But when we walked without shoes, the skin on our feet peeled off. My hands swelled to the point where I had difficulty gripping and handling tools. My eyes grew crazily bloodshot, and I grew nauseous and often vomited up spittle which I spat ove
r the side. Troy and I both experienced these symptoms due to a combination of lack of sleep and seasickness, combined with the diesel poisoning.

  I did not want Troy to lose his confidence so throughout the storm I acted not merely as though nothing were wrong, but as if I were thoroughly enjoying the experience. Stalwart Troy reached a point where he refused to step out of the cabin. I sat up in the companionway, by the cockpit, pushing my head into the galley and singing Neil Diamond songs, trying to lighten the mood. As the gunwales of the boat dipped underwater, I leaned down and said to Troy, “Hey, can you pass me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some fresh potato chips?”

  “Are you kidding me, Max? Are you really thinking of food right now? We might die, and you want me to make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

  “Troy, come on, man. Don’t be lazy. I’ve been sitting up here for, like, six hours. I’m hungry as hell. I can understand you wanting to go to sleep and all, but seriously, please at least make me a PB-and-J before you go to bed.”

  At this point, of course, diesel-contaminated bilge water was sloshing over everything—Troy’s sleeping bag, his shirts, pants, and socks—coating them in slimy toxic black bilge gunk.

  “Sleep? You think I’m going to sleep? You’re joking, right? Tell me you aren’t scared, Max. I know why you’re acting this way—to try and make me feel better. But you are scared, aren’t you? Seriously, is this dangerous? Are we going to die?”

  “Troy, come on, man, you and I have been out in wind like this so many times. Look, the waves aren’t even as high as the spreaders on the smaller mast. The only issue we’re facing is that I am hungry and you refuse to make me a PB-and-J, which I think is selfish and, frankly, uncharacteristic of you. So, seriously, there’s a fresh bag of chips behind the bookcase by the water bottles. Please bring it up with the sandwiches, because I like to eat them at the same time.”

  I kept riding him this way and actually succeeded in distracting him at times from the terror around us. Then lightning would crack just a hundred feet or so to starboard, and Valkyrien would tremble, and I could smell something burning in the air.

  For a moment, on top of a wave, we could see into the distance as the lightning struck and illuminated the cloud-filled sky in a flash of stark white shadow. A moment later, in the trough, we were again enveloped in near-total blackness. The Whaler, tugging behind, sometimes pulled the towline absolutely tight. At other times, the line had completely disappeared, and the Whaler lit up like an apparition only a few feet from the cockpit, having ridden a steep wave and careening toward us.

  At these times I would turn to Troy and muster a puzzled look, saying something like: “Do you think I’ll be able to find bolts that will match up to that steering linkage?”

  Troy would be staring down at the silent motor through floorboards that he had removed in order to keep an eye on things. Quick as a switch, he’d look up, meeting my gaze, trying to figure out whether or not I was putting him on.

  “What steering linkage?”

  “The Toyota—you know, those last two bolts are weird; they kind of have that cone shape at the end.”

  Then the lightning would flash again and the thunder would explode and he would jerk his head at me and say, “You’re just messing with me, right? You don’t really care about those bolts. You’re just trying to take my mind off this, right?”

  “Troy, why do you think I would give a flying F in a rolling doughnut if you’re scared? Have I ever shown any care for your well-being in the history of our relationship? Why would I start right now? You’re down here for a limited time. If you were going to quit your job and stay with me, I could deal with all of the other stuff later, but I need to get that Jeep going, so I need to figure out the bolts while you're here. What kind of tool do you think we could use to cut into some number 8s that is strong enough for us to shape as we cut?”

  For a moment, Troy would live inside that problem—how to repair a forty-year-old Toyota Jeep. In this way we avoided talking about the storm and the fairly dire situation I had led him into. Sometimes it even took Troy’s mind off our predicament entirely. I sang songs and laughed and talked about tools and hardware, and asked Troy about painting the Sperry town water tank green when he graduated from high school. (Troy climbed the tank, the tallest structure by half in his hometown, and painted it all night long.) The tower has never been repainted, and he has that night by which to remember the “Class of 1995.”

  Sometime after the events in this book took place, safe at home in Los Angeles, I was laughing with my children while relating the story of the terremore and of how terrified I had been. Troy, who happened to be in another room, overheard me. I had forgotten that I’d never owned up to him about it. He was dumbfounded. Troy said he did not think he would have made it through that night if he had known how scared I was—which made me really happy. I actually have come to think of that night as one of my greatest accomplishments. (I do like scaring the heck out of my friends—but not for real.)

  The wind and storm lasted for several days. It was at its worst for nearly thirty-six hours, which is the longest time I’ve ever spent in a boat with the heart of a storm directly overhead.

  The storm knocked out the generator, and we lost our auxiliary gas tanks. Our diesel was stored below, but the gas tanks had to be kept on deck for safety; eventually, the storm waves worked them free and overboard. The diesel generator was missing its cooling pump, and our standby gasoline generator had to be run in the open air (not feasible in that storm); running it belowdecks would have poisoned us. Loss of this equipment forced us to rely solely on the standard bilge pump to clear the bilge, and because we had limited battery power, all other electrical equipment aboard the Valkyrien had to be turned off.

  For two days the storm blew us south, past Honduras, across the Gulf of Fonseca, and down the entire coast of Nicaragua. We never saw Nicaragua. Lightning broke overhead, dramatically illuminating the night sky, yet we never saw another boat. When I say “overhead,” I mean, directly overhead. Lightning shook the boat and burned the air around us.

  With the need to conserve electricity for the pumps, we couldn’t use GPS, and our compass was unreliable at best. Luckily, we were able to make do with a standby compass I had purchased on eBay to use in my truck.

  Now and then the storm slackened a bit, leaving only the waves. During those breaks we made what repairs we could to the masts and rigging. The storm finally broke as we stood off the shore of Costa Rica. The sea and our senses mercifully calmed. Troy and I lay down and rested, sleeping well as Valkyrien bobbed serenely. Several hours later we woke, rose from our filthy bunks and checked all of the fluids in the engine then, started it up. The diesel ran perfectly.

  We motored for most of the following night. Around sunrise, we approached Cabo Blanco and the entrance to the Golfo de Nicoya. We ran headlong into the steep current, pulling out of the Gulf, and just as we reached the tip of the cape, the engine made a terrible sound. A metallic death rattle of finality. Awful, thick white smoke rose heavily from our exhaust.

  Troy and I knew we had a big problem.

  28. Puntarenas

  Bullfight critics ranked in rows,

  crowd the enormous plaza full.

  But only one is there who knows,

  and he’s the one who fights the bull.

  — Domingo Ortega, Spanish bullfighter

  We drifted along for much of the morning, with no ability to control our direction. Our efforts to restart the engine produced nothing. Sailing wasn’t an option. The masts and stays were too weak to carry sails. And so we were stuck there, on the edge of Costa Rica, with no way to move. We had spent three days battling a terrible storm, and came out of it a couple of hundred miles from where we’d started. Our engine was broken. We found ourselves wholly at the mercy of the wind, tide, and currents. We had very few options.

  We d
rifted along for much of the morning, at the edge of Cabo Blanco. My mind drifted too—often to our last resort—the trusty Boston Whaler still tied to our stern. The wind blew lightly, and eventually the current lifted us into the calm waters of the Gulf of Nicoya.

  I walked through our various options in my mind, then called down to waken Troy, asking him come on deck to talk about our situation. I figured we had a few choices, none of them good. I summed up the situation for Troy: Because of the torn bowsprit, ripped stays, and weakened deck, sailing was out of the question. As for the engine, the color of the smoke coming from the exhaust indicated that cooling water had entered the cylinder head, which at a minimum would mean that a seal had broken, and at worst, that the head had warped or cracked. In any event, we would not be able to start the motor.

  We were drifting a couple miles off of a vicious coral reef, and the rocky point at Cabo Blanco, at the northern opening of the Gulf of Fonseca in Costa Rica. At any moment, a shift in tide or wind could push us onto the rocks, where the Valkyrien would be torn to pieces. Our depth meter no longer functioned, but our charts told us the water was way too deep to anchor.

  Our first option was to lay out all of the anchor chain, dangling the old Danforth two hundred feet below us, hoping that the anchor would catch ground in a favorable location. This would buy us time to figure out what to do. Alternatively, we could scuttle the boat right there in the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean and take the Whaler to shore and head home.

  The final option was for Troy to drive the Whaler to shore and find a boat that could tow us to Puntarenas. I would remain aboard Valkyrien, alone, keeping watch. If we drifted too close to the rocks I would jump in the dugout canoe and paddle to safety ashore.