Troy had an intense desire at that point to get off Valkyrien. I don’t think he liked the idea at all of letting her sink in international waters, and drifting had no appeal for him. The cost of hiring a tugboat to pull us the fifty or so nautical miles inland to Puntarenas was absolutely prohibitive—in the neighborhood of $10,000. My best hope was that Troy would be able to find a fisherman with a seagoing trawler who would do it for under $1,000—still a huge bummer for me.
The Whaler had worked perfectly for the first eighteen months of our journey, but the engine sounded terrible ever since Cesar had crashed her. We knew that the outboard would quit at some point, but the Whaler is unsinkable, so Troy’s trip sounded doable.
I looked at the charts, and climbed up the ratlines with Troy to point him toward the most likely places to find a trawler. Then I said good-bye. I watched Troy race out toward the coast and could hear the engine of the Whaler for a long time before it faded into the other noises of the sea.
I grew up in a family with eleven children. My wife Vicki and I are extraordinarily close. We met when I was twenty-one, and have been together ever since. Unless I am aboard a boat, we rarely go more than half a day without sending at least a brief message to each other. I had essentially spent my entire life without ever being alone. Of course, I sometimes sailed by myself, but always on a day-sailing sloop. I think that the time I spent on Valkyrien, drifting at the edge of the territorial waters of Costa Rica, was the first appreciable period of time I had been truly alone in my entire life.
Troy promised that whether or not he found a fisherman to tow us, he would return in two hours. Valkyrien barely moved as the current ebbed, and I lay down below for a few minutes on my bunk.
That’s when I heard someone on deck.
The boat had been absolutely silent. Then I heard the planks creaking. I knew someone had stepped aboard. I froze in my bunk, and did not make a sound. After a few minutes, I heard men talking on deck. I couldn’t make out any words, but it sounded like Spanish, with almost a W. C. Fields accent. I hoped that it was just some old fishermen who had seen the Valkyrien drifting, unmanned, and had come aboard to investigate.
I made some loud noises, hoping they would hear me and depart. For a moment they became perfectly still. I waited for the men to paddle away on whatever panga they had arrived on, but then I heard them creeping around and talking again. Their words were unintelligible through the thick deck. But it sounded like three old men. I shouted, in Spanish, “I am here. I am the Captain. Get off my boat!”
The intruders froze. I waited below, with growing concern. Then they started talking again. I guessed they were trying to decide what to do—whether to confront me or just leave. I picked up a knife and a bluefish bat and suddenly, with no warning, I leapt to the deck, screaming.
Just in front of the cabin house, I saw three very large brown pelicans. They looked at me as though I were out of my mind and went back to their conversation. I laughed, and shooed them off the boat.
I walked the deck after that, checking for loose shrouds and stays, and repairing the masts. Troy had been gone a good long time, and I figured that he must have found a fisherman and was negotiating. But I also began to wonder if something could have happened to him. He had only to travel ten or twelve miles on the Whaler, headed toward a harbor that was protected by a reef. Still, I worried.
The breeze came up a bit, to about 5 knots, blowing Valkyrien inside the Gulf of Nicoya. I decided to try flying the genoa like a kite, to see if I could steer the Valkyrien like a kite-surfer. I tied three lines to the genoa, and stretched it out as far as I could, lifting the puffy triangular sail up into the air slowly until it caught the following wind. Then, with the sheets pulled back through blocks on the deck, I let it out about eighty feet. Remarkably, the kite-sail steadied itself.
I could not sail through the night alone, and I could not anchor in the Gulf of Nicoya (too deep). I had to find some shallow cove to anchor up and spend the night Fortunately the southern coast of the Nicoya peninsula is dotted with coves, and most have easy entrances. With the precarious kite-sail, I could now turn the Valkyrien a few degrees left or right, perhaps just enough to enter one of the coves. The genoa lifted Valkyrien along, directly toward a group of two or three coves that each offered a perfect depth to anchor. If the wind held, I would make it to the opening of one of these coves just before dark. Single-handing Valkyrien was always tough, but entering a strange cove at night, and anchoring her successfully with no engine and makeshift sails, seemed a long shot. With luck, though I could drift in on mere boat speed, drop the anchor, and hold.
I cruised along the coast for the rest of the afternoon, happily dragged by this huge kite but worried about Troy. I also worried about Valkyrien, and, quite frankly, myself.
As the sun set, the wind slipped away, and I wished very much that Troy had not left. I had to edge closer to shore in order to make it into a cove. But the shore was covered with rocks. If the wind fell away, I would lose control and we would be smashed.
Twilight came, and the wind rose once more. I saw the lights of a boat coming toward me. A big boat, running fast. Too fast, I thought, to be a commercial fishing boat. The vessel turned and made a huge loop around Valkyrien. She had perhaps thirty men standing along the rails, wearing blue uniforms and flying the flag of the Coast Guard of Costa Rica. At first I thought they had come to rescue me.
I did not want to be rescued. I have had an aversion to rescue my entire life. I knew that if I took the boat out, it was my job to bring her back to harbor. I hoped that, seeing me safely sailing, they would go away. But as I looked more closely at this Coast Guard boat, I saw that all of the men on her side were holding assault rifles, and it dawned on me that this was not a rescue but a boarding party.
The captain called to me in Spanish over his loudspeakers. I could not understand the words, but as he was speaking I saw the entrance to a small cove. I pulled down the kite-sail and turned into the cove, using Valkyrien’s momentum. The thousands of pounds of lead in her keel drove her forward for nearly a mile with the Coast Guardsmen dogging, close to my side.
As I turned into the wind, Valkyrien halted, and I ran to the bow to drop the anchor and show our papers to the Coast Guard. I wondered and worried for Troy; what had happened to him? And how would he find his way back?
But before I could release the heavy anchor, the Coast Guard vessel pulled up just a few feet from my bow. None of the men aboard were smiling, which is unusual in Costa Rica. They brought forward a crewman who shouted to me, in broken English, to shut off all power (which was easy, as I had none) and prepare to be taken under tow.
They had come to arrest me and impound the Valkyrien!
29. Temporary Fixes
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous.
—T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The sailors passed me a large rope. Despite my protestations they forced me to tie it off to the bow, and they began towing me out of the cove. The huge rope cut into Valkyrien’s bow like a forestry cable saw. It was painful to watch, but I could do nothing to stop it.
After an hour or so, we reached another cove, farther into the Gulf of Nicoya, where they released their lines and ordered me to anchor up. At that point, a contingent of ten or twelve armed men approached me in a whaleboat from the CG cutter. The men climbed aboard Valkyrien. Three approached me directly and pointed their machine guns at my chest, motioning for me to put my hands in the air, while two others frisked me. They then sat me down cross-legged, my arms held straight up, while their leader (the Capitan) climbed aboard Valkyrien.
I realized that this guy would never shoot me. I had no guns, no drugs, nothing that is illegal in Costa Rica. So I knew too, that he would not arrest me. But I figured he would probably detain me for several hours, or more, and I felt frustration at my confinement and a good deal of fear.
He looked at me with a practiced glare of contempt, then shouted: “Where do you keep your guns?”
In an accelerated, emotional series of questions, pronounced roughly, but in a precise and direct manner, like a verdict, he yelled in English: “Why are you entering Costa Rica?”
Then:
“Who is the owner of the boat?”
“Where are the drugs?”
“Where is the money?”
“What is your name?”
“Where is your identification?”
I remained silent, cross-legged, trying to figure out how best to respond in a way that would get me out of this as quickly and with as few repercussions as possible. I do not respond diplomatically when threatened, and it took every ounce of self-control not to lash out at this bully. His men were well armed and in full control, physically and emotionally. I was unarmed, pacific, and remained in the legally required physical position of disadvantage—legs crossed, arms held straight up, and palms facing out toward the armed men. I knew, under those conditions, they would not shoot me. I thought of Prufrock, “Politic, cautious, and meticulous.” None of these words describe me.
After a while, the Capitan ordered me to go belowdecks with him. I refused. I wanted to remain in front of as many witnesses as possible. He ordered me again, and had his men thrust their guns at my chest. I also wanted to show that while I would comply with requests for safety, I was unafraid of his weapons.
“There is no way I am going down there with you. No way.”
I spoke each syllable clearly, pausing between each word, and never taking my eyes off of him while I spoke (pretending not to look at the guns they had pointed at me, though in reality I was terribly frightened). The Capitan barked an order at his crew and several of his men climbed below.
Two guardsmen returned almost immediately with my leather secretary (from a shelf just below the staircase) filled with our papers—copies of Valkyrien’s registration, title, the contract selling the boat, Troy’s passport as well as mine, and immigration and exit stamps from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
I looked through the papers with the Capitan, and had a moment to reflect on the travails of the journey. I did not pay much attention to days and dates on the trip (particularly during the terremore), and when I looked through the official documents I realized that it was Thursday, late in November.
My family at home was celebrating Thanksgiving. I felt the stark contrast of me, sitting alone with my arms in the air on this nearly wrecked boat, while my family sat at the table together, eating sweet potatoes and turkey only a few miles from First Encounter Beach in Eastham. Thanksgiving is the most uniquely American, and in some ways, the most patriotic of all our holidays. I felt so far away from my wife, my children, and my country. They were at home, safe and cared for, but with an empty chair. I wondered how it was for them to celebrate Thanksgiving with me absent. We were in totally different worlds at this point.
I comforted myself with the knowledge that we had less than five hundred miles to Panama—like sailing from New York to Bar Harbor. I knew we could finish the trip before Christmas.
The captain sent a larger search crew below, but their leader returned to Valkyrien’s deck and reported that they could not see in the dark. The Capitan ordered me to turn on Valkyrien’s interior lights. None of her interior lights had worked since the day we’d purchased the boat. Everything we did on Valkyrien at night was accomplished by flashlight and the little plastic lights you can buy at Pep Boys that stick to the interior roof of your car.
I told the Capitan that the lights did not function, and he became irate, stepping toward me and screaming that he would take me to jail ashore if I did not immediately and fully cooperate. He ordered me to my feet. His men marched me back and forth along the deck, having me sit down, then stand up again, march forward, then march back, always with my hands in the air. I had not eaten a meal nor slept in thirty-six hours.
The Costa Rican Coast Guard search team was absolutely bewildered by the condition of Valkyrien belowdecks. Military cases, many of them cracked and broken, had been strewn about during the storm. Miscellaneous equipment lay piled three feet deep from the engine compartment through to the bow. In the center of this pile sat the six huge barrels of diesel fuel. It didn’t help that I’d carried nearly every item aboard Valkyrien in those military boxes purchased at the government auction (every box seemed to be labeled “Property of US Navy”). The searchers found satellite phones, broken computers, currency from four countries, plus all sorts of fancy (although not-functioning) navigation equipment.
Every single one of my US Army rifle boxes and night-vision binoculars cases had fallen out of their cabinets and shelving during the storm, many colliding together. Nearly every single box had broken, and every bag had torn. The mess was astonishing. I had a ton of stuff in those plastic storage boxes.
A five-gallon bucket of oil had cracked open during the storm. The oil had seeped out of the oil storage area, spilled across the galley, slid down into my bunk, then mixed with the diesel fuel that had sloshed out of the huge plastic tanks. The spilled oil wallowed with all of the clothing and electronic equipment and ropes and first-aid gear and pens and pencils, paper, a Hewlett Packard printer, flashlight batteries, car batteries, bars of soap, folding knives—on and on. Forty-weight engine oil, ninety-weight transmission oil, two-stroke oil for the pump, paper towels, cloth towels, brake cleaner—a seemingly endless mess.
“Why do you have so many computers?” the Capitan asked.
“Why do you have a military computer?”
“Why is everything all over the place?”
“Why did you leave everything all over so we cannot walk?”
“Why don’t your lights work?”
“Turn on your lights!”
I told them the lights just didn’t work; they hadn’t come on since we’d left San Francisco.
That night about an hour after I’d vehemently insisted once more that the lights did not work, all of the lights suddenly blazed on! It should have been funny, but it wasn’t. I have no idea what combination of buttons their boarding party hit, or which out-of-place wire bounced back on its circuit and made those lights ignite. They did not merely turn on, they lit up bright as the sun. The inside of Valkyrien looked like the grass field at RFK Stadium during Monday Night Football. Every single corner of the boat was completely illuminated.
This really irritated the Coast Guard captain. He came forward and shouted in my face, angry and talking really fast in Spanish, saying something about taking me to jail if I did not cooperate. He stared at me, waiting.
I stared back.
“I don’t understand what you just said.”
This set him off as though I had lit his feet on fire. He stamped, and shouted: “Yes. You. Do. You-are-a-lying! You speak-a Spanish!”
This was the first time that someone in South America thought that my Spanish was any good. The boarding party spent a lot of time trying to trick me into admitting that I spoke Spanish better than I did. I was pretty good at understanding Spanish—but not when the speaker pronounced the words quickly—and I had never heard such a torrent of language as flowed from the agitated Capitan’s mouth. I could pick out some words now and then, and I knew for sure that cárcel meant “jail.”
Suddenly, without warning or explanation, the entire CG crew stepped back into their whaleboat and returned to their cutter. They gave me no further instruction. But four men stood duty, watching me through the night from the stern of their vessel. I wanted to ask the guards about Troy, but was afraid that if I told them I had crew, they might arrest him too.
It turned out, they already had.
At about eleven p.m., hungry, and having nothing fit to eat, I dove overboard, intending to buy fish on the beach about four hundred yards away. The watchmen raised a loud alarm. All of the CG crewmen rushed
to the deck, staring and pointing at me. They shone their spotlights on me; I ignored them, swimming past their boat,gently making my way to shore, phosphorescence shining off my arms and legs each time I kicked forward.
An old man sat in a chair at the end of a small commercial fishing pier, watching me kick slowly toward him. He stared at me when I climbed out of the water but did not say a word. I walked around onshore for twenty minutes or so, trying to find some food and scared as hell that the CG would send police to pick me up. I did not want to spend the night in a rural Costa Rican jail with no shoes, no shirt, and a wet bathing suit.
Eventually, I gave up on the food and walked back to the piers. A fisherman drove me to Valkyrien on his panga. The coast guardsmen waved him over though and ordered him never to give me a ride again.
An hour later I saw the blue flashing lights of a police car at the dock. Soon after, the fisherman’s panga appeared again, this time carrying Troy and several police officers. The panga brought him across, and moments later we were reunited.
Troy had had a long day. After leaving Valkyrien, he reached the reef outside a small natural harbor, home to a rustic fishing village. He ran the boat along the outer edge of the reef to the entrance of the safe harbor. Swells lifted the Whaler four to five feet above the reef, enough for him to see the violence of the waves breaking on the coral. He prayed as he sped toward the narrow opening into the harbor, but the gears in the lower unit seized up, the boat stopped hard, and Troy drifted, pushed by the surging waves toward the reef.
Desperate, Troy waved a life jacket at a wooden panga in the vicinity. The fisherman piloting the panga swung over and took Troy under slow tow. By the time they arrived at the local beach, word had spread that a gringo carrying drugs in a small boat had broken down and was being towed to shore. Police arrested Troy on the beach. Local officials then called the Coast Guard to find the mother ship that carried the drugs, weapons, and cash.
Sea Change Page 18