Sea Change

by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy

  As Valkyrien slowed I managed to pull myself alongside the canoe and slip in over the gunwale, flat-bellied like a penguin, so I wouldn’t tip it. I lay on the bottom for a moment, exhausted from my sprinting swim, looking up at the burning noonday sun and thinking how ridiculous I was to jump in after that old and very broken rod, but happy that I hadn’t simply let it float away. I still had no idea that Valkyrien was currently in reverse.

  The sun warmed my skin in that wonderful way that only happens when you are soaked with salt water at midafternoon on a scorching tropical day. I sensed a shadow, though, so sat up in the canoe, surprised to see Valkyrien towering above me. The reverse gear had pulled her straight back. Her stern had been lifted by the huge wake of the fishing boat and now crashed down, smacking the surface of the sea a couple of feet in front of the canoe, making a sound like a paddle slapping the water—thwack!

  I realized that she was motoring in reverse, and as the stern climbed up over the next wave, I knew Valkyrien would come slapping down on the canoe with me in it, and I would be crushed. I quickly slid over the side into the water, by reflex lifting my left arm up as high as I could to protect myself. Valkyrien’s stern smashed down on my hand and pushed me deep under the water. I was grateful she had not cracked my head but it occurred to me that I had broken my very basic rule of not swimming near the prop.

  The suction of a boat propeller is much exaggerated in movies; most seaweed will float within a few inches of a propeller without being sucked in. But a boat driving backwards is a completely different situation—the propeller will tear your body to pieces. I looked down along my chest and legs and saw Valkyrien’s huge, 46-inch-wide propeller spinning horribly toward my feet. I took one hard stroke backward and up with both arms, desperately hoping that would lift me up and away from the prop. My paddling arms had no effect. Valkyrien bore down on me, her propeller getting closer and closer.

  The canoe surfaced a few feet above me, upside down. I reached my left arm up, just able to wrap my hand around the narrow keel along the bottom of the canoe, barely gripping it. The propeller churned hard, only a couple of feet away, like a chain saw in a horror movie. I pulled myself up beside the canoe, and, desperately pushed the front end of the canoe downward and jerked my legs up to my chest. The propeller violently struck the bow of the canoe—bang, bang, bang! It snapped a chunk off the front end and knocked the canoe hull violently aside. The canoe, now tipped sideways, acted as a funnel. I slid along its slimy bottom toward the murderous spinning propeller.

  Just in front of me, the prop sucked in the canoe’s thick towrope. I kept my knees bent up to my chest as Valkyrien’s spinning prop wrapped the heavy line around itself and jammed. The blades stopped just before they cut me to pieces.

  The canoe popped up from the severed line upside down, and I climbed up on its bottom and lay there for a moment, thinking how completely ridiculous it was to have almost died like that, and how weird to be clinging, like Ishmael, to something almost precisely the size and shape of a coffin.

  Bryan looked down at me and smiled. I don’t think he understood how close he had come to sailing Valkyrien alone.

  32. Days in Quepos

  Restless nights in one-night cheap hotels.

  —T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  Bryan and I sailed for a couple of beautiful, uneventful days down the coast of Costa Rica, anchoring up in small coves and swimming ashore for breakfast at little bodegas on the beach. But Brian had to get back to LA, so we pulled into Quepos to drop him off.

  Quepos was the perfect antidote to the sinking, sweltering misery of Puntarenas. The small town sits about halfway between Puntarenas and Golfito in southern Costa Rica—less than 150 miles from Panama. Quepos is the gateway to the meandering Manuel Antonio National Park, protecting miles of white-sand beaches, coral reefs, and rain forest. It is truly a tropical paradise.

  When we reached Quepos, I rented a small room at a little hotel in Manuel Antonio, where the trees overflowed with blue monkeys. Bryan flew back to Los Angeles and I lay on the bed, grateful to be on land, and stared at the ceiling fan, thinking about Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, and wondering if I would ever get Valkyrien to Washington, DC.

  Alone again. I had less than 350 miles left to the Canal, and couldn’t stand the thought of giving up—but I needed to find crew.

  Valkyrien leaked badly. I could not remain at the hotel for more than two or three hours, or seawater would begin to fill her cabins. I lay on that hotel bed, lonesome and exhausted, wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. I had not seen my family for weeks. I called Vicki. She tried to buoy me up by sharing news about our children: Summer and Maxey had won their last three flag-football games, and Summer, the only girl in the league, had been elected team captain. Vicki reported that the boys had taught Summer how to spit farther, and she’d taught them how to use their left hand in the huddle (because it is closer to your heart). Noah had gotten a role in the school musical, and the house was filled with song.

  Vicki told me that Maxey had been home sick for a few days with a bad cold, but that he was happy to have all six dogs in bed with him. Vicki then signed off to go pick up some soup for Maxey. They felt very far away.

  Lying atop that hotel bed, I thought about an old friend, Dennis Daniels, who had passed away. Dennis grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, abandoned by his father. He had never graduated high school and had done his share of jail time. Undaunted, Dennis had fought and clawed his way up to become city editor of the Boston Herald.

  We played paintball once and I caught Dennis by the shoulder. He had no ammo left. I had a full clip, and stood eighteen inches from him. I told Dennis to give up (so I would not have to shoot him), and Dennis replied, “Fuck you—I ain’t surrenderin’.”

  So I shot him from eighteen inches away, on the bare skin of his chest. The pellet left a welt the size of a 50-cent piece. Dennis didn’t care. He would have done it again—“in a haht-beat,” he told me in his heavy Dorchester accent.

  I admired Dennis’s single-mindedness, his sense of his own direction and the fact that once he’d committed to a course of action, he stuck with it no matter what. Even if it led straight down.

  My own single-mindedness had spun into unrelenting obsession. I was losing my perspective. For a time, without knowing it, I would have given up everything I loved to stay aboard Valkyrien. I had long since stopped sailing for the Pearl. My chaotic being found a home on Valkyrien—like a storm making landfall. I told my friends and family that I was doing all of this for the Pearl, but it made no sense. I had set sail out of charity, but by the time I reached Quepos, I skippered Valkyrien only to sail. I had surrendered to this odyssey. I would have sailed her all the way across the world to keep from giving her back. I could not stop.

  But God, how I loathed that boat!

  I moved into that monkey-house hotel in Quepos with some relief, but keenly aware that, like an unruly child, I could not leave Valkyrien untended for more than a few hours. Rain fell in torrents for the next several days, and I left the hotel only to go back and forth to Valkyrien to run the bilge pumps and keep her from sinking.

  I had moored Valkyrien in a quiet, protected bay outside of the small harbor at Quepos. She sat, without the vibration of the engine, and bathed in pouring rain for a couple of weeks while I searched for teak and crew and retrieved the old Land Cruiser. Her sides swelled up, tightening the gaps, and many of the more serious leaks slowed. I could leave her for several hours before the bilges overflowed the floorboards. Sitting still, and with her boards full, Valkyrien healed herself nicely.

  I hitchhiked from the hotel or rode in tiny taxis to the municipal docks every few hours to charge the batteries, run the engine, check for new leaks, and, above all, pump out the water. I needed to put fresh gasoline into the powerful trash pump each day. At first I siphoned the fuel by sucking on the small gaso
line line. Gasoline tastes much worse than diesel, and coats your mouth and throat in a way that keeps you tasting it for hours. After getting a couple of mouthfuls of gasoline, I rigged up the ball pump from the Boston Whaler, which worked slowly but made for a great culinary improvement.

  The genset had to remain on deck while running and yet had to be completely protected from the heavy rains. I strung various tarps from the mast and over the boom and tied them down along the railings. Valkyrien began to look more like a squatter’s camp than a schooner.

  I was exhausted. But I had less than 350 miles to the canal. and I was sure the Valkyrien could make it, if I could find some crew and a decent shade-tree mechanic who would keep the diesel running.

  33. Bad Medicine

  I should have been a pair of ragged claws

  Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

  —T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  Some years ago I found myself in a predicament eight miles south of the 10 Freeway in the Mojave Desert. I had torn the knuckle and spindle out from the front right axle of my Ford Bronco; after a night in the desert and a day spent towing, I searched through Craigslist for people who were selling trucks with Dana 60 front axles, and I finally found a guy out in the desert named Trent who did all of his own work. We pulled my truck back to his place, and he toiled on that axle day after day. We searched through hundreds of advertisements on Craigslist finding difficult-to-source parts—gears of the same ratio, and spindles with the same number of splines. I became convinced Trent could get any diesel engine to run.

  I knew that if I could convince Trent to come down to Costa Rica, he could keep the engine on Valkyrien working long enough to get us through the Canal and I would be able to get some much-needed rest. Fortunately, I succeeded. For the first time I would be able to leave Valkyrien for a full day, knowing that Trent would run the pumps, and she would be afloat when I returned.

  I picked Trent up at the airport in San Jose, and instead of driving to Quepos, I had the taxi drop us off in Puntarenas to rescue the Whaler. A couple of local mechanics, using mostly a hammer, had taken apart the lower unit of the outboard and, though it was not fixed, they did get it running.

  Trent and I filled all the fuel tanks and drove a wild 60 miles down the coast to Quepos, where we tied her up behind Valkyrien. I did not realize at the time how terrifying this ocean run aboard the Whaler had been for Trent. He immediately regretted his rash decision to join me, but said nothing. We spent the next several days getting Valkyrien’s various electrical systems, motors, and engines running.

  I also persuaded a young Costa Rican named Elias to come with us, but when he first saw Valkyrien he refused to climb aboard. Elias said he had a bad feeling about the boat. Eventually I convinced him that it would be okay. I don’t think he regretted any decision in his life more than agreeing to sail with me.

  The day after both men arrived I hired the two women who cleaned my room at the little monkey-festooned hotel in Quepos to come out and scrub down Valkyrien. They had grown up beside the sea but had never been on a boat. They had heard many frightening stories about the ocean from local fishermen, and it took me some time to convince them they would be safe aboard Valkyrien, even at the mooring.

  I gave them a little tour after they nervously stepped aboard, and eventually they began cleaning. When I returned that evening, Valkyrien had never looked better inside. I noticed they had left a bunch of bananas on the galley table. I immediately threw the bananas overboard and washed my hands. As every New England sailor and fisherman knows, bananas on a boat are bad luck. The women came back the following day to finish up. I had Trent and Elias sleep in the little hotel that night while I slept alone aboard Valkyrien, doing bilge duty.

  I awoke in the morning with a tropical thirst and, still groggy from a sweltering night of waking every hour or so to look at the bilge, I climbed out of my bunk and up the companionway. A half-empty bottle of water sat on the galley table at almost precisely the spot where I had found the bananas.

  In Costa Rica many of the water bottles are tinted blue, which is kind of nice. I had brought several cases of water aboard Valkyrien, owing to my disquiet over dehydration. As I raised the blue-tinted bottle to my lips, I thought for the briefest moment about the bananas before tipping the bottle back and taking a huge glug.

  Almost immediately I fell down to the cabin sole, dropping the bottle, which landed near my head. For a moment I could not remember what had happened. I lay there, utterly confused. The powerful scent of chlorine burned my nose. My mouth and throat felt as though they were on fire. I began vomiting violently. Later, it would occur to me that the cleaning women, who, like most Costa Ricans, were mindful of wasting things, had poured their leftover bleach into an empty water bottle and left it on the galley table for me. Unfortunately, they had failed to mention it.

  I stood up and climbed the ladder to the cockpit, then fell down again, this time with my head over the side, a white spume foaming out of my mouth and forming bubbles in the blue ocean below me.

  I remember watching the bubbles and thinking that my wife, who knows more than anyone, said she didn’t worry about me when I sailed because she knew that I would never be killed by the ocean. I followed that thought immediately with the realization that dying from drinking bleach while on the ocean would not count. I could feel myself becoming not merely dizzy but also confused, and then I thought, “You will not have long before you will no longer know how to deal with this issue, so you’d better figure out a solution now.”

  I stood up on the deck. I could see a small boat coming in to land at the pier and I shouted to them as loudly as I could. To my horror, no sound came from my lips. I fell to my knees on the deck and looked up at the boat. I thought if I went below for the horn I might not make it back up. Near me a shirt had been tied to dry on the rail, and somehow I was able to untie it and raise it over my head, waving it back and forth—the international sign that emergency aid is needed.

  The boatman looked at me, staring for an interminable period, and then somewhat reluctantly turned his boat toward Valkyrien. He arrived at our side and I sort of fell in and onto his small deck. I looked up at him and asked him to take me to the dock. Again, though, no sound came from my mouth. I pointed to the dock with all of the energy I could muster and he turned his little boat and brought me to the float.

  I climbed, befuddled, to the top of the ladder, trying to figure out how to get myself to the landward end of the pier and then to the hospital. The wharf was used exclusively by fishermen. Foreigners were not allowed on the pier except by special permission. In the days I had been there I had seen an American only once.

  But as I climbed the ladder I saw two men and a young American woman. They had hired a local captain to take them on a half-day snorkeling trip. I walked, nearly stumbling, toward them. They thought I was drunk or high, but I leaned forward and whispered, “I need to go to the hospital immediately, please help me. I drank bleach.”

  “I am a doctor,” the woman said. “My name is Mary. You are going to survive.”

  I thought to myself “You’re damn right I am,” but I mumbled only, “Thank you,” as I walked them toward my old Toyota. Given my horrendous condition—foul clothing covered in spittle and vomit—the two men were reluctant to get involved. They worried, I suppose, that the Jeep did not belong to me. But the doctor wasn’t fazed, and they drove me in my Toyota to the local hospital.

  The nurses refused, at first, to treat me as an emergency case. Mary, the American doctor who had brought me to the hospital, insisted they call the emergency physician immediately. Mary explained that I had accidentally swallowed bleach. She said that my symptoms would not become fully emergent until the burning in my stomach was irreversible. I would die if not treated immediately.

  The Costa Rican doctor told us that he knew a good deal about medicine and I would be
fine for now. And with that the doctor walked back inside the closed area of the Emergency Room. I stood alone then with Mary.

  I looked at Mary, my savior, and asked quietly, “Are you sure I will die without immediate treatment?”

  Mary looked at me straight and nodded grimly.

  I pushed past the two nurses and into the closed emergency ward. Then I stumbled up to the doctor and gripped him hard on his shoulder.

  I still could barely speak, and so I leaned my lips straight up against his ear. I said to him, “My name is Maxwell Taylor Kennedy. My uncle was President of the United States. You may be right. I may not need any treatment. But if you are wrong and I die, you will never receive your pension.”

  The doctor lifted his head when I said the word pension and looked me straight in the eye for a few moments. Then he began speaking very quickly in Spanish. The two nurses, now quite confused, rushed in and half carried me to a table. They gave me an injection, put sensors on my chest, and inserted a tiny tube through my nose.

  Mary assured me I would recover. It would take a few days before I could move well, probably only one night in the hospital. I fell into a restless sleep, my half-conscious thoughts revolving around whether or not Elias and Trent would go out to pump Valkyrien on their own without me coming up to the hotel to wake them.

  Three hours later I sat up on the cot and told the nurses I had to go. They called the doctor, who told me that I absolutely could not leave the hospital. Worried for Valkyrien’s bilge, I pulled the sensors from my chest and stomach and, wearing the odd hospital clothing, made my way outside and climbed into a taxi. I felt bad about threatening the doctor’s pension, but figured it had been necessary.