Their disappointment was almost palpable but, unfazed, they launched into new lines of questioning. They flicked through our passports and saw that mine had entry/exit stamps for most countries in the Caribbean and some in South America. ‘What you been doing in all these places?’ they asked. ‘Sailing,’ I replied, truthfully. They found a bank statement that showed a debit of $12,000. ‘Where’d ya get all the money frum?’ they demanded. I pointed out it was a debit, for the money we’d borrowed to buy the boat.
The USA has over a million people incarcerated in prisons at any given time and, to fuel that industry, they have a bewildering array of laws and law-enforcement agencies. There are federal police, state police, CIA, DEA, FBI, immigration police, environmental police and industrial police. Training and selection processes for their personnel can be pretty spurious, but it pays to treat them all with respect.
Slowly it dawned on the DEA men that Sarah and I weren’t a nefarious seafaring arm of the Medellin cocaine cartel at all, and they began to struggle for things to ask us. One of the men would trudge away to the marina office and use a pay phone to ring their boss in Jacksonville to ask for further instructions, then trudge back with a whole new line of questioning.
What do you do in New Zealand?
Why are you in the USA?
Had they been immigration police, they would have realized that we had been working in the USA for months without permits or green cards, but immigration wasn’t these boys’ line of expertise. Gradually they warmed to us, reholstered their pistols and accepted a cup of coffee. Finally, they collected our passports and left. I almost felt sorry for them as they walked dispiritedly down the breakwater. They’d been thwarted from a career-enhancing drug bust by a couple of penurious yachties in a floating cot-case.
A bit shaken, we hurriedly cast off and headed for the seclusion of the open waterway and the few remaining miles to our destination. A couple of days later, I called the number that the DEA men had given me, from the call box on the road outside Topper Hermanson’s boat yard in Fernandina Beach. ‘Where you at?’ the voice on the other end barked, followed by: ‘Start walking down the road toward town.’ I began strolling along the country road, enjoying the autumnal cool and the rustle of leaves in the gentle breeze. Twin plumes of smoke idly billowed from the stacks of a nearby paper mill.
Twenty minutes later, a black car with darkly tinted windows pulled up beside me. An electric window whirred down. ‘Geddin,’ a voice ordered and I climbed into the back seat with two men in black suits and caricature G-Men attire: white shirts and thin black ties. They introduced themselves by their first names, and handed me back our passports. ‘Y’all spend a lot of time in the Caribbean and Bahamas?’ they asked. I nodded. ‘Well, if y’all ever hear about any drug smuggling going on out there, I want you to call this here number,’ one said and handed me a business card. I nodded enthusiastically and gave assurances that yes sir, I sure would — the very first drug smugglers I came across, I’d be straight on the phone to the good ol’ US of A.
‘We can make it worth your while,’ he assured me. ‘Why, just last week we sent a guy home to the Philippines with $50,000 — US — enough to set him up for life … we could do the same for you.’ The car stopped outside the boat yard, I climbed out, and it drove off. I stood by the side of the road watching it disappear, dumbfounded, like I’d just played an impromptu cameo part in a Humphrey Bogart movie.
I turned and stared at the business card in my hand. ‘Art,’ it read, ‘001 305 869 4267.’ And nothing else.
DEEP SOUTHING
We left Connecticut the day before Christmas 1984 with a blizzard nipping at our heels.
Our workmates from the boat yard said goodbye like they’d never see us again, and we sailed down Long Island Sound under a pewter sky. It started to snow as we reached Manhattan and we were swept through the tidal maelstrom at Hell Gate in a flurry of snowfall and roiling brown water. The riverside FDR Drive was clogged by commuters — it seemed like a million motorists all honking their horns at once — and we saw several nose-to-tail car vs car collisions as car tyres slid on the slushy surface.
Snowdrifts gathered on the Statue of Liberty’s torch and head as we sailed past. We beat past Sandy Hook, at New York Harbour entrance, our frozen fingers clasping the stainless-steel wheel. The salt spray turned to ice as soon as it left the leaden sea, and piled ankle deep on the weather deck, wrapping around the rigging wires in slushy layers. Within half an hour, slushy ice was 15 centimetres thick around our boots and clung to the rigging wire in round, white columns.
A few days and several miles south, we nosed into Norfolk, Virginia at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay and cracked a path through a few millimetres of skim ice on the Intracoastal Waterway, past the ranks of mothballed warships: destroyers, frigates, aircraft carriers and submarines, the legendary liner SS France. But the atmosphere was appreciably warmer — southern.
By the time we reached Coinjock, North Carolina we were down to mere shirts and jeans. When I asked about a place to eat, the marina manager tossed me some keys. ‘Y’all take the pickup truck, go over the bridge, and about 10 miles down the road you’ll see a truck stop — they do real fine food,’ he said. The truck looked like left-over ordinance from the Civil War and its wheels seemed determined to head off in four different directions as we wobbled down the country road. The truck stop was the only building for miles, nestled into a backdrop of leafy forest with a gaggle of pickup trucks and cars in the parking lot out front.
Inside, about a dozen patrons slumped over beers at the bar and two or three couples sat at tables in the adjacent restaurant. Sarah and I took a table and the waitress flounced across, slapped two laminated menus on the table in front of us and pulled out a pad and pencil to take our order.
We’d spent a bit of time in Connecticut, enough to be considered honorary locals, but many items on the menu were foreign to me. ‘Aahh-uumm, excuse me,’ I cleared my throat, ‘what are hush puppies?’ In my native New Zealand, Hush Puppies are a type of suede shoe worn by school teachers and journalists.
The waitress fixed me with a look of utter amazement. ‘You ain’t never had hush puppies?’ she asked incredulously and, before I had a chance to reply, she spun to face the patrons at the bar. ‘They ain’t never had hush puppies,’ she announced, pointing down at us two cringing culinary ignoramuses.
‘Y’all wait right here,’ she ordered, and strode purposefully towards the kitchen, returning minutes later with a plate piled high with what looked like dumplings. Hush puppies, it turned out, are deep-fried balls made from corn flour. Plate after plate arrived at our table, steaming, free from the kitchen to broaden our gastronomic horizons. As we ate, other patrons of the Coinjock Roadhouse sauntered over. ‘Where y’all from,’ they asked disbelievingly, ‘y’all ain’t never et hush puppies?’
Deep South in the USA — you’ve gotta love it.
Later on in the same delivery voyage we tied up to the town wharf at Beaufort, North Carolina and began washing the boat down, chatting backwards and forth while we worked, Sarah in her English accent and me in my Kiwi. A woman bystander paused on the wharf and watched us for several minutes. ‘Nice boat — where y’all from?’ she eventually asked. ‘Uh, we’ve just brought her down from Connecticut,’ I replied warily, careful not to say anything that might reveal our highly illegal work status. ‘Huh,’ she said, like a veil had suddenly lifted before her eyes, ‘that’s where ya got those funny accents frum, huh.’
On another occasion I’d been left in charge of a boat yard, up the creek at Fernandina Beach in North Florida, for the weekend. In mid-afternoon a small wooden launch, towed by another boat, limped up to the wharf and I sauntered over from my own boat to take the mooring lines from the good ol’ boys in fishing gear who stood on the deck peering uncertainly up into the empty boat yard.
The launch engine had seized, they explained, and could the yard take it out that day? I told them that the yard was clo
sed but I’d do the job for them. I went into production mode, unbolted the engine, disconnected fuel lines, propeller shaft, exhaust and cooling water, put a chain between the engine lifting eyes, swung the crane out from the wharf and lifted the engine out onto a waiting trolley. We wheeled it down the wharf and I used the mobile yard crane to lift it into the back of their pickup truck.
‘Well, whadda we owe ya?’ their spokesman asked, reaching around to the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Aww … she’ll be right, mate,’ I replied in true Kiwi fashion, ‘you can do me the favour next time.’
He wasn’t happy with that approach, though, and the good ol’ boys went into a huddle, murmuring among themselves. Eventually the spokesman, Topper, approached Sarah and me. ‘What say we all take y’all out for a meal tonight?’ he asked. We nodded, and they piled into the pickup and left the yard.
They were back about an hour later. ‘We done tried all over town,’ he said, ‘but we cain’t make no dinner reservations nowheres — they’s all filled up. Would y’all like to come up to the house for some real southern cooking?’ That’d be even better than eating out, we assured them.
Later that night we stood around a deep-frying urn sipping beer, in a sultry southern evening, with various local titbits bubbling away at the surface. They asked where we were from, then figured that New Zealand had to be over by New Mexico somewheres — or maybe up by New York. For most Americans, the known world is confined to the area bordered by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Canada and Mexico.
Succulent chicken, hush puppies and venison emerged from the deep fryer, then they slipped each of us a large piece of meat and urged us to try it. The assembled families watched anxiously while I bit into it. ‘Well, what do ya think?’ ‘Yum,’ I nodded appreciatively. The meat had a firm, white texture and vaguely fishy taste. ‘That’s alligator tail,’ Topper explained. ‘Now don’t you go telling nobody you-all was eatin’ it here,’ he added, ‘they’s all pertected and if the game rangers find out youse was eatin it here, we’ll all be in deeeep trouble.’
On another southern delivery trip, we ran out of alcohol in a dry part of Georgia and needed a police permit to buy two dozen beer and six bottles of wine. The sheriff drove Sarah to the local liquor store, a low concrete bunker with steel-barred windows, then back to the boat to ensure that she really was taking that liquor out of state and not just having a hooley somewhere out in the bayou. Later on, as we sounded our way through the descending dusk into Belhaven’s marshy approaches, the marina dockmaster flashed a Texaco oil sign on the fuel dock to point out where the deep water was. Once we were tied to a marina dock, crewman Chip, a Connecticut Yankee, leapt off and approached the old black man who had taken our mooring lines. ‘Hiya, buddy,’ he bellowed, ‘nice little town ya got here — where’s all the wild women?’ The old man thought, stroking his chin, for several pregnant moments. ‘Wil’ wimmin…’ he drawled softly. ‘Wil’ wimmin … ain’t got too many wil’ wimmin hereabouts … got some wil’ ducks over there aways’ He gestured towards the dark swampland.
We were in the deep south.
Acknowledgements
To all the people who have caught my docklines, showed me where to shop and helped me get back to sea. Thanks to the many people I’ve been privileged to sail with. Special thanks to Harley and Diane Watts, Noel Pryor, Lance and Alison Girling Butcher, Noel Hilliam, Pete and Gill Seccombe, Keith Duncan and Ann Tucker, Jill Tait for her tireless typing, editing and encouragement, and Tracey Wogan, Antoinette Sturny and Teresa McIntyre from HarperCollins — ‘Let’s go for it,’ they said … and did.
Photographic Inserts
Elkouba making her way through ‘the leads’ in Norway’s craggy coastline. SARAH WRIGHT
Elkouba at anchor in North Spitsbergen. SARAH WRIGHT
Kromhout, with Elkouba alongside, berthed outside the Dahl household in the Lofoten Islands, Norway. SARAH WRIGHT
Live bait for a polar bear. The author exploring in Taff off Ny Ålesund. SARAH WRIGHT
Harald’s dog team and their sleds idle for winter. Seal carcasses dry on the rack in the background. SARAH WRIGHT
Luigi, the pin-striped Italian dandy. SARAH WRIGHT
The derelict Askoy — altogether too fine a vessel to rot away in a Fijian harbour. SARAH WRIGHT
Askoy’s next resting place — Baylys Beach, Northland. LINDSAY WRIGHT
The salvage of Askoy. LINDSAY WRIGHT
Refuelling helicopter depot at L’Esperance Rock, the southernmost islet of the Kermadec group of islands. LINDSAY WRIGHT
Tiama with the passage between Orde Lees Islet and mainland Antipodes Island in the background. LINDSAY WRIGHT
Tiama under way off Perpendicular Head, Antipodes Islands. LINDSAY WRIGHT
Bounty Islands anchorage. LINDSAY WRIGHT
Towing gear laid out ready for deployment on the deck of Braveheart in Fiji. LINDSAY WRIGHT
The aftermath of an encounter between a humpback whale and the trimaran Loose Goose, 150 km off Port Waikato. KEITH BRODIE
The author, as skipper, aboard Braveheart. JOHN TRAVERS
About the Author
Lindsay Wright has been a professional yachtsman, delivery and charter skipper and shipmaster. He lives in New Plymouth and has written for New Zealand Listener, North & South and national and international boating publications.
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Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in 2010
This edition published in 2010
by HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1, Auckland
Copyright © Lindsay Wright 2010
Lindsay Wright asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
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Lindsay Wright
Blue water / Lindsay Wright
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1. Wright, Lindsay. 2. Merchant mariners—New Zealand—Anecdotes. 3. Yachts and yachting—New Zealand—Anecdotes. 4. Seafaring life—New Zealand—Anecdotes.I. Title.
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