Atlantic High

by William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Then to cap it off, Pat and Bill Buckley. Pat is as much at home on the water as she is on her beautiful estate in Connecticut, and apartment in New York. She is famous as one of the best cooks in the world—but, darlings, you should see her shinny up the mast to turn the boat around, or whatever it is they do up there. You’re sitting there, talking to her about The World According to Garp—a trashy little novel we all decided to read, just to keep in touch with the people we all love—and suddenly she’s gone—right to the top of the mast. You will ask, what is she wearing? You are right to ask: The last time she went up, she was wearing a hoopskirt (only Pat, who has an incomparable sense of humor, would do that, you know) of green chiffon, laced with a gold trim that would have knocked out the Incas themselves—but Pat Buckley didn’t even seem to notice, though she wasn’t in a position to talk about it, what with that nasty old big black wrench in her mouth.

  And dear Bill. Yes, you guessed, he was the one who came in with “vaticinator,” which is someone who predicts who will be President: the roots of the word are Persian, like the Shah. Well, Bill was busy with Jeff, all day long, doing celestial navigation. I’m telling you, Bill can do anything. Yesterday, while we were at St. Bart’s harbor, he proved to us—I mean, he is so persuasive, you wouldn’t begin to dare to disagree with him—that we were really in Antigua. As he put it, a computer cannot lie. Dick Clurman, who is so clever, said something about, What do you do when liars program a computer? But Big Bill disdained that comment, because, you know, he rises above everything. Well, tra-là. We’ll be back soon, and if you feel New York is jumping again, you’ll know that Sealestial’s loss was the Big Apple’s gain!

  For l’homme moyen sensuel, there is a sensible inventory (for a transatlantic sail), and in response to requests from the uninitiated I asked Danny Merritt to list what he intended to take, and I sent out notice of it in a memo to the crew:

  Danny has made a list of the articles he plans to bring on board. I duplicate it, in that it might be useful to you. You may ignore the item that reads, ‘radio-time tic.’ You need not each bring a radio-time tic. A radio-time tic is an arcane device which Danny, Reggie, and I are aware of, and we feel no necessity to share our knowledge.

  Dan’s suggestions of individual equipment for a transatlantic trip:

  SHOES

  2 Topsider-type shoes

  1 Topsider boots

  10 white socks

  2 dark socks

  PANTS AND SHIRTS

  12 shorts

  2 pr Levi’s/2 pr shorts

  1 corduroy

  1 dress pants

  12 LaCoste shirts

  2 dress shirts

  1 flannel shirt

  MISCELLANEOUS

  1 heavy sweater

  1 light sweater

  1 hat with brim

  2 pr sunglasses

  sun lotion

  foul-weather gear

  rigger’s knife

  flashlight

  safety belt with strobe with horn

  1 sports jacket

  2 belts

  sewing kit

  extra laces (shoe)

  complete dock kit incl: toothpaste/toothbrush, soap, deodorant, hair rinse, shampoo, razors, lotion, comb/brush

  camera/film

  radio-time tic

  spare reading glasses

  duffel bags required—large plastic garbage bags for dirty laundry

  address book

  Arriving in Antigua ten days before Christmas, we were introduced to Sealestial. Notwithstanding my misgivings about large charter vessels and their capacity to sail, as voiced in my journal from Fiji, I had a feeling, on approaching her in the crowded dock at English Harbor, that this was a boat designed to sail. And, indeed, we discovered that the beautiful white ketch had been designed as that—a racing boat, built in 1973 at the South Ocean Shipyard in England, designed by E. G. Van de Stadt. The prototype was Stormvogel, against which we had once raced to Bermuda aboard Suzy Wong. Sealestial, its mast cut down by eight feet, was now a cruising-charter version of Stormvogel, 41 net tons, 47 gross, with 71 feet of length overall, 18.6 feet of beam, drawing 8.5 feet (disqualifying it for Bahamian waters, significant areas of which accommodate a maximum of 5.5 feet—Cyrano’s draw).

  A boat is easier to visualize than to describe, and accordingly herewith a few shots of Sealestial, including its huge saloon and the owner’s splendid cabin.

  The owner of Sealestial is a Yugoslav-American physician who practices in Detroit, Dr. Papo, with whom I will deal later. The dominant figure in Sealestial was its captain, Allen Jouning.

  We stowed rapidly, eager to test the boat. I took the helm, with no objection from Captain Jouning, eased the vessel back, and headed out for a short afternoon sail to the northwest, anchoring off a small, secluded beach. I felt an instant bounciness to the vessel, which responded joyfully to wheel and wind. I could see that she pointed (came up close to the wind) well, without losing speed. She had on a less than full-cut genoa, but we did 8.5 knots in moderate airs, and that’s not only good but very nearly unheard of in heavy, large, charter sailboats. We were all very happy, and vaguely resolved that Sealestial would figure in our future.

  Provided it is always safest to add, that Allen Jouning was aboard. I noticed first that he was quiet, emitting as few instructions to the paid crew as necessary, in comfortable contrast to the raucous types who make a drill out of every maneuver. I noticed next that he raised no objection not only to my acting as master of the vessel, but even to my maneuvering the boat into and out of tight corners. He knew, of course, that I had sailed. But it is nevertheless the practice of most captains gently to edge themselves back to the wheel at just those critical moments when you wish to exercise your own skills. On most charter boats you are made to feel like the new copilot who is welcome to take the wheel after cruising altitude is reached, always on the understanding that he will give it back to the old pro for landing and takeoffs. Elsewhere I have commented that since age thirteen I have owned the boats I have sailed with fewer than a half-dozen exceptions. I find it easy to play a purely passive role on a boat, and easy to act as the boat’s master; anything in between, I fidget.

  Allen Jouning sensed this, as he seemed, with uncanny intuition, to sense other human idiosyncrasies, all of which he handled with humor, thoughtfulness, and dignity. He had been in command of Sealestial since November 1978. He was born in Auckland in 1946, and was schooled there. In 1969, having sailed eight years, he went to Fiji and did charter work for two years. From there he delivered a boat to Los Angeles in a harrowing forty-two-day passage, nonstop, beating all the way, running out of everything save the barest supplies.

  He was determined to race, and found himself as first mate in the Onion Patch series aboard Bermuda’s Peanut Brittle, and then on an Erickson 46, Alita, on which he did the Annapolis-Bermuda race. Just before coming to Sealestial he was master of Venceremos, a Swan 65—a “gold-plater,” as they denominate boats on which no expense is spared, that they may bring home the silver. Captain Jouning wears a red walrus mustache, is balding, and his humor comes in brief, nonabrasive flashes. In the four passages I have had with him, I have heard him complain only once—about the defective workmanship of Detroit sailmakers who failed to secure with strong enough material the genoa clew, resulting in one of those noisily (and dangerous) chaotic sequences at night in uproarious seas when suddenly the sail lets go, the entire vessel vibrates with the whipping canvas, and one man starts letting down the fugitive sail halyard while two other men try, without being knocked out by the flying steel clew, to get hold of the sail and drag it down. “That’s bad work,” Allen said, examining the sail with a flashlight at the post-mortem. Such words, from that mouth, have the sound of fire and brimstone.

  It was on our second outing on the Sealestial that we learned that in the summer of the following year, 1980, the owner desired to have the boat in the Mediterranean, for his own use and to pick up Mediterranean charter
s. I looked up suddenly at Dick—we were seated in the cockpit, during the cocktail hour. Allen was standing, leaning against the doghouse. I moved my head up, down, in a slow-motion gesture. Dick understood instantly. I put my index finger to my lips (meaning don’t say anything to the ladies; my wife is always certain that any ocean trip by me will be my last, and is mildly resentful when her apocalyptic predictions don’t eventuate). That night, taking a nightcap at the beach bar on Bitter End in the Virgins, Dick and I plotted…. The doc wants the boat in the Mediterranean—so, somebody has to get it there, right? … A nice route, one that would accommodate to prevailing winds, would be to head …north from St. Thomas (that is where the Sealestial would end its chartering season, Allen had said) to Bermuda; then across to the Azores, and then—Gibraltar-Marbella. We could arrange to fly in the wives for a joyous week’s cruise in the Azores, breaking up the passage.

  The day after returning to New York I called Dr. Papo.

  The negotiations lasted over a period of several months. And then:

  November 7, 1979:

  Memo To: Dick Clurman, Van Galbraith, Tony Leggett, Chris Little, Danny Merritt, Reggie Stoops

  From: WFB

  The purpose of this note is primarily to say that I will be writing at much greater length in the very near future. Our splendid venture is definitely, unmistakably on—departure date is May 30 (by coincidence five years to the day after the beginning of the BO1). We will definitely get a book out of it, with Christopher Little’s photography and probably a documentary. This last depends on a number of factors including financing, the answers to which I should have the next time I address you. In due course we’ll organize a couple of those areas of responsibility that worked so well on the BO—e.g., an assignment to individuals of primary responsibility for our safety schedules, provisioning, that kind of thing. Reggie may have in his files some of the work we did in connection with the BO. Whether Reggie can find that which is in his files is of course another question, concerning which I shall be diplomatic…. I shall, after discussing a number of matters with the captain in December and looking at the weather charts, make estimates as accurately as possible of when we can expect landfalls along the way so as to make it possible to coordinate our other arrangements—e.g., the Azores leg. So, as I say the primary purpose of this memorandum is to advise you that the captain is alive, well, exacting, and solicitous.

  The arrangements with Dr. Papo were, on the larger matters, entirely amicable. We approached a little snag or two over minor questions which we both had the good sense eventually to circumnavigate. On the matter of who would be in charge of the vessel, I devised a formula satisfactory to Dr. Papo which in due course we reduced to writing. I would be in charge of Sealestial during the passage, save that in any circumstance in which it could reasonably be held that the safety of the vessel was hostage, and Captain Jouning disagreed with WFB, Captain Jouning’s word would prevail. (After all, it was Dr. Papo’s boat.) A hypothetical situation would be a bad storm in which I elected to heave to, but the captain believed the wind so strong as to require running. Or a less melodramatic occasion: I might reason that I could wend my way between two shoals approaching, say, Bermuda; Jouning, if he disagreed, would have the authority to dictate the roundabout course. The contingency never in fact arose.

  I was greatly amused when, forty-eight hours before our departure, I had an agitated telephone call from Dr. Papo informing me that his insurance broker had revealed that the understanding we had arrived at could have the effect of annulling Sealestial’s insurance policy, which was written around the presumptive mastership of Captain Jouning. There was no time to apply for a binder transferring authority to me. Dr. Papo suggested a solution, which was altogether agreeable. We would sign a fresh contract in which I remitted authority entirely to Captain Jouning. A single copy of this document would be typed out. No one but Dr. Papo and I would be aware of its existence. It would go from the signing ceremony, sealed, straight to Dr. Papo’s bank vault. There it would die a natural death—unless the Sealestial, having set out to sea, was never again heard from, the vessel and all the crew disappearing from the face of the earth. In that event—to be sure, only after the requisite exhibitions of grief—Dr. Papo would put his claim in to the insurance company. If the company confronted him with the contract granting me command, Dr. Papo would triumphantly come back at the company with my subsequent reversion. It pays to think ahead.

  The only crisis was personal, though that is to overfreight what happened. As I got on with the planning, Dick had begun to reconsider. As is his mode, he ended by giving his straightforward reasons for electing to undertake only the first leg. As already noted, the 1975 crossing five years earlier Reggie had nicknamed the Big One, and we found ourselves very quickly, and ever after without self-consciousness, referring to it routinely as the “BO.” Dick felt we needed a theme for the forthcoming passage, one thatwould stress less the adventure inherent in a virginal experience, no longer possible, than the exploitation of all the passage’s possibilities. He came up with the idea of “The Ultimate Charter.” After returning from the trip, revisiting the subject, he wrote in his journal:

  The Ultimate Charter: Let’s (I had said to Bill) make it ultimate in every way, preparations, people, amenities, equipment, music, books, first-run movies, food—whatever. And so we agreed—but never did it.

  Why not?

  Two reasons: First, we were both too busy and running around too much doing other things to really carry through on that intention. Games are games but work is work. So while theplanning, as can be read in the memos that preceded the trip, was good and careful, it was not “ultimate,” just “good.” Secondly and more important, my friend Buckley, among his lesser-known (to the outside world) qualities, is a real lover of his friends, not just his sailing friends, but his writing, painting, piano-playing, economizing, computerizing, lawyering, banking—all his real friends. Not that he’s profligate with friendship nor does he debase the coinage. He’s just intense about it.

  For that reason he picked, along with me, four of his sailing friends—in fact three of the four had been on his only other transatlantic crossing. Splendid companions all, but hardly ultimate in the sense that I had originally intended. My thought was that six of us, from completely different and accomplished walks of life on land—who also like to sail—would make the trip and bring to our happy confinement not old friendships but different and preeminent perspectives. That we would get acquainted at sea and commingle our interests and experiences. To be sure that is a producer’s way to proceed. And while part of Bill is always a producer, all of him is always a friend. So it was Bill and I, Reg and Van, Tony and Danny plus Chris, our very appealing and equally talented still photographer—unfailingly fine fellows but not a cast for a unique and memorable floating seminar.

  …and [so] I concluded that as much as I thought a month at sea would delight me, I couldn’t imagine spending that month, on the eve of the two political conventions, cut off from the world, the New York Times and in some ways the quadrennial apocalypse of my lifelong professional preoccupations. Also, in truth the abandonment of the month-long seminar (which apparently only I imagined) made me wonder, first point aside, whether I could spend a month dropped-out at sea happily with my companions. So, over Bill’s reproving but understanding protests, I signed on for only the first leg, merely an appetizer passage to a much heartier full, salted meal.

  And of course Dick was quite right. Someday I might just attempt a floating seminar aboard a sailboat crossing the Atlantic Ocean. As ever, one might learn from Plato….

  (Scene, the cockpit, midday.)

  RICHARD: You see, my friend, when I asked you before what piety was, you didn’t tell me enough; you said that what you are doing now—prosecuting your father for manslaughter—was a pious action.

  WILLIAM: Yes, and what I said was true, Richard. DANIEL: Pass the ketchup.

  RICHARD: No doubt; but surely you admit t
hat there are many other actions that are pious. WILLIAM: So there are.

  CHRISTOPHER: Hold it where you are, Richard. The light’s perfect. RICHARD: Well, then, do you recollect that what I urged you to do was not to tell me about one or two of those many pious actions, but to describe the actual feature that makes all pious actions pious?—Because you said, I believe, that impious actions are impious, and similarly pious ones pious, in virtue of a single characteristic. How can you distinguish between the pious and the impious?

  EVAN: Impious sucks—how’s that, Richard?

  WILLIAM: If that’s how you want your answer, Richard, that’s how I will give it.

  RICHARD: That is how I want it.

  TONY: Aren’t you going to eat your sausage?

  WILLIAM: Very well, then; what is agreeable to the gods is pious, and what is disagreeable to them, impious.

  RICHARD: An excellent answer, William, and in just the form that I wanted. Whether it is true I don’t know yet; but no doubt you will go on to make it clear to me that your statement is correct. REGINALD: IF it turns out William’s statement is not correct, Richard, I’ll see you on the four A.M. watch.

  WILLIAM: (ignoring Reginald) Certainly.

  RICHARD: Come along, then; let’s consider what we are saying. The action or person that is god-beloved is pious, and the action or person that is god-hated is impious, piety being not the same as impiety but its direct opposite. Isn’t that our position?