Solo

Chris woke up early one day in May; a Sunday. It was too early for anyone in the Yacht Haven marina to be up and around especially after a Saturday night farewell party with friends and a Cinco de Mayo beer fest at Fred’s bar. He was sitting in the boat’s small galley thoughtlessly dunking a very stale. Orange Julius glazed donut in a cup of instant coffee (The only thing that made reheated, instant coffee drinkable) while thinking about his trip. Although tempted he was grateful not have celebrated the Mexican festival the night before.

Bent over the polished mahogany chart table with chin in hand, he looked over a calendar where several important dates had been penciled in. Today’s date he had repeatedly circled in red, like a bull’s eye, to remind him this is the day he planned to leave. Aimlessly he brushed away the donut crumbs littering the calendar, rubbed his finger over the fresh coffee stains making abstract brown shapes over yesterday’s date with a reminder, in bold letters, it was the fifth anniversary of his divorce on the Mexican holiday in 1967. He chuckled when thinking back on the Mariachi band that Kathy hired to sing at the dinner party she insisted on after the divorce hearing. It was a mutually agreed on dissolution, free from alimony and malice but having a Cinco de Mayo, divorce celebration not to be forgotten. He smiled at the thought of her.

Kathy tried to live with him in the islands on the Wind Song, chartering, and sailing to explore new islands, but she couldn’t quite get accustomed to the slow, unpredictable pace away from her friends and South Florida social life. Not caring for that life style and her inability to overcome a fear of sailing was the only reasons they divorced but they continued to be the closest of friends. He pushed a few more donut crumbs into a small pile, tilted the calendar and brushed them into a small trash can, held in place with a bungee cord, swallowed the last of his coffee behind the soggy remains of his donut, and stood up to begin preparations for the trip. The fair morning breeze and sunrise promised to be a beautiful day for sailing.

This was as good a time as any to leave despite him knowing from past experiences that April and May could have erratic and sometimes fierce weather from numerous low pressure systems that form in the Atlantic. Past hurricanes all went through here in September so May seemed an okay time to leave. Besides it was a short trip. He agreed to go only as far as the Bahamas where he would meet the couple who purchased the Wind Song. If all went well he would have enough time to pick up his new yacht Falcon, from the Albury shipyard in the Abacos and arrive in Cape May soon enough for the summer charter season. He picked up a small pad where he had scribbled a list of things needed for the trip.

Looking at each item, he thumped the pencil’s eraser on each as if to assure himself that nothing was forgotten. Food, fuel, charts, batteries, and water enough for the brief voyage expected to last no more than three or four days. Satisfied everything he needed was on board he tore the list from the pad then put the wrinkled list and pencil in his pocket. For navigation he needed nothing more than an easy to use RDF, (Radio Direction Finder), since he would not be but a few days from the islands. He opened a package of new batteries, opened the small battery compartment door of the radio and threw the old ones in with the donut crumbs. With fresh power the radio squealed to life with some carnival music from the only radio station on the island. Checking his chart, other stations were identified and tuned in to check their signal strengths. He micro-waved another cup of instant coffee, rolled the chart into a tube and put it back with the others.

Chris had learned from experience to be prepared for the unexpected which, without exception, could happen at sea. He removed the pencil and paper from his shirt, put his coffee on the table next to the calendar, and then walked around tapping the pencil on his hand to the beat of the steel pan music taking inventory and fastening down anything loose in the cabin that could be damaged in the event of rough seas. On deck he made a final check of the rigging, checked the emergency flare gun and spare batteries for the radio, turned on the single side band radio requesting last minute weather information from the Coast Guard and made sure that all necessary charts for the trip were in the navigation table before tossing the cold coffee over the side.

Back on deck he removed the sail covers, untied the sails, set the emergency release on the life-raft, and then took another quick look at the dinghy suspended from under the stern davits. Under its seat, as an added precaution, he had secured survival gear in a water-proof ditch bag just in case. He was ready. He opened the consol, slipped a key into the ignition switch and the engine quietly came to life. Chris stepped onto the dock, walked slowly from bow to stern untying the dock lines and tossed them onto the deck. He pulled the boat closer to the dock and with the last dock line stepped casually aboard, put the engine in gear and the Wind Song moved slowly into the harbor.

The sun was just a sliver above the horizon and the low lying soft clouds looked just like the pink carnival cotton candy he remembered as a child. The morning darkness became a pale blue as he motored away from the fuel dock and into the harbor carefully steering clear of the yachts swaying lazily on their anchor moorings. After stowing the dock lines he raised the sails and as he cleared the harbor, set a course south for a while then headed west.

The weather was perfect. The rising sun, steady easterly breezes, billowing sails of the Wind Song, his grey beard and tanned skin could have been from the cover of any Yachting Magazine, or island rum ad. Too bad, he thought, the cameras weren’t here to capture the images of such a beautiful morning. It would have been a perfect tribute to his boat and life in the islands.

The breezes now became a light wind and he tightened the lines a little on the sails until the forty-eight foot Mayflower ketch heeled over with a pleasant low groan. The wind filled, taught sails put the starboard rail just a couple of feet above the water causing a wake of bluish white foam to trail behind. At this speed he could easily be in the states sooner than expected. Chris was aware that sailing to and from the states alone was risky but something he chose to do because of past incidents with inexperienced deck hands he didn’t know well. Besides it was quieter and he relished the time alone.

Despite his seemingly lonely life, Chris was quite content to be free to travel when and wherever he chose. In his thirty’s he left the states after divorcing Kathy, whom he had married just four months before, and when asked, he wouldn’t talk about her or the reasons behind the separation. It had been a marriage of convenience and deception. He thought he needed to fill the loneliness in his life and she thought he would settle down into her Florida social life brought on by a sizeable family inheritance. But Chris was happy with his life of chartering in the islands and saw no reason to stop. They divorced as friends and he would occasionally stop to see her when in Florida. Each time she would lecture him for making the risky trips alone but he reminded her why he did. It was safer.

He often lectured friends at Yacht Haven, who recruited strangers to help crew their boats, about a particularly harrowing trip when one such crew member placed everyone and the boat in danger while in the midst of a particularly bad storm six hundred miles off North Carolina. He was delivering the eighty-foot racing sloop Unity to a small marina in Virginia. She was a badly designed ship, over rigged for speed, dangerously under designed for safety and required extra precautions for everyone’s protection especially with an inexperienced crew.

Remembering that trip made him grateful for his own well constructed yacht made of fine teak, with ample room below and a mid-ship deck house for cover in foul weather. The Wind Song and Chris were the envy of fellow yacht owners. He kept her brightly varnished spars, teak trim and paint looking like new which played more than a modest part in his successful charter business. She was ketch rigged, easily handled by one man and fast, often placing in the top five of the annual St. Croix race. Her good looks had fetched top dollar and in a way he was saddened to be delivering her to strangers.

As the wind picked up Chris eased the lines around the belaying pins allowing some wind to spill out of the sails. The ketch straightened up a little without noticeably slowing down. He thought back to the luckless Unity again and couldn’t help but wonder if she ever made it to her final destination in Virginia after he left her in North Carolina.

Enough, he thought, think of something pleasant and went below after trimming the sails. Puerto Rico was only a few hours away and he would soon head North West through the Virgin passage west of St. Thomas. The weather was holding nicely.

He opened a cold Heineken, spread the charts on the mahogany chart table in the deck house and looked once again at the course he plotted. After passing Puerto Rico he would sail North West to maybe stop in the Turks and Caicos Islands or continue on to Florida if the weather permitted; plenty of time to make that decision. He rolled the charts up, put them back into the chart locker and returned to the aft deck, sat down behind the wheel and put his feet on the wheel and relaxed. The first day was ending quietly and Puerto Rico would soon be off his port side. He finished his beer and watched as the bottle floated away and finally sink.

    The first night was quiet and the Wind Song rolled slightly and pitched gently. Chris woke well rested just before dawn, fixed coffee, and decided to wait before cooking breakfast. For the moment coffee and dunking another stale donut was all he needed. On the horizon a few clouds gathered but for the moment he didn’t consider them to be threatening; just a few gray thin, low clouds skittering well to the west; nothing to worry about.

As the day wore on and neared sunset, which was a brilliant orange against the cloudy sky, Chris prepared for what he saw in the distance as a possible storm. The breeze became a bit more brisk and the waves, although not high or rough, had small white-caps that sprayed across the deck. He decided to reduce the main and mizzen sails by a single reef and take in the inner jib leaving the smaller outer jib for the time being. By reducing sail, the boat sailed more upright but rolled more without the steadying force of wind-filled sails. The weather remained steady; not worsening or improving. That night he slept in spurts getting up every hour or so to check on the weather and the boat.

The next day he was North of Puerto Rico steering a new course for the Turks and Caicos Islands in hopes of avoiding the approaching storm. The weather improved slightly. He was not anxious to increase sail even though there was a slight easing of wind and seas. Maybe the storm would go more southward. He put on light weight foul weather clothes then settled down with his feet on the helm and considered moving into the lower deck house if the weather worsened. Although the clouds darkened and the seas became more agitated, the weather was still too good to go inside.

He turned his head and looked over the stern at the waves caressing the bottom of his dinghy suspended under the two stern davits. He checked the lines that held the small boat in place. The bag of flares, radio, food and water were firmly tied to the seat. Everything looked good. Chris went back to the galley and returned with a fresh cold Heineken. The day and night of his third day passed with no change in weather except for slightly higher seas that forced him into the mid-ship deck house.

Later the next day weather and seas seemed to ease a bit, as he neared the Dominica Republic and Haiti. Relieved the storm appeared to be falling apart to the south west, Chris removed his foul weather gear and hung them to dry over the life line. The Caicos Islands would be a welcome rest; perhaps look up an old friend on Grand Turk Island who had been a sailing companion.

He went below for another beer but instead reheated a cup of stale coffee in the microwave and went back on deck to relax behind the helm deciding whether or not to return to full sails. He leaned back against the brightly varnished rail, stretched his sore muscles and looked up at the white clouds rimmed with a touch of grey. Smelling the salty sweet air of the Caribbean and the aroma of coffee he remembered Kathy as he stared into the cup and smiled. She didn’t like coffee and because she was not interested in brewing anything but herbal tea her coffee was always weak enough to see the bottom of the coffee mug. He adjusted his feet on the wheel to make a minor alteration in the boats course. He settled back once more, emptied the mug of stale, lukewarm coffee over the side and decided he would go below for a cold beer.

The wave was a rogue wave and he had seen them before. Without warning it swept over the transom taking him completely by surprise. The boat’s stern disappeared for a moment under the blue-green water as it spilled over the deck rolling him uncontrollably as he crashed against the dinghy breaking it free from the davits before he plunged into the ocean. He was thrashing in desperation trying to find his way to the surface. He would not be one of his unlucky or careless friends who had been washed overboard and disappeared. He wasn’t going to die this way and he struggled frantically to be free from the cold grip of the ocean. Surfacing abruptly, sputtering and coughing up the stinging salt water, he shook the water from his face and opened his eyes to see what all sailors feared.

The Wind Song with the dinghy were sailing slowly away. As his eyes cleared he spotted the long rope, he towed the small boat with on short trips, trailing in the water just a few feet away. If he swam quickly he could catch it then pull himself to safety before it was out of reach. He swam furiously watching the Wind Song sail away without him. The dinghy’s rope was so close but could slip away if he didn’t hurry.

He swam with all his strength, desperately gripped the last few feet of the line, wrapped it tightly around his wrist and let the boat pull him. Once he caught his breath he would pull himself to the safety of the dinghy and back to the Wind Song. He was thankful he had not returned to full sail again. Then the nightmare trip of the Unity came back to haunt him as he was being slowly pulled behind his own boat like trolling bait.

He remembered the Unity’s ninety foot aluminum and foam-filled mast was especially annoying as it clanged like a dull bell as halyards beat against it day and night. The noise was the least of her problems. Without proper non-skid paint the flush deck became dangerously slick when wet. Two days into the trip the first late night gale broke the fore stay, nearly wrenching the mast into a twisted tube of useless metal. Quickly coming about to sail down wind repairs were made before the unsupported mast could break loose. Adding to the danger were the running back-stays that were terrifyingly awkward requiring two men to control, and the stainless steel helm had broken on an earlier trip down islands.

In the midst of that storm an inexperienced sailor had panicked, jumped on Chris’s back causing him to lose control of the helm and the ship to jibe. The main boom swung quickly from port to starboard violently striking the inexperienced deck-hand pushing him over the side. He was gone; sucked into the dark, raging cold Atlantic waters. And now Chris was in a similar situation except he was alive, above water and tied to his boat. A cold chill came over him when he thought how the unlucky guy must have felt watching the lights of the Unity disappear into the gloom of that stormy night; how he must have struggled to stay afloat only to sink beneath the waves in exhaustion. Chris felt very lucky.

As he was being pulled slowly through the water something brushed against his legs. Chris flushed with fear. Maybe it was the un-inflated life raft that was torn loose and thrown overboard. He looked down but was startled with heart pounding dread as a large gray shape with dull vertical stripes passed just beneath the water. Tiger shark was his first thought. He twisted so he could grab the line with both hands and began pulling desperately; hand over hand on the rope, against the force of the wake of his own boat sailing beyond his reach. The large gray, striped fish was following, circling, brushing against him now with deliberate curiosity. Terror replaced feelings of exhaustion. He pulled on the rope with renewed strength until his arms cramped and he was within reach of the dinghy. The seas calmed but the Wind Song sailed slowly on, never wavering from her course, unattended as though a ghost was at the helm.

He reached up and urgently grabbed the stern of the small boat with hands now raw and bloody from this tug-of-war. He was now within a few short yards of the Wind Song. Once he got in the dinghy he would rest long enough to finish pulling the final fifty feet or so to the safety of his boat. That, he thought, would be the easy part.

Chris’s hands were numb and his arms ached. The waves raised him gently as he floated easily hanging on to the stern of the dinghy with its’ emergency gear still intact where he tied it to the seat before leaving. The small boat rose and fell bobbing like a cork as Chris unsuccessfully tried to lift himself over the back of the boat. He moved slowly to the side and gripped the seat, trying to bend one leg over into the boat but the dinghy nearly capsized. He moved back to the stern. Be calm he thought and maybe the fish would lose interest and go away. The big fish probed the strange objects dangling in the water, again and again then once more before disappearing into the blue darkness below.

The sun came out, the clouds fell away, the seas calmed, the brief distant storm had slipped beneath the horizon and the Wind Song rose gently on the long, calm swells of the Caribbean. It was a beautiful tropical day and a beautiful day for sailing.