Seven at Sea

by Erik Orton

We had to find a lender. I thought that would be easy. I should have known better. We had adequate savings, impeccable credit, and steady employment. Three gold stars! What we didn’t have was a borrowing history. Like most New Yorkers, we rented. We’d been faithfully paying our rent for over a decade. The bank didn’t care. They wanted a precedent.

  The next strike against us was that Emily and I were debt-free. We’d paid our way through school with minimal loans, and we’d paid those off a week after the one-year grace period. I took great pride in the fact that we’d paid less than twenty dollars of interest for our college educations. Our mantra is, “Ortons don’t pay interest, we earn it.” Well, lah-dee-dah. Now no bank would lend us money to buy a boat.

  Aha! Now I had one more reason to buy a boat: establish our borrowing history. If we ever wanted to buy something larger, like a home, buying this boat would help. That made both Emily and me laugh. But it’s true! You can see for yourself the kind of logic we used to talk ourselves into why something would be a good idea. Our plan was: buy a sailboat with a loan, quit my job, and sail around the Caribbean for a year to build our credit. Nice.

  So how did we do that when every lender in the country was turning us down? Google search. Up popped “Chesapeake Financial.” That sounded good. I knew where the Chesapeake Bay was. It was the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend, but I called and left a voicemail. This was our window of opportunity. We were doing this now because, if we did it any later, Karina would be off to college. We would turn that corner where we start to launch our kids. They would come home between semesters or between jobs, but they would never really be home again. They would start to have lives of their own outside our home and family. That was good and what we wanted for our kids, but we didn’t want to miss the chance. This time of having them with us would never come again.

  We were at a gas station on the New Jersey Turnpike the Monday after Thanksgiving. My phone rang. Phil at Chesapeake Financial wanted to help get us the loan. Great. I told him I’d fill out the forms the moment I was home. Phil was our last shot. If he didn’t get us the loan, I didn’t know what we’d do.

  I was so stressed about this whole “buying a sailboat” thing, our concerned neighbor, Tiffany, checked in on us. “How are you guys doing?” she asked, with sympathetic eyebrows. Emily and I shook our heads and gave her our sob story. “Would you guys like a massage?” she asked. She was a massage therapist, and who’s going to say no to that? She arranged with another friend to give Emily and me a complimentary couple’s massage. Emily and I now have a running joke, which of course we say with a snooty accent: “I’m so stressed buying my yacht. I need a massage.” I felt like a spoiled brat, but I’m not gonna lie: the massage was great. And I think it helped.

  Phil got us the loan. A Google search, a New Jersey parking lot, and scanning some forms to PDF. That’s what a dream coming true looks like.

  I’d hoped for a lower interest rate. Am I ungrateful or what? We want our dreams to come true, but when they do, we get picky. I was sweating again. I called Jim—from my trip to Maine—and asked his advice. Jim was a smart lawyer who had helped start several banks. His advice: “Erik, in the eternal scheme of things, it will be fine.” Jim was wise. Emily agreed with Jim. We took the loan and signed the papers. Emily and I looked at each other with bugged-out eyes. Was this really happening?

  We put down $20K out of savings.

  My parents borrowed $10K against their house and loaned it to us. I was grateful they believed in us. We could have paid for the boat on our own, but this approach gave us a little cushion for the inevitable surprise expenses. We agreed to pay my parents enough to cover their costs plus a little, so it was a profitable investment for them.

  We financed the other $120K, for a total of $150K. Again, we’d planned to buy a much less expensive boat, but this route gave us the best shot at selling it when we were done. Selling the boat was key to us not going broke down the line. We could afford to rent our apartment or pay the mortgage on this boat, but not both. The rest of the trip would be paid for from savings.

  It was early December when I called out, “Family meeting,” and everyone gathered in the living room. “Big news.”

  “We bought a boat?” guessed Karina, our child most likely to stick around for boring conversations about money.

  “Merry Christmas,” I said.

  “Wait . . . what?” Sarah Jane asked. All the kids’ eyebrows went up, except Eli’s.

  “That’s so cool! Can I drive the dinghy?” Alison said.

  “When are we going?” Eli asked. “I don’t want to miss any sledding days.”

  “We will be the official owners in January, on our anniversary,” I gestured toward Emily. “There are still a few steps. We need a survey and a sea trial. I’ll get somebody in Saint Martin to do that for us. What we need now is a name for our boat.” Emily taped a giant sheet of paper to the living room wall and held a marker at the ready.

  Thinking of boat names had been a family pastime, but this was serious. We wanted no sailing puns and especially no cat puns. I love a good pun, but boat owners can take it too far, especially catamaran owners: Catatonic, Catalyst, Cat Me if You Can. Need I say more? Some of our suggestions included Hoity-Toity and Higgledy-Piggledy. Eli proposed Luigi from the Nintendo video game. If he had to go, he’d rather sail in a boat named Luigi.

  Emily said, “If our boat name had a Z in it, we could say ‘Zulu’ every time we hail somebody on the radio.” We started thinking of names with Z: Zany, Crazy, Snazzy, Bowzer—another Nintendo shout-out from Eli.

  “Fezziwig,” Emily said, looking from face to face to make sure we’d heard her.

  “What’s that?” Alison asked.

  “Like Mr. Fezziwig from A Christmas Carol. It’s Scrooge’s boss, the happy guy who throws a party.” Emily found our copy on a bookshelf in the entryway and read aloud to us, her favorite thing to do.

  Scrooge cried in great excitement:

  “Why, it’s old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it’s Fezziwig alive again!”

  Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice: . . .

  “Yo ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig. “No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands. . . .

  “Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. “Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here!” . . .

  Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life forevermore. . . . The warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter’s night.

  In came a fiddler with a music-book. . . . In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. . . . In came all the young men and women employed in the business. . . . In they all came.

  “I don’t know . . .” Karina said. The other kids looked doubtful too.

  “I like it,” I said. Emily smiled and nodded toward me. “He’s a guy who works hard but knows when it’s time to play. He put time and money into celebrating people and making memories. That’s what we want to do.”

  “I like that,” Alison said. It was growing on them—plus, it was nearly Christmas. We tweaked the spelling because we’re Yankees, so when we got on the radio, we would say: Foxtrot, Echo, Zulu, Yankee, Whiskey, India, Golf. Fezywig.

  We heard back from our surveyor in Saint Martin. His inspection turned up a list of things needing to be done. By now I
knew words like bimini, windlass, and transom. I knew I didn’t want a boat with bow thrusters. But I didn’t understand the electric and engine mumbo jumbo. Thankfully, Sunsail agreed to fix everything except one item: the fresh water gauge. But that was probably for show. They didn’t want to look like pushovers. We were getting a great deal on a perfectly functional boat, our boat: Fezywig.

  EMILY

  1 Month before Fezywig

  We had cleared away a lot of stuff to make room for a boat in our lives. I stowed tax papers, journals, photo albums, and other irreplaceables I didn’t want to take with us in Erik’s parents’ basement. We painted our apartment for a series of subletters he had lined up. We’d seen our dentist and physicians and had a plan in case of a medical emergency. We packed everything we wanted to bring on our flight to Sint Maarten in our minivan. Then, just like the Fezziwig family in Dickens’ story, we pushed back the furniture.

  We didn’t have to hire a band because, fortunately, we are a band. Erik plays piano, violin, guitar, drums, penny whistle, and any other instrument he picks up. Karina plays ukulele, mandolin, and piano. Alison plays ukulele, guitar, and a little piano. I jump in on egg shaker or tambourine as needed. We all sing. We play street fairs, organic farms, and Christmas concerts. Mainly, we host a live music night every couple of months. Everyone is invited to bring music and food. With everyone on holiday and our departure imminent, this would be our biggest live music night ever.

  Our tiny apartment quickly filled up with friends of all ages and foods of every kind. One trumpeter pinned up a giant black Jolly Roger flag. The musical offerings tended toward nautical themes. Our goal for this sailing sabbatical was to make family memories, but we would dearly miss these friends. We knew we would meet people while on the move, but we didn’t think we’d be anywhere long enough to make friends. Eventually, the stack of guests’ coats piled on top of the bunk beds started to shrink. It was way past bedtime for the toddlers, and the party wound down.

  We gathered our family to sing the traditional closing number one last time. It’s a song Erik wrote called “Harvest Time.”

  We are here and they are there

  They’ve all moved on and this earth feels so bare

  What we know, we cannot see

  But we’ll plant again, just you and me

  Seasons come and seasons go

  Things grow up and then they go

  Seeds and soil, sunshine and rain

  Giving thanks. It’s harvest time.

  ERIK

  A friend who worked for a magazine asked about our trip. In a brief phone interview I said, “A lot of times people feel like, ‘Oh we have kids so we can’t do that until the kids are out of the house.’ The time to go is when you have your kids with you because you only have them for a short period. There will be plenty of time to make more money. There’ll be plenty of time to take it easy in retirement when you’re older, but the reason we’re going now is because we want to go while our kids are with us. Let your kids be a reason rather than an excuse.”

  After I hung up, Emily said, “I think a lot of moms are gonna love you and a lot of dads are gonna hate you.” Let your kids be a reason rather than an excuse. This inverted logic became a motivating mantra for us. Nobody is going to send me an invitation. There will never be enough money. There will never be a convenient time to go. Time only moves in one direction, and it keeps moving faster.

  The checklist we’d created for our departure unfolded quickly.

  Emily drove to my parents’ with the kids and our last batch of storage items. I would meet them there. They cried their way down the New Jersey Turnpike.

  I moved to a spare room in our neighbors’ apartment. Our subletters moved in. We didn’t own our boat yet, and we no longer had an apartment. Technically, we were homeless.

  Every summer Alison complained about her thick, long, red hair. She knew it was going to be a hassle in the salty Caribbean wind, so she planned to crop it short before we arrived. Like us, she worried about how to earn money while living on a boat. She found one solution to both problems and decided to sell her hair. Our sweet neighbor, Tiffany (the one who gave us the couple’s massage), had sold her own hair twice before and mentored Alison through the process. Alison found a buyer online who made hair extensions and cut a deal to the tune of $700, a chunk of change for a fourteen-year-old. Upon receipt, the buyer told her he’d gotten a bargain, but Alison was all smiles and no regrets. It was a bald stroke—I mean, bold stroke—and I was impressed.

  I requested a year-long leave of absence at work. They turned me down. I had to decide what to do next. Decide comes from the same root as homicide, suicide, fratricide, pesticide. It’s about killing. I don’t like the idea of killing, but I do it every day. I decide; I kill one option so the other can live. Saying yes to something means I need to say no to something else. Sometimes I say yes to what is established. Sometimes I say yes to change. But I can’t say yes to both at the same time.

  Quitting my job would start the clock running. Based on our best budgeting, we’d saved enough money to sail for a year. After that we’d be broke. But Emily and I had decided a long time ago. We felt it was worth the risk. We believed I could find work again once we were back. I dropped the knife. I turned in my two-weeks’ notice.

  Two weeks later I got on a bus headed toward Emily and the kids. We hadn’t stepped foot on our boat yet, but I already felt like we were casting off.

  * * *

  1.Beam reach: point of sail where the wind comes from the side of the boat. Used in a sentence: If I died and went to sailor heaven, I’d sail all day on a beam reach.

  2.Heeling: when a boat tips sideways because of wind or waves. Used in a sentence: “When I do yoga while sailing, I like to call it spiritual heeling.”

  3.Jackline: a cord or strap that runs the length of the boat from bow to stern. Usually there is one jackline along each side of the boat. A crew member wears a chest harness with a tether that clips to the jackline. If the crew member accidentally falls overboard, he or she will still be connected. I think they’re named after a guy named Jack who used to fall overboard a lot.

  Chapter 4

  Dreamer’s Remorse

  Sint Maarten, Dutch Antilles, Caribbean

  Day 1 aboard Fezywig

  EMILY

  From the airplane all I could see of Sint Maarten was a cluster of lights. Erik said, “I never thought we’d make it this far.” The first time we had sailed together, our family had made perfect stairsteps from baby to father. Now Karina and Alison were taller than I was. Sarah Jane was up to my eyebrows, Eli up to my chin, and Lily up to my chest. Our flight had been delayed four days due to a snowstorm in Chicago. When we arrived at the airport, our carefully packed Rubbermaid bins were deemed unacceptable luggage until we begged a supervisor to request an exception.

  As the wheels lifted, Eli and Lily raised up both arms and she said, “We’re flying like a bird.”

  “I can’t wait to do this trip,” Eli said, which surprised me until he added, “so we can go home to New York.” I had a lot on my mind as well. I was sure I’d make lots of mistakes. I would feel stupid and unprepared, but we were doing it. We touched down at Princess Juliana International Airport. For about an hour everything went according to plan. Our luggage arrived looking much sturdier than we felt. We were relieved and grateful, but wobbly. The shuttle driver stood waiting and ready. Erik took the first dolly full of bins to the van. My stomach growled. We were all hungry. I sat with Eli and Lily on the airport floor while Karina watched the carousel for our straggler bags. SJ and Alison explored the airport, discovering all the shops and restaurants closed for the evening. I was fresh out of goldfish crackers and granola bars, but all of our luggage had arrived, so we started for the taxi van Erik had prearranged. Seventy-five thousand people lived on this island and ate every day.
I’d figure out dinner after we got to the boat.

  As we made our way to the exit, a woman’s voice called, “Are you the Ortons?” I turned to see a woman and a man in their sixties. He was slim with white hair, a white button-up shirt, and dark slacks. She was barely over five feet with short, intensely red hair. They held a handmade paper sign that read, “Welcome Ortons!!” Who were these people? I noticed the small black rectangular name tags and recognized them as missionaries.

  “How did they know we were coming?” Karina asked. I didn’t know, especially since we’d had a four-hour delay with our connecting flight. “Yes. We’re the Ortons,” I said shaking their hands and introducing each of the children.

  “We came to welcome you,” said the man whose nametag read Elder Thompson. “We came earlier today and learned that your flight was delayed, so here we are.” Erik returned for more luggage and greeted our unexpected welcome committee.

  “If you’re planning to come, church is at eight tomorrow,” Sister Thompson said. “And you better hurry if you’re hungry. The grocery stores close early on Saturdays and are closed on Sunday.” Grateful for the generous greeting of friendly faces and the timely local wisdom, I waved goodbye. I hoped we’d have food before Monday. In the taxi, Erik reminded me that he had contacted the local congregation weeks earlier looking to hire a ride from the airport to the marina. Nobody was interested. But that’s how they knew we were coming.

  Our driver idled while I ran into the Market Garden grocery store. Any store with the word garden in the name is probably expensive. I returned with bread, peanut butter, jelly, pasta, marinara, a gallon of water, and the sinking feeling this was going to be a short trip. Those few staples cost sixty dollars.

  “How did it go?” Erik asked. My response was pressed lips, slightly flaring nostrils and a sideways glance. In the dark, we shifted through hills, twists, and turns until we arrived at Captain Oliver’s marina on the central east side of the island. Erik paid the driver and gave me the pressed lips look.