Seven at Sea

by Erik Orton

  “What?” she called back from her cabin.

  “You wasted water. You wasted fuel. And you’re wasting our time.” I slammed the lid on the pot and went to my cabin. Alison sheepishly restarted dinner.

  Half an hour later she called out, “Dinner is served,” and everyone gathered in the cockpit. I came out, ready to try and not bite anyone’s head off.

  As we finished eating I thought to myself, This guy in the motorboat isn’t coming back. We can’t wait any longer. It’s going to be dark soon. I asked the kids, “Who wants to float downwind and get the dinghy?” Emily raised both light-blonde eyebrows.

  “The wind has been steady all day, and it’s right there,” I said, “less than a thousand yards to the seawall.” All the older kids shot each other sideways glances. “It’s at the closed end of the bay. The inner tube will drift to the same spot as the dinghy. I want two of you to go together.”

  Alison and SJ volunteered. I equipped them with the waterproof VHF, and they plopped into the double inner tube and drifted off. Half an hour later they motored up to the stern in the dinghy.

  I immediately jumped in the dinghy and went to shore for another walk. What was wrong with me? Why was I so angry at my kids? At my wife? I was on a beautiful, peaceful island in the Caribbean with my family. The breeze was blowing and there was a clear sky overhead. I kept walking.

  At sunset I headed back. Before I left I’d turned on the generator to charge the batteries. When I returned, the generator was still running. I figured someone would have turned it off by now. The batteries should have been fully charged. I went to the nav station and checked the battery charge monitor. The batteries weren’t charging. Great! Nobody had noticed.

  “Come on, guys!” I bellowed at the whole boat. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me. They had no idea what I was talking about. I thumped myself down on a cockpit bench. They quietly went back to whatever irrelevant thing they had been doing. I leaned my head into my hands and put my mind to work.

  I went to my toolbox and pulled out a screwdriver. I turned off the generator and opened up the screws that held the plug in place at the end of the connector cord. I had installed the connector myself, so I knew what it was supposed to look like. Inside, the ground wire had come loose. I put it back in place, reinserted it to the shore power outlet, started up the generator, and checked the charge monitor. The batteries were charging. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but it was time to visit Don and Janis.

  Emily and I lowered into the dinghy and puttered over the short distance. We didn’t speak. Don and Janis were bubbly and beyond encouraging. He was a retired firefighter, and she was retired from health services. They were from Texas. Their accents made us feel welcome. He owned a plane back in Texas. Had his own runway and maintenance hangar. He made owning and taking care of an airplane sound like a breeze. I liked people who talked like that: competent, capable, relevant. They’d recently bought and renovated some beachfront property on the south coast of Puerto Rico. Now that it was rented out, they were taking a two-week break to sail with some friends. Everything about them encouraged me.

  “With this weather window, you can make a straight shot to the Bahamas,” Don beamed, his cheeks a bit rosy from the sun and his beer.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. We came from Matthew Town straight down to Fajardo. It was great. Matthew Town has everything you need. Fuel, water, food. They have the best lobster. Huge!”

  “Wow. Sounds awesome,” I said. Emily and I hadn’t made much eye contact since she’d lost the dinghy, but we looked at each other and nodded.

  After a warm, boisterous visit, we climbed into our dinghy and motored back to Fezywig. Don and Janis had snapped me out of my funk about our uncertain future. The weather window would take us straight to the Bahamas.

  I was claustrophobic. I still needed mentors and friends, but John and Peter were hundreds of nautical miles away on their way to Grenada. As much as Emily and I supported each other in our marriage, and we all supported each other as a family, we couldn’t be everything to each other all the time. I needed outside input, as well as time alone with my thoughts. Journaling had always been therapeutic. I hadn’t done much journaling, and aside from taking care of business, I hadn’t spent time with anyone outside our family. I’d never been a husband, dad, and captain under these new circumstances. Sitting with Don and Janis broke the ice for me.

  Emily and I still had work to do, as a couple and a sailing team, but we drove the dinghy back to Fezywig in peaceful silence.

  EMILY

  Erik carried the burden of being our most capable sailor and navigator. When he felt the world on his shoulders, I wanted to do something helpful. I apologized for tying the wrong knot and losing the dinghy. Within a day or two I knew he’d say, “Sorry I’ve been in a funk lately . . . ,” and be ready to talk about it.

  Processing intense feelings can require privacy. We didn’t have much of that on Fezywig. It was the same in our apartment, so we have a few techniques to help maximize personal space in tight quarters. We all keep journals. Taking a walk helps, though it’s not always an option at sea. We create audio cocoons by popping in earbuds and listening to anything from rock music to pre-recorded rainstorms. When one of us had that do not disturb vibe, we tried to respect it. Creating personal thinking space, however permeable, is essential for personal growth.

  I preferred the struggles of too little space to having too much space. I had tried both. After Lily was born, while working on a project, we lived in a friend’s 5,000-square-foot vacation home for six weeks. Coming from our 900-square-foot apartment, I fantasized about this palace with six bedrooms, a giant living room and, best of all, a playroom. With five young kids, I believed a playroom held the secret to happiness. I was wrong. A bigger home was a bigger responsibility. The larger space divided us while simultaneously multiplying how long it took to gather my family, tidy up, or find a lost shoe in a sprawling house. I was thankful for the place to stay for six weeks, but I was grateful every day for the simplicity and closeness of my tiny apartment. But that didn’t make living in a small space easy.

  If you laugh in a small living space, everyone else wants to know what’s so funny. If you open a package of cookies, you draw a crowd. We can’t hide our differences, either. Whether good or ill, we lived too close to let them fester. We addressed them and resolved them or let them go. It sounds more diplomatic than it feels in real life. I tell our kids, “People are messy.” If you want people in your life, expect things to get messy.

  Visiting Don and Janis helped. We got fresh stories and a fresh weather report. We decided to take Don’s advice and leave after sunrise. We had a new mission to focus on. That helped too. It was a quick morning sail to Fajardo, Puerto Rico. We dropped anchor and went to work.

  Our goal there was simple: get food, water, and fuel, and leave by Sunday afternoon. It was Saturday afternoon. We had twenty-four hours to make it all happen. But we were in a new place, so that involved figuring out where everything was and how to get there and back. This was especially tricky with provisions. We’d need a car to get them from wherever we bought them to the water’s edge, and then we’d have to ferry them out to the boat. If we were lucky, we thought we could attend church Sunday morning. Never a bad thing before putting your life in danger.

  “I want to check the ferry schedule at this marina here,” Erik said. “Maybe we won’t have to dinghy all the way to the main island, about a mile away.”

  “Let’s see if that hotel-looking thing has a laundromat,” I said.

  I was tying off on the seawall when I saw this huge guy, well over six feet tall, with a big bushy beard and baseball hat. He looked like he was off-loading a guitar and an ironing board. My hopes for a laundromat skyrocketed.

  “Is that an ironing board?” I asked.

  “No, it’s m
y surfboard.” He had a big smile, too.

  “Right, that makes a lot more sense,” I said. Erik had the good sense to be embarrassed on my behalf.

  “And you play music?” Erik asked, noticing his guitar.

  “Yeah, I play at this little bungalow up around the bend.”

  “Cool. We play tunes too. We have a bit of a family band,” Erik said.

  “No way! It’d be great to hear you guys play.”

  A few minutes in, Erik asked, “Have you ever sailed the Bahamas?”

  “Tons.”

  “Any route recommendations?”

  “Sure. Which boat are you on?” he asked. I pointed to our catamaran a few hundred yards away. “I’m on that green sailboat behind you. Why don’t I swing by after your errands and I can show you some route ideas?”

  “That’d be awesome,” Erik said.

  Our scouting trip didn’t turn up a ferry or laundry, but Erik was thrilled to get some expertise planning our route through the Bahamas. We returned to Fezywig for Jane, our volunteer for the day. “We met a guy named Ike, and he may come by later tonight,” Erik said. “He plays the guitar.”

  “Cool,” Karina said. “How long will you be gone?”

  “A couple of hours,” I estimated. We had a lot to do in a couple of hours.

  “Let’s see if we can find the local chapel first,” Erik said. “Maybe someone will be there who can recommend a place to rent a car.” The church was a mile away—if you knew right where it was and your smartphone GPS didn’t glitch like ours did. I called on my rusty college Spanish to ask for directions, and we finally made our way through the humidity to our destination. As best I could tell no one was at the chapel, but we called out “Aló!” anyway. Down a darkened hallway, a doorway opened a pocket of light and a slim Puerto Rican gentleman in a white shirt and tie stuck his head out. He invited us to sit in the small office where he was doing family history research. We briefly explained who we were and asked if he could recommend a good place to rent a car.

  “Toma el mío,” he said without hesitation. “Take mine.” He handed us the keys to his pickup truck in the parking lot.

  “Gracias. What’s your name again?” Erik asked.

  We piled into Rafael’s truck. We hadn’t moved this fast in weeks. Traffic lights, stop signs, yielding and merging, all happening at ten times the speed of Fezywig.

  “Can I ride in the back on our way home?” Jane asked.

  “It’s pretty fun,” I said. “I did it as a kid—loved the eighties.”

  “We’ll see . . .” Erik said. He pulled into the Walmart parking lot. My heart dropped. It was huge. It would take a while to find everything. I forgot how tattered and sun-bleached I was until I was around people with strip malls and washing machines. I may have been shabby, but I looked official. Officially shabby? Whatever. For the next two hours, I carried my clipboard and crossed off found items while Erik and Jane followed me up and down the unfamiliar aisles, each pushing a cart. Our list completed, we headed to the register to pay. $340 for two carts of groceries.

  “That’s way cheaper than Saint Martin,” I said. “Maybe we should stay here for the next six months.”

  It was dark when Rafael handed the last bag of groceries to Jane to put in the dinghy. We’d been gone several hours.

  “What time is church tomorrow?” Erik asked, putting on his headlamp.

  “A las doce,” Rafael said. Noon.

  Dang it. That was too late for us. We had to be underway by then. Weather waits for no man—or family. We thanked him profusely for the use of his truck and drove our heavy-laden dinghy into the darkness. I radioed ahead. Karina and Alison were relieved to hear from us.

  “Oh, and that guy Ike came by twice,” Karina said.

  “Thanks for the heads up,” I said, and I reclipped the radio to my backpack. Erik stopped by Ike’s boat so he’d know we were home.

  The kids immediately started unloading the dinghy and putting away groceries. We had a system. And I had a surprise for them.

  “Hey kids, check this out,” I said, setting a rotisserie chicken on the salon table. Somewhere angels were singing. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d eaten chicken. It wasn’t from a can. Nothing from my galley kitchen could compare with the scientifically prepared poultry. It was like a surprise Thanksgiving without any of the holiday pressure. I removed the plastic lid and we pulled off chunks and stuffed our mouths.

  “You guys are a bunch of barbarians,” Erik said, reaching over the melee to get some for himself.

  “Mom, this is so good,” Eli muffled through his mouthful.

  Ike pulled up with a guitar strapped to his back and a stack of charts under his arm. “Would you like some chicken?” I offered.

  “Nah, I had an avocado for dinner already, so I’m good,” Ike said.

  “That must’ve been a mighty avocado,” I said. This was not a small guy.

  “More for us,” Alison said.

  “Let’s clear this table so Dad and Ike can do their magic in here,” I said.

  Ike pulled out his charts, and the kids continued stowing groceries under the bench seats and floorboards.

  “I’m starting to get my head around the Bahamas,” Erik said. He’d already sent a plan to the insurance company and consulted with Don. Ike showed us some of his favorite spots in the Bahamas. Erik took notes and felt better oriented talking to someone who had been there so many times.

  “It’s all going to be okay. There are good things ahead. Don’t worry too much. You’ll be fine,” Ike said. That was reassurance I wasn’t qualified to give. Erik stopped grinding his teeth.

  “You still up for a jam session?” Erik said. “It’s getting late.”

  “We don’t have to worry about the neighbors,” I said. No boats were within earshot, and the moon was full. We got all the instruments and all the kids on deck. We all lay on the trampoline under the moon learning new songs and improvising our own, the Fajardo Blues. We all felt the playful pressure. It’s so much easier to sing somebody else’s song than it is to make up one of your own, especially when others are listening.

  Ike taught our songwriters, Karina and Alison, a bit about how to make a living as a live musician. “Have three hours’ worth of material and take a fifteen- or twenty-minute break. Play tunes people know: Bob Marley, Jimmy Buffet . . . things they expect to hear when they’re at the beach on vacation. But keep writing your own stuff. No one ever got famous playing someone else’s stuff. You have to write, speak, and sing with your own voice. That’s what I’m working on. Finding my voice.” I think that’s what we’re all working on in some way or another.

  ERIK

  My biggest crossing to this point as captain had been eighty miles. We were leaving in the morning and our next stop was 500 miles away. We would be along the Puerto Rican and Dominican coasts for most of the way, but the last leg—from Luperón to Matthew Town—would be 150 exposed, vulnerable miles. By that time, we would be outside our weather window, we would have no fresh forecast, and we would be nearing the end of our fuel supply. Our only options to ditch would be Haiti and Cuba. We would technically be “outside the box” for windstorm coverage, and I still hadn’t gotten confirmation that we would be insured come Tuesday. The next morning was Sunday, and we had to go. I’d have no way to check email once we pulled anchor. So many unknowns.

  But that morning we’d been in Culebra, where Don and Julia had looked out for us and encouraged us. By midnight we’d met Ike and Rafael. We’d borrowed Rafael’s truck and been to a Super Walmart. We had a boat full of groceries, Ike said our route looked good, and we’d learned a new tune. I snuggled closer to Emily and fell asleep.

  I wrote in my journal: “Despite my fears, the amazing and the unexpected continue to happen.”

  The next morning we pulled anchor and motored the mile over to the
marina to top up on fuel before setting out for Matthew Town, Great Inagua, Bahamas.

  There was a small concrete room constructed on the dock. Inside was the cash register and a few items for sale like fuel cleaner, boat polish, sodas, candy, and ice cream. Around back were some restrooms. Emily and the kids took one last chance to use a land-based toilet, but Lily walked right behind the counter for the cash register and pulled the desktop calculator up in front of her. She’d already grabbed a few Snickers and bags of peanut M&M’s and was ringing them up when I walked in the door.

  “That’s not going to work, sweetie,” I said.

  She looked up, smiled extra big, and then went back to work. I was irrelevant.

  “Hey there. Time to get on the boat,” I continued. She kept punching numbers. One of the guys in a blue polo walked in.

  “Thanks for helping us out!” he beamed. “Can I get in here real quick?” He squeezed in and rang up the fuel.

  “Come on, Lily,” I said.

  “You gotta go with your daddy, but thanks for all your help. Here’s your payment.” With that, he handed her a bag of peanut M&M’s, a Coke, and a package of Oreos. Only Lily could work for two minutes and get paid in Oreos. She’s a genius.

  Only Lily could work for two minutes and get paid in Oreos.

  I started up the motors. Other boats were lining up to get fuel. We pushed off from the dock and I went to spin the boat so we could head out the way we had come in. When I tried to spin the boat, it wouldn’t turn. One engine would go in forward and reverse, but the other engine wouldn’t do either. It ran fine, but the propeller wouldn’t engage. Was I confused? Had I forgotten how to spin our boat? I prided myself on being a good driver. After three tries, I couldn’t get Fezywig to turn around. It was bad enough I was confused; now I was embarrassed because the dockhands were watching, along with all the other boats waiting to get fuel. In the end, I drove the boat out of the marina backward. There’s nothing quite as cool as driving backward at five miles per hour. Very Jason Bourne.