Once Upon a Gypsy Moon: An Improbable Voyage and One Man's Yearning for Redemption

by Michael Hurley

  The Atlantis resort is the city’s major private employer. Here I found well-heeled tourists willing to blow hundreds of dollars a night on a hotel room and hundreds more in the casino, all the while enjoying a Disney World send-up of Bahamian life that bears little resemblance to the surrounding reality.

  Still, everywhere around Nassau the natural beauty of the island and its culture breaks through the concrete and commercialism. Coconut palms sway overhead, flowers bloom in every crevice, and the aroma of fish and mango roasting on Arawak Cay travels on the ever-present breeze. Even in the shallowest, most obscure corner, amid grubby workboats, the water of the harbor is still as clear as a Beverly Hills swimming pool. The most remarkable gem to be found on this island, however, is its people. The King’s English is spoken here, and as I would learn in traveling the breadth and length of New Providence over the next eight months, the quaintly formal British manner, imbued with strong native pride, is everywhere in evidence.

  It was nine o’clock in the evening on Sunday, April 4, 2010, when the Gypsy Moon arrived at the anchorage in Nassau Harbor. The area reserved for transient boats lies just west of the two high-span bridges that arch over the harbor between East Bay Street and Paradise Island. Of the several boats at anchor, none had lights on below to indicate that a crew was aboard. Circling twice to find a spot with adequate swinging room, I noticed that depths in the anchorage shoaled quickly to six feet. A half-submerged derelict near shore warned me to stay well out in the harbor, which I was only too happy to do.

  Gypsy Moon’s plow anchor dropped with a splash from her bow, and forty feet of chain and rode paid out slowly in the gentle evening breeze. I tested the holding ground with the engine under reverse power, watching the lights onshore to be certain I wasn’t dragging anchor, then throttled down to full engine stop.

  All was quiet. I felt the singular joy of having come a great distance under sail that at the outset had seemed unimaginable and impassable. I had made good on a promise to myself. I had done the thing I’d said I would do, and that meant much more to me than it likely meant to anyone who’d heard me say it. Mercifully, I had sailed this final leg under a benevolent star, such that my voyage was without storms, equipment failures, or errors of navigation or seamanship. It had all gone so remarkably well and quickly.

  In my mind’s eye, the docks at Annapolis were as clear as those I could see behind me. I recalled with a satisfied nostalgia the mixed feelings of dread, anticipation, and uncertainty I had felt when departing from that city’s harbor one thousand miles and eight months ago.

  From my view on deck, the now brightly lit towers of Atlantis were prominent against the night sky and gave an air of enchantment to the place where I had just arrived. This was no banana backwater, I thought. This was Neptune’s playground. I tidied up the sails that I had furled in haste before coming through the channel and then organized the general clutter below from the previous days spent living at a steep angle of heel. Before long, all was well aboard my tiny spaceship on Planet Nassau, and I was deeply asleep.

  Chapter 40

  Coming Ashore

  On my first morning in paradise, I slept in. I am one of the rare few who find the vee berth of the Gypsy Moon spacious and comfortable. I was content to wait for the Bahamian sunshine to spill through the hatch and wake me. It had been a welcome comfort, that first night at anchor, not to have to pop my head through the companionway every hour to look for the odd marauding supertanker that might be bearing down upon my little boat.

  Nassau Harbor on that Monday morning was bustling with activity. The mail boat was in, and everywhere little skiffs that tended fish shacks at Potter’s Cay were coming and going. Potter’s Cay has been for centuries and is today the place where native Bahamians come to buy and eat fresh fish from colorfully painted shanties and to send and receive goods carried among the outer islands aboard cargo boats.

  My first order of business was to secure a suitable berth where I could leave the boat before returning to the United States by air. Before arriving, I had chosen the Nassau Yacht Haven as a home for Gypsy Moon through the coming hurricane season. Once the anchor was up that Monday morning and the engine was purring, I returned to my easterly heading in the channel to find this marina.

  It was not as easy as all that. Like most places in the islands, the marina didn’t advertise itself with a flashy entrance as most American marinas do. It was tucked in behind rows of wooden docks and a fuel pier in the “working” end of Nassau Harbor. I radioed the dockmaster about my impending arrival, and he answered promptly. A fellow named Sidney appeared on the outer dock, caught my line, and showed great concern in selecting the best slip for a long-term stay. For the next thirty minutes, I put Sidney through some needless calisthenics to determine why the shore power at my new slip wasn’t working, only to discover that the boat’s circuit breaker had tripped back in Port Canaveral. Sidney responded with a weary smile that told me I wasn’t his first idiot that week and would probably not be his last.

  With the push of a button the circuits were electrified, and the Gypsy Moon again became a home of modern convenience, now in the exotic port of Nassau. With difficulty, I resisted the impulse to dress ship and call the embassy to invite the ambassador aboard for dinner.

  Walking onto the pier at the Nassau Yacht Haven wasn’t even one small step for mankind, but it was a giant leap for me. I had come here first by plane the year before, when I began considering a solo voyage, to look for a place to tuck the Gypsy Moon in for a long summer’s nap. It had taken navigating airport security, long flights and connections, baggage hassles, cabs, a hotel, and no small sum of money to reach the island back then. Looking down from thirty thousand feet, it seemed daunting that I should attempt to travel at four knots the same distance it was taking me several hours to span at jet speeds.

  To be honest, I never thought I would make it. Even when I had stood on this same pier all those months ago, assuring the dockmaster that I would be pleased to rent a slip, I felt very much the poser. I feared this voyage to Nassau was just a pipe dream of mine that was destined to fade away for some reason or another, as most dreams do.

  Now, standing in the hot Bahamian sun, I frankly did not recognize the confident fellow who nonchalantly stepped off my boat onto the streets of Nassau as though he made such voyages all the time. If I was fooling anyone by my bravado (not likely), I certainly wasn’t fooling myself. In my wildest imagination I might have been Charles Lindbergh in Paris, but in my heart I was just a kid who had taken his tricycle around the block for the first time and was astonished not to have met the bogeyman along the way.

  Concluding the particulars of my slip rental at the harbormaster’s office, I inquired about a bus to Christ Church. My flight was scheduled to leave that evening, and I didn’t have much time. Soon enough, I was aboard one of the many small buses that ferry passengers around the city for about $1.50. They are a mainstay of the local population and a great way to get to know ordinary Bahamians.

  Riding the bus on this and many other occasions, I saw young children traveling to and from school unfailingly greet the driver and those on board with a respectful “Good morning” or “Good afternoon.” They wore school uniforms that were clean, starched, and pressed. Their demeanor was cheerful and polite, and they spoke in complete, intelligible sentences to elders and strangers. No one was walking about in his underwear with his pants at his knees. No one was tattooed, pierced, or spiked. People made eye contact and smiled.

  I am not ignorant of the high rate of drug-related crimes in Nassau, and it is impossible not to notice the relative poverty that exists in places in the city. However, speaking only from my own experience, I saw very little antisocial behavior of any kind. In fact, over the nine months I spent there I regularly encountered the most scrupulous manners from people at every echelon of that society. While I wouldn’t wish for their economy, we may well need to discover their secrets of elementary education and apply them in the Uni
ted States.

  At last, I arrived on foot at the stately stone cathedral of Christ Church, which has stood at the corner of George and King Streets since the year 1670. It was the Tuesday after Easter, and the pastor was on vacation. Apparently that is the custom after the rigors of Holy Week and the many responsibilities of that high season to which the clergy must attend. Thus, after a thousand miles of ocean I was unable personally to deliver my tiny cargo to the assistant pastor to whom I had promised the gift in a letter written the previous fall.

  With my arrival rather late and unannounced as it was, I was certainly not perturbed at the reverend’s absence. I was pleased instead to present the book to the church secretary. Dimly recalling my letter of months before, she received my unscheduled visit with aplomb—even posing for a picture in the sanctuary while holding the book I had the honor to inscribe with a message of goodwill. This photo was duly presented to the pastor in Raleigh, and thus was the Queen Isabella of my journey given her due.

  Within a few hours of delivering my gift to the church, I was airborne again, retracing the slow voyage of the Gypsy Moon at speeds unknown to nature and the Great Age of Sail. While I was glad for the means that modern industry and the ingenuity of man had afforded me to return so quickly to hearth and home, I was gladder still to have made the outbound journey slowly, with time for reflection and understanding. One can travel a thousand miles in a matter of hours today and experience nothing. But the voyage I had just completed could not be measured in a span of distance or time. I had ventured inward to an uncharted place, found no dragons, and returned to tell the tale. Clouds of self-doubt were beginning to part in the brilliant Caribbean sky. Where the voyage was headed I did not know, but where it had taken me so far had already changed my life forever.

  LATITUDE 21.76.48 N

  LONGITUDE 72.17.45 W

  PROVIDENCIALES, TURKS AND

  CAICOS ISLANDS

  Chapter 41

  Sailors and Lunatics

  This voyage did not begin, back in August 2009, with the idea that it would change my life or anyone else’s. Seeing no better plan, I had cast my fate to the wind; but the wind being the fickle fellow he is, I expected nothing more from this gesture in the end than I would from a helium balloon that escapes a child’s hand. The thrill and wonder of its sudden rise belies the quiet ignominy of its inevitable, unseen descent.

  Yet what I came to see in my little vessel, as she completed each successive leg of the voyage, bloodied but unbowed, was a realization of what we were both stubbornly capable of achieving. I began to kindle a hope, and soon that hope became a plan, that I might actually keep going.

  Let there be no mistake: there is madness in any attempt at a voyage around the world in a small boat. I have known sailors all my life, and I am here to tell you that no one who seeks such an adventure is in his right mind, nor has anyone in his right mind ever completed the task. To the willing fool it offers scorching sun, sudden storms, poor food, scarce water, sleepless nights, and lonely days, among other petty discomforts and mortal dangers.

  Hollywood, the artist’s canvas, and the printed page have yet to capture the stark reality of the unforgiving sea. Ages before Darwin, the writer of Genesis revealed the ocean to be the origin of species with the words, “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life….” Yet for all its teeming vitality, the sea is a billowing desert to mortal man. He cannot live long in it or upon it. The faith of Peter could not traverse it, and not for nothing did the disciples wake Jesus to quell its rage. Its watery depths wait ever ready for the careless step or the failing grasp that in an instant can turn a sailor’s bright, sun-kissed afternoon into the twilight of his eternal repose.

  But sane or not, each man has only his own heart to guide him—not those of his wiser friends. If he has a deep yearning to go, he is not likely to find any greater peace in the resistance of that desire. The only thing left is for him to sail and to keep sailing until he either comes to his senses, comes all the way around to the place where he began, or sinks somewhere in between. By just such a course was the New World discovered by a small group of terrified Italians. By this same haphazard route must every man find his own destiny, using whatever vessel his life may offer. All of us, before the end, must find our way to some unseen shore, however distant, and there plant the flag that will stand as testament to the reason why we made the voyage.

  I am accustomed to being asked by strangers, well-meaning friends, and family whether I am afraid that I might encounter storms, fall overboard, be set upon by bloodthirsty pirates, or suffer some life-threatening illness in the middle of the ocean, far from aid. When they bring up these wild imaginings, I first reassure them that my days at sea are not nearly so cinematic. Yes, there is a risk in ocean voyaging. The boat has not been built nor the man born to sail her who can survive every storm. But dangerous storms come and go according to a predictable calendar in most parts of the world. What can be predicted can be avoided, and what cannot be avoided cannot be helped. A careful man and a well-found boat are both safe at sea, and to cross oceans is hardly to test the Lord’s mercy in the way some do by jumping out of airplanes, smoking cigarettes, or running with the bulls at Pamplona.

  It is wrongheaded, in my view, to imagine that life is lived on a linear plane somewhere between opposite poles of risk and reward. There is another dimension. Even the most sober, sane, and cautious life is temporary. What makes for a life well lived is not the length of our days but how we spend them. Never sail an ocean and you will surely never die at sea, but die you surely will. We cannot stack that deck or cheat the dealer. Yet we Americans in particular strive mightily to do so.

  Much has been written about our youth-oriented culture, and that phenomenon is easy enough to understand. Who wouldn’t prefer to be young and attractive and vital? But less is understood about the flip side of our preoccupation with youth, which is an irrational fear of death. We seem to regard death not as the inevitable end of all things, but as a kind of grand larceny of our basic human rights. Our uniquely American lust for justice will not be served until the root causes of this heinous crime, be they the failures of our medical or political or economic systems, are legislated and litigated into oblivion. This is the great folly of our time.

  Like the bloom of a rose, the beauty of all life is organic and, therefore, limited by time. Look around you. Most of the people you see will have left this earth in fifty short years, and the rest will be crowding the exits. Yet knowing this, when we hear the story of a man and woman who are lost at sea or killed by Somali pirates while living out their dream to sail the world, some of us privately congratulate ourselves for having the good sense to stay home. We see their deaths and shudder, but were we able to foresee our own deaths, would we feel so smug about our choices versus theirs? Isn’t it really our manner of living that matters most, not our manner of dying?

  It is an article of popular faith that if only we eat our vegetables, recycle, and exercise regularly, we can somehow arrange to meet Death on our own terms, peaceably in our sleep. Such nonsense. Death is not a peaceable fellow, no matter where he does his work. But Life is different. She is a fickle beauty to be relentlessly wined and dined, and no man stands a chance of winning her heart unless he is willing to risk losing her forever.

  Our irrational hope that Death will come for thee but not for me drives the nation’s politics, the world’s economy, and many of the choices of our daily lives. We plan for the future as though we will live forever, yet we worry incessantly about pensions, health insurance, and jobs. We protest that our leaders aren’t doing more to address the crisis of our dependence on these castles of sand. For the vast majority of us, however, this anxiety cannot be explained by any reasonable fear that we will ever be hungry or lack the basic comforts of life, many of which are beyond the imagination of millions of people in the Third World. For many of us life is rich to the point of gluttony, and that overconsumption m
ore than anything else is what threatens our longevity.

  So to my worried family and friends clinging tightly to this life, who see sailing upon the open ocean as a reckless risk of all that I should hold dear, I lovingly demur. The world offers no safe harbor—that is an illusion. The end comes for us all, and if we choose to remain in port, it will come for us there. I for one am in no hurry to rush out to meet it, but neither do I see the point of altering my course in fear of its arrival. It is life that I am at risk of meeting on the open sea—not Death, who already knows where to find me.

  Chapter 42

  A Pilgrim’s Tale

  I have a story to tell you of Nassau. In our shrinking world you hardly have need of my memoir to know something of that story already. Millions come here aboard cruise ships and airplanes, just as hordes now span in a matter of hours all the hard-won miles of Magellan’s passage to the Philippines. But what I have to report is something that might have escaped the harried traveler’s eye.

  In the months over the summer and fall of 2010, Susan and I came by air to the island for a week or two at a time to tend to the Gypsy Moon during her layover. Through the wonders of the Internet, I was able to continue my work there as easily as if I had been sitting in my office chair. And when I was not working, I had the privilege of waking up aboard a small boat, just a few feet from the waterline in the harbor, with absolutely nothing to do. I held this important agenda in common with assorted geckos, crabs, and the odd damselfish. With my fair complexion and blue eyes I would never be mistaken for a native, but I had the privilege of lollygagging around town in a way that only a native could afford.