Once Upon a Gypsy Moon: An Improbable Voyage and One Man's Yearning for Redemption
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I have carried an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon aboard the several oceangoing boats I have owned since 1987. In twenty-four years, I had never turned one on. I did that day.
If my confidence was warranted, the EPIRB would send a signal identifying my vessel and giving the coordinates of my position to a satellite monitored by a search and rescue center somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard, where the coast guard would with all deliberate speed determine whether my signal, among the dozens of false alarms and prank signals they receive every day, was genuine. The brilliant strobe light of the EPIRB confirmed its operation, and in the darkness of the cabin it appeared for a moment that an ambulance had arrived on the scene. Climbing the companionway steps only part of the way in order to lean into the cockpit, I used the enormous bag containing my torn jib to wedge the device in place, upright, where the antenna could transmit a clear signal into the night sky.
For a few minutes, I simply waited in the darkness for help. When I had last checked my position, I had been more than seventy miles from land and thus well out of VHF radio range. I also hadn’t seen another ship for two days, so I hardly thought there was much point in a radio call. All the same, in a nod to proper seamanlike procedure, I decided to make a Pan Pan call just to be sure. “Pan Pan” is the radio code one step below “Mayday” in degree of urgency and is used to request assistance in moments of dangerous but non-life-threatening distress.
“Pan Pan, Pan Pan, Pan Pan. This is the sailing vessel Gypsy Moon,” I began my broadcast. I told the unseen listener, believing all the while that I was talking only to myself, about the loss of my jib halyard, the knockdown that had damaged my engine, and my resulting inability to make way in any direction but downwind. Only Jamaica and South America lay in my direct path, some three hundred and six hundred miles away, respectively.
To my surprise—no, my astonishment—the captain of a British-flagged freighter, the Paramount Helsinki, answered my call and, in a thick Eastern European accent, stated that he had already begun heading for my position. He was eight miles away. Sticking my head out into the cockpit, I surveyed the night horizon and saw nothing—not even a light. When he asked what assistance I needed, I said I wanted a tow to a repair port. There was a long silence. The captain came back on the radio to say, with an almost quaint politeness that I scarcely deserved, that he was a “beeg freighter” and could not effect a tow. He could rescue me, not my boat.
About this time, a young American voice from a vessel identifying itself only as US Warship 913 hailed me and asked for the coordinates of my position. He, too, could offer only a rescue, not a tow to a repair port. After some initial particulars, he pointedly asked whether I would agree to abandon ship. His question dumbfounded me. I had never heard of abandoning a ship unless it was sinking or on fire. But the officer’s request helped me to understand the hard reality of my situation.
I was six hundred miles from American waters, floating in the ocean on a mortally wounded boat between two Third World countries, neither of which presented any realistic options for dockage or repairs. This was not a Florida towboat operator calling me on a Sunday afternoon to arrange for a trip back to a marina in Biscayne Bay. This was big-boy trouble I had gotten myself into. I made sure the radio was off while I vomited ferociously again.
It was time to take stock of my position. My thirty-year-old boat (thirty-three, to be exact), which leaked like a sieve from every port light and deck fitting and on a good day in a better economy might be worth $10,000, was likely damaged beyond her value. Even if she could be repaired, there was no competent repair facility within three hundred miles of my position. The boat was not only uninsured but uninsurable, due to her age and condition and the remote waters in which she was sailing. I was in no mood and no shape to float three hundred miles to Jamaica, where I planned to do God-knew-what, on a boat with (soon-to-be) dead batteries, no lights, no motor, and only one working sail. When I considered the additional cost of storing, repairing, and retrieving the boat intact from her current predicament, not to mention how smoothly a Jamaican engine replacement project would likely go, the dollar signs whirred in my imagination like a financial horror movie.
Both ships in the area were monitoring my radio broadcasts. I called them back to advise that I would agree to “give up the ship.” Those words have special nautical significance going back to Captain James Lawrence, who first uttered them aboard the US frigate Chesapeake in 1813, preceded by the word “don’t.” History tells us that even Captain Lawrence had to give up his ship, and, alas, so did I, though I would be a liar if I suggested that I did so unwillingly at the time.
The Paramount Helsinki was headed to the island of St. Lucia, in the far eastern Caribbean, and would not make port for another two days. US Warship 913 planned to make port by the next day at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where I could board a flight to Miami. I opted to go with the Yanks.
The Paramount Helsinki continued to steam toward my position and arrived there first, even though it would not be called upon to perform the rescue. Demonstrating the courtesy, charity, and brotherly concern that are the rule among seamen everywhere on the open ocean, the Helsinki stood by my position until the rescue detail reported that it was in the vicinity, and only then did it slowly move on. I expressed my sincere thanks to the captain as I watched the big freighter steam away into the night, imagining the wonderful experience I might have had among his crew during the two-day voyage to St. Lucia.
The officer on US Warship 913 gently warned me not to be alarmed when the rescue detail suddenly appeared out of nowhere in a black boat, wearing the blacked-out gear they used for the element of surprise during hostile nighttime operations. When the rescue team finally arrived, formally dressed for the occasion, the seas were way up. While still several yards away, the coxswain shouted a question to me with surprising gravity: “Sir, are you prepared to give up the ship?”
There was that question again. I hesitated—why, I don’t know—before saying yes, albeit with a measure of sadness and regret that had not fully registered with me until that moment. Surely there were dozens of things I could have done and should have done to avoid that ultimatum. One careless mistake had compounded another to bring me to this place. “My kingdom for a jib halyard,” I thought. Perhaps if it had remained my plan, as it had been for so long, to take the Gypsy Moon around the world and far away from everything that I now held dear, I would have been the man to do the things and avoid the mistakes that had brought me to this current pitiable circumstance. But all that was done, then. It was time to go.
Earlier, my rescuers had informed me that they planned to rig the Gypsy Moon with multiple strobe lights and radar reflectors and to spray-paint both sides of the hull with USCG OK in giant orange letters, to ward off false reports of distress by other boats. However, in view of the sea state when the rescue detail arrived, these plans were scrubbed. I was handed only a small orange life jacket with a nine-hour strobe light to hang on the stern rail. Then it was time to board the rescue boat, which proved to be no easy task.
I found myself perched on the port rub rail, hanging on to the lifelines and the wildly swinging boom, trying to time the sequence of the waves that were raising both boats like opposite ends of a seesaw. The Gypsy Moon was still rolling badly.
I have great admiration for the three young men and one young woman on the small-boat rescue detail who kept at it until they finally pulled me aboard with what little luggage I could salvage. I learned that US Warship 913 is actually the US Coast Guard cutter Mohawk. The name is painted plainly on the hull but is concealed in radio broadcasts for security purposes. I was brought alongside, and the rescue boat with all of us aboard was hoisted up the side, again with great difficulty because of the rolling of the 278-foot cutter in the rough seas. The Gypsy Moon was set adrift through the Windward Passage, where she will someday hit South America if she isn’t destroyed for target practice by the coast guard beforehand. When
I looked back at her from the rescue boat for the last time to say good-bye that night, I was struck by the fine figure she cut upon the open ocean, surprisingly beautiful and floating high and proud, as she will always be in my memory.
Once aboard the Mohawk, I was greeted by the captain and taken straight to the corpsman for an examination. He located the lump on the back of my head, but he seemed satisfied that I had never lost consciousness and felt entirely fine. I was given a meal made to order by the mess crew, a steady stream of conversation with some of the finest young people you would ever want to meet, Cadillac quarters to share with a senior chief petty officer, and a hot shower. My ensuing daylong cruise to Guantánamo, during which I spent most of my time on the bridge chatting up the junior officers and staff, was a seminar on the wonderful job the men and women of the coast guard are doing to protect the people of the United States. I hereby take back my disparaging remarks about the coast guard, recorded earlier in this book, about the dismasting of my brother’s sailboat in 1976. If anything, this latest incident demonstrates nothing so well as the fact that I have been a burden and a nuisance to the coast guard my entire life. Be that as it may, I felt a surge of patriotism and pride in seeing these young people in action, and my hat goes off to them.
The next day, one of the crew of the Mohawk told me that when looking down from the bridge at the rescue operation, he’d been able to see the keel of my boat come out of the water as each wave rolled her onto her side. He estimated that the seas were running eight to ten feet at regular intervals, with some higher swells. “I’ve got to give you some props,” he said, “for being so calm on the radio. Had it been me out there on that boat all alone with no engine in this weather, I would have been freaking out.”
The compliment was undeserved. The truth be told, I was never in any real danger on the Gypsy Moon that night or in all the years I sailed aboard her. In our last hours together, in the Windward Passage, she took a sucker punch in the back from a rogue wave and came up fighting. She defended me to the end, and in the end, I was the one who walked away from the fight. It was bittersweet solace to hear the young man’s words.
So there you have it. I’m a landlubber now, looking for a bridge club and a gardening group to join. (If you have read this far in the book, you will recognize that last remark for the heinous lie that it is. At this very hour, I am carrying on a robust correspondence with a shipyard in Wareham, Massachusetts, concerning the construction of a twelve-foot gaff-rigged wooden catboat that I intend to name Honor Bright. She will not cross oceans, but she will have a tale to tell, mark my words.)
The Gypsy Moon may still be on the ocean somewhere today, and could yet cruise the world. With Godspeed, perhaps she’ll even round Cape Horn of her own accord. I wouldn’t put it past her, but I must now put that past myself. For a man to know his own heart is a great gift, and though it took me two thousand miles and two years to come to this knowledge, I now realize that my treasure is closer to home, with a woman I love and not on a lonely ocean by myself, pursuing a delusion that I once mistook for a dream.
I do not have the first regret to have made the voyage, the loss of the Gypsy Moon notwithstanding. Had I not decided to sail from Annapolis on what I and everyone else at the time thought would surely be a boondoggle, and were it not for God’s silence and my intuition, that night on the porch in Beaufort, that I should set sail for Nassau, I would be poorer in spirit, less wise, and less well loved than I am today. I had a great ride on a great boat, and without her I never would have met the love of my life. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Contents
Title Page
Welcome
Preface
LATITUDE 38.97.86 N LONGITUDE 76.47.61 W ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
Chapter 1: To Sail
Chapter 2: A Voyage Begins
Chapter 3: Weather Signs
Chapter 4: A Voyage Lost
Chapter 5: Preparations for Sea
Chapter 6: A Time to Go
Chapter 7: Whistling in the Graveyard
Chapter 8: Landfall Beaufort
LATITUDE 34.72.64 NLONGITUDE 76.47.61 WBEAUFORT, NORTH CAROLINA
Chapter 9: A Homecoming
Chapter 10: An Unlikely Adventurer
Chapter 11: What Dean Martin Knew
Chapter 12: A Moment of Indecision
Chapter 13: A Wanderer’s Vigil
Chapter 14: A Voice in the Darkness
Chapter 15: Thanksgiving
LATITUDE 32.77.90 NLONGITUDE 79.95.15 WCHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
Chapter 16: A Cold Rain
Chapter 17: A Simple Vessel
Chapter 18: A Following Sea
Chapter 19: A Yearning
Chapter 20: Africa Beckons
Chapter 21: A Harbor Homecoming
Chapter 22: The Siren’s Song
Chapter 23: The Promised Land
Chapter 24: The Pearl of Great Price
LATITUDE 28.40.88 NLONGITUDE 80.62.73 WPORT CANAVERAL, FLORIDA
Chapter 25: The Secret
Chapter 26: The Story
Chapter 27: Gathering Stones
Chapter 28: Casting Away
Chapter 29: The Passage
Chapter 30: On Right Marriage
Chapter 31: A Mystery Unfolds
Chapter 32: An Immodest Proposal
LATITUDE 28.40.88 NLONGITUDE 80.62.73 WPORT CANAVERAL, FLORIDA
Chapter 33: A Boy’s Will
Chapter 34: A Moment of Truth
Chapter 35: A Plan in Earnest
Chapter 36: To Sea at Last
Chapter 37: The Crossing
Chapter 38: Atlantis Rising
Chapter 39: Landfall Nassau
Chapter 40: Coming Ashore
LATITUDE 21.76.48 NLONGITUDE 72.17.45 WPROVIDENCIALES, TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS
Chapter 41: Sailors and Lunatics
Chapter 42: A Pilgrim’s Tale
Chapter 43: Golden Calves
Chapter 44: What the Nomad Knows
Chapter 45: Journey of the Magi
Chapter 46: The Stranger
Chapter 47: The Gift
Chapter 48: Maiden Voyage
Chapter 49: The Perfect Mahimahi
LATITUDE 19.82.84 NLONGITUDE 70.73.11 WCOFRESI, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Chapter 50: The Voyage to Come
LATITUDE 19.55.33 NLONGITUDE 75.8.54.60 WGUANTÁNAMO BAY, CUBA
The Loss of the Gypsy Moon
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Michael C. Hurley
Cartographer credit: Jeffrey L. Ward
Michael C. Hurley is represented by D.C. Jacobson & Associates LLC, an Author Management Company.
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ISBN: 978-1-4555-2934-6