Running Against the Tide

by Captain Lee

  Angelo didn’t give orders, he made requests. And his latest request was one that would be impossible to refuse.

  “My father-in-law just had back surgery, and is recovering in Baltimore, at Johns Hopkins. We chose the hospital because the surgical staff was so talented, but he doesn’t know anybody in Baltimore. Would you consider taking the boat to Baltimore so he could share Christmas and New Year’s with his family?”

  I always wanted to be as helpful as possible to Angelo, but both he and I knew this wasn’t the easiest request. It was November, and the weather was already worsening, getting colder and stormier. The Atlantic coast in December and January is no cakewalk. The temperatures would be below freezing, the waves would be big and angry, and there was a good chance of getting hit by a storm.

  A good captain can deal with weather. There are two kinds of trouble you can get into: bad luck and getting caught. There are storms in the Mediterranean called mistrals that just hit you out of nowhere. These things will come whipping through the Med, totally unpredictable. The most you’ll get is a two-hour warning before you get hammered by 70-knot winds and 15-foot seas, and that’s some bad luck for the captain.

  Bad luck is just what it sounds like—you do everything you can to be safe, but you still get smashed by a rogue wave or a nuclear sub surfacing under you out of the blue. Getting caught is different. Getting caught is when you know the situation is going to be rough, and you still go out in it, thinking that your varsity seamanship will overcome any obstacle. One is an issue of unknowns; the other is an issue of stupidity. There’s a big difference between the two, and the man who can’t recognize that will get people killed.

  That’s what happened to the Andrea Gail, the fishing boat whose destruction was recounted in Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm. That was a captain who took his boat out when everyone else was laying in the harbor, even though he knew it was hurricane season. Taking a boat out in winter in the middle of the North Atlantic, you just know you’re going to get your ass kicked. The storm came, the boat got caught, and six men died when they didn’t have to.

  The same tragedy visited the El Faro. The captain of that freighter left Jacksonville in September 2015 knowing that there was a tropical storm close to where he was plotting his course. Meteorologists at the National Hurricane Center forecasted that the tropical storm would become a hurricane. That’s exactly what happened, as Hurricane Joaquin increased in strength. The likelihood of encountering the storm seemed so high that one of the deck officers wrote an email bemoaning how “there is a hurricane out here and we are heading straight into it.” The captain seemed to think it was worth the risk, and he pushed on. He had plenty of time to turn around, more than ample time to select a different route. But that’s not the decision he made. He did not have to go into that storm, but he plunged in anyway. He got caught. As a result, thirty-three men died on the El Faro.

  Being a captain is no joke. People’s lives depend on you being able to do your job. Families depend on your intelligence and your experience to bring their loved ones home safe. A skilled captain isn’t the one who “boldly” tackles storms like they’re one of the labors of Hercules. A good skipper isn’t the one who never says no to a job. A good captain is the guy who can accomplish his mission and keep everyone alive. You don’t get extra points for degree of difficulty.

  That said, a good captain should be able to navigate around difficult conditions given enough time to plan. We have access to the technology that allows us to get a pretty accurate idea of what weather conditions will look like ten days out. So, when Angelo came to me, he gave me enough time, maybe seven weeks, to make a plan for a safe travel window.

  Not every owner is so wise.

  Some guys love the rush of flying by the seat of their pants or shooting from the hip. They like springing things on their employees at the last minute because they think giving people lots of warning is coddling them. I knew a captain in Costa Rica whose owner had a real hard-on to see the Super Bowl, so he told his captain he had to go to the Atlantis Resort in time to make the game. The Super Bowl is in January, and traveling from the Caribbean to the Bahamas in the middle of winter is a real dicey proposition. The captain said he wouldn’t recommend it, but the owner vetoed him, demanded he move the boat, said, “Just get it done. You can take off and leave or I’ll have a new captain here in the morning who can take your place.” So, he agreed. He got it done, all right.

  They were looking at 12- to 15-foot seas, lousy conditions. There’s a bell on the bow of a boat, with a clapper that just swings free. Nobody pulls a rope to make it ring—that bell only rings when the waves move the ship enough to roll the boat to the point where the clapper swings and strikes it on its own. When you hear that bell ring, you know you’re in trouble. The bell was ringing on that voyage. The captain ran right into a storm that smashed up a new $75,000 tender, lost a Jet Ski, and rang up about 250K in damages to the boat. And no insurance company is going to pay a claim to a guy who ran his boat into a hurricane when every weather report told him not to just because he didn’t want to miss the big game.

  But even the captain would admit that what he did was stupid. Luckily, Angelo understood how the world and the ocean worked. He gave me enough time to plot a course and find a safe travel window. He also gave me a perfect reason to make the trip, something a lot more convincing than just screaming, “Get it done.”

  Angelo’s father-in-law had bought the vessel we were going to be sailing, hoping that he and his wife would be able to use it as a retirement boat. Unfortunately, his wife had died before they set sail on their first trip, and Angelo’s father-in-law lost all interest in the boat. When he injured his back, it made it impossible for him to travel comfortably, so we decided to bring the mountain to Moses. We would bring his kids and grandkids on the boat and make a special holiday reunion.

  In order to make this happen, Angelo would do anything. He appreciated that it wasn’t going to be an easy sail for me or my crew.

  “Captain Lee, it will be cold, so I want you to buy foul-weather gear for all the crew. The best. Anything you need, you come to me.”

  Angelo really pulled out all the stops. One of our crew, an engineer, didn’t want to be separated from his wife during the holidays, but she couldn’t afford to take off work to accompany him on the trip. So, Angelo offered to hire her on to our boat for the entire trip, so they could be together and we wouldn’t have to find a replacement engineer.

  He was extremely generous. So much so that he’d been horribly abused by one of his previous captains. That guy just saw Angelo as a big, fat paycheck. He was already getting paid a very nice salary, but that wasn’t enough for the guy. He would find ways of screwing over Angelo every chance he got.

  One of his cons was the car scam. This guy had convinced Angelo that he would need a company car to run errands once every few weeks. Angelo agreed, offering him a travel budget of $1,000 a month for rental cars. So, this bastard bought himself a beater Camry for $2,000, and then would rent it to himself and bill Angelo $1,000 a month to drive his own car. A good way to add another $10,000 to your annual salary. And it didn’t stop there.

  At one point, the boat needed to get some more substantial work done, so Angelo told the captain to hire some day laborers to do the job. It would take a couple weeks to complete, but nothing too technically demanding. So, what did this guy do? He hired the workers but told them that he’d offer them affordable rates if they just slept on the boat, which he charged them for. He then docked their pay for the lodging, which he paid to himself. So, he ended up turning Angelo’s boat into a hotel, screwing both the workers and his boss.

  I don’t understand why he needed such a complicated scam, since the ex-captain also resorted to straight-up robbery. After I’d come on, Angelo would call, asking if I needed more money in the safe for petty cash.

  “Nope, I’m fine, Angelo,” I said.

  “Are you sure, Captain Lee? It’s no trouble.”


  “No, we’re doing fine with what we have. Thanks.”

  We didn’t need a ton of cash. We weren’t traveling. We’d resupply food and drink as demand required it, but it wasn’t more than a couple thousand a month. After three months, Angelo called me, extremely anxious.

  “Captain Lee, are you certain that you’re not running out of cash?”

  “Yeah, certain, Angelo. Why?”

  “Well, the last captain just needed a lot more, like fifteen thousand dollars a month.”

  Ah—that was the problem. The captain was asking for “operating expenses” that went right into his pocket. Another $180,000 a year as part of his benefits package.

  “Must have been for a leak, but that leak is fixed now,” I said.

  I wouldn’t take advantage of Angelo, never. And he always looked after his own people like they were family. Before we set sail for Baltimore, he made it clear that he wanted us to be as safe as possible.

  “Please, Captain Lee, stop every night. Take your time. Don’t push too hard.”

  We did take our time, which in those conditions was mandatory. Everyone watching me leave the Port Everglades and hang a left to go north instead of south thought I was batshit crazy. But I wasn’t crazy enough to rush. We actually took more time than we should have, but it wasn’t because we were pacing ourselves.

  At one point, we ran into a real spot of trouble. Going from where we were, in Florida, to Baltimore, would normally take about three days. We had the Gulf Stream current on our side, which goes south to north. We expected that to give us a 4- to 5-knot boost. But once we reached Cape Hatteras, the engines just died.

  Problem.

  We were bobbing like a cork in a washing machine, running into 6- to 9-foot waves. Shit’s flying all over the place with no propulsion, no control. We bled all the injectors, but I was just dumbfounded. What the hell had killed the engines? The engineer had no idea. Something mechanical? Electrical? Something with the hydraulics? So far, we’d found nada. Not confident we’d be able to solve the problem before getting knocked around enough to break something even more important, I called the tugboats to come help us. We were 60 miles off shore in a shit sandwich—I wasn’t too proud to ask for help. I was pissed off and covered in diesel fuel from poking around the engine room, so I went to my quarters to clean up and cool off. With no other great ideas, I hit the showers.

  Sometimes, when you can’t figure things out, it doesn’t hurt to change your perspective.

  I was standing in the shower, my leg braced against the bulkhead so that I didn’t get flung around from the waves hitting us. My mind, just wandering on its own, started thinking of another vehicle that just died. It was in the movie Beverly Hills Cop, when Eddie Murphy disabled an unmarked police car by sticking a banana in the tailpipe. Pretty funny. The exhaust had nowhere to go, and eventually, it killed the engine.

  Wait a minute—did we put a banana in our own tailpipe?

  I ran out of the shower, naked as a jaybird, soap everywhere, and got on the horn to the engineer.

  “Did you close the underwater exhausts?” I asked him.

  “I thought I did,” he said.

  When you ask someone a yes/no question, and they respond, “I think so,” they are really saying, “No, but don’t quote me on it.” That wasn’t good enough, not for me.

  “You get your ass to the engine and make sure they’re closed,” I told him.

  Sure enough, that was the problem. We’d left open our underwater exhausts. With too much back pressure, we’d suffocated the engine. We switched to the side exhausts and the engines came roaring back to life.

  Still, I didn’t want to take any chances. I told the tugs to keep on coming just in case there was more to the problem than the exhausts, or in case we’d sustained more damage than I realized. And it’s a good thing I did, too. Half a mile from shore, we got enveloped with fog thicker than cold oatmeal. Just nothing for visibility. This was a real problem when entering an incredibly narrow inlet with maybe 15 feet of clearance on each side. It took three tugs to get us the last 10 miles to the dock, one at the stern, one at the bow, and one running as a scout with all its lights on just so we could have something to follow.

  We stayed there docked overnight, got everything cleaned up, and then headed to Baltimore. It was a pretty uneventful trip the rest of the way, not to say it was a pleasure cruise. The biggest shock was the weather.

  That dock in Baltimore Harbor was cold. As soon as water would hit the boat, it would freeze solid. There was soot all over because of the diesels, to the point where it looked like we’d been sitting on top of a smokestack for a year, but we weren’t going to be washing that off anytime soon, because to do so would encase us in a block of ice. The lines mooring us to the dock quickly sprouted six-inch icicles. Even though it was cold, it was a relief to get to where we’d wanted to go.

  Angelo’s father-in-law loved the trip. He was able to see his family and enjoy the boat for basically the first time. It also rescued him from the hospital. He still needed twenty-four-hour professional care while he was recovering from his back surgery, but Angelo had that figured out, too. He built a cabin for his father-in-law equipped with every device he’d need, as well as a berth for a nurse he hired to look after the man 24/7.

  Once we finished, Angelo gave everyone two weeks’ bonus pay for making the trip, which was a nice Christmas gift indeed. Before he left on his private jet, he insisted that I stop every night on the way back and that I take the crew out for every dinner.

  “Please take them to a nice restaurant. I do not want the chef to have to cook for anything. I don’t care how long it takes to get back. Take a week, take two weeks, I don’t care. Take it nice and slow, take it easy, and make sure everybody rests up.”

  He really appreciated what we contributed, and he made us feel valued as part of the team.

  If Angelo ever called and said he needed a captain, I’d be there in a heartbeat.

  It cost about the same amount of money to buy the Sea Hag III as it did to buy Angelo’s boat, but there was an ocean of difference between the two men who made those purchases. Just because you have a big bankroll doesn’t mean that you’re a genius. Just because you’ve got the cash to hire people doesn’t make you a leader. Perhaps most important, having a lot of money doesn’t automatically make you happy. The Monarchs had all the money in the world, but they weren’t happy. Their family spent time together, but they seemed to resent every second of it. They were insecure, petty, undisciplined, superficial, and could only seem to take pleasure in cruelly exercising their power over others. Angelo was happy in great part because he was respected, and that’s because he gave respect to others. He was happy because he loved his family, and they loved him in return. They didn’t love him because he was rich. They loved him because he’d spent the time to raise them, he prized his time with them, and he showed great strength of character. He had worked hard to develop that character in his children and grandchildren.

  I’ve worked for bad owners and good ones, and while it was never a joy to work for the bad ones, it sure allowed me to appreciate more fully how good I had it when working with people with class. Nothing comes easy in this world. If you want to be a good captain and cross stormy seas in winter, you need to take your time. Plan with exacting precision and surround yourself with good people. If you want to be a good man, do the same.

  Chapter 11

  Don’t Embarrass Yourself or the Boat

  I’d been working in the business for twenty-five years when I got an interesting call. The head of our charter management company wanted to tell me about a new opportunity.

  At the time, I was working as the captain of a 50-meter Benetti, the Cuor di Leone. The owner actually had two boats, the Benetti and a 120-footer. Not typical, but the guy had money that kept his other money from getting lonely. We were working the charter show in Miami, and there was a new charter client potentially interested.

 
“Captain Lee, we’ve got some TV people interested in chartering the boat,” said our agent at Charter Management.

  “That right?” I said.

  “Yep. The Bravo network is planning on doing a show about yachting. You ever hear about that?”

  “Yeah, I think I heard something through the grapevine.” A few months before, those of us in the yachting world had heard that a TV network was interested in casting a yachting show. They needed a captain, deckhands, stews, the whole works. They were asking people to submit applications, headshots, video screen tests, and that kind of thing, if they were interested in being a TV star.

  My response, at the time, was no thanks. I already had a job. And why would anyone want my ugly mug on TV? I’d spent a lifetime at sea. My face had weathered things like sunlight and salt air. I didn’t look like I spent half of every day in a spa, or half of every dollar for a plastic surgeon. My dream wasn’t to be famous. My dream had always been to be a captain—to spend my life commanding vessels, going from one beautiful island to the next, and have a few umbrella drinks along the way. The only stars I was interested in were the kind I could navigate by 100 miles from the nearest city, when the clouds blew away and it was like looking into infinity.

  Besides, I didn’t have a clue how to make a video screen test, and I wasn’t looking to expand that particular horizon.

  “Well,” the agent said, “it looks like they’ve cast their show, and now they need a boat to film it on. They’re looking at a six-week charter down in St. Martin and St. Barts. Think you could give them a ride?”