Once Upon a Gypsy Moon

by Michael Hurley

  According to the NOAA, I now had one day to make it to my intended turning point at West Palm Beach before the wind shifted to the north and closed the door to any attempt to cross the Gulf Stream. I suddenly had the sensation of déjà vu. This far south, the Gulf Stream runs only a few miles offshore. To avoid it, I was forced to tack back and forth with regularity in the narrow alley that runs between the west wall of the stream on one side and the beaches on the other. While the wind vane could steer the boat without my aid, tacking and resetting the vane after each turn was a hands-on job.

  By nightfall on Christmas Eve, I was exhausted from working the helm, to say nothing of how Santa and his reindeer must have felt in that headwind. I was increasingly in need of sleep, but I had less than an hour of time on each tack before I would need to come back out on deck and tack again to avoid being carried off in the Gulf Stream to the east or crashing into the lobby of some beachfront hotel to the west.

  Up at the bow, the Gypsy Moon continued her fistfight with the waves as one steep rolling punch after another slammed into the hull, slowing our speed made good (the distance over the bottom) to less than three knots. By midnight on Christmas morning, the wind speed was gusting to twenty-six knots and the boat had reached an effective stalemate in her contest with the sea: tall waves kept coming north, and we weren’t moving any farther south.

  A change in plans was needed. I fell off the wind and ran five miles out to sea in an effort to get some speed going under the hull before tacking back toward the coast on a wider broad reach. This approach meant I was sailing a less due-southerly angle in exchange for greater boat speed that I hoped would let me make more southward progress against the waves. With the boat on a comfortable heading, I set the egg timer alarm and nodded off in my bunk down below.

  Every sailor at some point, if not often, realizes that he has benefitted from the vigilance of an unseen crew. In his book about becoming the first man to sail alone around the world in 1898, Joshua Slocum shared the credit with the long-dead pilot of Christopher Columbus’s ship the Pinta, whose ghost Slocum matter-of-factly claimed he saw steer his sloop whenever he was most in need of aid.

  I saw no ghost of Christmas past or present that night off the coast of Florida, but I was mighty glad for whatever (or whoever) awakened me well ahead of my alarm. Coming out on deck early, I was startled to see that the depth sounder read only twenty feet instead of sixty. Judging from the glare of the lights onshore and the sound of breaking waves, the beach could not have been far from my bow. On a broad reach in the rising wind, the boat had made much better speed than I had expected. She was racing toward shore, and with a few more minutes of sleep, I would have parked her neatly in some child’s sand castle.

  With hands shaking and heart pounding, I quickly spun the wheel around to put the helm on an easterly heading. The rowdy wind sent the boom and mainsail crashing to leeward. I had nearly made a mistake that would have cost me the Gypsy Moon and put an end to my dreams for good. “What would Susan have thought of such a blunder?” I wondered.

  I took a step back and tried to look objectively at my situation. I was not far enough south yet to attempt a Gulf Stream crossing. Once I entered it, the stream would carry me well north of my position, and at this latitude, wherever I came out on the other side I would miss the Bahama Banks entirely. I needed to make another 125 miles of southing before I could turn, but at the present speed that would take three days. In less than one day the wind was forecast to turn to the north and increase to thirty knots, where it was supposed to remain for a week. In those winds, the Gulf Stream would be an impassable war zone. The mantra I knew best was that no crossing could be attempted in a north wind.

  Exhausted again, I hove to the boat on an offshore heading and waited till the dawn of Christmas Day. I was just below the hook of Cape Canaveral, and glancing at the chart book, I saw that there was a full-service marina nearby.

  You know for sure that you’re all grown up when you’re motoring alone into a deserted marina on Christmas morning. I had made the choice to be there, it was true, and I would have been just as alone back in my apartment in Raleigh, but there is never a better opportunity to feel sorry for oneself than to be the only one in a shipyard on Christmas. Or so I thought.

  I had forgotten that whenever I am around boats and seawater, there will always be someone, somewhere, who suffers my addiction. In this case, the fellow was easy to spot in an ancient wooden Colin Archer sloop that was a throwback to the days of Joshua Slocum I had only recently called to mind. He was sailing for Maine with a rather interesting and odd sort of crew (they are always interesting and odd), but I could not have wished for a nicer bunch to greet me on Christmas morning.

  The only unlocked public bathrooms with hot showers at the marina were coin operated, and there was no coin changer within walking distance—not that it would have mattered, as I had nothing less than a ten-dollar bill to change. One of the crew on the Colin Archer took pity on me. Extending an arm tattooed over its entire length, he opened his hand to empty a stack of quarters into mine and then said: “As they say in the Middle East, go with God.”

  It was a merciful gift. God and I went straightaway, as directed, and got a wonderfully hot shower.

  The next morning, the red and green Christmas lights came on early in the marina store, and I made arrangements for dockage for the Gypsy Moon until I could return. After spending five days at sea since leaving Charleston, it seemed impossible that I would be stopped again, short of my destination, but there I was.

  The marina hands directed me from the fuel dock where I had tied off the day before to a slip on one of the interior piers. As I secured the Gypsy Moon in her temporary home, I noticed that the boat in the slip next to her seemed to be a somewhat more permanent fixture. Looking closely, I saw that this little boat, a day sailor no more than seventeen feet long, with only kneeling headroom, was the homestead of a middle-aged Latina who lived alone. Her grandchildren had come to visit her on the day after Christmas.

  When those of us who have lived lives of relative abundance and ease see such scenes, we are often moved. On that morning after Christmas, I was moved not by a sense of anyone’s hardship or despair but by the genuine contentedness of this woman to be living in that place, in what most of us would regard as difficult circumstances, without any evidence of difficulty.

  I had a shipful of stores that I was not likely to need anytime soon. One by one, I lifted plastic bags filled with cans of food over the side of the woman’s boat until it could hold no more. She spoke no English. In broken Spanish, I established that she liked vino rojo and gave her the few bottles I had left to wash down the ravioli. I explained the troubles of wind and weather that had brought me to that place. She was gracious in acknowledging her need, and I was honored to be able to give someone an unexpected gift in person that Christmas.

  Chapter 32

  An Immodest Proposal

  “It feels strange to be writing this…to you on the tray table of an airplane,” my next letter to Susan began, on December 26, 2009. “I never expected to be where I am today—flying home on the wind to see you, instead of sailing on the wind farther from you. But then, life is like that. Things happen—beautiful things—when we least expect them…I didn’t expect the Gypsy Moon to be stopped in her tracks by a Christmas Eve storm, but neither did I expect to be stopped and stunned by a ‘date’ I had in Charleston one week ago.”

  By then, I think we both knew that what had occurred the week before was much more than a date. It was an opened door, and I was now hurrying back to the welcome that waited for me there. I had something to say to Susan. I wanted to tell her that my prayers had been answered, in hopes that her answer would be the same, but I needed to find the words. A letter would help me begin, and so I kept writing:

  “I think many times we pray with little faith that God will actually grant us exactly what it is we seek, if anything at all. This sense of doubt can be so strong that wh
en prayers are answered, and the very blessing that we hoped for arrives at our door, we assume it must have come to the wrong address.”

  I knew when I stepped off the airplane in Charleston and saw a woman waiting there, her smile beaming down the Jetway at me, that I had come to the right address and that the Gypsy Moon had known her proper heading through that Christmas gale far better than her captain.

  Nassau would have to wait, again. It was well that I had turned back, as a strong north wind was now blowing and would continue to blow into mid-January. Had I somehow made it all the way to Nassau, I would have missed Susan’s birthday—her fifty-first—the day after Christmas. As it was, the only gifts I had to give her that day were my hand and heart, but she took them without hesitation and refused ever to give them back. Her answer, thanks be to God, was yes, and with that acceptance she banished every doubt I’d ever had about the power of Providence to see us through.

  LATITUDE 28.40.88 N

  LONGITUDE 80.62.73 W

  PORT CANAVERAL, FLORIDA

  Chapter 33

  A Boy’s Will

  Four months would pass after my return to Raleigh from Port Canaveral in late December 2009 before I would see the Gypsy Moon again. In that brief interval, events in my life streaked past like leaves in a gale.

  I had arrived back in Raleigh engaged to be married to a woman whom I had not known when I left. Two months later, I found a little yellow house that would become our new home on a leafy street in the suburbs and raided the remnants of my retirement savings for a down payment. In the meantime, Susan sold most of what she owned, ended a twenty-year career with the City of Charleston, and prepared to move north.

  Longfellow wrote that “a boy’s will is the wind’s will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” I had begun my voyage south in the variable winds and slack tide that followed the slow ebb of a twenty-five-year marriage. My decision to embark had been the final expression of a boy’s will that his life should find some deeper meaning. I faced a sea of doubts in my search for what was certain and solid and true. Now, with Susan by my side, Longfellow’s lament was no longer my own. An older and wiser man had at last taken the boy by the hand, steadied him, and set him upon the way forward.

  When I piloted the Gypsy Moon out of Charleston Harbor to sea and the outer limits of wireless transmission on December 21, 2009, Susan’s last words, “I am totally committed to you,” had been all the more powerful for their unguarded simplicity. That unconditional sentiment had not been expressed to me by another woman in my life. Now that I was back ashore and in the earnest beginnings of a new year, I intended to make good on her commitment and match it with my own.

  Improbably, new cases and fresh funding for my law practice came rolling in the door in spring 2010, and not a moment too soon. My cupboards had been nearly bare, but by the same mysteries I have witnessed all my life, the Good Lord again placed bread on my table in spite of my considerable efforts to interfere. With my workload suddenly mounting, I took out an advertisement that attracted the welcome interest of two young attorneys who helped me transform a sleepy solo practice into a respectable law firm. I found the perfect building, where I could lease expanded office space not three miles from the house Susan and I had chosen, and she and I prepared to begin a new life together with a vigor I had all but forgotten.

  A young writer for a weekly newspaper that circulates among the state’s lawyers became intrigued by the story of Susan’s fairy-tale romance and decided to tell the world, as it were, in a front-page feature about a sailing attorney waylaid by a storm who came home with a bride. Good wishes followed from friends new and old, and the sun suddenly seemed a little brighter and higher in the sky. I planted roses in the garden of the little yellow house where we would begin our life together in August. But long before the wedding pipes might sing, there was a decision to make and a voyage to complete.

  Chapter 34

  A Moment of Truth

  Sailing is an odd thing, and sailors by and large are an odd lot. As a manner of transportation the sailing vessel is ponderously slow, but as a means of impoverishment it is deceptively fast. Sailcloth is woven in gold mines, halyards are knit together by feather-winged angels, and bottom paint is made from rare, fine wine.

  In beginning a new life, I was loath to ask my bride to bear the burdens that had weighed so heavily on my first marriage, chief among which was an expensive passion that my partner did not share with equal enthusiasm. I resolved to give up the ship before repeating that mistake.

  Susan, like many people I have met who hear that I have a boat and that I venture about to various places far from land, was intrigued by the idea of sailing. But the imagining and the doing of things can be very different, and never has that been truer than when it comes to sailing offshore.

  Most guests temporarily aboard the Gypsy Moon have found little not to their liking. She is a snug home, encircled in warm teak, with tufted cushions, standing headroom, and a charmingly simple layout. From her serviceable galley I have brought forth many candlelit dinners, lovingly prepared and served. Such an evening—played out in the serene setting of a moonlit harbor, accompanied by Sinatra, Bennett, or, perchance, a Van Morrison tune for dancing—can be a strong magic. Susan was no less enchanted and herself so much more enchanting than all the others who had fallen under the Gypsy’s spell, but I had more in mind for her. And because I did, I had no intention of taking Susan to that place where the spell of romantic harbors would be rudely broken.

  Susan would get no invitation from me to go voyaging around the world. It is one thing to endure a hardship of one’s own choosing but quite another to choose a hardship for someone one loves.

  Far out at sea, days removed from the memory of a hot shower, a level surface, and a toilet that does not stand tauntingly on edge, defying the laws of gravity necessary for its use, there is no romantic thrall that can endure. In my years of bachelorhood, on those few occasions when I heard a woman’s voice, in whispers and kisses, speak the words “I will go round the world with you,” I heard the unspoken voice of reason in ready rejoinder say: “Alas, my dear, you will not.”

  Now, before any paper and ink are wasted on cries of sexism, I hasten to add that I speak here in generalities, not particularities. There are, I wager, at least a hundred women at sea this very hour who could take tea and biscuits in the gale that would send me whimpering to the lifeboats, but I don’t care to marry any of them, and no doubt the feeling is mutual.

  Selling the boat, I resolved, would not be such a bad thing. Perhaps it was time. The world of wind and sea was not Susan’s dream, and I wondered whether it should any longer be mine. The vacuum in which I had begun the voyage had, after all, been filled. I was no longer living an outward metaphor of a solitary inward journey. I had reached my Ithaca at last. Perhaps the day had come for me to lie upon my laurels, meager as they were, and enjoy a long-awaited rest.

  I did exactly that for a time, but as you no doubt suspect, there is more to this story. Always in the corners of my mind the image remained of my little boat, tugging at her lines, waiting to be off. A still, small voice in my head pleaded to go with her, as impractical as that now seemed.

  For a time, reason prevailed over all emotion and small voices, still or otherwise. I did actually and in good faith put the boat up for sale. Several would-be owners bent my ear with intricate questions about her design and capacities for this or that, but they were never in the game to go. I tried to explain that here was a ship that had the heart of a vagabond and the means to fulfill the seduction she promised to men who looked longingly her way. Some listened intently but without real understanding. I answered their questions instead about the number of people the boat could sleep (five altogether, but only two in comfort); whether she had a hot and cold shower (she has neither); and whether she was wired for Internet and cable TV (blessedly, she is not).

  I breathed a sigh of relief when no suitable offers came my way. The Gyp
sy Moon was saved from a sad fate as a floating South Florida condominium. But that didn’t solve my problem, as I understood it at the time.

  I found myself considering a donation of the boat to a church camp on the North Carolina coast, where it undoubtedly would have found a happy home. A man planned to come to my office to discuss details of retrieving the boat from Florida and bringing it north, where boys and girls would use it to learn to sail on their summer vacations—a worthy cause indeed.

  The night before my meeting with the kind gentleman from the camp, I could not settle my thoughts. I finally confessed to Susan that I was not sure I had the will to let the Gypsy Moon go. Something in me resisted the idea. It was a fear, as best I can describe it, that I was giving up on myself and losing something that I would never get back. We all face these kinds of decisions in our lives, and often the moment of truth is not something we can avoid or forestall. We grow up. We leave. We change. We move on because we must. The nature of life is that it progresses inexorably in only one direction.

  But this was different. This was a choice, not the passing of an epoch. And it was a choice about which I was unsure until Susan spoke her mind.

  “Keep it,” she said. “You’ve always sailed,” and she was right. She reasoned that I needed at least one thing in my life that was all my own and that I loved to do. Sailing seemed to be that thing for me.

  As Susan spoke these words, I felt a glacier thaw and a great burden fall away. The message that it was okay to be the man I am was both revelation and validation. I needed no revision or refurbishment as a condition of Susan’s acceptance. My voyage would be acknowledged, accommodated, and celebrated between us. Had I demanded as much by stubborn force of will, the treasure she now offered would have slipped through my hands. But instead, Susan had freely opened her heart and made a home there for the dreamer and his dream.