A Mile Down

by David Vann

  “Well shit-o,” Nick said.

  “Indeed,” I said.

  I asked if he’d be okay for a minute, and he said he would, so I rushed back the hundred feet or so to the restaurant and asked them to call the cab again. When I returned, Nick was still fine, still sitting there.

  “Your dad will never forgive me,” I said. First the trip on Grendel up the coast from San Francisco, a nightmare of seasickness and mechanical breakdowns, pounding for three days into fifteen-foot seas and thirty-five-knot winds just to get to Eureka, where Charlie and Nick wisely disembarked and took a bus. Then the paint had fallen off the hull this summer during Charlie’s Odyssey course. Now this. His son had taken a semester off from Oberlin to crew from Turkey to Mexico after I’d filled him full of tropical visions, and here we’d only made it to Morocco before losing our rudder, and then Nick had fallen ten feet onto steel beams just for icing.

  “My mom’s the one who won’t forgive you,” he said.

  “Oh great.”

  “Just pulling the old leg, mate. The ’rents will be okay.”

  The cab finally came and we made it to the hospital, where the doctor, a different one from earlier in the day but also Indian, said it would probably be fine. Some painkillers, an antibiotic, and if we wanted to wake Nick all night on coma alert, we could, but it probably wasn’t necessary.

  Nick called his parents, I promised we’d wake him every hour, and we were back on the street.

  “No more events tonight,” I said. “This day has gone on long enough.”

  I WOKE NICK every hour that night, having trouble sleeping anyway. By morning I was a wreck, and it was going to be a busy day. I needed to let everyone know about the damage at the dock, meet with the surveyor from the insurance company, write a summary of events, meet with the lawyers, try to lift the arrest, make arrangements for hauling the boat and replacing the rudder, figure out why the engines weren’t starting, and chase down the loan from John.

  It was the end of October and the loan still wasn’t in. It had been promised no later than October 15, and I needed it. Amber’s mistakes and the rudder incident had made things considerably worse. The $150,000 would still be enough to pay everything, including $35,000 in interest due to lenders, but without it, I would be lost.

  The marina already knew about the damage, but I had to notify my insurance company, my lawyers, and the admiralty marshal. The marshal, I learned, had not yet taken out the insurance policy. He hadn’t gotten around to it. It had kind of slipped his mind. And according to my lawyers, it would be impossible to recover losses from the admiralty. They were a government agency, the main one for anything related to boats, so if they made a mistake, oh well. No one was going to enforce it against them. Same as when a government agency screws up in the United States.

  This meant convincing either the marina or my insurance company to pay for a considerable amount of damage. As I sat in the plush offices of Isola & Isola, looking at legal texts on the shelves and the finely carved wood, I couldn’t help yearning for a life with some dignity and stability.

  The two lawyers who entered and sat opposite me were well groomed and expensive-looking, while I sat in a T-shirt covered with stains from oil, diesel, paint, and rust. They were handsome and articulate. They had money and power, respect and important friends. They told me they would try to go after the marina, and all I could think of was what that would cost me in legal fees, and I had to ask about the fees, too, and express again that I was having a hard time financially, which was something I was tired of doing.

  They read the summary of events I had written that morning for Pantaenius, my insurance company, including a description of the damage at the dock, and they told me again they would go after Queensway Quay, but I knew my only hope was to have this damage included in my own insurance claim, as part of the same event. The boat had been at the dock where the damage occurred because I’d had no choice of berthing because I had lost my rudder. It was all one sequence of events. But as I walked back to the boat to meet with the surveyor for Pantaenius, I wasn’t convinced. They could call it two separate events, making me pay the $3,000 deductible twice, or even deny the entire claim.

  I met Nancy on the boat, told her my thoughts, and she said, “Well, look at the bright side. It can always get worse.” I couldn’t even laugh.

  The surveyor arrived, a friendly and handsome man in his fifties named Nick Bushnell. Very cheery in a button-down shirt, slacks, and a leather jacket. He was carrying a clipboard. I had done nothing wrong, but I was afraid anyway, as I suppose all people naturally are around insurance adjusters. I wondered whether I could be found negligent in some way that would invalidate my claim. I was afraid to tell him about the hydraulic ram coming loose, for instance. The ram coming loose was as simple as a loose screw, even if it was an enormous and specialized screw, and why hadn’t it been checked and tightened before heading out to sea? If I was found to be negligent, I would lose the boat and much more. I couldn’t possibly afford to pay for the tow or the salvage claim or the repairs.

  “I know you’ve been through an awful time,” Nick said. “But I just need to hear what happened and take note of the damage to the vessel.”

  I began with the sound of the rudder breaking off and told the story from there. I tried to help the insurance company by detailing how the German captain had lied and endangered the crew and vessel. Nick asked why I had abandoned ship, and I gave my reasons.

  Nick listened carefully and took notes. “Sure,” he said periodically. “What else could you do?” He sounded reassuring, and I hoped he was sincere.

  He asked questions about each of the towing attempts, the tow back to Gibraltar, the kayak that was lost in the harbor, and the damage at the dock. “For now I want to make two lists,” he said. “The damage that occurred before arriving at the dock and the damage that occurred afterward. That’s really a shame the admiralty didn’t act as they were required. You’ve had an awful bit of luck, mate. We’ll see what we can do about that.”

  “I’m hoping it can be viewed as one event,” I said. “So that I don’t pay the deductible twice. It seems to me that it was the same event, since I’m here at this wall as a direct consequence of losing the rudder.”

  “Yes, I can see that. I can understand the argument, and I can try to put it to Pantaenius that way, in a favorable light, especially since it seems to me you’ve acted to the best of your ability throughout the ordeal to limit the damage. It’s often the case that there’s consequential damage after an event, and anything you’ve done to limit that argues in your favor, I would think.”

  I was pleased to hear this. He seemed to be taking my side.

  “The one thing I’m still in the dark about,” he said, “is how this rudder came off in the first place. You’ve said it was unskegged, and that certainly makes it weaker, but I have to believe they would have used the right-sized post for it, and I’m not sure why that post would have sheared off. We’ll see more once the boat comes out of the water, but can you tell me anything more about why it might have come off?”

  This was the moment I had feared. I couldn’t hold back the incident with the hydraulic ram any longer. “Well,” I said. “I don’t know why either, and I also want to see what it looks like out of the water, but I think it must have been a combination of factors. We were moving fast through high seas, about eleven knots with both engines at 2200, and I think the seas were about twelve to fifteen feet at that point. I don’t remember exactly.”

  “That’s fine,” Nick said. “I’ll be looking up all the weather records. I have a friend at the RAF base here.”

  “Great,” I said. “So I think it was the stress of that, combined with the lack of a skeg, and then the safety on the hydraulic ram failed, too, earlier in the night, and we had to put the emergency tiller on and reattach the ram, so it may have fatigued then, too.”

  “The hydraulic ram became detached from the rudder post?”

  “Yes.
”

  “Can we take a look at the ram?”

  We went below and looked at the ram and the damage the fitting on the post had done to the wood. I felt sick. I was afraid this was going to invalidate the entire claim.

  “Now how did that come off?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s not supposed to. That piece is supposed to lock.”

  “And how long was it off?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes. It’s hard to tell. It was kind of a panicked time.”

  “Yes, I can imagine. But you were able to get it back on in those seas. Did you hear any other sounds while you were doing that? Anything from the rudder?”

  “It was banging a bit. I think its top edge must have hit against the hull, limiting how far it could swing. I imagine we’ll see marks when we’re hauled out.”

  So now I had confessed everything. I only hoped Nick and Pantaenius would be kind. Nick took some more notes, then had me turn the helm both ways while he watched the rudder post. He came back up to the pilothouse, made some more notes, told me he’d try “straight away” to arrange the lifting of the arrest and the haul out, then left.

  Nancy and I heated some cans of soup for lunch and sat in the pilothouse staring into our bowls as we ate. The crew were helping to clean the mess from the tow, but they were also spending quite a bit of time on shore, which was fine. They were frequenting Dad’s Bakehouse and the Clipper and other comfort spots. At the moment, it was getting windy and rainy, and that’s always when food in a warm, homey pub sounds best.

  After lunch, I tried again to start the engines. They wouldn’t turn over, and by now their batteries were low. I was tired and didn’t feel up to the project, but I decided to shop for a twelvevolt charger to give a direct boost to the start batteries. That would be a good backup to have on board anyway.

  Nancy and I walked a long way in our foul weather gear. Half the length of the country, in fact, to Sheppard’s chandlery in Marina Bay. But we found what we needed, and the price wasn’t marked up as high as usual. This was a rare find, perhaps even a mistake on their part. We snapped it up quickly and left.

  I charged the starboard engine for quite a while, tried it with the boost and still didn’t get it to turn over. So I went down to the engine room to inspect. No visible sign of problems on the starters, batteries, or connectors. I couldn’t think of what else to check, so I just started checking everything, and when I looked at the oil in one of the engines, I found the problem. A terrible problem that I’d had before and hadn’t thought was still possible. The oil was creamy, which meant saltwater had gotten into the engines, siphoning back through the exhausts.

  I was so frustrated I started yelling, which made Matt, Emi, and Nancy come down to the engine room. “The engines are full of salt water,” I told them. “That’s why they won’t start.”

  “Oh no,” Nancy said. “Not again.”

  “We have to drain the oil,” I said, “then remove the injectors and blow the saltwater out. Then we have to change the oil a million times and run under load at the dock with the fill caps off and our lines doubled, which we actually can’t do because of the fouled props. Goddamnit.”

  I was demoralized during this time, pushing myself to get through each part of each day. Nancy encouraged me to remember the good parts of my last few years.

  “Look at me,” she said, and I looked up and she was beautiful and it was a comfort to have her with me. “You’ve changed people’s lives. Think about Pete, and Dave, and others who care more about their writing now than anything else. Think about that guy who quit his job to go sailing, and the people who decided to retire early. Think of the great friends you have now that you met through the trips.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Seriously, David. It was a unique program you set up, and you worked hard, and this will all get better. And think of all the places we got to see, too.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’ll quit moping.” I did feel lucky and grateful to be with her.

  I was helped also by Nick Bushnell. He managed to get the arrest lifted, and he convinced Pantaenius to accept the damage at the dock as part of the overall claim. He also found a yard in Spain that could haul us, in Sotogrande, about fifteen miles down the coast, inside the Mediterranean, and he arranged the tow to take us there. His help was an unexpected kindness, a great gift.

  Sotogrande has a beautiful marina lined with pastel buildings. A large country club development, one of the exclusive golf and marina communities along the Costa Del Sol. Several tenders were waiting and helped the tug maneuver us to a stern tie along the inner quay. We couldn’t go directly to the slip under the 150-ton travelift, unfortunately, because there was a waiting list to be hauled out. Nick Bushnell impressed upon me the need to visit the office several times each day to make sure I was hauled out soon. “You need to keep after the Spaniards a bit,” he said.

  Senor Guido, the yard manager, was likeable and mild-mannered, in his early forties and a bit plump. I explained my situation to him and he sympathized. My boat was also larger than any other sailboat the yard had ever hauled, if you considered its weight and beam, and it needed a lot of work done quickly, all covered by a large and reputable insurance company. This made it attractive business. And I was constantly in his office, just saying hello, so that none of the other captains could get around me. I was hauled out within three days, which Nick Bushnell said was a new record. If I could be repaired and back in the water within three weeks, I’d make the crossing to Mexico in time for all but the first charter.

  When the boat was finally parked on the pavement, we could see the prop shafts bundled with dock line. Amazing they had still delivered enough power to maneuver up to the liferaft. On most boats, attempting to use the props with line around them would have bent the shafts, but these were very thick.

  The rudder was completely gone. Just an inch or so of steel rod sticking out from the bottom of the hull, its edges uneven from having been torn off. Nick Bushnell examined it and said there was no way of knowing exactly why it had done that. For the repair, the new rudder could be made in the yard, but the post, which would need to be solid Aquamet 22 or some other high-tech stainless steel, 3.5-inches thick, would have to be custom-made in Algeciras or another city.

  The challenge now was to get the repairs done on time. The shops in the yard were independent. They paid a commission to the marina, but I had to contract separately with the metal fabricators, the painters, the carpenters, etc. Each shop was busy, and the proprietors, each an oddball in his own way, had to be wooed.

  The workday here was not what I was used to. It started at about nine-thirty at the local Café Ke for breakfast, which meant coffee and almost an hour of shooting the breeze. Then actual work from ten-thirty until two. Then lunch from two until four, then work again until five, six, or whenever they happened to feel like stopping. Every two or three days there was a national holiday and no work at all.

  For the first couple of days, until I figured out this schedule, it was nearly impossible to find anyone. Endless walks back and forth across the yard, chasing shadows. When I finally caught on and appeared at Café Ke at ten one morning, it was like a revelation. Absolutely everyone was there, all in one small room. In half an hour, I was able to circulate to everyone I needed.

  My break from the daily antics of the boatyard was to go to Puerto Banus with Nancy. Puerto Banus is one of the spots where the wealthiest people in the world gather. The harbor is tiny and filled with expensive yachts. The narrow, short road along this waterfront has become a car show. A Mercedes, Porsche, or BMW doesn’t mean anything here, except the rarest models. German practicality run over by the extravagant waste of British and Italian models. We saw Bentleys—not one but several—Aston Martins, Rolls Royces, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis. A few token Americans, such as the Shelby. We always enjoyed the show, and the fact that the drivers looked unconcerned, as i
f they weren’t parading. We found the one or two reasonable places to eat, and after some food and a stroll, we’d hit the Internet café.

  Two things were becoming clear. First, there was no way the boat would be finished in three weeks. It would be more like six weeks, probably, so I would lose all my crew. Second, I would have to fly to California for a week to put my business back together. Amber and her friend Heather, whom she had basically forced me to hire part-time, were messing up everything, and they were both about to bail for the big bucks at a dot-com, so I needed to hire and train someone new. The dot-com thing was annoying. Heather was straight out of an unimpressive college, with zero experience, and somebody was going to pay her $50,000 to start. I had made $27,000 as a lecturer teaching full-time at Stanford. Amber, who couldn’t even pay bills correctly, was going to be a product manager and make even more.

  MY SIX DAYS in California were extremely rushed. The first night back, I met with Amber and Heather.

  Our office was just one room in a two-storey building in Menlo Park, but it was big enough, and it was clean. Heather had done a lot of filing. She and Amber showed me what she had done, and it became clear that all she had done was filing, and I saw that she had filed documents related to my pickup truck in four different folders. “Nissan,” “Truck,” “David,” and “Insurance.” I had paid a thousand dollars or so over the past month for unnecessary and poorly executed filing.

  Amber and Heather were both young. Amber about twenty-three, maybe, and Heather probably a year younger. They were acting like schoolgirls caught not having done their homework. It was odd. I was running a business. This was my life. It wasn’t an amusement. But I could tell that less than complimentary comments about me had been the staple in this office for some time.

  I was going through bills with Amber when we came across one small one, for only $700, that had been paid late, after three written notices.