The Cure for Anything Is Salt Water Part 2

The sea hates a coward.

-EUGENE O'NEILL.

June 23, 2004, was a beautiful day, on its way to being another scorcher, but it was still too early to be hot. I was hanging over the railings of the boat with a can of navy blue paint, writing BOSSANOVA on the gray, sun-bleached hull. John was doing some final errands. We were getting underway today, and I had waited until the last minute to put the new name on the bow-though I had managed to letter the stern the night before. My original plan had been to repaint the entire boat soon after I closed on it, but the unexpected bottom job at the survey had cleaned out my coffers. The truth is, I didn't even have enough money to buy vinyl transfer letters, let alone have a professional do the fancy job the boat deserved. I'm not sure why I had thought waiting would solve anything-it's not like I was planning on getting any richer soon-but I guess I dreaded doing what I knew was going to be not such a great job. I wanted to narrow the window of embarra.s.sment for the Bossanova.

I had also procrastinated because changing the name of a boat is considered extremely unlucky. A couple of my close friends had begged me to keep Shady Lady. Their rationale was that it was so not me that it was hysterical. They later confessed to a darker desire to order me a Members Only jacket with Shady Lady embroidered on it. Very funny-and it sums up exactly why I had to go with a new name. I remember sitting in the Hinckley office and hearing somebody bark out over their handheld VHF, "Yeah, I've got Mary here from Shady Lady"-every guy in the room turned a hopeful, salacious glance my way only to find not a wanton hussy but a cringing tomboy-and at that moment I knew that the old name had to go. Besides, she just felt like a Bossanova to me.

I'm the kind of girl who will cross a street to avoid walking under a ladder and who has practically driven into a ditch to avoid the path of a black cat. It's not so much that I believe these superst.i.tions-I just don't see the point of tempting fate. With this in mind, I exhaustively researched boat renaming ceremonies designed to take the bad juju out of the occasion. The Internet offered up countless rituals claiming to protect you from your own personal Poseidon adventure. Some demanded that you perform the renaming with the boat in the water, others insisted it be in dry dock. Some called for champagne offerings, and others for red wine. One stipulated sailing backward for 200 yards, and another predicted bad luck until you'd run aground three times. It was impossible to determine which ceremony was best, and in the end I just borrowed from a couple and created my own. I figured that if I respectfully asked Neptune/Poseidon for a blessing on my boat with a pure heart, the ritual itself could be safely improvised.

I did embrace the widely held notion that renaming a boat is a two-tiered process. It just made good sense. Lore has it that Neptune/Poseidon keeps a ledger with the name of every boat recorded therein, and the first thing you have to do is purge the old name from his ledger and his memory. It also seriously p.i.s.ses off the Big Guy of the Deep if you bring anything aboard with the boat's new name on it until you've eradicated the old. In this respect, I inadvertently screwed up-I did have a couple of e-mails on my computer that referred to the boat by its new name. I also had my running papers aboard, including my Coast Guard doc.u.mentation with the new name of the vessel on it. But I guessed that the deities of the deep would be willing to let these tiny transgressions slide. After all, they're probably not computer-savvy enough to tap into my hard drive and I did have a legal obligation to keep the paperwork handy.

I began my ritual by first removing every trace of the vessel's old name. This was harder than you might think. It meant not only peeling the old lettering off the bow and stern, but painting over the ring buoys, removing all of the old doc.u.mentation, maintenance records and s.h.i.+p log. (I mailed them to a friend to keep for me.) Finally, as I took a happy look around the salon, satisfied that I had eradicated every reference to Shady Lady, I saw the previous owner's cruising card pinned to the bulletin board. His name and contact information were superimposed on a photo of the boat, and when I squinted, I could see Shady Lady written across the bow. I left the card but blackened out the lettering on the boat photo with a Sharpie, hugely relieved that this crucial detail had not slipped by me.

The next thing I did was gather the dogs in the salon and give a little speech, praising Shady Lady for her years of faithful service to Mel and asking Poseidon to erase her esteemed name from his ledger. Then I thanked him and raised an icy margarita in his honor. I also gave each dog a Sausage. We all savored the moment.

Then, I asked Poseidon to record the new name, Bossanova, on his ledger. I asked him for his blessing on this name and implored him to keep the boat and all her pa.s.sengers safe. I closed by hoping he'd help me be a captain worthy of my vessel and of his constant protection. I raised my gla.s.s to him again and then I turned and toasted all four directions of the wind, just to be safe. The dogs looked at me expectantly (which is pretty much how they always look), so I obliged with another treat. They looked at me expectantly three more times. Smart and greedy!

Later that day, after I had painted the name on the stern, I went forward with another margarita, splashed it liberally across the anchor locker and bow and over the side into the water. Then I officially p.r.o.nounced the vessel Bossanova and drank the remainder of the c.o.c.ktail. I knew the margarita was an unorthodox alternative to the traditional blessing with good champagne but, in my mind, the quality of my offering was what mattered. And I make a mean margarita.

All in all, I was happy with how the dogs and I had welcomed Bossanova into the world, but I was decidedly not happy with my hand-painted lettering job.

I am not a vain girl. Sometimes I go days without even glancing in a mirror, and then when I finally do, I think nothing more than "Yup, that's me, all right." A friend once described my rumpled sartorial style as "home from St. Andrew's for the weekend," and I noticed recently that all my childhood photos showed me wearing khakis and navy blue sweaters, an urge I still have to fight daily. But I felt real pain whenever I failed to keep Bossanova looking good. I thought my boat was gorgeous. I was proud of her and I felt a duty to keep her looking her best.

The new name looked awful. A couple of guys stopped to tease me about it on their way up the dock to Storm-Along, a beautiful motor yacht with lots of varnished wood and a distinctive inky green hull with matching upholstery. This vessel, which they were busily making repairs to, was not much bigger than mine but was probably worth well over $1 million. The nice thing was that-and this happened all the time-these same guys had stopped by the day before to say how much they liked my boat and to ask me all about her. So, I took the ribbing good-naturedly and prayed they wouldn't see the stern. I felt deeply ashamed, like I was sending my kid to school in filthy clothes.

Honestly, it really was a minor disaster. After I had removed the old vinyl letters that spelled out SHADY LADY and painted over the area with a rectangle of fresh gray paint, I thoughtfully eyeballed the shadow of the previous name's outline, whose gluey ghost still peeked through, ever so faintly. I figured that if I kept the same letter s.p.a.cing, it would look pretty good. A nice theory, but when I stepped back to have a look, I had somehow crammed all the letters together on one end. It was completely lopsided and looked like someone with significant learning disabilities had taken a stab at it-with her foot. My friend Julie later coined a name for my hand-painted font: r.e.t.a.r.dica Bold. I vowed to repaint it while underway-it was too embarra.s.sing to imagine arriving in Sag Harbor like this.

John came down the dock, brandis.h.i.+ng an air filter triumphantly. The previous owner had run Shady Lady without one for more than ten years and never had a problem. I had absolute faith in Mel's advice and I also subscribed to the motto If it ain't broke don't fix it. But there was an obvious basket attached to the engine that cried out, in its naked emptiness, for a filter. Clearly the manufacturer had intended one. Chapman had also drilled into us the importance of keeping dirt and foreign bodies out of the engine. With two broken-coat Jack Russells aboard, I had dog-fur tumbleweeds if I didn't sweep on the half hour. So I decided to err on the side of caution.

The filter had been easy enough to find at NAPA, but installing it was a bear. The bolts on the holder had ossified from disuse and John had a tough time getting them off. Once he had the filter installed, he couldn't close the bracket again. But he used a few small pieces of wire to keep it in place. We decided that a jury-rigged filter was better than no filter at all.

At this point, I was pretty determined that nothing was going to keep us from getting underway. The week before, I'd been trying to do some small maintenance to prepare for our trip. The raw water strainers, which supply cooling water to circulate around the super-hot diesel when it's running, needed to be cleaned. They were black with gunk from the boat's trip across the Okeechobee Waterway to Stuart and its subsequent lingering soak in the murky Manatee Pocket. Wrestling the tops off the over tightened strainer lids had caused the handle to crack, and some temporary leaking, which disappeared when the system was pressurized, alarmed me enough to order a replacement. In the end, I just kept the new one as a spare because the old one continued to function.

But waiting for the part had delayed our departure by two days. Even now I suspected there were a few things we'd overlooked or forgotten in our preparations, but I also felt that we were as ready as we'd ever be. No doubt there is always one more thing you should do, but we weren't going to. It was time to head out.

And so, at 1130 hours, as John cast off our lines, I backed us out of the slip and powered us to starboard in a tight circle. I headed the Bossanova up the Manatee Pocket and toward the Intracoastal Waterway, and as we pa.s.sed the channel into the Chapman docks, I sounded the horn. It was John's first time out on the Bossanova, and only the third time I had taken the boat off the dock myself. I felt elation, giddy excitement. But in the back of my mind hovered a subtle, fluttering sense of irresponsibility, swatted away by sheer determination. I didn't really have enough experience to be making a journey like this, and I knew a million things could go wrong: terrible weather, disastrous mechanical problems, contaminated fuel, running aground. I wasn't really prepared to handle any of these scenarios.

But I focused on the here and now: Stay in the channel, watch your rpms, check the oil pressure, watch for traffic astern, monitor Channel 16. . . .What a beautiful day. Oh my G.o.d, we're underway and I am the captain of this beautiful little s.h.i.+p. It's a dream come true.

Halfway up the pocket, I planned to stop and fuel up for the voyage. This would be the very first time I docked my boat solo, and even though I'd merely be coming alongside an open bulkhead, I held my breath. I didn't want to mess up-it would seem like a bad omen. Adding to the pressure was a Coast Guard patrol boat, already at the dock for refueling. A posse of young Coasties in uniform eyed me skeptically as I made a 180-degree turn and brought us alongside the fuel dock. Perfect. I had to remind myself that seeming too happy about it would be very uncool and totally blow my cover as an ancient mariner.

Three hundred and sixty gallons of diesel fuel and $600 later, John and I headed back up the pocket and into the Intracoastal. We anch.o.r.ed that day at 1910 hours, at Pepper Point, otherwise known as Mile 935. My logbook shows readings from the engine gauges throughout the day and notes the times at which we pa.s.sed the Fort Pierce Inlet and Vero Beach. After a few days, this kind of overly meticulous logging fell by the wayside and we recorded major events, weather conditions and anchorage spots. Of course, I still monitored the engine gauges with great regularity, but everything continued to look stable and I stopped writing it down over and over, like a big nerd.

Our first night's anchorage was a deep spot outside the ICW channel. We knocked off around 1830 that evening, and once we had securely anch.o.r.ed and shut down the engine, we sat on the stern with a couple of cold margaritas and toasted a fantastic first day. The air was warm and held that magnificent pinky golden hue particular to summer evenings. John and I felt not only a deep sense of contentment but also relief.

The scenery that day had been gorgeous and ever-changing I kept a couple of guides handy in the pilothouse, and from time to time, I tried to identify the beautiful vegetation and wildlife we encountered. We pa.s.sed by mangrove islands shaded by oak trees, red cedars and cabbage palms. I spotted what I thought were p.r.i.c.kly pear cacti, covered with beautiful yellow flowers. Sea oxeye daisy, mangrove, saltwort and spartina gra.s.s lined the banks. Wading birds, including sh.o.r.ebirds, ospreys, cormorants, brown pelicans, roseate spoonbills and wood storks, watched us slowly pa.s.sing, rarely perturbed enough to fly away. There were dozens of dolphins, a couple of manatees, and plenty of people fis.h.i.+ng from the banks. It felt sleepy and peaceful as we chugged along through our first day without even a hiccup. After all those months of sitting in a cla.s.sroom, we were finally experiencing what had drawn us to school in the first place. We were really doing it! And we seemed to be on top of everything.

Of course, we had no way of knowing that very few days would be as uneventfully successful as our first. Even the very next morning, shortly after we left our anchorage at 0715 hours, we started noticing some problems with the VHF radio that would plague us through most of our trip. I suspected it was battery-related. The diesel engine was fitted with an alternator that charged the batteries and allowed the essential electronics to run off their stored energy while underway. I had wondered if my batteries needed replacement even before we left the dock, but a marine electrician had tested them, swapped out some old wires for new ones and declared them absolutely fine. Now, though, our first radio check of the morning showed a pathetically weak signal. But as the day wore on and the alternator continued sending power to the batteries, our signal seemed to recover. Maybe our radio was fine after all.

The second day was memorable mostly for a far-off view of Cape Canaveral that was thrilling in the early dawn light. All we could see was the profile of the launch pad, silhouetted against the pink morning sky. It looked majestic, though distant. At eleven o'clock, we could make out a little more detail in the midday sun but by one o'clock, we had run out of enthusiasm for it. Around three in the afternoon we started to actively avert our gaze, looking at anything but the s.p.a.ce Center. And at five o'clock, when Cape Canaveral seemed as far away as it had at seven-thirty that morning, we became slightly unhinged and took turns hurling insults at its taunting immobility. Nothing deflates a sense of accomplishment like watching the same landmark go by. . .all. . .day. . .long. The contentment of the first day was already being invaded by a teeny, tiny, vaguely itchy realization that it was going to be a long trip at this rate.

In the late afternoon of day two, we stopped at the t.i.tusville Munic.i.p.al Marina for ice and then motored on for another few hours. It was earlier in the evening than we had wanted to stop, but the route ahead looked like a slow and twisty one through an area that some dimwit had enticingly named Mosquito Lagoon. I later learned that this spot had been rotary-ditched back in the 1950s in an effort to control the mosquito population. From Jupiter Inlet in the south to Ponce de Leon, which was still north of us, this was all part of a 156-mile-long estuary called the Indian River Lagoon, the "Redfish Capital of the World." It claims to be the U.S.'s most diverse estuary, with over 400 species of fish, 250 species of mollusks and 475 species of shrimp. At Mile 860, though there was nary a mosquito in sight, we were being bombarded by the big black horseflies we'd been warned to expect in North Carolina-obviously, ours were precocious. Maybe they'd killed off the mosquitoes. We pulled outside the channel and into an area where the river widened, in an attempt to outsmart the little b.u.g.g.e.rs. It worked.

When we went to bed we shut everything down, and in the morning, it seemed as though the batteries had held most of their charge overnight. The VHF radio was again working beautifully, which was imperative if we were even going to think about venturing into the Atlantic. The VHF is often your only (and always your most important) means of communication aboard a s.h.i.+p. It's the source of vital weather updates, special notices of military maneuvers, and warnings for unscheduled bridge closings or dangerous objects afloat. It's also your lifeline to help. In case of a mechanical failure, a fire, a medical emergency-anything that might cause you to summon immediate help or abandon s.h.i.+p-the VHF alerts not just the Coast Guard but everyone aboard a boat within a 20-mile radius of your situation. It would be unthinkable to go offsh.o.r.e without it. Even hearing it fade and die as we ran the Intracoastal the day before had made me anxious. Its miraculous recovery was excellent news.

A few hours later in New Smyrna, after our slow meander through the twisty area we'd avoided the night before, the landscape had completely changed. We were motoring through a suburban neighborhood of ranch houses with screened-in pool rooms and condos with views of the Intracoastal. Ahead of us, a bedraggled sailboat putt-putted along at a tortoise's pace. Its deck was cluttered with jerry cans and drying clothes; a battered inflatable dinghy bobbed along in its wake; its hull was painted in a patchwork of faded colors.

This boat looked like it had dragged itself halfway around the world and was now officially exhausted. After a while, at a very wide point in the channel, I signaled that I was going to pa.s.s. We were happily waved ahead, but within a few seconds we felt a sickening thump.

Mariners always say that the only people who haven't run aground in the ICW are liars.

Still, it wasn't until I had powered us off the shoal, fifteen minutes later, that I was able to joke that I was glad to get that little tradition out of the way. Of course, I could afford to laugh.

At 30 tons, the Bossanova's steel hull was built like a tank and her unusual box keel meant the propeller shaft exited the boat in a straight line, making it less vulnerable than a typical (angled) shaft. When I had gunned the engine enough to kick up great balloons of sand in the water, we finally floated free and were none the worse for wear. I was now even more impressed with my st.u.r.dy little s.h.i.+p and her excellent design.

Later that morning, John would also very briefly touch ground, twice in several minutes, as we negotiated a portion of the channel that had become very shallow. It occurred to me that, technically, since we'd now run aground three times, any curse the name change might have brought should be history. I worried about the technicalities, though: did touching ground count as running aground? I suspected we had to get hung up to get credit for the incident. That would happen soon enough.

Shoaling in the ICW is a hot-b.u.t.ton issue among boaters in recent years. This federally maintained system of waterways that's most traveled between Norfolk, Virginia, and Miami, Florida, is made up of natural rivers and estuaries connected by man-made channels. Periodic dredging is all it takes to maintain this boater's highway that parallels the Atlantic Ocean but is protected behind the coast. The authorized depth of the Atlantic ICW, meaning its minimum depth at low tide, is 12 feet anywhere along its course between Norfolk and Fort Pierce, Florida. (From Fort Pierce to Miami, the authorized depth is 10 feet.) Most of the ICW falls below 12 feet at low tide, though, with many, many areas dropping as low as 5 feet.

In recent years, federal funding to maintain the waterway has been cut and dredging has fallen behind schedule. Some people suspect that since most commercial cargo is now moved around the country by trucks, planes and trains, government enthusiasm for maintaining the ICW has ebbed.

However, an entire economy exists along the waterway, and is as dependent on the seasonal migrations of boaters for their livelihoods as these "s...o...b..rds" are on the safety of the ICW.

For most recreational boaters, the ICW is the only way to go. If time's not an issue, the ditch is scenic and relatively safe. But after only two days of it, we were getting antsy. Time was an issue for us. John had already scheduled a fight from New York to Chicago, and I had some much-needed work waiting for me. Even though we were only a few days into the trip, we could see from the charts of the winding ICW that we were going to be underway for a very long time, much longer than we had planned. And to be honest, John and I both had a hankering for the real sea, not this sleepy two-lane highway.

As we approached the Ponce de Leon Inlet, we made a couple of quick calculations and decided that we would have plenty of time to make St. Augustine by nightfall if we went offsh.o.r.e.

We double-checked our VHF radio and the marine weather forecast. Both were good. We had one more look at our guide to the Atlantic inlets. Alarmingly, Ponce de Leon Inlet was listed as one of the most dangerous on the East Coast. But further reading seemed to suggest that many other inlets shared this dubious distinction. While I was at the helm, John chatted on the VHF with a sport fisherman who pa.s.sed us. He gave us some tips on where to look out for unmarked shoaling, but told us it was an otherwise very manageable pa.s.sage.

Our Chapman experience had included one afternoon when we took a boat out to the St. Lucie Inlet. I'd have to say that running this inlet several times was the most exciting thing that happened at Chapman, with the exception of acing my midterm in chart navigation. Transiting an inlet safely is something that takes skill and an understanding of the forces of water, wind and tide. For instance, a strong onsh.o.r.e wind with an ebb tide is a combination likely to produce dangerous waves.

Pa.s.sing through an inlet on your way to the sea has the advantage of showing you the face of the waves. In other words, you can see how rough the conditions are and decide to turn around if it looks too difficult. There's no shame in this option-at least a half-dozen people die every year just trying to run the inlets of southeast Florida.

Pa.s.sing through an inlet from the ocean can be even trickier. Coming from the sea, you do not have the advantage of seeing the wave's face; you can only see its back-the swell rolling toward the sh.o.r.e. This is when most accidents happen.

One danger is that your bow will slow and your stern will get kicked out to the side, causing you to be beam-to and broadsided by the surf. Very perilous and not a pretty thing to see a fabulous way to get swamped and sink. But even worse than that is being caught on the downward slope of the wrong wave. If the angle is steep enough and the wave period short enough, your stern can get flipped right over your bow by the following sea. There is a word for this, "pitchpoling," and its very mention sends a s.h.i.+ver down any mariner's spine.

The correct way to enter a rough inlet is to ride the back of a wave-not the crest!-but this requires good timing and practice to keep the throttle at just the right speed. When you can do it perfectly, it's a subtle thrill, very like bodysurfing, to feel nature carrying you safely through the rough and pus.h.i.+ng you into calmer waters.

Buoyed by our Chapman experience and craving the wide-open ocean, John and I agreed we were ready to brave the Ponce de Leon Inlet and see what was out there.

Using the tips the pa.s.sing boat had given us, we knew exactly which markers to stay close to and where to look to port for another channel to take us out. When we reached the inlet, the surf was low and rolling and the water was flat and bright. We motored through easily and it was wonderfully anticlimactic. Days without drama are exactly what a good mariner craves, and they happen less often than you'd wish, as we'd soon find out.

Once we were on the outside, I stood at the helm and steered us out. As the sh.o.r.e and its signs of civilization grew smaller, the sea flashed its amphibious jewels and fluidly turned a dozen shades of blue, green, gray. I was giddy but apprehensive. This was the big time-my little s.h.i.+p's first foray into the Atlantic-and I prayed that nothing would go wrong: no mechanical failures, no bad weather, no hidden navigational hazards. After an hour, when I had corrected our course to run parallel to the sh.o.r.e and switched on the autopilot for the first time, I slowly let out my breath and relaxed. I listened to the Coast Guard on the VHF, checked my instruments, watched as Daytona Beach, Ormond-by-the-Sea and Flagler Beach slipped by in the distance. And I thought my heart would burst from the ecstatic sensation that I was exactly where I wanted to be. I had been right: this was the life for me.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Black sea, deep sea, you dangle Beneath my bliss like a dreadful gamble.

-JOHN UPDIKE.

Once we were on the outside, it was clear that there was no going back. Looking out toward Portugal, it was hard to discern the sea's horizon from the sky. I felt like I'd been released from a cage, and the sense of freedom was so intoxicating that I had to resist the urge to stand at the bow, fling my arms out and shout, "I'm the king of the world!"

But there was no point alarming John this early in our trip, and it was probably better not to invoke the t.i.tanic right now.

All other considerations aside, if we continued to run up the coast, instead of through the twisty-turny ditch, as the ICW is known, we would save ourselves a lot of time. So John and I quickly agreed to leave its pokey charms without a second thought, gladly trading the murky rivers for the cornflower blue of the Florida Atlantic in suns.h.i.+ne; the cypress, pine and moss-draped oaks for frolicking dolphins and giant sea turtles; the ambling pace for, well, a slightly less ambling pace.

In the Atlantic, you don't have to worry about shoaling channels, oncoming traffic or scheduled bridge openings. You can set the autopilot, keep an eye on the course and instruments, and relax a little. In return, you give up the utter safety of the ICW, the free anchorages in quiet spots, the interesting sights and sounds of life on either bank as you pa.s.s through. But for us, there was simply no question that the Atlantic route was well worth its slightly riskier ride.

Everything went smoothly for us on our first day offsh.o.r.e. John and I took turns at the helm. The diesel was very loud when the engine was running and the bridge was the quietest spot on the s.h.i.+p, so we kept each other company even when it wasn't our watch. We were both ecstatic about the sights and sensations of being offsh.o.r.e: the constantly changing colors of the water, the dolphins and giant sea turtles and large schools of fish we pa.s.sed through. When we weren't chatting and I was at the helm, John read a book-some conservative pundit's attack on liberals. I ignored this. Around 1:00 p.m., I made us turkey sandwiches with pickles and potato chips on paper plates and we ate in the pilothouse. We tried tuning in a radio station, but the reception wasn't good, and anyway, we were both afraid to run down our iffy batteries by wasting power.

Our first afternoon was relaxed and happy, so when we made our planned destination, St. Augustine, earlier than we'd antic.i.p.ated, we were tempted to just keep going. We still had a few hours of daylight left, and after we checked the chart, we decided we could make it to Jacksonville Beach by nightfall.

Forty-five minutes from the entrance to the Jacksonville Beach channel, I caught the Coast Guard broadcasting on Channel 16-saying something about severe weather, I thought. Our skies looked fine, but John and I fell silent while I switched the VHF up to Channel 22 for the full announcement.

Attention all stations, attention all stations. This is the United States Coast Guard, Mayport Group, United States Coast Guard, Mayport Group. At approximately 1800 hours the United States Coast Guard was notified of a storm moving toward Jacksonville Beach, in the vicinity of 30 degrees 20 minutes north and 81 degrees 36 minutes west. The storm is moving southwest with winds of up to 55 miles per hour and will be accompanied by severe lightning and thunder. All mariners are urged to seek safe harbor immediately. Again, all mariners are urged to seek safe harbor immediately. This is the United States Coast Guard, Mayport Group, Out.

Out. The word echoed in my mind with ominous finality.

"Out" is radiospeak for "signing off," but I thought I detected something like pity in its curtness. It sounded more like a dubiously offered "Good luck. . .because you're going to need it."

I had a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach: half dread, half excitement. For those in the vicinity aboard something sporty like a little center console with twin 250 horsepower engines, this warning was useful. All they needed to do now was point their bow toward sh.o.r.e and gun it. But for us, the Coast Guard's announcement was nothing more than a bad review of a show where we had already taken our expensive and highly visible front-row seats. There was no chance of escaping now.

John and I put our heads together over the chart. The only way we could possibly find shelter was to make it to the closest inlet: Jacksonville Beach. But as the skies darkened to the ominous green and black of an old bruise, it became clear we couldn't beat this monster front. It was moving at us-fast-from the direction of Jacksonville Beach, and we decided there was no point going right into the storm. Instead, we turned 180 degrees and ran away from it. Of course, when your boat averages about 7.5 knots (approximately 8 miles) per hour, "ran" is just a figure of speech. What we were doing was more like shuffling.

A storm at sea is something to see. First, imagine being at the beach and watching a big storm from behind a plate gla.s.s window-the vastness of the ocean, the change in the waves as they grow and crash against the sand, the way the skies become almost black beyond the surf. The rain lashes against the window, streaming down the gla.s.s in a blur that makes it hard to see exactly what's happening out there. A storm at the seaside gives nature a wonderful stage for its high drama. But the overall sensation you feel as you watch is one of coziness You're safe inside. You don't have to go out. Start a fire. Have a cup of tea. Enjoy the show.

Now imagine that you are surrounded by that dark sea, bobbing in the middle of it. Instead of looking out a big picture window, you are looking out the blurry windows of your pilothouse as your little s.h.i.+p rocks from side to side and climbs steeply up one wave and down another. Off in the distance you see land and it looks. . .like heaven. We did not make tea. One of us stayed at the helm while the other ran below to check that all our portholes were tight and all loose objects were stowed. The dogs took up a cowering position in the corner of the pilothouse bench. We put on our foul-weather jackets and felt as prepared as we could be. Bright white flashes of lightning were now shattering the charcoal sky behind us, and we were feeling pretty smart for evading the brunt of it. We decided to move a little farther off the coast and out, then circle back up toward Jacksonville Beach. We changed course, and half an hour later, it looked like our tactics had worked: all but the fringes of this brief, violent front just pa.s.sed us by. Of course, it was our first storm and we had nothing to compare it against. Later I learned that 21,000 people ash.o.r.e lost their power that night and more than 10,000 remained without electricity for another 24 hours. We were right to feel smug.

But that sensation didn't last long. When we regained our previous position just offsh.o.r.e of Jacksonville Beach, it was pitch dark and the storm had left turbulent seas in its wake. While I wrestled us over 8-foot waves at close intervals, John tried locating the entrance to the channel, relative to our position. We hadn't studied our approach in advance, a.s.suming instead that we'd be there in daylight under good conditions, with plenty of time to strategize en route. Then the storm hit, and we focused solely on staying out of its way. Now we realized we'd made a very amateur mistake: we had failed to familiarize ourselves with the approach to an unknown harbor in advance.

According to the chart, the entrance to the channel was about two nautical miles offsh.o.r.e, marked by a flas.h.i.+ng red and flas.h.i.+ng green marker. But how far out did the jetties extend? How deep was the water approaching the entrance? In daylight, I would have felt confident about cutting into the channel without going all the way out to the first marker. But in darkness, I was afraid of what I couldn't see (since charts are not always accurate), so we headed all the way offsh.o.r.e to the top of the channel entrance. The Bossanova rode the waves like a cowboy atop a bucking bronco-up the face of one wave and steeply down the face of the next. And we couldn't see a d.a.m.n thing.

To reduce glare, the only light on in the pilothouse was a red bulb, but I still had to leave the doors open and frequently step outside, with one hand on the wheel, to get a clearer view of the ocean at night. Even the dimmest light on the bridge seemed to ricochet off the gla.s.s and obscure the outside. But standing in the open air, my eyes gradually adjusted to the slight variations of blackness around us. Beneath, before, behind-that dense blackness was sea. The parts that seemed trimmed in a faintly luminous frill were the crests of waves.

Above and all around us, the night sky's scattered stars drew the only discernible border between the dark waters they blanketed. Every minute or so, I stepped back out, let my eyes adjust, had a good look around and then stepped back in. When we finally headed into the very top of the channel entrance, it was 9:00 p.m. and we'd been running for twelve hours.

As we pa.s.sed through the jetties, just past the mouth of the St. John's River, we sighted some secondary channel markers to port. These were a line of smaller buoys leading to Mayport Basin, the third largest naval base in the United States. The base was lit up like a ma.s.sive, open-air operating room. An aircraft carrier tied by a dozen hawser lines to the dock resembled a dangerous giant, strapped down to sleep off anesthesia under merciless white lights.

Unfortunately, these lights, and all the other less spectacular sh.o.r.e illuminations of Jacksonville Beach, made picking out markers in the main channel nearly impossible. Now when I stepped outside the pilothouse for a look, there was no darkness to adjust to, just a different kind of light. In its own way, it was as stressful as finding our entrance had been. We were safer in that we were not out there alone, pitching around in a tar black sea. On the other hand, we were in a major navigation area that was unfamiliar to us, we didn't know where we were going and we couldn't see anything. We took turns-one of us at the helm, the other outside the pilothouse with binoculars and a search light, which we swung like a scythe through the blackness, carving a path up the channel, one marker at a time. When the beam weakly hit a distant buoy, we focused intently, calling out its number as soon as we could see it and checking it against the electronic chart. We were slowly groping our way forward.

Theoretically, this nighttime navigation should not have been as tricky for us as it was. We had both suffered through a very difficult (and excruciatingly dull) course at Chapman called Rules of the Road. Success depended on hours of sheer rote memorization of Coast Guard legalese covering which vessel has right-of-way in any given situation and which day shapes or sequence of lights marked which kind of vessel. The Coast Guard licensing exam required a grade of 90 percent or higher on this section of the test in order to pa.s.s, so the material was drilled into us. We were quizzed at the beginning of each and every lesson on the previous dose of mind-numbing rules, and in the end, we all squeaked by. But as real life was teaching us tonight, all the other ambient lights in a port-including highway lights, commercial signage, secondary channel markers, even pa.s.sing cars-make isolating the identification lights of other marine traffic and navigation aids very tough.

Now, as I looked up the river, I saw a stack of lights moving across the horizon, parallel to us. "What's three whites over a green mean again?" I asked John, who had done an extra three weeks of extensive preparation for the Coast Guard licensing exams.

"Hmmm," he said. "Let me see. Three whites over a green. . .three whites over a-holy s.h.i.+t, that's a long tow." A long tow is a vessel of 200 meters or more, being towed by a tug. And that was only the minimum length of the barge. We were in so much shock that I didn't try to calculate its actual length, but it was gigantic as it rounded the bend and headed straight for my wee 40-foot boat. It absolutely dwarfed us. I moved over to the starboard side of the channel in order to give this leviathan plenty of s.p.a.ce as it closed in. But about a minute later, we heard two prolonged blasts and one short blast ring out from behind us. John stepped out of the pilothouse and shouted back in "Oh my G.o.d, Cap. I cannot believe it. We've got another long tow coming up behind us."

When you're out in the ocean, with plenty of room around, you still give these giants as much leeway as possible. They throw off an enormous wake and they're very restricted in their ability to maneuver. Now I held us steady in the middle of the river as we were pa.s.sed on either side by barges 600 feet long or more, pa.s.sing on both sides of us and no more than 100 feet away.

There was really nothing I could do besides alter my course ever so slightly and get ready for the fallout. Nothing we studied could have prepared us for this, and I was vaguely aware that-in terms of channel traffic nightmares, at least we were being given a scenario about as bad as we were ever liable to meet. Still, after months of stressful study in a cla.s.sroom, something in me rejoiced that we were out from behind our desks and books and actually doing it. I wasn't half as scared as I was thrilled.

The two long tows pa.s.sed us simultaneously, and for a moment we were sandwiched between their hulls. Piled high with cargo, the s.h.i.+ps caused a quick eclipse of the stars as they pa.s.sed us. The channel waters they left in their wake were confused, meeting in the middle in a high swell that rolled us gently back and forth.

And then they were gone. And we were fine.

An hour or so later, we finally found a deserted dock to tie up at for the night and almost wept with relief. It was midnight, the end of a seventeen-hour day underway, and our first one out in the ocean. My body was absolutely exhausted but my heart ached with happiness. After giving the poor boys a quick walk, I fell into bed, fully clothed.

What seemed like minutes later, when I could no longer ignore the clamor chewing at the edges of my consciousness, I opened my eyes. It was 5:15. Where was I? Engines were coughing and catching, I heard the high-pitched beep-beep-beep of a forklift in reverse and someone shouting, "Back it up, back it up." Three boats in quick succession peeled away in loud, whiney flourishes. Was that diesel I smelled or testosterone? It was still gray out, but it was definitely time to get up.

It slowly came back to me. John and I had finally turned in about four hours earlier. We'd had a storm, a rough approach to the channel, and a cheek-to-cheek dance with two long tows. What we needed was four days of sleep, not four hours.

But we had tied up near the fuel dock of the only marina we could find and, of course, today had to be the day they were hosting their annual fis.h.i.+ng tournament. I threw on shorts and a clean b.u.t.ton-down and took the dogs for a walk to the office so I could pay for the overnight tie-up. A plump girl with freckles, maybe 10 years old, was handling the register like a pro, and a line of sunburned guys in shorts and grimy caps hustled through as she rang up their purchases. Everyone seemed a tad morose and hurried. The marina office looked and felt like any small-town gas station-minimart, except for the a.s.sortment of lures, baits, charts, boots, cheap sungla.s.ses, spare starter batteries and fis.h.i.+ng equipment that lined the shelves along the walls. All the other offerings were typical of a highway convenience store, right down to the beef jerky, snack cakes and pump canisters of coffee. I skipped the array of flavored nondairy creamers and had a sip of tepid coffee-flavored water from a Styrofoam cup while I waited in line. When it was my turn, the bubbly little girl said she didn't know how much to charge me and got on the VHF to someone named Randy.

"I've got someone here wants to pay for tying up last night. What do I charge her? Yeah, that big boat by the fuel dock. . . .Okay." The girl pulled a large ring binder from under the counter and handed me a slip of paper with questions: name of vessel, length, beam, date.

"Looks like it's going to be busy today," I offered while filling out my form. I'm a mistress of the obvious.

"Oh, jeez. You have no idea. And the worst thing is, a lot of people are pretty angry because we, like, ran out of diesel."

So, that was testosterone I had smelled! "Oh, dear. And you guys have a big tournament today, huh?"

"Yeah, and it's, like, a long way back to another place with fuel, so they're not too happy with us. And it's not so good for us either because lots of these people are our regular customers."

But she said all this with a cheery smile, took my paperwork, checked the binder and came up with a charge of $80.

Eighty dollars for about four hours: it seemed steep, but she was sweet and I was too tired to argue.

Back at the boat, John and I agreed we should get outside again as fast as we could. He went for ice and I put the water on for real coffee. This was before my life-changing purchase of the beautifully basic stovetop Bialetti Moka espresso maker, so I was still pouring boiling water over Bustelo through the wrong-size paper filter wedged in a small red plastic funnel I'd found in the engine room. It wasn't pretty but it did the job.

We were underway by 6:00 a.m. It was dawn as we pa.s.sed between the jetties and the sun flashed patches of liquid gold on the dark Atlantic. It was a beautiful sight, though the noisy escort of center consoles on either side of us, opening their throttles to full drone as soon as they left the No Wake zone, p.i.s.sed all over G.o.d's grandeur.

Once we were well offsh.o.r.e and headed north, John and I came up with the day's game plan. This would be our routine every morning. We'd roll out a paper chart and have a look at the coastal towns up ahead. Which one was the farthest away but still reachable in daylight and close to an inlet? We'd take a guess, then plot a line or series of lines along the coast and measure the distance using a compa.s.s divider, comparing it against the chart's distance key. Then we'd calculate how many hours it would take us at cruising speed and verify that we could, indeed, make our guessed-at arrival point by evening. If we had chosen a place that was a tad too far, we'd back up and find a closer destination. If we'd been under ambitious, we'd look for the next inlet up the coast and run calculations again to be sure we could make it by nightfall. Then we'd chart our first leg and put the coordinates in the GPS. The GPS would then show us a bearing and an expected time of arrival that confirmed our hand-drawn work. We'd then set the autopilot and make more coffee. This morning, we were exhausted but happy, and we spent the next few hours rehas.h.i.+ng the previous night's incredible adventure.

After a second cup of coffee, we talked about the possibility of an overnight run to Charleston. We decided we'd go as far as we could by day and see if the weather held, and if we felt up to the challenge of navigating by night.

At noon, John donned his radio headphones and took his fis.h.i.+ng pole to the stern of the boat to listen to a nationally syndicated sports radio show from his beloved Chicago as well as the latest in right-wing punditry. I stayed on the bridge and admired the unspoken separation of church and state that kept the crew of the motor vessel Bossanova fond of each other.

O N E T H I N G YO U H AV E on an ocean voyage is time. The sun goes in and out of a cloudy sky until it tires of the chase and declares itself against a bright blue ceiling. The waves get shorter, get taller, come at you from different directions, take on different gradations of blue and green. Every degree of lat.i.tude brings a slightly different feeling-new wildlife, a crisper light, a slightly different smell. The sea's surface mirrors heaven's every nuance. Watching this and not thinking about anything at all was what I loved best.