09-Twelve Mile Limit (19 page)

It wasn’t ideal weather, but it wasn’t terrible, either. In his custom twenty-five-foot boat powered with twin 225-horse-power Evinrudes, Sanford could still blast through waves at thirty-five miles per hour or faster, which put the wreck of the Baja California less than two hours or so from the light buoy off Big Marco Pass.

Something else that Sanford may have considered is that weather forecasts for the Gulf Coast of Florida are notoriously unreliable. Fishing guides often joke about them with a bitterness born from losing family income because, each season, clients cancel trips after listening to erroneous forecasts predicting foul weather. It’s not because the Gulf region lacks excellent meteorologists. Weather here is difficult to predict because the Gulf of Mexico is a complicated body of water, sensitive as a barometer, and influenced by changes in global weather, both subtle and strong.

The influence of the two gathering hurricanes on the Gulf was invisible but indisputable. The erratic, swirling currents and gyres of the Gulf are driven by diverse factors that include wind, heat, and oceanic currents. During a normal week, the great trade wind currents of the Caribbean push through the Yucatan Channel, into the Gulf, rivering along at speeds that can exceed three nautical miles per hour during the fall and winter. When Hurricane Gordon began its slow counterclockwise lumbering, however, the trade wind streams began to pile water massively off Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula, pressuring it through the Yucatan Straits at more than twice the speed of normal flow—in excess of six knots, or more than seven miles an hour, which is twice as fast as an Olympian can swim.

Off the Florida Straits, the effect of soon-to-be Hurricane Florence was proportional, but in reverse. As the Gulf of Mexico’s great loop current flows eastward along the Florida panhandle, then southward along the Florida peninsula, it rejoins a smaller but more powerful current loop off the northern coast of Cuba. These two saltwater rivers combine to form an inexorable surging of water called the Florida Current. This is the beginning of the Gulf Stream, which Juan Ponce de Leon described in his ship’s log as “the current more powerful than the wind.” The Gulf Stream transports 80 million tons of water per second along the coast of the United States, then east toward Europe, its warm waters profoundly affecting the weather of the British Isles and Europe.

Because the Florida Current is severely constricted by the Florida Keys and Cuba as it exits the Gulf, it flows hard even in normal weather, sometimes nearly four nautical miles per hour. However, with Florence hanging off the stricture, sucking in heat, wind, and water, both the velocity and mass of the Florida Current were amplified.

Hurricane Gordon was pushing water from the west; Tropical Storm Florence was pulling water from the east. The swirling, mobile, and complicate gyres whirlpooling within the Gulf were energized proportionally, gathering speeds of up to five, six, perhaps even seven knots, though no one knows for certain.

As the velocity of the currents and gyres increased and conflicted with wind flow, seas became heavier, more volatile, with occasional rogue waves large and out of keeping with normal seas abraded by twenty-knot winds. Even during calm weather, boat traffic is never heavy offshore of Florida’s Gulf barrier islands. There are more fish and more fun to be had gunk-holing around the bays. When the weather turns sloppy, though, boat traffic is almost nonexistent, and the Gulf becomes an uninhabited desert of gray.

There is an additional factor to be considered when contemplating the fate of three lone souls adrift in rivers that have no horizons. Oceanographers have determined that wind blowing across open water can sometimes alter the direction of the fluid’s movement—a phenomenon known as “wind drag,” the effects of which are defined as “geotropic flow.”

Wind moving over water creates friction, and the influence of that applied friction can cause objects on the water’s surface to drift at a 45-degree angle to the wind. Thus, wind blowing from the northeast will gradually create its own northwesterly water current. If the water is already flowing north, the velocity of that current will be increased and its direction altered only slightly.

Under such rare conditions, wing drag might have more influence on an inflated buoyancy compensator vest, which floats mostly atop the water, than on a data-marking buoy, which floats mostly beneath it.

Hurricane Florence formed quickly, swirled out to sea and vanished. Gordon had an impact on the Atlantic coast, though it was a hurricane for only about a day while southeast of the North Carolina Outer Banks. Most of its havoc was wrought as a tropical storm, its driving rains producing flooding and mud slides, which were particularly deadly in Haiti. Estimates of the death toll ranged up to two thousand. In Florida, seven deaths were attributed to Gordon, and there was significant agricultural damage.

If judged by similar elements, factors that can be consistently measured and recorded, the effect of the two hurricanes on the Gulf of Mexico, however, was negligible—unless you were one of three people out there in a gyre, floating and alone, being swept away.

At 7 P.M. on that moonless, windy night, Michael Sanford heard Janet make an abrupt mewing sound, then heard her scream, “Hey! My God, where’d the boat go?”

Moments later, the anchor line he and the others were holding was ripped away.

The anchor line had been in his left hand. In his right, he’d been holding Grace Walker, had her spooned against his body, trying to comfort her. Was trying to find some comfort himself, too—there was reassurance in the act of reassuring. When the boat went down, the anchor line snatched him under, vibrating with the intensity of a piano wire. He let go instinctively and stroked his way toward the surface, up through the blackness … and felt Grace sliding down his body, clawing at his abdomen, then legs, her fingernails gouging into the flesh of his feet as the boat dragged her toward the bottom, 110 feet below, while he ascended.

Gracie!

Even before he reached the surface, he understood what had happened. To make Grace feel more secure, he’d tied a conventional life jacket to her BCD, and then he’d looped a bight of the anchor line into the life jacket. She been terrified of losing her grip on the rope and drifting away. What would happen if he fell asleep? Who’d come get her? Being tied to the life jacket and the anchor line seemed to calm her.

But now the Seminole Wind, the boat he’d help design, the boat that was a favorite symbol of the lifestyle he embraced, had belched the last of the air pockets floating its fiberglass hull and was finally sinking, pulling the anchor line and Grace down with it.

Still underwater, Sanford deflated his BCD by yanking the dump valve cord at his right shoulder, then jackknifed downward, eyes open in the black water, seeing only the iridescent streaks and swirls of phosphorescence. A couple of yards below him was a strumming, greenish light that he hoped was the anchor line, and now he swam wildly toward it.

With his fingers outstretched, he found the line and clamped his left fist tight around the rope, while, with his right hand, he fumbled for the stainless-steel dive knife in the plastic scabbard strapped to his ankle. Ironically, the knife was a birthday gift from Grace, an expensive blue tang made by Underwater Kinetics.

He drew the knife—nearly dropped it—then severed the anchor line with three fast sawing strokes and was instantly catapulted to the surface by the buoyancy of Grace’s inflated vest. Came up right beside her, the two of them already wrapped tight in the other’s arms, both of them coughing water and vomiting, each calling the other’s name, while Janet and Amelia, from out of the darkness, shouted, “Michael? Grace? Michael? Gracie? Where are you?!”

Sanford yelled, “Here! We’re over here!” then began to inflate his BCD again, holding the valve open with his trembling fingers, blowing into the valve, seeing nothing but black waves, canyon-sized, and Grace’s silhouette floating beside him, his heart panicking inside his ribs, as he heard her scream, “I’m scared, Mikey! I’m so scared, and I don’t want to be here anymore. Please take me home. Please!” The childlike quality of her voice was so touching and painful that he groaned, groaned again, then began to shake uncontrollably between breaths.

When his vest was inflated and he could speak, he hugged Grace tight to him, as she whispered over and over into his ear, “You saved me, Sandman, you saved me!” and him not hearing because he was speaking into her ear, whispering: “I’m so sorry about this, Gracie. I’m so goddamn sorry about this I could cry.”

Then he did.

Amelia had left them. Intentionally or accidentally, they didn’t know. For the last half hour, she’d been right there at their side, one of four gray shapes in the darkness, a hand to grasp as, together, they battled their way toward the flashing light that fired on the horizon.

If they were riding a cresting wave, they could see the light clearly: a detonation of white, every four seconds. The light was about three miles away—Michael told them that. Not such a far swim, Amelia kept telling them that, too. Told them that when she was in high school, their swim team workouts had sometimes been five, even six miles. “Three miles,” she said. “That’s nothing. We’ll just take it steady and easy.”

They talked back and forth that way, shouting over the whistle of wind and keening waves, trying to bolster themselves with lies no one really believed: The swim would be easy. There was no danger. Sooner or later, a boat would come along and pluck them out. Michael kept saying the Baja California was a popular wreck. It attracted a lot of fishing and diving traffic. This would be a funny adventure story to tell their grandchildren. Some day, they’d all look back and laugh—no one really believed that, either.

Only Janet seemed to have any real confidence as she said over and over: “We’re going to make it. They’re going to find us. If we stick together, we’ll all make it.” Once she told them oddly and without explanation, “This evil doesn’t stand a chance against my prayers. Trust me. It doesn’t stand a chance.”

It was very slow going. They were southwest of the light tower. The wind was blowing even harder now, whistling into their faces out of the northeast. Waves rolled toward them from that direction, so it came to seem as if each wave was a purposeful attack, one after another, intentionally blocking them from their destination.

At first, they tried to swim individually, but that didn’t work. Janet and Amelia still wore fins, but Michael and Grace had lost theirs when the boat swamped. There was no way that the barefooted swimmers could keep up. It was Amelia who suggested that she and Janet each give the other two a fin to wear. “We’ve got to share!” she yelled. “None of us are going to make it at this rate!”

But that wouldn’t work, either. Both women wore full-footed fins, Amelia’s fins expensive and made by Force, Janet’s a much cheaper set made by U.S. Divers. Janet was a size 6, Amelia a size 7. Grace was a big woman, and Michael was a very big man. The fins wouldn’t fit them.

They juggled the order, getting mauled by waves, and finally settled on a method that was at least better than what they’d tried before. Michael and Grace, arms locked, floated on their backs, kicking, while Amelia at one end and Janet at the other used their fins to paddle their tiny human raft along.

The four of them would battle their way several yards up a wave, only to be smashed back that distance or more by the wave’s crest. Worse, their inflated vests, while keeping them afloat, were also acting as effective sea anchors, slowing their progress. Wearing an inflated BCD in those conditions was like being strapped to a small parachute in a wind tunnel. It was maddening. It was exhausting. In time, as they one by one realized how unlikely it was that they were going to make it to that far tower, the situation became terrifying.

The psychology of group hysteria is well documented, its roots predictable—la participation mystique, Carl Jung termed it. Hysteria can begin when one member of a group is overwhelmed by a fear or an illusion so powerful that all rational thought processes cease, sparking brain activity in the frontal lobe and the primitive limbic system. All primates are deeply coded with the instinctive fight-or-flight response. When one group member displays that limbic response, other members react immediately, and for good reason—survival is the only inviolable mandate of our species. Panic is contagious because it effectively speeds reaction time.

None of the four could ever be certain who panicked first, nor would they have reason to wonder. There was a big wave, then a second big wave that covered them like a waterfall and separated them, then a third, mountain-sized wave that sucked them down, down into blackness, tumbling them, contorting their bodies and nearly drowning one of the swimmers, so it was possible that they all panicked independently as they surfaced, one of them surfacing slightly later than the other three.

There were screams and swearing. A mouth opened skyway, begging for deliverance: Dear God! Please help us, God! Two of the swimmers vomited salt water. One independently reached out, seeking elbows and bodies, and drew a person toward her.

That’s when Amelia disappeared. One moment she was bobbing with the group. Then she was a wave ahead of them, and soon, two waves ahead. Then she was gone, like a small mist that had dissipated in blackness, leaving the shouted pleas of her companions to feather away in the wind: Don’t leave us, Amelia! Amelia, come back!

Now, it was just the three of them…

The panic had passed, replaced by a resolve that was part numbness, part survival instinct. The flashing light was their only hope. On that wide dark ocean, beneath its black rolling sky, the explosion of light was their only link to civilization, to the safety of their homes, to the reality that had abandoned them, the security of their daily lives.

Each time one or two of them faltered and began to panic again, or to lose confidence, another became assertive, assumed the leader’s role, and rallied the group’s spirits. There was no choice. They knew independently and as a group that, if they lost control again, stopped fighting and gave in to their fear, they were dead.