Once Upon a Gypsy Moon (3 page)

The
Gypsy Moon
had undergone various repairs and improvements in preparation for the contingencies of an extended voyage, the need for some of which I had come to appreciate the hard way. Two years earlier, during her maiden voyage to the Bahamas, she had brushed shoulders with Tropical Storm Barry as it moved across Florida on the second of June—the first time a cyclone had come so close to those islands so early in the season in four decades. Wandering in the Abacos, far from VHF weather-radio broadcasts, I was caught unaware by remnants of the passing storm. As I made a run across fifty miles of open water from Great Sale Cay for the harbor at West End, my headsail shredded in high winds, and the sheets fouled the roller furling. Unable to make sail or lower sail, I learned then the value of old-fashioned hank-on jibs that go up when you pull the halyard and come down the same way. So one of the first changes made to the
Gypsy Moon
in preparation for this solo voyage was the removal of the roller furling and the replacement of the head stay.

The decision to take down a $2,000 roller furling system and switch to hanked-on headsails was a nod toward the reliability of a simple nineteenth-century design over the convenience of modern technology. Roller furling became common in the early 1980s. It allows a helmsman, while seated in the comfort of the cockpit, to deploy or stow the headsail merely by pulling a line wrapped around a drum at the base of the forestay. The line spins the drum, the drum spins the forestay, and the jib—tucked into a groove in the forestay like a window shade—furls or unfurls as the forestay swivels, depending on the direction in which you pull the line.

On a pleasant day’s sail on the bay, roller furling is a convenient thing to have. It eliminates the need to put down your gin and tonic to travel to the foredeck to raise or lower the headsail. In a rising wind on the open ocean, however, with the risk of the line fouling in a rat’s nest in the drum and the helmsman unable to retrieve or lower a flogging headsail, it is (in my opinion) of little convenience at all. Moreover, the thin fabric of sails appropriate for light winds is nothing like the cardboard-thick storm jib needed for heavy weather. You can’t accomplish that sail change with roller furling. You’ve got to get your fanny on a pitching, wet foredeck, pull one sail down, and replace it with the other. Roller furling makes that process harder because it requires the sail to be fully unfurled before it can be lowered. Unfurl a three-hundred-square-foot sail in a thirty-knot squall and you’re not likely to see it again soon. As a result, skippers on boats with roller furling often succumb to laziness in making sail changes too late, too infrequently, or not at all. They usually end up flying too much or too little canvas in high winds, which may explain why so many boats with roller furling that venture offshore are reported to suffer dismastings. And yet the pressures of modern marketing have done so much to make these and other “improvements” standard on new boats that seem more like floating RVs than seagoing vessels.

Another modification on the
Gypsy Moon
that went against the grain was the installation of a Monitor Windvane. This is a Rube Goldberg contraption that steers a boat on a constant heading relative to the wind, without benefit of electricity or fuel or human effort. It operates by means of a wind vane mounted on the transom. The vane is attached to a servo-pendulum rudder that pulls one of two lines running to the ship’s wheel. As the boat veers off course, the vane backs against the wind, pushing the servo-pendulum rudder, which pulls the line, which turns the wheel, which alters the course of the boat until the vane is headed dead into the wind again. Monitor Windvanes are expensive to install and difficult to learn to operate correctly, but once mastered they can sail a boat on a straight course indefinitely. First perfected in the 1950s by some British “yotties” who were trying to race each other solo “across the pond,” some form of this device has been a trusted ally on sailing circumnavigations ever since.

Push-button electronic navigation systems that operate by battery power are more commonly seen, and the
Gypsy Moon
is fitted with one. They are convenient and simple to operate, but they cannot handle the strain of heavy seas or high winds or constant use over a long span of time. The motors burn out or the gears strip. Simpler is better, most of the time.

High on the list of improvements was a newly inspected and repacked four-man inflatable life raft, which I nicknamed
Lucky Jack
after the hero of Patrick O’Brian’s novels. It is stored in a sealed canister and strapped into a steel cradle that is bolted to the deck just ahead of the mast. The raft (I am instructed) deploys automatically when the canister, secured by its tether to a strong fitting on deck, is thrown overboard. The tug of the tether pulls a pin inside the canister that fires a CO
₂
cartridge, which inflates the raft. The covered raft is designed for survival in all sea states, until help arrives.
Lucky Jack
is well named because he has never been needed, and I for one am hoping his luck holds.

Other doomsday devices that I keep aboard include two Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs), which, with the flip of a switch in a moment of need, will transmit an electronic signal embedded with the
Gypsy Moon
’s unique data signature and GPS coordinates to satellites in space from any ocean in the world. The satellites relay the SOS signal and the boat’s exact position to the US Coast Guard and international rescue agencies.

So much for
preparation and visions of disaster. This is, after all, a sailing voyage and not a moon launch. It is easy to get so carried away with the logistics of planning that we lose sight of what remains, which is simply “to go.” On this subject Joshua Slocum, who in 1898 at the age of fifty-four became the first man to sail alone around the world, had this to say in the closing paragraphs of the book he wrote about his famous voyage:

I eased the
Gypsy Moon
away from the dock where she had been laid to after launching. The diesel engine kept up a low, steady rumble until I reached the last marker on the Magothy River. When I could feel the wind of Chesapeake Bay on my face, I pulled the kill switch on the engine and raised the headsail, as the world returned to silence. I was off, though only briefly, for the short sail to the mouth of the Severn River, where I would turn into Annapolis for the night.

As I glided into Spa Creek by the naval academy, my anchor found the bottom with plenty of sea room. I made the rode snug on the bow chocks. The boat turned smartly to the wind and luffed sail. Within minutes, all sheets and canvas were made fast. I was looking at Annapolis from the same place where Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington had viewed the town. They came here under sail, and so did I. Whatever poetry there was in that, I savored it only briefly before the heavens opened with a warm summer rain.

Annapolis Harbor may be crowded and the town may be overrun with tourists, but I have always enjoyed the convenience of its well-run water taxi service. Hailing a pontoon boat with a canopy to come alongside and take you from your anchored boat to the town dock, for the price of a few dollars, beats wrestling a dinghy onto the foredeck, inflating and launching it, and rowing it ashore—especially because the funds available for the repair of the
Gypsy Moon
had not included money for a suitable dinghy. Her last tender had disintegrated under the Bahamian sun two years earlier.

But the comforts of the water taxi extend only to the shoreline. Before I knew it, I was less in need of a dinghy than of a good set of weathers as the rain intensified. Running and dodging barhoppers from one sidewalk awning to the next in the sudden downpour, I finally arrived at Fawcett Boat Supplies in hopes of finally replacing my dime-store vinyl rain gear with the latest technical offshore racing duds. Alas, Fawcett’s has always been extremely proud of their foul-weather gear, and I found the prices no different that night. I settled for some waterproof charts instead, and a waterproof tube in which to carry them. The captain would have to get wet.

Feeling like a cat scolded with a garden hose, I arrived later that night, a sodden mess, at the door of Middleton Tavern. This is the very place where Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington came to dine not long after the Revolution, although with better clothing, I suspect. Even so, I had declared my own independence and lived through my own revolution of sorts, and I felt in some way a part of that honored tradition in that historic town that night.

I had plans to meet two old friends—a college fraternity brother and his wife—at Middleton’s. He had been a groomsman in my wedding in 1981, and we had stayed in touch through the years. He’d followed me to the same law school in the Midwest, did exceptionally well there, and returned to the Washington, DC, office of a big, top-drawer law firm, where he worked long hours for his clients and reaped the rewards—as well as the stress—of life as a silk-stocking corporate lawyer. A few years younger than I, he had always been thin and in annoyingly good shape. I could not constrain my disbelief when he told me, at dinner, of his recent heart attack. This was a young man. But he was characteristically upbeat and well versed in the medical science that now required even more careful attention to diet and exercise. In that moment I had the palpable sense that I was leaving on this voyage not a moment too soon and perhaps a good deal later than I realized.

We suppose that when pivotal moments in our lives finally arrive, they will be accompanied by the sound of trumpets on high or some outward epiphany of inner clarity. For me, nothing in my surroundings seemed different at all when I raised the anchor on that Sunday morning in August. My head was still in a fog of sleep when I began a voyage that would change my life forever.

Starting an ocean voyage is like asking a pretty girl to dance. There is nervousness and apprehension at first. When leaving for any length of time or traveling any distance, there is inevitably a feeling, at the beginning, that it all must be a terribly foolish undertaking, which you suppose is the reason why none of your wiser friends is aboard. But as master and vessel take their turns in the dance, as one leads and another follows, the dancers acquire a reassuring rhythm, and man and boat settle into the voyage as one.

There was barely a puff of wind, and within an hour of heading out of Annapolis, bound for the open ocean alone, I scarcely felt like Magellan. The flies were running circles around my boat. After a full day of sailing, I anchored in a cove still forty miles north of Hampton Roads, unable to catch any sleep under sail in the busy shipping lanes of the lower bay.

There wasn’t a whisper of sound after I tucked the
Gypsy Moon
into her snug anchorage that first night. I was the only boat around but for a few crabbers coming and going far off in the distance. The lights in the windows of houses onshore gave off a soft glow, and I imagined that families inside were sitting down to dinner. I missed my own family. It is in just these still, calm moments when the naysayers of conscience seem to arrive. They disturbed my mind that night with rude criticism: “What are you doing here all alone? Do you notice that no other boat is anchored out in this godforsaken place tonight? Don’t you suppose there’s a reason for that? All the boats are in their slips, and their owners are with their families, getting ready to go to work tomorrow, where you should be. When are you going to grow up? Why must you always be looking over the horizon? Trust me, you’re no Magellan. Besides, it didn’t work out so well for Magellan, either. Or Columbus, for that matter. Give up this nonsense and put the boat into Norfolk or, better yet, put her up for sale and take up golf, like normal men your age. You’re going to regret this, mark my words…” And so on.

The criticism got a good bit louder the following morning. I hit the snooze button and slept later than planned, but I was up like a rocket when I heard the noise of sails flogging in a sudden thunderstorm. Bolting out on deck in my skivvies, I felt the wind come in cool gusts from the southwest. It had caught a corner of the headsail stowed on the foredeck and had raised it halfway up the forestay. The sheets were snapping at me like a cat-o’-nine-tails as I tried to grab the flailing sail and tamp everything down on deck. When I finally won the battle and the storm had passed, I sat for a long moment in the cockpit. The naysayers returned to my thoughts. I knew why: I was coming to a point of decision. If I weighed anchor, I would be committing to the voyage offshore. I was scared already, and the storm hadn’t helped matters, but whenever I thought of turning back, an awful sadness—almost an ache—welled up in my gut. There was something about this voyage that already owned me. I had to go. The idea of turning back seemed like a psychic death, a defeat, a resignation to an unkind fate. I raised the sails, and soon the
Gypsy Moon
and I were off again.

The Chesapeake Bay is a long, long thing. It was nightfall before I passed over the bridge-tunnel at Cape Charles and finally faced the ocean again. I had sailed many nights in the Atlantic before, but never alone, and never here. As I came through the shipping channel, the first difference I noticed was the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of the
Gypsy Moon
as she rode over the long swells rolling in from far out at sea.

At the mouth of the bay several shipping lanes converge, and in the night sky the navigation lights of huge freighters scarcely reveal their true size until they pass abeam, silently and slowly, like giant elephants tiptoeing into the harbor. The
Gypsy Moon
was entitled to the same navigational privileges as any other sailing vessel, but not being so restricted in her ability to maneuver, she owed a duty of deference to these behemoths in the close quarters of a channel. I knew, too, that like a mouse under their feet, my little ship would make them nervous with any sudden, unexpected change of course. I did my best to keep a careful heading toward the first waypoint, well out to sea and down the coast near Virginia Beach.

Very soon, it seemed, all the channel markers were behind me, and all that was left was the inky black of the night sky. The occasional crackle on the radio of the coast guard sector in Hampton Roads reminded me that I was not very far from where I’d started two days earlier. The sails were set for a gentle beam reach on a starboard tack, and the electronic autopilot whirred distractedly in short bursts, every few seconds, to keep the
Gypsy Moon
on course. I calculated the distance to my next marker as the lights onshore faded to starboard, set my bunk alarm for ten-minute intervals, and with the heel of the boat to port keeping me snug in the pilot berth, drifted off to what, over the next four days, would pass for sleep.