The Old Man & The Sea
I was lucky to marry a man who shares my love for the sea. We pounded the waters in South Florida for many years while a dream lay submerged in my subconscious. In 1982 my father left me some shares in the company he’d retired from. I hung on to them for several years until that old dream resurfaced. What triggered it was something simple: a toilet – rather the lack of one – on our boat. The older I got, the more annoyed I became about the lack thereof.
“This is disgraceful and I will no longer be subjected to such an indignity,” I warned Joe in the middle of Blackwater Sound as he handed me the too-familiar plastic bucket.
That’s when we began searching for a boat with a toilet. We started small but each boat we looked at was larger than the last. Finally I found my dream in a boatyard on the St. John’s river: a thirty-two foot hefty little ship with the undeniable lines of a working trawler. Lots of beautiful teak inside. Heavy wooden doors with brass hinges. Best of all: the bathroom. Not just a toilet but a full shower, sink, large mirror and vanity. We made a ridiculously low offer on it. It must have been destiny because, to our astonishment, we became the proud owners of our own tiny ship.
I was so thrilled with the bathroom (Ahem! – the head), I wanted to rename the boat “Dear John.” But Joe said it’s unlucky to change the name. (Unlucky for him since he’d have to part with the extra hundred bucks it costs to change the name of a documented boat.)
When the “Odyssey” arrived at Manatee Bay Marina in Key Largo a year after we’d begun searching, I knew what it meant to have my ship come in. I wandered through it, marveling at the fully equipped galley, lying on the berths, and staring at my own brass portholes. I couldn’t stop fondling the wood, walking around the cabin to the bow, leaning over the rail. And it wasn’t even in the water yet.
That first day we painted the bottom. The next two days, I cleaned and polished and caulked while Joe installed the marine air conditioner. (I would nap in cool luxury while he trolled for dolphin on that stretch of liquid desert called the Gulf Stream where he’d tortured me for years. And I would delight in making frequent trips to the head.)
The day we launched “Odyssey” and began cruising south toward our dock in Key Largo, my dream shattered. We hadn’t been on the water for fifteen minutes when the boat stopped dead. Joe descended into the bowels of a nightmarish realm called the bilge. A perpetual stream of moans and grunts, clanks and clangs, preceded a sweaty, grease-smeared face that popped up like an evil Jack-in-the-box, sneering something about water in the fuel tanks. He descended again, swearing vengeance on the former owner.
Joe’s knack for fixing things got us underway in an hour or so and my dream revived quickly when I realized one of the select fantasies connected to it lay just around the next bend. There, a sweltering snake of cars would slither to a halt at Jewfish Creek while the bridge opened to let us through. We’d been a scale on that snake’s back for years. I’d watched with envy as the big graceful boats glided through, always wishing one of them was mine.
My heart thumped as I went below, got on the radio (Joe hadn’t installed one topside yet.) and requested a bridge opening.
“Which way are you headed, Captain?” the bridge tender asked, “North or south?”
At the word, “Captain,” my heart fluttered to a stop. So did my brain. I answered professionally as any good sailor would, “Uhhh.”
“Never mind. I see you,” he said, to my relief.
There is no way to describe my feelings, gliding through that bridge opening the first time, waving at all those poor scales in their cars.
We took turns at the helm, learning the feel of it. We arrived at our dock in approximately three hours, doing about seven knots. (Somewhere along the line, the word “trawler” must have evolved from “Crawler.”)
For the next two weeks we worked in anticipation of our weeklong shakedown cruise, one of the best weeks of my life – and one of the worst. “Shake-up” cruise would have been a more befitting word. But it taught us much.
One lesson only took a half an hour: always be sure the door to the main locker is shut before going into the head. The doors face opposite each other in the passageway with room enough to open only one at a time. The open one butts against the other, holding it shut. The locker door is apt to swing open while cruising if not shut properly. I learned this the hard way, in the head, while shouting through the porthole and banging on the overhead, trying to get Joe’s attention.
Another lesson: Never try to grab a mooring buoy while the boat is still moving. I learned this by watching Joe fall overboard while trying to retrieve the boat hook I dropped after it practically wrenched my arm from its socket. But nothing could mar my dream. Not even Joe’s falling overboard a second time for no apparent reason while I tried to untangle the rope from his foot.
We bobbed around in bays and sounds. We meandered through creeks in the backcountry. Schools of porpoise flanked our bow. I hung over the rail, thrilled down to my boat shoes, watching them arch out of the water and beam their fixed smiles at me. We fished. We swam. We watched the sun set from the fly bridge where we danced and toasted each other with champagne. We cooked fish dinners, played cards, and even watched a little TV.
Oh, those magic nights we spent anchored in secluded Tarpon Basin and Buttonwood Sound! I slept like a baby … waking every hour. Each time, I strained my eyes in the dark toward the black outline of islands that seemed to loom closer and closer. Joe was not pleased the few times I woke him to ask, “Wasn’t that boat over there much farther away the last time we looked?” But it wasn’t difficult to drift back to sleep, being rocked in a giant cradle, rippling water lapping a lullaby on the hull.
And those glorious mornings when seabirds called to wake me. We ate breakfast in wonder, gazing out at a paradise of islands where rosaries of ibis and egrets soared from their night roosts. Joe took the dinghy and shopped for supplies and the Sunday paper. I, of course, remained with my ship. By the end of the week, when Joe had exhausted every foul word in his vocabulary, we headed home.
After that week, we began venturing farther and farther away until recently we had the confidence to complete a two-week voyage to the Dry Tortugas. I felt as if I’d stowed away on a ship to exotic ports.
Occasionally a demon still possesses the engine or some other thing-a-ma-jig and Joe has to exorcize it. But when everything’s running smoothly, you’ll find me at the helm of my ship, nudging the islands along the Intracoastal Waterway. And every so often, I can’t resist cruising North to Jewfish Creek Bridge.
Someday if you happen to be waiting there, you might see a little trawler glide through. And waving from the helm, you’ll see a petite chaser of dreams who believes they do come true.
I was lucky to marry a man who shares my love for the sea. We pounded the waters in South Florida for many years while a dream lay submerged in my subconscious. In 1982 my father left me some shares in the company he’d retired from. I hung on to them for several years until that old dream resurfaced. What triggered it was something simple: a toilet – rather the lack of one – on our boat. The older I got, the more annoyed I became about the lack thereof.
“This is disgraceful and I will no longer be subjected to such an indignity,” I warned Joe in the middle of Blackwater Sound as he handed me the too-familiar plastic bucket.
That’s when we began searching for a boat with a toilet. We started small but each boat we looked at was larger than the last. Finally I found my dream in a boatyard on the St. John’s river: a thirty-two foot hefty little ship with the undeniable lines of a working trawler. Lots of beautiful teak inside. Heavy wooden doors with brass hinges. Best of all: the bathroom. Not just a toilet but a full shower, sink, large mirror and vanity. We made a ridiculously low offer on it. It must have been destiny because, to our astonishment, we became the proud owners of our own tiny ship.
I was so thrilled with the bathroom (Ahem! – the head), I wanted to rename the boat “Dear John.” But Joe said it’s unlucky to change the name. (Unlucky for him since he’d have to part with the extra hundred bucks it costs to change the name of a documented boat.)
When the “Odyssey” arrived at Manatee Bay Marina in Key Largo a year after we’d begun searching, I knew what it meant to have my ship come in. I wandered through it, marveling at the fully equipped galley, lying on the berths, and staring at my own brass portholes. I couldn’t stop fondling the wood, walking around the cabin to the bow, leaning over the rail. And it wasn’t even in the water yet.
That first day we painted the bottom. The next two days, I cleaned and polished and caulked while Joe installed the marine air conditioner. (I would nap in cool luxury while he trolled for dolphin on that stretch of liquid desert called the Gulf Stream where he’d tortured me for years. And I would delight in making frequent trips to the head.)
The day we launched “Odyssey” and began cruising south toward our dock in Key Largo, my dream shattered. We hadn’t been on the water for fifteen minutes when the boat stopped dead. Joe descended into the bowels of a nightmarish realm called the bilge. A perpetual stream of moans and grunts, clanks and clangs, preceded a sweaty, grease-smeared face that popped up like an evil Jack-in-the-box, sneering something about water in the fuel tanks. He descended again, swearing vengeance on the former owner.
Joe’s knack for fixing things got us underway in an hour or so and my dream revived quickly when I realized one of the select fantasies connected to it lay just around the next bend. There, a sweltering snake of cars would slither to a halt at Jewfish Creek while the bridge opened to let us through. We’d been a scale on that snake’s back for years. I’d watched with envy as the big graceful boats glided through, always wishing one of them was mine.
My heart thumped as I went below, got on the radio (Joe hadn’t installed one topside yet.) and requested a bridge opening.
“Which way are you headed, Captain?” the bridge tender asked, “North or south?”
At the word, “Captain,” my heart fluttered to a stop. So did my brain. I answered professionally as any good sailor would, “Uhhh.”
“Never mind. I see you,” he said, to my relief.
There is no way to describe my feelings, gliding through that bridge opening the first time, waving at all those poor scales in their cars.
We took turns at the helm, learning the feel of it. We arrived at our dock in approximately three hours, doing about seven knots. (Somewhere along the line, the word “trawler” must have evolved from “Crawler.”)
For the next two weeks we worked in anticipation of our weeklong shakedown cruise, one of the best weeks of my life – and one of the worst. “Shake-up” cruise would have been a more befitting word. But it taught us much.
One lesson only took a half an hour: always be sure the door to the main locker is shut before going into the head. The doors face opposite each other in the passageway with room enough to open only one at a time. The open one butts against the other, holding it shut. The locker door is apt to swing open while cruising if not shut properly. I learned this the hard way, in the head, while shouting through the porthole and banging on the overhead, trying to get Joe’s attention.
Another lesson: Never try to grab a mooring buoy while the boat is still moving. I learned this by watching Joe fall overboard while trying to retrieve the boat hook I dropped after it practically wrenched my arm from its socket. But nothing could mar my dream. Not even Joe’s falling overboard a second time for no apparent reason while I tried to untangle the rope from his foot.
We bobbed around in bays and sounds. We meandered through creeks in the backcountry. Schools of porpoise flanked our bow. I hung over the rail, thrilled down to my boat shoes, watching them arch out of the water and beam their fixed smiles at me. We fished. We swam. We watched the sun set from the fly bridge where we danced and toasted each other with champagne. We cooked fish dinners, played cards, and even watched a little TV.
Oh, those magic nights we spent anchored in secluded Tarpon Basin and Buttonwood Sound! I slept like a baby … waking every hour. Each time, I strained my eyes in the dark toward the black outline of islands that seemed to loom closer and closer. Joe was not pleased the few times I woke him to ask, “Wasn’t that boat over there much farther away the last time we looked?” But it wasn’t difficult to drift back to sleep, being rocked in a giant cradle, rippling water lapping a lullaby on the hull.
And those glorious mornings when seabirds called to wake me. We ate breakfast in wonder, gazing out at a paradise of islands where rosaries of ibis and egrets soared from their night roosts. Joe took the dinghy and shopped for supplies and the Sunday paper. I, of course, remained with my ship. By the end of the week, when Joe had exhausted every foul word in his vocabulary, we headed home.
After that week, we began venturing farther and farther away until recently we had the confidence to complete a two-week voyage to the Dry Tortugas. I felt as if I’d stowed away on a ship to exotic ports.
Occasionally a demon still possesses the engine or some other thing-a-ma-jig and Joe has to exorcize it. But when everything’s running smoothly, you’ll find me at the helm of my ship, nudging the islands along the Intracoastal Waterway. And every so often, I can’t resist cruising North to Jewfish Creek Bridge.
Someday if you happen to be waiting there, you might see a little trawler glide through. And waving from the helm, you’ll see a petite chaser of dreams who believes they do come true.
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