The Sean Seamour II
Before casting off at six-thirty in the morning, JP checks the marine weather forecast, but finds nothing out of the ordinary. Their destination is Gibraltar, but first they will land at the Azores for refueling. As they untie the lines, some friends from the marina come down to wave goodbye. JP then makes good on a promise. He will stop smoking now that the voyage has begun. To prove it, the short and slender captain with wispy gray hair takes his last pack of cigarettes, ceremonially holds them high in the air, and tosses them into the water—his new life as a nonsmoker begins at this moment. Rudy and Ben exchange glances; they hope their polite and relaxed captain doesn’t turn into Ahab.
After doing some 360-degree turns to calibrate the new equipment, they slowly motor down the St. Johns River, going right through the heart of Jacksonville as the sun clears the eastern horizon. As they approach the first bridge, Rudy can’t help but wonder if the mast—all sixty-one feet of it—will clear the underside, but JP assures him it will, and it does. Near the river’s mouth, they stop at a marina to top off the diesel tanks and fill up jerricans with more fuel. During the refueling, Rudy announces, “I’ll be right back. I’m going to make a last stop for food.” He walks to a market and purchases three orders of fish and chips.
JP uses this opportunity to call his wife, Mayke (pronounced Mykeh), a highly successful artist. They talk for a few moments, but JP wonders why Mayke is so mad at him for not calling earlier. She doesn’t tell him the real reason: She has had an uneasy feeling—“the kind you get right where your navel is”—that this voyage will not end well.
Mayke knows her husband is a safety-conscious sailor and that the Sean Seamour II is more than capable of handling rough weather, but ever since she dropped JP at the airport a couple of weeks earlier, her apprehension has grown in intensity with each passing day. Sleep has been difficult, and her time painting in the studio has suffered. She just wants her conversation with JP to end before she blurts out her misgivings and puts a damper on JP’s enthusiasm for the voyage.
When she hangs up the phone, Mayke tries to analyze her anxious mood, but she simply has no idea where it’s coming from. If it’s intuition, it seems totally illogical. But try as she might, she can’t shake the feeling that the trip is doomed. She doesn’t even try to return to the studio, knowing that anything she paints will be dark and foreboding.
• • •
When Rudy returns with the fish and chips, the men enjoy their lunch—their last meal from the outside world. Then they resume motoring, reaching the ocean at two p.m.
I’m finally doing it, thinks Rudy as he watches the shore disappear. We’re on our way.
There’s a slight breeze from the southwest, and the men are able to get their sails up, first heading in an easterly direction for about an hour and then sailing north-northeast. They are at the edge of the Gulf Stream, whose current will assist them on the first days of the journey. The balmy air allows the men to enjoy dinner in the cockpit, watching the sunset as they pull farther from land.
Later, while JP and Ben go to bed, Rudy stands watch to make sure they don’t get too close to any other vessels. He is assisted by a radar detector that will sound an alarm if another vessel is in their vicinity. Rudy wears his safety harness with the tether clipped to a bed-eye or other firm object on the boat. This is a wise precaution to ensure that if someone accidentally falls overboard, the tether will keep him with the boat. Without the tether, a sailor who goes overboard at night has a slim chance of being found. There are few fates worse than swimming frantically and hollering in the darkness, trying to keep up with a boat whose stern lights are getting fainter and fainter as it sails into the night.
Rudy is glad he has the first watch; he’s much too excited about starting the voyage to sleep, and he’s already thinking ahead to tomorrow, his first full day at sea. Just before midnight, with a half-moon illuminating the water, Rudy has his first thrill of the trip. He’s startled by a splash a couple of feet away from the boat. Peering at the ocean, he sees the outline of a dolphin come out of the water. There are perhaps twenty dolphins swimming along either side of the Sean Seamour II, occasionally breaking the surface with acrobatic leaps. Rudy watches, mesmerized. He has never seen dolphins at sea, and this pod seems to want to race the boat, just a few feet away from the awestruck Canadian. Grinning, Rudy feels a sense of well-being from contact with the natural world of the sea.
Looking from the radar screen back to the dolphins, Rudy expects the pod to veer away from the boat at any moment. Instead, they accompany the sailor for the next hour. Finally, at about one a.m., the dolphins leave, and Rudy checks a computer navigation screen that shows both the actual course of the sailboat and the course plotted in advance by JP. The vessel seems a bit off track. Rudy decides to wake JP and get his advice.
JP joins Rudy in the cockpit, and together they get the boat back on course. As they sail into the night, Rudy says, “Aren’t you going back to bed?” JP shakes his head. “When I’m on the boat, I don’t seem to require much sleep. It’s a beautiful night, and I feel refreshed, so I’ll stay up and enjoy it.”
JP loves sailing so much, he doesn’t want to miss any of it by sleeping. Like many die-hard sailors, he has had an unconventional life. Born in New York City, JP’s father was French and his mother Belgian. They were not ready to raise a child and JP’s father was abusive to both his son and wife. Because of the ill treatment, JP’s mother fled her husband, abandoning her three-year-old son. It’s a wonder JP survived the cruelties of his father. Neighbors heard him crying all the time and called social services when they realized he was left alone for hours on end in his father’s New York City apartment.
Social services removed JP from the apartment and placed him in a foster home, which was little better than his lonely existence in the apartment. He was the youngest of several children there, and was ostracized by the older boys. But he was a resourceful child, and out of necessity he adapted, learning that he could survive by being alone and hiding when necessary. When he was six years old, his father somehow managed to regain custody of his child. JP went to live with him and his new wife, Betty. The resulting years were disastrous for young Jean Pierre. His stepmother, Betty, was a kind woman, but she, too, had to flee the cruelties of her husband, and once again JP, now ten years old, was alone with his physically abusive father. In an effort to get his second wife back, JP’s father concocted a heinous plan, using JP as both pawn and victim. The father knew Betty loved the boy, and he surmised that if she realized JP was in trouble, she would return. In an unspeakable act of cruelty, his father intentionally dumped a pot of boiling water on his son, later claiming it was an accident. JP was brought to a hospital where a priest was ready to give the boy last rites. That was the last thing JP remembered. The scalding gave him second- and third-degree burns over most of his body, and for the next five weeks he was in a coma.
When JP emerged from the coma, he had to endure the latest burn treatment, which included being strapped to the bed. Nurses would have him lie for a couple of hours on his back and then rotate him onto his stomach so each side of his burned body would get air. Betty was a regular visitor, holding JP’s hand, fighting back the tears whenever she looked in his sad eyes. He seemed to look right through her, a haunted gaze similar to that of soldiers returning from battle who have seen horrors few of us can imagine.
Somehow JP survived the trauma, and after several painful and lonely months in the hospital, he was well enough to be discharged. The “accident” accomplished his father’s intended effect: Betty returned out of concern for the boy. She, too, was a victim of this manipulative and cunning madman.
Shortly after his recovery, Betty arranged for JP to be reunited with his biological mother, wanting to get him away from her husband. JP was shipped off yet again, this time to France, where his mother lived. In addition to being a better parent than his father, his mother lived in a place that was entirely different and exciting for the young boy, not just because it was a new country but because his mother lived by the sea.
The young boy who had endured so much cruelty found that the sea had a soothing effect. Saint-Tropez, on France’s Mediterranean coast, opened JP’s eyes to the marvels of the ocean, and he spent much of his free time prowling the seawalls while expectantly watching the fishing boats come and go from the port. He dreamed of hopping aboard one of the boats and traveling beyond the confines of the harbor, past the lighthouse, and out into the open ocean.
Soon the local fishermen noticed the quiet American boy watching them, and one kindly fisherman finally motioned for JP to come aboard his boat, explaining to the lad that if he arrived at the wharf early the next morning, he could ride with the fisherman as he performed his work. The next day JP reported for duty before dawn, and out to sea they went. After a couple of hours, when the net was hauled aboard, he helped the man sort his catch and perform a few other odd jobs. Although JP could speak little French, the old man and the young boy worked well together, and soon JP was a regular helper. The twosome would motor out in the boat before dawn and return with their catch in time for the morning market.
A year later, JP received his initiation to sailboats when he met an English sailor who was repairing his catamaran. JP watched and helped when he could as the man worked on his boat. The sailor told stories of his adventures at sea, which stimulated young JP’s imagination and his growing desire to get his own sailboat. Through this Englishman, JP met other sailors and was soon crewing on centerboard sailboats.
When he was twelve years old, JP found a derelict sailboat that he rehabilitated as best he could, and soon he was sailing around the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, learning largely by trial and error. Over the next four years, the young sailor and his little boat would challenge the wind and seas far beyond the boat’s designed purpose, first voyaging to Cap Camarat, then the isles of Levant, and finally out into the blue water of the open Mediterranean. It was on JP’s solo trips that the idea percolated to someday sail across the Atlantic and later around the world.
JP’s aspiration was further fueled when he read about the exploits of sixteen-year-old Robin Lee Graham, who set out to sail around the world in his twenty-four-foot sloop named Dove. National Geographic published periodic articles of the young sailor’s adventures as he sailed through the South Pacific, was demasted twice during storms, and met his future wife on the island of Fiji. Graham was not trying to set any records for speed; he was interested in exploring different ports of call, and this appealed to JP. It took Graham a little over four years to complete his journey, but nevertheless, when he finished in 1970, he became the youngest person to solo sail around the planet. Graham became JP’s inspiration and hero.
JP thought the adventure of circumnavigating the world was the perfect challenge for him, and he vowed that someday he would set sail and not return until he had crossed the seven seas. Neither JP nor Graham minded being alone, but there was one big difference in their childhood. Graham had a loving father who taught his son to sail and celebrated his son’s independent streak. But JP didn’t let his past slow him down; he simply taught himself what he needed to know or asked questions of the fishermen and sailors of Saint-Tropez.
JP’s dreams of blue-water sailing were put on hold when he was seventeen and attended landlocked Syracuse University in New York, followed by finding a job in Germany. The young man had an entrepreneurial spirit combined with a sharp mind that could intuitively solve problems. He also had a pair of hands that could make or fix just about anything. In 1978 he put those talents to use, starting his own business developing and marketing consumer products, including toys and household goods. Four years later, he sold the business but agreed to stay on for a couple of years in a senior management position. Although he was mostly away from the ocean, he read about the sea and went on day sails whenever possible, still dreaming of one day sailing around the world.
JP had married and fathered three children when new business opportunities prompted him and his family to move from Europe to the Washington, D.C., area. His heavy workload and frequent travel kept him not only from the sea but also from his family, and soon his marriage fractured, ending in divorce in 1995. During this period he purchased a country inn in Saignon, France, because his mother and stepfather needed work, and JP thought they could manage the business with his occasional oversight.
After the divorce, JP turned his attention back to the sea, often walking the harbors and boatyards, eying different models of sailboats. He viewed the vessels with a “champagne man’s taste and a beer man’s pocket,” but finally found a compromise in a thirty-three-foot Beneteau Oceanis 321 that he christened the Lou Pantai, which roughly translates to “the Dream” in the old language of Provence. He moored the Lou Pantai at the Annapolis City Marina and lived aboard the boat during the coldest winter of his life, planning his blue-water getaway while shivering in the cabin. He consumed every sailing book he could find to help him prepare the vessel for a transatlantic crossing, and he purchased an EPIRB. JP was a loner by nature, and that cold winter, while living solo aboard his vessel, he felt exhilarated by the possibilities that stretched before him.
The next spring he sailed the Chesapeake Bay region, often traveling down to Smith and Tangier Islands. Those weekend trips taught him more about his vessel’s capabilities, and he continued to upgrade the Lou Pantai for the voyage he planned across the Atlantic. With his analytical mind, he began to investigate every nook and cranny of the boat, seeing what improvements he could make, and pushing himself to understand how each and every piece of equipment functioned. One of his major changes was to remove the boat’s batteries, which he did not feel would meet the needs of an ocean crossing. He replaced the batteries with eight six-volt golf cart batteries, rebuilding the hold to accommodate them. Using the same creativity that helped him start his own business, he installed a workbench, where he placed his cherished Zyliss aluminum-alloy multifunction bench tool. JP was an inventor at heart, and the bench tool allowed him to custom-make some of his own parts for the vessel. He also spent those first couple of years with the boat considering various problems that might crop up at sea and how to resolve them.
In 1996 JP began his long-awaited transatlantic trip. The first leg of the voyage took him to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to visit his stepmother, Betty, and to finish provisioning the boat before the Atlantic crossing. He set sail from Annapolis on July 4, reaching the Cape a few days later. JP was ecstatic to be out on the open sea, feeling much like he did as a boy during that first trip on the fishing boat from Saint-Tropez.
Once moored at Cape Cod, JP had to wait for Hurricane Bertha to pass by, up the East Coast. When the storm had spun its way north of Massachusetts, he monitored the weather forecasts and decided he could set off safely for Europe. Betty went down to Harwich Port to see her stepson off with hugs, kisses, and more than a few tears. She waved goodbye as the Lou Pantai cleared the harbor, and then she drove down to Red River Beach, where she could see JP sailing eastward, fighting back tears until the boat became a speck on the horizon before disappearing from sight.
JP thought Hurricane Bertha was long gone, but the storm had a surprise for both meteorologists and the lone sailor. Four days into the voyage, while in the Gulf Stream, JP ran into building seas. Bertha, now downgraded, had not continued north after reaching the Maine coast, but instead had veered east-southeast and into the path of the Lou Pantai. The winds increased to over fifty knots, and the seas climbed to twenty-five feet. JP ran with the seas, and about midday he laid a drogue off the stern that provided better helm by slowing the boat when running down the following waves. Realizing he could not stay at the helm all night, he decided to deploy a sea anchor to keep the drift to a minimum. But as he prepared this equipment, an extreme wave spun the sailboat completely around, causing the slack in the line attached to the drogue to tangle in the propeller.
Battered by crashing waves, the Lou Pantai rolled so violently that JP had difficulty moving without being thrown to the deck. Water infiltrated the engine tank vents, and the boat lost power. The wind screamed through the rigging, fraying JP’s nerves, making him feel like he was inside a screeching violin. Somehow he made it through the night without being injured, but during the next day and evening, the waves grew to thirty feet. JP’s sole source of comfort was the knowledge that he had an EPIRB on board. Later that night, the seas became so chaotic that he considered activating the EPIRB, but he forced himself to hold back.
He was convinced the storm would eventually kill him, and during the desperate hours, he wrote a goodbye letter to each of his three children, telling them how much he loved them. When the notes were written, he sealed them in bottles and tossed them overboard.
Through the long and terrifying night, the wallowing Lou Pantai somehow remained afloat, and when dawn finally came, the winds abated a bit and JP knew the seas would follow. Later that day, when the waves became manageable, JP tied a line around his waist and entered the water with a mask and snorkel. Over a five-hour period, he worked on cutting the sea anchor line from the propeller and shaft. When the job was done, the bruised and exhausted sailor resumed heading eastward.
The rest of the voyage was without incident, and JP felt an enormous sense of gratitude and accomplishment. He had not only completed his transatlantic crossing but had survived the worst conditions that the ocean could throw at him. Or so he thought at the time.
The Sean Seamour II