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WE WERE ALL JUST sitting there kind of stunned as we watched the ship continue on to the north and the port of Mobile. Terry steered us on a course straight away from the ship channel at right angle, so now we were going east instead of south. By the time the second and third ship in the line passed us, we were a good half mile from the channel and he finally backed the throttle off to idle and let us drift for a bit until he could decide what to do next. I’d expected him to be mad enough to just about throw me overboard for losing that starboard motor, but he didn’t do it and he didn’t scream at me either. Instead, he just gave me a look that made me feel about two feet tall; a look that told me he thought I was an idiot and that I’d let him down when he needed me most. It wasn’t quite as bad as getting thrown overboard and keelhauled, but it was worse than getting yelled at.
I felt bad about losing that motor, but I didn’t think it was completely my fault, especially in those big waves. Even if Terry was trying to put all the blame on me, he had to know it was as much his fault too because he failed to secure the motor properly. One day back when we were still on the river he’d mentioned that it would be a good idea to rig a safety line on each of the outboards in case they came loose. He just never got around to doing it.
But even though he didn’t direct it specifically at me, he made a comment we could all hear about how close we’d come to losing our ship and probably our lives too because we only had one outboard now, and the smaller one at that. He said next time we might not be so lucky and that as soon as we could find a good deal on a used one, he was going to have to buy a replacement for that Evinrude. He seemed even more upset about the torn jib and the difficulty he’d had getting the mainsail down in a blow than he was about the lost motor though. Later on I figured out that was because he had thought he knew everything there was to know about sailing and that he had built and rigged the Apocalypse to handle anything. Having so many problems on her maiden voyage under sail felt like an utter failure, and he was disappointed, to say the least. Not only that, but Mom and Janie were now scared of sailing and both of them said something about wanting to go back home. Terry dismissed that as nonsense and reminded them we were home.
But home or not, one thing was for certain. After what happened, we would not be continuing on into the open waters of the Gulf that day. Terry said the jib had to be repaired before we could sail anywhere, and he had to get the mainsail rigging sorted out so that the sail could be dropped instantly when necessary. He said we could do all this at anchor somewhere nearby, and that we might as well keep going until we found a good spot to hole up. We couldn’t stay where we were; out in the open expanse of Mobile Bay, so he said we would motor on to the east with the one outboard we had left. We would use the Intracoastal Waterway to take us in the direction of Florida, which is the way he had planned to go once out in the Gulf anyway.
We finally got across to the east side of the bay and then we were once again motoring through a narrow channel kind of like on the Tenn-Tom Waterway. But the Intracoastal Waterway wasn’t a river. Terry said it was a mix of manmade canals, bayous, sounds and bays that were connected together to form an inside route along the coast safe from the storms and big waves of the Gulf. Like the Tenn-Tom, towboats and barges used the ICW, but at least there were no huge ships like the one that almost ran us down. For the first time on the trip, we also passed other sailboats underway, most of them motoring like us but a lot faster, their sails down and neatly furled and stowed away under colorful canvas covers. All of the ones we saw that first day were monohulls, and most of them were shiny and expensive-looking, like the yachts back at the marina on Dog River.
“They’re making fun of us,” Janie said.
I had no doubt she was right as I looked at the staring crew of a gleaming white sailboat that overtook us, easily cruising twice as fast under power as we were.
“We’re the ones who should be laughing,” Terry said, adding a derogatory comment about the company that built the particular yacht these snobby people were aboard. “They’re all about building what looks impressive at the dock. All that piece of crap is good for is piddling around in protected waters like this. One trip out to bluewater in some weather, and a plastic pool toy like that would be crushed like an egg and swallowed whole by the waves.”
Looking at the yacht, I couldn’t see why Terry thought it wasn’t well built. It had a massive looking aluminum mast that was a lot taller than either of ours, and the metal railings at the bow and stern looked like polished stainless steel, as did the winches and other deck hardware. Everything on board was neat and organized, and there were no bicycles lashed to the decks, or faded blue plastic tarps stretched out in the rigging for shade like ours. Instead, the crew of two middle-aged men and two women who were probably their wives were all seated in a comfortable-looking cockpit behind a big shiny steering wheel, with a sharp-looking Navy blue awning overhead to keep the sun off. Compared to their boat, the Apocalypse looked like it was built from mismatched marine salvage parts and miscellaneous bits and pieces of junk, which was about the way it was. From the way the people aboard that boat looked at us, I could tell they had never seen a ship like ours before. Janie said she didn’t care if Terry thought their yacht was a bad sea boat. She said she would trade places with them any day.
“I’ll bet they’ve got a big screen T.V. in every stateroom,” I said, doing my best to fuel her envy. “And they probably have satellite Internet and cell phone service no matter where they go.”
“What they have is an affront to Mother Ocean!” Terry countered. “See that ridiculous walk-through transom and the total lack of overhangs at the bow and stern? Combine that with way too much beam for her length and you’ve got a tub that would be happier on the bottom than trying to stand up to her rig in a seaway! It’s all completely wrong; everything about it!”
Janie finally shut up about it when the yacht was so far ahead of us it was out of sight. We kept going until the middle of the afternoon, passing through some areas that were nothing but woods like along the Tenn-Tom and other places where fancy waterfront homes with private docks lined the channel on both sides. There were places to stop and eat and places to buy fuel, as well as more marinas like the ones on Dog River where lots of boats were tied up. When we finally came to a place called Ingram Bayou, we turned off the ICW channel heading north into a small bay, and at the end of it entered a winding channel into more woods. Terry said the bayou was a designated anchorage, and that its location would provide good protection from the wind while we made our repairs.
When we first got there, we had the anchorage all to ourselves and it looked perfect. Terry steered us around several bends until we were completely surrounded by the woods, then he told me to go forward and drop the hook while he held the ship in position from the helm. The water was really shallow here and it didn’t take much rode to set the anchor securely. Mom was especially relieved that we were off the bay and out of the wind, and she said she wished we could just sail in places like this all the time and not have to go out in the ocean at all. Terry said that if all he wanted to see were places like this he would have built a houseboat instead of a proper ship. Then he told her that once she saw the islands she would never want to look at muddy brown water like this again.
We cleaned up the decks that afternoon by washing them with buckets of water dipped up from over the side, and the next morning we started working on repairing the jib, spreading it out on the decks and hand-sewing the ripped seam back together. We were no longer alone as we did this, because that second day was a Saturday and the wind had calmed and the weather turned out really nice. All kinds of boats started coming and going in the bayou, some of them fishing boats and others houseboats or pontoon boats like some we had seen on the Tenn-Tom. Twice during the afternoon a big pontoon tour boat full of people with cameras visited the bayou, the man driving it pointing out the sights on a loudspeaker to his passengers who were all snapping pictures and taking videos, including plenty of us.
Everybody that came by in a boat stared at the Apocalypse like they’d never seen a catamaran before, and I knew it was because they probably hadn’t seen one like ours. Some of them stopped to talk and ask where we were going, but most of them just looked at us like they felt sorry for us or something. Janie said they probably thought we were poor and homeless because we were living on a homemade wooden catamaran with lots of old parts, torn sails and one little worn-out outboard.
Terry was getting more and more agitated as the day wore on and the bayou became more crowded. He especially hated it when the jet-skiers started showing up that afternoon. They were speeding by in all directions, yelling and revving their motors and throwing spray everywhere, some even getting close enough to get us and the sail we were working on soaking wet. Terry cussed and shook his fist and flipped them the bird, but this just made them laugh and do it again and again. Most of the riders were boys about Janie’s age or even younger. When they saw her, they did even more showing out which just made Terry madder. Janie waved at them and said it looked like fun to her and that she wished she could ride one. I wanted to ride one too but I knew better than to ask Terry if we could. If I didn’t pretend like I hated them as much as he did, he would probably never speak to me again.
The jet-skiers finally scattered and left us alone when a big gray powerboat with a row of blue lights mounted on top of the pilothouse came cruising into the bayou. We knew the men on the boat were policemen of some sort, and sure enough, they were coming straight in our direction. Two of them were standing by the gunwales with lines already in their hands, waiting to tie off to our rail, while a third man steered, the boat now barely idling. By then I could read the lettering on the side of their hull, which said: “Alabama Marine Police.”
“Water cops!” Terry whispered loudly, but not so loud the men on the boat could hear him. That was probably a good thing, as he couldn’t hide the disgust in his voice.
The man at the wheel maneuvered his boat alongside our starboard hull and one of the others standing ready said that they needed to come aboard for an inspection. It wasn’t a request—even I could tell that—and I knew far less about things like water cops than Terry did. Like when the game warden came aboard on Bay Springs Lake, there was nothing Terry could do but stand aside and let them. But these guys looked more serious and a lot less friendly than that game warden. All of them were wearing big black pistols on their belts, and they had short crew cuts and clean-shaven faces like they were in the military. They didn’t seem to be in the mood for friendly conversation like the game warden in Bay Springs Lake either. It was clear that they were sure when they came aboard that we were breaking some law and they were determined to find out what it was and fine us for it. I already knew one thing we were missing, and that was the Type IV throwable PFD that Officer Riley had already written us a ticket for. Terry had told him he would stop and buy one at the next marina or marine supply we came to, but he didn’t because he either forgot or just never got around to it. Now, I figured he was going to regret it, and I was right.
The two policemen standing at the forward end of their boat stepped up to the decks of the Apocalypse without waiting for an invitation. The other man at the wheel remained where he was, keeping a close watch on his partners and us at the same time.
“We have all the required safety gear on board,” Terry lied. “And our boat registration is up to date, as you probably saw from the stickers on the hull.”
“We’ll check that for ourselves,” the first officer to come aboard said. “I need you to show me your head and holding tank facilities first of all.”
Terry had told me back when we were building the boat that water cops everywhere in the U.S., and especially in Florida, made a big deal out of boat toilets. He said they had a bunch of stupid rules and regulations to keep people from peeing and pooping in the ocean, even though the ocean was so huge he said it couldn’t possibly hurt anything.
“They make it illegal for one human on a boat to flush his crap overboard, while entire cities along the coast run their sewer lines straight into the bays and sounds. But get caught flushing a turd out of a boat and they fine you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars! All for doing what billions of fish, dolphins, whales and other sea creatures do every day in every square mile of the ocean! I’m telling you, Robbie, marine waste regulations are among the stupidest laws ever devised by man, and are nothing but a source of revenue for the local bureaucrats!”
Terry had gone on to explain the various complexities of a legal marine head system, and ranted about the expensive and dangerous arrangements found on almost every “proper yacht.” He said such installations required drilling holes in the bottom of the boat, below the waterline; holes for water to come in and holes for water and crap to be flushed out. But flushing it outside into the water was only allowed out on the high seas anyway, beyond a certain distance from shore. Along the coasts, all the pee and poop had to be flushed into what was called a “holding tank.”
“Holding tanks take up huge amounts of valuable room on board and they stink and they leak. And pumping a toilet overboard, even offshore is insane, considering you have to drill holes right through the bottom of the boat and then install a bunch of pumps and hoses and valves and vents to route all the crap in the right direction when you flush. At best, you get a stinky, crappy boat if one of those hoses or fittings inside the hull bursts. At worst, you sink if one leading to the outside fails. More boats end up on the bottom because of faulty toilet installations or plumbing failures than sink in storms, and all because people want to have a flush toilet like they’re used to ashore. All you need on a boat, Robbie, is a bucket. Put a toilet seat on the rim and you’re good to go. When you finish your business, dump it over the side and feed the fish!
“Buckets are cheap, foolproof, and they don’t stink and they don’t leak. But the government hates them for all those reasons. Anything that’s simple and works as it should is an abomination that must be banned and outlawed! But we’re going to use a bucket anyway; we just have to keep an eye out for the water cops when we do, at least until we get out of U.S. waters and get somewhere people still use common sense.”
Ever since we had launched at Bay Springs Lake, we had been using a big plastic bucket with removable toilet seat; at least all of us except for Janie. She had refused, saying it was disgusting, and had been constantly using the Porta Pottie toilet that Terry had bought as a compromise specifically to comply with the law while we were still in the U.S. He didn’t want us using the Porta Pottie because he said it was a pain in the butt to empty and clean. He said all it really was anyway was a glorified bucket that just had a lot of parts to make it look like a shore bastard’s commode and to hide the sight of one’s own crap until it was emptied. Keeping it from stinking required the addition of expensive chemicals, and when it was full the whole mess was supposed to be flushed down a toilet somewhere on land. Terry didn’t like it, but he had given in and let Janie use it, at least for now. But he said it was going over the side as soon as we were away from U.S. waters for good.
I didn’t mind using the bucket myself, but I only used it to poop. It was much easier to pee right over the rail, and that’s what Terry and I did whenever Mom and Janie weren’t looking. Terry said that’s what all men did on boats whether it was legal or not, but the silly toilets had to be aboard just to satisfy the law. The Porta Pottie, at about eighty dollars, was the cheapest legal option, and that’s why Terry bought it. He said he wasn’t about to drill a hole in the bottom of the Apocalypse for a marine head, and that we sure didn’t have room aboard for a real holding tank.
But the Alabama Marine Police officers seemed really surprised that we didn’t have one of those marine toilet installations that Terry hated so much. They said that a Porta Pottie like ours was just for weekend sailors and wasn’t big enough for a family of four living aboard a boat full time. They questioned the fact that the small built-in tank underneath it was completely empty and wanted to know how that was possible. I knew Terry had dumped it over the side and washed it out right after we had anchored at Ingram Bayou, and that Janie hadn’t used it since, but I kept my mouth shut. Terry lied and said we had gone ashore at a marina we passed a few miles back and that he had emptied it ashore in the toilet there.
The questioning officer was skeptical of this and asked to see Terry’s logbook to see if he was telling the truth. When Terry said he didn’t keep a logbook, the officer lectured him on the importance of maintaining a captain’s log for safety and navigation purposes. Then he wanted to know where we got the Apocalypse, where we came from, and where we were going. He also wanted to know why Janie and I were not in school even though it was right in the middle of the fall semester and not a holiday or break time. Terry told them that he was a certified schoolteacher and that he was home schooling us on the boat.
“We moved aboard so they could get a real education,” he said. “Do you think they could learn anything in a small town public school in Mississippi besides how to do drugs? The public school system is so hopeless I gave up trying to teach other kids. I decided to focus my energy on my immediate family and get them the hell out of that zoo before it’s too late!”
The officer who was asking most of the questions looked skeptical of Terry’s explanation. “I’m not sure how you figure they’re going to get a well-rounded education living on a homemade raft! And I don’t know where you think you’re going, but if you’re headed to Florida you’re going to find out that you can’t just anchor out somewhere and live for free. Not anymore! People are tired of looking at anchorages full of derelict liveaboards who don’t pay taxes or contribute to the local economy. You’ll have a hard time finding a marina slip that allows full-time liveaboards too. And even if you do, it’ll cost a lot more than living in a nice apartment ashore to tie up something this long and beamy.”
I could tell Terry was seething from the comment about our ship being a “raft.” He didn’t try to convince the officer otherwise though, because he probably figured there was no use. He said we weren’t headed to Florida anyway and if we stopped there at all it wouldn’t be for long. He said we were on a world cruise and that the education Janie and I would get would be better than any school on the planet could offer. He said that besides that, there wouldn’t be any functioning schools to go to in the United States much longer anyway.
“Why do you think I named this vessel the Apocalypse? Do you officers of the law not keep up with what’s going on? Do you think everything can keep rocking along like it always has and not come to a screeching halt? I’m not waiting around to see how long it takes! I can’t take a chance that it might happen before we can get out, so we’re staying ahead of the curve, leaving now to find a place where we can ride it out in safety.”
Both of the policemen just kind of laughed at this like they thought Terry was joking. You could tell that like most everybody else who heard our reasoning for leaving, they didn’t believe anything like that was going to happen. It seemed nobody did, except for Terry and the people who wrote all those books he read.
Just like I figured they would, those Alabama water cops wrote Terry another ticket for that missing PFD, saying we’d better get one on board as soon as possible. And before they left, the one who had been doing most of the talking had another stern warning for Terry:
“I don’t have any proof you’ve been dumping that Porta Pottie overboard, Captain, but I can tell you that we will be back soon for another inspection. You won’t know when we’re coming either. It could be this time tomorrow or it could be at oh-four-hundred in the morning. If you’re still here when we get back and that little five-gallon tank is still empty, you will be fined for illegal overboard discharge, and you’re not going to like what it costs! If I were you, I’d stop at the next boatyard and have a real marine head installed in this vessel if you insist on continuing to live aboard. But the best thing you can do is get these kids back in school and quit filling their heads with all these ridiculous ideas about the world coming to an end. People have been saying that stuff since the beginning of time and it hasn’t ended yet, so I doubt we have to worry about it happening in our lifetimes, either. You’re a lot more likely to get your family drowned out there trying to run away from it all than you are to have problems just living a normal life on land. Especially on an ill-equipped homemade raft!”
“Normal life on land!” Terry muttered as the officers motored away in their patrol boat. “What the hell does he call normal? Slaving away at some underpaid job to make some faceless corporation rich? Selling more than forty hours a week of your precious time on earth for money to buy all the crap those same corporations want you to believe you can’t live without? Those cops are just part of the machine that keeps people from knowing what real freedom is. They spend their days keeping the herd in line, worrying about enforcing the most ridiculous rules ever devised. They should change the name of their agency from “marine police” to “pottie patrol!” Can you believe they get paid for riding around all day in that boat, burning up fossil fuels to make sure everybody else on every other boat is crapping in a plastic tank? A plastic tank that gets pumped out at a marina so it can then be pumped into a sewer line that takes it to the sea? And they think this is not going to collapse? Insanity!”
After this visit from the Alabama Marine Police, Terry said it wasn’t worth it for us to hang around here any longer than necessary and that it wasn’t worth stopping in Florida, since we could avoid it.
“What we need to do is get out of this country ASAP and go somewhere people are still living in reality. We need to finish getting our sails and rigging in order and then leave on the first weather window to sail across the Gulf. We can lay a course for Key West and then sail around the bottom end of Florida without touching land. From there the door is wide open: Cuba and the Bahamas, through the Windward Passage past Jamaica and on to the Panama Canal and the blue Pacific that awaits!”
“But I wanted to go to Florida!” Janie protested. “I’ve always wanted to go to Florida. You promised us we would!”
“Florida’s nothing but sand and condos,” Terry said. “You won’t see anything there you haven’t already seen here in south Alabama. Florida is just an over-hyped old-folk’s state for people who want to get away from winter. There are so many snowbirds living there now they’ve driven the price of everything through the roof and made more rules and regulations than any state in an already rule-happy nation! We haven’t lost a thing in Florida, and you’ll see better beaches than any to be found in that overcrowded tourist trap as soon as we make our first island landfall. Giving Florida a miss is the best idea I’ve had all week, and thanks to those water cops, I’ve made up my mind. As captain of this ship, I can’t subject my crew or my vessel to the hazards that sailing to Florida would entail!”
At this, Janie sulked off to her cabin, saying that was nothing but a bunch of bullshit, but I knew that when Terry made up his mind about something, there was no changing it. Mom didn’t argue with him. As usual, she believed whatever he said even if it contradicted something he’d told us all before. That left me, and I wasn’t about to protest because I knew all it would get me was another long rant, probably lasting for hours, about the evils of Florida. It kind of made me sad that we couldn’t go, but I knew Terry wouldn’t let us see anything fun there like Disney World anyway, so what was the point? For better or worse, I was stuck on the Apocalypse sailing wherever Terry wanted to sail unless I ran away to live like an orphan on the street somewhere, and that didn’t sound any better. At least we were going back out into the Gulf once we got the boat ready again and I would get to see what it was like out on the ocean. Mom was worried about that, and I have to admit, it made me nervous too after what happened the first time we sailed. But Terry said it if we didn’t go on across the Gulf, we’d probably end up in jail if we stayed near the coast. He said nobody here wanted to see us because seeing our ship reminded them of all the things they wished they could do but were afraid to. He said a ship like ours represented freedom, and that most people were afraid of the idea because they wouldn’t know what to do if they didn’t have somebody to tell them, especially the cops. He said they would think up so many things we were in violation of that we couldn’t possibly pay all the fines. In the end, I was okay with the idea of sailing on across the whole Gulf to get to some island somewhere, but I sure hoped the wind wasn’t blowing as hard as it was that day on Mobile Bay when we did it.