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WE STAYED AT INGRAM Bayou while working on the sails and sorting out the problems with the rigging. Terry had to climb both of the masts to change out some blocks at the top that the halyard lines ran through. He said they were getting in a bind when the sails were full of wind and that was part of the reason he’d had such a hard time getting the mainsail down when it was blowing so hard on Mobile Bay. We had to all help him when he climbed up there, because there were no steps or anything else to make it easy. The two masts were just round wooden poles cut down from the huge chunks of square timbers we had glued together from the old wood salvaged out of Mr. L.C. Pickens’ barn. When we were making them, Terry said James Wharram’s sail design was different than those used on most ships because the leading edges of the sails went around the masts like sleeves. It was an innovation designed to clean up the airflow and make the boat go faster. Terry said they were called Wharram wingsails and that they acted just like airplane wings. Janie said that was stupid and that a dumb, slow sailboat didn’t have a damned thing in common with an airplane.
“That’s where you’re completely wrong,” Terry had countered. “A sailboat is actually very much like an airplane and operates on the same principle. But instead of using the lift to get off the ground like an airplane wing, a well-trimmed sail uses it to go to windward. Figuring out how to harness the wind to sail to windward is one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Sailing ships that could go to windward changed history in every way you can think of!”
Terry admitted that while the Wharram wingsail design was efficient, the wrapping of the sail around the mast had some drawbacks. It meant that the masts had to be smooth and unobstructed, and certainly could not have the ladder-like steps to the top that many sailing vessels were equipped with. It also meant that there was sometimes a lot of friction with all that fabric in contact with the mast, and getting the sails to slide up and down properly was not easy. This was especially true in strong winds, when the pressure was increased. Terry was confident this wouldn’t be a problem once we were out to sea in the steady trade winds of the Pacific, because he said we wouldn’t have to be raising and lowering sails all the time. But regardless of the reason, climbing the rig to work on things aloft would never be easy.
To get up there, he had to sit on a flat board called a bosun’s chair with straps hooked to one of the halyards. We had to hoist him up using the big winch in the cockpit. This was slow, hard work, even with me and Janie and Mom taking turns. And because our boat was a schooner, he had two masts to climb, which meant double the work for us. Terry said that going aloft was going to be my job most of the time because I was way lighter than him and most jobs up there were simple, like replacing the bulb on the anchor light. But all this rigging work was something he had to do himself and it took just about a whole day to do it.
While we were at Ingram Bayou doing all this work, Terry made us all go to the bathroom in that stupid Porta Pottie so we could show those marine police when they came back that it was full of crap. And they did come back the very next day after that first visit, just like they said they would. And we did show them the crappy toilet, which seemed to surprise them because they were no doubt expecting that they would find us in violation of the no-discharge law. The one who wrote Terry the ticket for not having a throwable PFD had brought one to give us this time. He said it was an old one he’d found floating in one of the bays and that we still needed to buy a better one, but this one would be good to have until we did, in case someone fell overboard.
“Does that mean I don’t have to pay the ticket, then?” Terry asked.
“No sir. I can’t let you slide on that because that ticket is supposed to serve as a reminder for you, as captain of your vessel, to put the safety of your crew first. But having this one on board will save you from another citation the next time you get stopped.”
Mom thanked the officer and I thought it was pretty nice of him too, but Terry was still furious about the ticket and didn’t say another word to him. The next time they came back, the day after that, the Porta Pottie was nearly full to the lid and the entire head compartment was starting to smell like it too. The other officer that had questioned Terry so much that first time wanted to know where we planned to empty it, since it was now too full to use. He warned that with four people on board, we’d better start thinking about that and probably should be moving on right away. It was clear from his tone that he didn’t like our ship, didn’t like our lifestyle and didn’t want us anchoring in his district. Terry told him we were almost ready to leave and that we would be gone by sunrise and he would never see us again. He told him that we wouldn’t need to use the head again until we were at sea, where it was perfectly legal to empty it.
Before dark that day, Terry announced that he was satisfied that the main and foresails would go up and down the masts easily in any kind of blow, and that with the jib repaired, we were ready to go.
“I’m not sure I am,” Mom said. “I don’t really like the idea of going way out there out of sight of land in the middle of the Gulf, especially after what happened right there in the bay. What if a storm comes? What if there’s a hurricane?”
“There’s not going to be a hurricane, don’t be ridiculous! I already told you it was too late in the season. Statistically, the odds are very low of another tropical storm forming before the cyclone season is over. Just look around you! The wind is ten knots out of the southeast. What could be better? That’s perfectly normal on the Gulf this time of year.”
He said he had already checked the VHF radio reports for any warnings or other changes and there was nothing in the immediate future.
“The forecast is as good as it could get. What we should all do now is get a good night’s sleep, because this will be the last night we’re at anchor for several days or maybe even a week.”
I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t for the longest time. I just spent most of the night lying there listening to the night sounds from the woods surrounding the bayou, wondering if I would ever hear them again. Terry said that next time we made landfall, wherever that might be, it would be in the tropics or at least the subtropics and that everything would be different. He said it was going to be better in every way, and that we wouldn’t have to deal with idiots like those Alabama Marine Police officers, but I was still nervous. What if the wind out there on the Gulf blew like it did that day on Mobile Bay? What if we were three hundred miles from land when it happened and the sails got tore up again, or we lost the other engine? There was plenty to worry about, but I was still excited about sailing the Apocalypse across the Gulf. I hoped we would see a whale or something cool like that. Terry said we probably would, but even if we didn’t, he promised we’d see stars out there at night like we’d never seen them before on land. He said that being on a sailboat gliding across the sea at night made you feel like you were in outer space in a spaceship, surrounded by all those stars stretching from horizon to horizon with no land or anything else in sight.
Just when I finally fell asleep it was already time to get up. It was still dark outside, but Terry was banging things around on deck, checking that all our stuff was secure and making sure the bicycles and other junk couldn’t fall overboard. He pulled on the outboard starter rope at least a dozen times, and I heard him cussing under his breath as it sputtered and refused to start. I climbed out of my bunk and went up there to help him. Mom was already up and making coffee in the galley, but there was no sign of Janie and I knew she would probably sleep until noon if Terry let her.
Once we got out there though, I knew he wasn’t going to. No one on board was going to be able to get out of watch duty. Janie could care less, but Terry made it sound exciting—to me anyway—like we were on a spaceship mission or a Special Forces operation or something cool like that. The way it worked is that we would all be assigned to rotating three-hour watches. That meant that whoever was on duty had all the responsibility for the ship: making sure the sails were trimmed correctly, that we were staying on course, and most importantly, keeping a sharp lookout for other ships and dangers. Someone had to be on duty around the clock, because Terry said that a ship at sea never sleeps and we would be running twenty-four hours, day after day until we made landfall.
To make it simpler to keep track of time, we would be operating on twenty-four-hour military time. He wrote down the schedule for the first day: depart Ingram Bayou at oh-six-hundred, (6 a.m.) under his watch. At oh-nine-hundred (9 a.m.), Mom would take over the watch. At twelve hundred hours (12 p.m.), it would be my turn, and then Janie would come on duty at fifteen hundred hours (3 p.m.). This would mean that I would be back on duty for my next watch at twenty-four-hundred hours, or midnight, and Janie would come back on at 3 a.m. in the morning: oh-three-hundred. This was the only arrangement that Janie was satisfied with, because she definitely was not a morning person and being able to sleep until almost three in the afternoon suited her fine. She stayed up all night anyway; listening to her music on her iPad, so coming on duty again at three in the morning was easy too. That way, she would be done by the time it was getting daylight and could be back in bed before the sun came up.
Terry said we would all settle into the routine once we were at sea for a day or two. He said it was normal that everybody would want to be awake when we first departed, and we all were, except for Janie. I wanted to get one good last look at land because I wasn’t sure I’d ever see it again, but I also wanted to see everything along the way as we made our way out of the bayou to the nearest inlet that would take us to the open Gulf.
That inlet was Perdido Pass, and to get there we had to go way east and then wind our way back southwest around a big peninsula built up with marinas, condos and seafood restaurants. Since it was so early in the morning, not many people ashore saw us go by, but the few joggers and fishermen and others who did all turned to stare at our ship as we passed. I saw a big McDonald’s sign on the main road and wished we could stop so I could get something like an Egg McMuffin and a McFlurry before we left America for good, but I knew better than to even mention that to Terry. There was no way he was going to stop for anything now, and all I could do was just stare at those Golden Arches and dream. It was better when it was finally out of sight around the bend, and I could see a much bigger arch—a tall, concrete bridge dead ahead, spanning the fairly narrow inlet that led to the open sea. It was as if it were a gateway to another world, beneath which we would pass, and beyond it, nothing would ever be the same again.
The single motor was running rough and pushing us really slow, but Terry said if it would just hold up until we got through the pass, it wouldn’t matter after that. There was hardly any breeze and no way we could sail through this early in the morning but he didn’t want to wait for it to start blowing again because if we did, those cops would certainly bother us again. Terry said that once we got clear of land, we’d pick up steadier winds anyway and getting where we wanted to go would be no problem at all. What he didn’t take into account though, is that the tide was still coming in when we left that morning. It had hardly been noticeable when we were just cruising through the Intracoastal Waterway, but once we made it to the inlet, it was like going upstream in a river. Terry had the throttle pegged wide open, and we were barely making headway against the rush of incoming water. Some old men standing on the rock jetties with fishing poles in their hands were watching closely to see if we would make it, one of them yelling that we needed to get a bigger motor or wait for slack tide.
All this tidal stuff was new to me, of course, since this trip was my first time to experience the ocean. Terry said that the tides were much stronger in other parts of the world and that the current here was nothing. He said the only reason we were having trouble is because that old Mercury outboard was a piece of junk and I’d let the better Evinrude go to the bottom. He said I’d better be glad we still had at least one or my job would be a lot harder. He said that in the old days before motors were invented, it was up to the crew to tow the ship through inlets like this by rowing the ship’s boat. Since our ship’s boat was that awkward inflatable dinghy that was so hard to manage, I knew that towing the Apocalypse against the current with it using just the oars would be impossible. The crappy little motor was our only hope and I felt bad that I had not been more careful with the better one.
Even with the motor, it took us more than a half hour to get through the inlet and break free of the current into open water. At one point, I was sure we were not going to make it because it felt like we weren’t making any progress at all and the big, sharp-edged rocks of the jetties threatened to tear our ship to pieces if the motor failed. But once we were in the clear, and free of the incoming tide, we picked up a couple more knots of speed. Terry pointed the bow straight south and told me to hold the helm steady. Then he opened the cockpit locker where our PFDs were and took out the throwable PFD the policeman had given us. Without a word, he flung it as far overboard to starboard as he possibly could.
“TERRY! What on Earth did you do that for?” Mom screamed.
“He said it was a throwable PFD! I was just testing it out, and yes! It is!”
“He gave us that because he was worried about us not having the required safety equipment. We might need it, Terry!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! How could anybody fall off a ship as wide and stable as a Tiki 46? And with all those safety nets and rails besides? They can have their stupid PFD back!”
“And now we’ll just get another ticket for not having it.” Mom said.
“I told you already, Linda; they don’t have laws about stuff like that where we’re going. And we’re not paying those tickets anyway!”
Mom finally dropped it and Terry took the helm back, steering us as directly away from land as he could. Looking back at the coast, you could see tiny cars moving both ways on the beach road, their glass and paint glinting in the sun, but they were so far away you couldn’t hear any sounds they made.
The water out there looked a lot different than any I had ever seen before. Instead of being brown and impossible to see into for more than a foot or two, it was a pale green color that was so clear you could see the sand on the bottom even though it looked like it was ten feet deep. I was amazed at this, but Terry said the water here was nothing compared to what we’d see in the islands. He said where we were going that we’d be able to see the bottom a hundred feet down. He said that if you were swimming in it, you could see everything around you just like on those shows on TV where SCUBA divers are swimming around with thousands of fish and other undersea creatures. According to him, the coral reefs we were going to visit in the South Pacific were so remote most of them had never even been explored. He said they would have even more marine life than those on the nature shows because they were too far away from anything for fishermen to get there. But it was all those fish and crabs and lobsters that he was counting on to keep us fed and that was the reason he said we wouldn’t need much if any money after we arrived.
I didn’t care if he did think there was something wrong with the water here in the Gulf of Mexico. To me it was amazing and all I wanted to do was stare down into it. I went forward to the slatted wooden deck between the bows so I could lie down on my stomach and look over the edge as we sliced through it. I almost jumped straight up in surprise when something huge came up out of the water just a few feet in front of the starboard bow, but even though I’d never seen one in real life before, I knew it was a dolphin. Pretty soon there were five of them, and they seemed to want to play with the Apocalypse for a few minutes. They took turns jumping out of the water and swimming in front of our two bows like they were leading the way until they decided we were going way too slow with that one old motor. They were gone by the time Janie finally came up on deck, and even though we all told her we saw them, she didn’t believe it. She just thought we were making it up just to get her interested in something besides sleeping and listening to music.
Once we were far enough out that we wouldn’t likely drift back ashore before we could sail away, Terry shut down the engine because he said he was tired of hearing it. We just kind of drifted for about a half hour, but then with the sun well up and it getting close to oh-nine-hundred, a bit of a southeast breeze was stirring and you could see tiny ripples of waves forming on the surface of the water. Terry said it was time to set sail, and so we did, first hoisting up the mainsail on the mainmast and then the jib up forward, just as we’d done that first day we had tried to sail.
It was a lot different this time though, and with such a light wind everything went smoothly and stayed in control. Once we’d tightened up and trimmed the main and jib, Terry was ready to hoist the foresail for the first time. It was nearly identical to the main, and was set on the foremast that was in the middle part of the boat. Terry said that we needed all the sail area we could put up in this light wind. Once they were all set and trimmed and working properly, the Apocalypse slowly began gathering speed until we were moving at least twice as fast as we could with that outboard. It was a lot nicer sailing in wind like this than it had been that day on Mobile Bay, and once again I felt pride that I’d helped build a sailing ship that really worked.
I kept looking ahead for more dolphins but from time to time I would glance back at the land we were leaving behind too. I was surprised that it already looked so far away. After sailing for about an hour, most of what you could see from where we were was just a hazy blue outline of the trees and tall buildings on the beach. Terry said that soon we’d be completely out of sight of land and we wouldn’t see anything else but water in any direction for days and days. He said we’d better get a good last look at the mainland if we wanted to now, because there was no way in hell he was going to be sailing back to America in this lifetime. Janie and Mom didn’t seem happy about that because I don’t think they ever believed this was going to be anything but a really long vacation until now. I knew that in the back of her mind, Mom still thought we were going to all be living in my grandmother’s old house again someday, which is why she wouldn’t sell it even when Terry tried to make her.
It hadn’t really occurred to me that I might never see America again once we left, and hearing Terry say that made me a little sad. I thought we’d come back sometime, but the way he said it, I could tell he wasn’t joking. I realized right then that I might have to grow up and get old enough to come back on my own if I ever decided I wanted to see it again. But even though I was sad about that, I was also anxious to get wherever we were going. Terry’s excitement about finally being underway at sea was contagious, and now that we were heading straight out to cross the Gulf, I wanted to see what was on the other side.
It was a weird feeling when the land behind us finally disappeared completely from sight. I turned all the way around in a slow circle on the forward deck, looking for anything on the horizon and saw only a few oil rigs and distant boats and ships. Terry said we’d have to go at least a hundred miles out to get away from the oil fields and marine traffic, but that after that the horizon would be truly empty. Mom said that thinking about that made her nervous and she wondered what we would do if we had a problem with the boat and needed help. Terry said that wasn’t going to happen and that compared to the Pacific, crossing the Gulf was just a practice run and that after we’d been out there a few days, we would all get used to the feeling of being alone.
The farther we got from land, the darker in color the water was, and before long it was such a deep, inky blue that it almost looked black. I kept looking for dolphins, sharks and whales but didn’t see anything but a few seagulls and pelicans that came by to see if we were fishing and had anything for them to eat. By late that afternoon, we’d gotten so far from land that most of the birds were gone, and there were fewer boats and ships in sight. The wind stayed about the same all day, blowing just the right speed to keep us moving but not hard enough to cause problems with the sails. Terry said it was perfect, and that if this kept up we’d be across the Gulf in three or four days. We were steering a course to the south-southwest, because with the wind coming out of the southeast, that was as close to due south as we could go. Terry said that was fine, because on that course we might make our first landfall in Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula, which was just as good a route as any.
“The land of the ancient Maya! I was there in 1983 when I was in graduate Anthropology, excavating a just-discovered city in the jungle. It’s a whole different world there, Robbie! Jungles...jaguars...monkeys... And snakes so deadly that if they bite you you’ll die before you take three steps!”
“Are we going to get to go to the jungle?” I asked, wide-eyed at the thought.
“You’re going to see jungles aplenty, Robbie, but probably not in Mexico. Everything has changed there now. They bus tourists in to the ruins from the high-rise resorts in Cancun, and everywhere you go, everybody’s got their hand out for gringo dollars. Get off the beaten track where the real people live, and you run the risk of getting caught in the crossfire of a drug war. We’ll likely give Mexico a skip, but we’ll be sailing close enough to get a glimpse. Then it’s on to Belize where we’ll make our first island landfall among the cays of the second largest barrier reef in the world.”
Jungles! Jaguars! Drug wars, ancient ruins and barrier reefs! It was hard for all that to sink in and to imagine that such a different world was just a few days away and this ship that was gliding quietly over the water would take us there. It was a lot to think about, but even now we were in a different world. As the sun started to drop in the southwest, almost straight ahead in the direction we were going, I couldn’t believe all the colors that appeared in the sky. Terry said sunsets were more spectacular at sea than they ever were on land, and after seeing my first one, I believed him. Even Janie was spellbound as she watched the changing colors and rays of light. When it finally reached the horizon, the sun looked like a fireball melting into the water. A few minutes later, it was gone and the bright reds and oranges turned to pale pinks and purples. In another half hour, the horizon grew much smaller as our ship was swallowed up in darkness all around, but overhead, a universe of stars opened up like I had never seen before.
All of us had been awake all day, despite the rotating watch schedule, and with so much to look at up in the sky, none of us wanted to go to bed now. We took turns with Terry’s binoculars, lying on the deck looking straight up into millions of stars that were so thick they looked like clouds of light in some places. I never knew there were so many and Terry said that was because all the manmade lights of civilization on land made it impossible to see them. He said just seeing the world as it really is for the first time was reason enough to build a boat and go to sea, even if the country we left behind wasn’t on the verge of collapse.
“Those shore bastards don’t know what they’re missing and never will! They’ve created an artificial reality that insulates them from nature. They live in climate-controlled boxes lit by fluorescent lighting and see only glimpses of reality through the windows or on a screen. They buy meat and produce from the grocery store but have no idea where food comes from or how to get it any other way. They take vacations on jets across the ocean and have no idea what they’re missing down below. Getting somewhere in a few hours without navigating or seeing what’s along the way is about as far from real travel as you can get, Robbie. Down here on the surface at the mercy of the wind, we’re earning our passage mile by mile. When we make a landfall we’ll have the right to be there because we found it ourselves and used the forces of nature to get there. Nothing is more real than sailing your own ship on a long ocean passage!”
As it turned out, Terry was right about us being at the mercy of the wind. Although the Apocalypse had maintained a steady speed throughout the afternoon and the first hours of night, by the time it was my watch at midnight, the breeze had completely died. With no wind to fill them, the sails hung slack, moving only slightly with the back and forth motion caused by the waves under our hulls. We were making zero progress, and Terry was up the rest of the night despite that it wasn’t his watch. He adjusted sheets and tightened halyards, hoping to get something out of the sails, but there was simply not enough wind to fill them. Terry said that short calms were normal and that the wind would pick back up soon.
But daybreak came, and then sunrise, with colors almost as spectacular as the sunset the day before, and still there was no breeze. The surface of the sea was as smooth as the lakes along the Tenn-Tom Waterway, and we were just floating on it like a piece of driftwood, going nowhere. Terry tried to get a weather report on the VHF radio, but we were too far from the mainland to pick up a signal with that. He had another radio that he said would work anywhere in the world—a single-sideband receiver that could be used to listen to broadcasts, but not to talk—and he spent almost two hours that morning fiddling with it, trying to tune it in to a station that might give us an idea of the forecast. Watching him, I figured out pretty quickly that he had no idea how to use the radio and I wondered why not if he had done as much sailing as he claimed. He finally managed to pick up a station broadcasting weather info, but as we listened, it became apparent that the forecast was for an area of the Atlantic off the U.S. East Coast, not the Gulf of Mexico.
“What if this is a calm before a storm?” Mom asked. “I’ve heard there’s always a calm before a storm, especially a big storm.”
“That’s an old wives’ tale,” Terry answered. “This is not a calm before a storm. There were no storms anywhere in the Gulf or the Caribbean when we left yesterday. You heard the weather report yourself.”
Mom still wasn’t convinced. She was certain the weather could change for the worse at any minute. She was clearly not comfortable being out here this far from land. It was a new experience for all of us, except for Terry, and I was a little nervous too at this talk of storms. It was after all, hurricane season, although Terry played that down when we left. He said that because it was already the first week in October when we launched the boat, the worst part of the season was already over. There had been no hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico that year and Terry said that if one didn't hit between July and early September, then we wouldn't have to worry about it. He said the best part about leaving in the fall is that we would get to skip the winter in Mississippi, which meant that we wouldn’t be needing our jackets, long pants and socks, or even shoes. He said that where we were going we would never see winter again and that the weather would always be warm enough to go swimming anytime we wanted.
A storm didn't come, but when the wind finally picked up again it was coming out of the south-southwest, in exactly the direction we were trying to go. It was blowing just enough to sail, but Terry said no boat could sail straight into the direction of the wind, so we would have to turn away at an angle of at least forty-five degrees to it to make headway. This meant either going nearly due west or east-southeast. West was not good, because Terry said that would take us to the huge offshore oil fields south of Louisiana and Texas, and put us too far away from the Yucatan anyway. He said it was better to go the other way, in the direction of Florida, at least until the wind turned again and allowed us to go more to the south.
Janie was happy to hear that we were sailing towards Florida even if Terry didn’t want to. He said we weren’t about to go there, no matter what, but as it turned out, Terry was wrong about that too.