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THE PLACE WHERE DEAN said we should anchor the boat was a mangrove-surrounded lagoon on the next key east of Islamorada. Before we left the anchorage in front of the tiki bar to go there, we made several trips ashore in the dinghy to replenish our supplies.
“If you wait until the forecasters say for sure that it’s coming our way, it’ll be too late to get what you need,” Dean said. “People will freak out and strip the shelves in every store on the island. Happens every time! What makes it worse is that all the tourists will be stranded too. There’s no telling how many hundreds there are at any given time just on Islamorada alone, and most of them don’t know what to do because they’ve never had to deal with a hurricane before.”
“Like us,” Janie said.
“No, because we are not tourists,” Terry said. “We’ve got our own ship. We’ll have shelter and we won’t drown in a storm surge because our shelter floats! All we need to do is buy some more food and fill the water tanks and we’ll be better off than any of them.”
Restocking the boat at anchor was way harder than it was when we started out, where we could just carry things up a ladder and put them in the hulls while they were still on dry land in Calloway City. We had to make several trips ashore in the dinghy, walk to the nearest store, and then walk back carrying the groceries. Dean couldn’t really help us because he didn’t have a car. He rode an old beat-up bicycle everywhere because he said you didn’t need anything else in the Keys, and besides, he’d lost his license for good after getting one too many DUIs.
He said he would guide us to the place he recommended that we should take the Apocalypse to ride out the storm, and that he would help us set anchors and make all the necessary preparations because he was retired and didn’t have much else to do anyway. It was too late to leave that day to go there though, especially by the time we shuttled enough water out to the boat in the dinghy to refill our tanks, so we stayed put where we were anchored. Terry wanted to keep track of the storm a bit longer anyway before we moved to Dean’s hidey-hole. He said once you committed to a place like that and put out all those lines and anchors, if something changed it would be too late to do anything about it.
I was glad we were staying where we were the first night, because it gave us a chance to get off the boat for a while and look around. I wanted to take my bicycle ashore and ride around with Dean to see everything, but Terry said it was too much trouble and that we didn’t have time to be untying and retying stuff like bikes because we needed to keep the boat ready to move at a moment’s notice. He didn’t care if I walked somewhere though, so I wandered around the marina next door, looking at all the expensive yachts tied up alongside old shrimp boats that looked even rougher than the Apocalypse. Janie followed Dean off somewhere in the parking lot and I figured they were probably smoking a joint because Dean’s clothes reeked of it and I knew he was bound to have one. Mom was too worried about the hurricane to notice, and she made Terry go sit with her in the tiki bar so they could watch the live reports on the big TV on the wall.
We were thinking about that storm all night, and I don’t think anyone on board slept well except for Janie. She admitted to me she smoked some ganja with Dean, and she was pretty chilled out. I sure wasn’t. I might have gotten two hours of sleep at the most before I saw daylight coming through the hatch and climbed up on deck. Terry was sitting there drinking his coffee and listening to the automated voice on the VHF as it gave out the latest information on the hurricane.
“It looks like it’s coming our way, Robbie. We might as well get ready to move. But we’d better hope they’re wrong.”
“I thought you said we’d be better off than all the tourists because we’ve got everything we need and we’re on a ship, instead of on land.”
“We will be, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be a good thing, riding out a hurricane. The Apocalypse could still sustain damage. If we don’t get our anchors and moorings right, she could be swept loose in the storm surge. Some other idiot’s boat could come loose and hit us. A lot can happen in a hurricane, Robbie, that’s why I wanted to sail away from here as fast as possible. If we had left yesterday, like I wanted to when we first heard about it, we would have had plenty of time to get out of its path before it gets here. Now we don’t have a choice. All we can do is tie up where Dean said and hope for the best.”
Dean had pointed out on Terry’s chart the day before the approximate location of the hideaway he was talking about, but he said the channel into the good spot wasn’t marked. He also said there were a bunch of old derelict boats in the lagoon there, some of them floating and some not, and that he knew where the sunken ones were. So we waited on him to get there, but even after we were all awake and had eaten breakfast, he still didn’t show up. Mom made Terry take her back to the bar so she could see the weather report on the TV, because she said listening to that monotone computer voice repeating itself on the VHF every fifteen minutes was driving her bonkers. When they came back a half hour later, it was nearly oh-nine-hundred and Terry said we couldn’t wait for Dean any longer.
“He’s probably passed out drunk. A guy like that probably sleeps ’til noon every day. If we don’t get going, we won’t have time to make all our preparations.”
Mom didn’t like the idea of going somewhere like that without local knowledge. She said we might get in the wrong spot or hit one of those submerged boats going in there. But Terry said there was no way we could ride out a storm where we were now, and he reminded her that the bottom was so poor for anchoring here that even a light breeze had nearly blown the Apocalypse ashore. So we left without Dean, using the chart to find our way along the Gulf side of Islamorada until we came to the pass separating it from the next Key. Just as we came in sight of the bridge that connected them, Janie said there was somebody on top of it waving at us. I grabbed Terry’s binoculars, and sure enough, it was Dean, standing there on the highest point of the bridge, straddling his bicycle. He waved and pointed to a little dock near the east end of the bridge and Terry steered us that way. By the time we got there, Dean was on the dock, waiting to be picked up. He locked his bike to a light pole and leapt aboard when Terry managed to bring the Apocalypse within three feet of the dock without hitting it. I was glad Dean could jump that far, because Terry would have smacked that dock for sure if he tried to get any closer.
“I’m sure glad you’re here,” Mom said to Dean.
“Yeah, sorry I’m late. I usually sleep ’til noon most days, but with this storm coming, I had things to do. Man, I wouldn’t want to see anything happen to a bitchin’ Wharram like yours. I had to come and do what I can to help out. They’re saying Leona might be a Category Four once it gets across Cuba and hits the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. I still think it’s gonna turn before it gets here, but it’s better to be ready, just in case.”
Following Dean’s directions, Terry steered us along the edge of a dense wall of mangroves until we rounded a bend and came to an opening in the trees that led into an enclosed body of water that looked like a small lake to me. Dean called it a lagoon though, I guess because it was seawater and we were (almost) in the tropics. The water was clear and you could easily see the way the only deep channel went, because on either side of it the color was bright green from the light reflecting off the sand and grass on the bottom. On the way in, I saw a couple of sunken powerboats and one sailboat, it’s stern railing close enough to the surface that someone not looking where they were going would hit it. There were some other old boats floating around in the lagoon, most of them tied up with one or two frayed-looking anchor rodes of inadequate size. Every one of these boats looked abandoned. Most of them were sailboats that didn’t even have a mast still standing, and some of them had the portlights smashed out and other parts missing. All of them had thick crusts of barnacles and mats of weed growing at their waterlines too.
“I don’t like this,” Terry said. “All these damned junkers will come loose in any kind of a blow, much less a hurricane!”
“Nah, they’ve been here for years. Some of them for decades! This place is sheltered, man. See how thick these mangroves are? But out here in the lagoon with all these boats is not where I’m talking about. The real hole is farther in, just keep going, but stay in the darker water. There’s just enough to get in with your draft. That’s what’s so great about it. You don’t have to worry about a bunch of yacht club idiots coming in here at the last minute before the storm and blocking you in.”
“This place is creepy, if you ask me,” Janie said. “There’re probably dead bodies inside some of those old boats.”
“If there are any, they’re just old skeletons by now,” I told her. “Maybe we can go in the dinghy and look for some after we get anchored.”
Janie just made a face at me like she always did when I aggravated her on purpose. Dean said they did find dead people on old boats around here sometimes, but usually they were homeless people or drunks living on some derelict long since abandoned by its owner.
“Why would anybody that owned a boat ever abandon it?” I asked. “Even an old boat costs money.”
“Entropy, Robbie. Remember what I told you about boat maintenance? Most people who buy boats don’t have a clue what they’re in for, especially if they buy an old wooden boat like most of these. Some slick yacht broker sells it to them, knowing all along it’s already too far-gone to be good for anything but firewood. They pour money into it until they’re broke, and then when they can’t find another sucker to buy it, they just tie it to a mooring somewhere and walk away.”
“Happens all the time,” Dean agreed. “Dreamers! Sailboats always attract dreamers. Most of ’em dreaming about sailing to the islands. Me, I don’t need a boat to get to the islands, because I’m like, already here, man! But this Wharram cat’s really bitchin’. If I did want a boat, it’d be a Wharram cat for sure!”
We finally saw the spot Dean kept talking about when we reached the back end of the lagoon, in a far corner invisible from the entrance outside. It looked like a creek or channel or something, but Dean said it wasn’t. He said it was just a dead end, a hole in the mangroves with just enough water to float a boat like ours and just enough width for us to fit in there. It looked tight to me, and Terry said the same thing. Dean said it was wide enough though and what did it matter if we brushed a few branches with our rigging? It wouldn’t hurt anything, and being in a snug hole like this was way better than being somewhere there was more room for the boat to get blown around. He said that in a place like this, we could tie all kinds of extra lines to the tree trunks and roots.
“We’ll put out so many warps your cat will look like a spider in the middle of its web,” he said. “If you’re worried about the branches scratching your paint, we’ll just cut some back.”
“He’s already gotten a citation for cutting off a mangrove branch in the Everglades,” Mom said.
Dean whistled. “Cutting mangroves in the Everglades! Man, do you know how much that’s gonna cost you?”
“No, and I don’t care, because I’m not paying any fines to Florida or the national park service. Just as soon as this hurricane business is over, we’re outta here! But even if we cut some of this jungle back, there’s no way I can back this wide cat into a tight spot like that.”
“So put your bow in man, no big deal!”
“I don’t like the idea of running up in a hole facing the wrong way so that I can’t get out in a hurry. Backing out will be almost as hard as backing in. We ran into that in the Everglades, trying to get out of a place like this when the mosquitoes swarmed us at dusk.”
“Nah, man. We’ll set an anchor way out off the stern. When it’s time to leave you can just haul in on it and pull the Apocalypse right back out. No big deal.”
That was pretty much what we’d done before, in that place in Shark River, and I didn’t see what the problem was. Terry was fretting about it, I could tell, but with the rest of us urging him on to do something so we could get started tying her up, he drove the Apocalypse forward into the hole. I think he just didn’t like the idea of committing to one spot where he couldn’t move quickly if the hurricane actually came.
The mangroves did brush against the shrouds and the plumber’s pipe deck rails, sending leaves and small branches falling all over the deck. Terry cut a few of the longest ones with the machete after Dean assured him the marine patrol would have better things to do with a hurricane coming than ride around looking for people doing stuff like that. Even with some of them cut back, the branches still closed in around us and I wondered if there were snakes in those trees that would find their way aboard. I told Janie there probably were and that they would be slithering down the dorades to get inside our cabin tonight.
“If I even see a snake, I’m getting off the boat and walking to a hotel!” Mom said she would too and then she said maybe that’s what we all ought to do anyway after we tied up the boat.
“What, and just abandon the Apocalypse? Are you out of your mind? A sailor doesn’t leave his ship to fend for herself. This vessel is our home now! There’s nowhere else to go!”
Mom didn’t say anything else, but I could tell she didn’t agree with Terry and she was getting more nervous about that hurricane with every hour that went by. Dean said everything was going to be cool and that there weren’t many snakes around here to worry about. He did say we probably ought not to swim around the mangroves in a place like this though, because there were sharks and American crocodiles. He said the crocodiles hadn’t ever attacked anybody that he knew of, but they were increasing in number and spreading out into this part of the Keys from the southern end of the Everglades, where they were a protected species. Before he said that, I was looking forward to jumping into that clear water with my mask and snorkel I hadn’t even gotten to try yet; but not now. Alligators and sharks were scary enough; I sure wasn’t about to go swimming somewhere there might be a crocodile too!
We tied off to the nearest mangrove branches just to hold our position while we sorted out the anchors and rodes, and Dean and Terry argued about the best angles to set the anchors and where to tie off the main lines. Dean said we didn’t have enough when Terry pulled out our entire inventory of line, and he said we ought to get in the dinghy and go see what we could find on the derelicts.
“No, it’s not stealing,” he said, when Mom objected to the idea of doing this. “Nobody cares about those old boats; that’s why they’re here. Most of the good stuff’s been stripped off of them a long time ago, but there’s bound to be some rope on some of them.”
I wanted to see the boats, so I went with Dean in the dinghy to see what we could find. He was a lot better at rowing than Terry, and it didn’t take us long to cruise around the lagoon, stopping at each boat and climbing aboard to look for what we needed. I kept expecting to find some skeletons in one of them, but we never did. We gathered a few assorted lengths of tattered and frayed rope, most of it too small to secure a ship the size of the Apocalypse, but Dean said anything was better than nothing. The best thing we found was when we followed a long anchor rode attached to the bow of a rotten old plywood houseboat and discovered a big anchor on the other end, buried in the mud bottom. It was so heavy it was hard to pull up, but when we did, Dean said it was better than anything Terry had on board.
“That’s a forty-five-pound Manson Supreme, dude! We need to set that off your stern out into the lagoon on the longest rode you’ve got.”
“You think we should just take it?” I asked.
“Sure, why not. What good is it doing tied to this piece of shit? Besides, whoever put it here probably stole it. That thing’s worth several hundred dollars. You can bet they didn’t buy it!”
“Well, without an anchor, won’t their boat get tore up in the hurricane?”
“Yeah, so what? Screw it! If whoever left it here cared, they’d be here now getting it ready for the storm.”
Terry was ecstatic to see the big Manson. He knew it was a good anchor, but when he was buying stuff for the boat on EBay and Craigslist, he hadn’t been able to find one at a price he wanted to pay. Like everything he put on the boat, he always got the cheapest he could find unless there was no alternative.
It took us half a day to get all the anchors and lines situated in a way that satisfied Terry and Dean. Then we had to take all the sails off the masts and fold them to stow below. We took down our blue tarp awnings too, and Mom said we ought to just throw them away because they were ugly enough when they were new and now they were faded by the sun and ripped by the wind. Terry wouldn’t throw them away though, because he said we might need them. He said that because none of us would agree to sail with him to try and outrun the hurricane in time, we might be living on the beach under the tarps when all this was over.
I was so sick of hearing the stupid computer-generated voice on the VHF weather report that I felt like smashing the radio. Mom was sick of it too but she wouldn’t turn it off because she didn’t want to miss a thing. She was scared to death of this hurricane and was on pins and needles whenever it was almost time for a new update from the National Hurricane Center every three hours. The latest report that we got that afternoon didn’t sound good. Hurricane Leona had turned north just like they predicted it would, and it was now about to make landfall on the south coast of Cuba. When it did, the experts said it would weaken some as it crossed over the island because of the mountains, but they still expected it to stay on the same track and strengthen when it got back over water. That water was the narrow Florida Straits, and it wouldn’t be far from where we were at all when that happened. They had now put the entire Florida Keys under a hurricane watch and said it extended up to Marco Island on the west coast and Fort Lauderdale on the east. Dean said the watch would probably turn into a warning soon, and when it did, all hell would break loose on the island.
“They’ll turn A1-A into a parking lot! Every gas station in the Keys will be pumped dry by dark and flights in and out of Key West will be cancelled. The motels will start closing and all the tourists caught here will double the problem of getting everybody off the island.”
“Where will all those people go?” Mom asked.
“Miami, most likely. They’ll open shelters there and bus out as many as they can, but there’s only one road off the Keys. It’s impossible to evacuate everybody without a lot more time, and all these stupid warnings will compound the problem. Most of us that live here know better than to leave, because nothing would suck worse that being stuck on one of the long bridges when a hurricane hits.”
“We need to leave immediately then!” Mom said, in a panic herself now.
“Wait just a damned minute!” Terry said. “Don’t forget it’s not even a warning yet, just a watch! It could still turn and probably will. The talking heads always make a big story out of these things just so they’ll have something to yammer on about. They thrive on panic and fear, and they know people want to hear it. The TV watchers and radio listeners want to believe there’s a disaster coming because otherwise, their lives would be so boring they couldn’t stand it.
“A hurricane is coming! Yippee! Hot freakin’ damn! Now that’s exciting! Let’s all go apeshit crazy and run around like a bunch of ants that just had their hill kicked in! Let’s buy everything in sight and then sit in the car in a gridlock until we run the tank dry to go five miles! It’s a Category Four for Christ’s sake! Maybe it’ll be a Five when it makes landfall! Death and destruction—a catastrophic disaster for sure—oh holy hell, now isn’t that something?”
Terry was waving his arms in the air and practically dancing around the deck by now. He was so enthusiastic he had Dean laughing first and then me and Janie. Mom didn’t think it was one bit funny though and stormed off below, slamming the hatch to their cabin shut behind her. Dean shrugged his shoulders and said everybody got all bent out of shape when these things were in the forecast.
“Jimmy Buffett wrote a song about all that, something about trying to reason with hurricane season. It’s just part of the price of living in paradise man. We never feel the winter here, but sometimes, there’s a storm or two. But like I said, we’ve got some pretty good karma happening in Islamorada. I think we’re gonna be all right, and you’re all set with the Apocalypse tied up in here like this. You couldn’t have done better anywhere. So just relax, man. Chill out and enjoy the chance to rest. The threat will be over soon and then you can go or stay.”
Dean said he needed a ride back to shore so he could take care of some stuff at the garage apartment where he lived beneath an elevated house in Islamorada. He said he would come back and check on us before dark, and give us the latest from the weather reports on TV. He knew of a path through the mangroves from the lagoon to the main road and said he would walk down there and yell at us to come pick him up when he got back. Terry took off with him in the dinghy, and Janie convinced Mom to come back out of the cabin while he was gone.
“Sometimes I think Terry Bailey is insane!” Mom said. “All this talk about getting out of Calloway City before the country collapses, and here we are in the path of a hurricane!”
I couldn’t help but remember what that trucker, Hal Jenkins, said about Hurricane Katrina tearing up every boat on the Gulf Coast. He warned Terry that we were leaving at the wrong time of year, but Terry always thought he was right and everybody else was full of crap. After seeing all the problems we had along the way, I wondered how much sailing Terry had really done. But despite hitting things, tearing up sails and running aground, he had managed to get us all the way here, and Islamorada was a long way away from Calloway City.
“You’re the one that listened to all his bullshit,” Janie said to Mom. “I told you I didn’t want to live on a stupid sailboat. Now we’re all gonna die!”
“We’re not gonna die,” I said, trying to balance things out and look at both sides. “You heard what Dean said. They haven’t been hit by a real hurricane here since 1935. He said they always turn and go somewhere else. I doubt Leona is going to be any different. Besides, if we had stayed in Calloway City, we would still be bored to death. At least if we die down here we got to see stuff like dolphins and sharks and coconut palms first. And look at that water,” I pointed down into the impossibly clear water upon which the Apocalypse seemed to be suspended over the bottom as if on a cushion of air. “Have you ever seen water like that before? Would you ever have if not for Terry?”
“Here he comes,” Mom said. “I’m not going to argue with him about it right now, but I’ll tell you this. If that hurricane doesn’t turn and it really is coming our way, we’re getting off this boat and evacuating to Miami like everybody else with any sense is doing!”
* * *
We spent the rest of the afternoon doing pretty much nothing but listening to the radio reports, Terry pacing back and forth on the deck and getting more agitated by the hour. Dean came back like he said he would to check on us and when Terry brought him back to the boat in the dinghy, he told us what he’d seen on The Weather Channel. Hurricane Leona was wreaking havoc in Cuba even now and was still tracking due north over the island after killing more than a hundred people there.
“They’re saying it’s not gonna turn, man. They said that about Michelle too, back in 2001, and they were wrong. But we’re under an official hurricane warning now and they’re saying that when it makes landfall here in Florida, they expect it to be a strong Category Four, maybe even a Five!”
“Dammit!” Terry swore. “I knew we should have left!”
“We are leaving!” Mom said, in a voice that left no doubt that she had made up her mind and Terry or no one else was going to change it.
“I don’t know,” Dean said. “It’s pretty crazy everywhere on the island right now. I don’t know how you’re going to go anywhere. But even if you do, you can’t do it tonight. They’re moving so many of the tourists up to the mainland that there’s no point even trying. The best thing to do is hang tight until first thing in the morning. The hurricane won’t be back over open water until sometime after daylight, and they’re not going to know if it’s going to turn or not until it hits the Gulf Stream.”
Mom still wanted to go right then, but we all talked her out of it. We would have to take all the stuff we needed with us in the dinghy and that would be a real pain in the butt in the dark. Aside from that, if we couldn’t find a bus or some other way to get to Miami, we wouldn’t have anywhere to sleep on the island. Dean said no motels or hotels were renting rooms now after they had already turned out all their guests. And he said his garage apartment was really just one room and he only had one single bed, and besides, he had four cats living there with him.
Once we finally got her settled down, Mom was okay with staying aboard one more night, but the agreement was that if the hurricane was still heading north when we woke at first light, we were leaving Islamorada and Terry could do whatever he wanted. He took Dean back to the path ashore and when he returned to the boat, we sat up until way past midnight, talking about what we were going to do and hoping that we would get good news about the hurricane when we woke up in the morning.
We didn’t.