The Yacht

EEEEMEEDIATELY!

Published in The Yacht, February 1989

We were four days from Annapolis and 60 miles off Savannah, Georgia. Just ahead of us, leaping in groups of three, 25 porpoises kept us company, contrasting sharply with The Moose, the 185-ton motoryacht we were taking south for the winter. Yet the spacious Moose was anything but graceless as she sliced crisply through the 10-foot swells.

Mike Marcin, Buzz MacIntire and Steve Ruiz, the three captains for the trip, didn’t seem to mind the bumping, rolling motion. It was just part of the job.

We had embarked in a record snowstorm that left the Baltimore-Annapolis-DC area paralyzed in mid-November and it was Friday the 13^th when we rounded the treacherous Outerbanks of North Carolina. In heavy seas.

I’m not superstitious, but after hearing about how the stabilizer fell through the hull on a trip to Hawaii and about how “the big one” smashed through the pilothouse’s thick glass during a hurricane, I began to understand why sailors are a superstitious lot.

By Monday evening’s watch, I considered throwing salt over my left shoulder. Twelve miles off Daytona, The Moose’s bucking action was even greater than it had been the day before. The radar screen glowed vivid green in the dark pilothouse like the eye of a black cat. It flashed five ships within three miles of The Moose. Four of us were headed south. According to MacIntire, the one heading north was probably a small fishing craft because it didn’t always appear on the radar screen. The conversation between one of the cruise ships and a tanker went something like this:

Tanker: “Cap’n your sparklin’ vessel is movin’ four knots faster than mahn. Your path is clear.”

Cruiser: “Thank you, captain. You should know, however, that a northbound vessel named Seawheel is on a collision course with you. I suggest you make radio contact.”

Tanker: “Ah have no readin’ for a northbound vessel, cap’n, but thank you for the suggestion.”

We picked up Seawheel on the radar now, and it was clearly headed for the tanker.

After various attempts to reach Seawheel, the southern tanker was rewarded with a response in Spanish. “Seawheel es…” static “…Cape Canaveral”…more static, “pero no comprende, ah, adjustments…” Between the static and the language barrier, neither boat altered course. The southern captain continued to warn Seawheel she was in danger. Minutes elapsed and still no response. When a collision seemed inevitable, we hear:

“Seawheel, if you don’t run dah-rectly into mah ship, you are bound – absolutely bound – to hit one of three barges ah’m towin’. Now, if you don’t change your course eeemeediately, you will either be salvagin’ pieces off the sea floor, or you will be climbin’ the side of mah barge like Mount Everest.”

Instantly came the response, “Roger, cap-eetan.”

While yet another northbound ship’s image crept slowly onto our screen, we conversed about the Devil’s Triangle.

Timing is everything, you know.