Seaworthy (9 page)

Our schedule hinged on how serious the damage was to the engine and how accessible parts would be. I recalled a total rebuild on the
Hannah Boden
's main engine done in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and a generator repair I endured aboard the
Gloria Dawn
in Province-town, Massachusetts. In both cases my crew was virtually ready for detox by the time we were back under way, and we had been forbidden by officials to return to either harbor. Both of these episodes were the sort that created sleepless nights. I didn't mention these stories to my crew. But my experiences with repairs in ports other than the vessel's home were uniformly long and unpleasant. Every day we spent at the dock was another day further off the moon we'd be when we got fishing. I didn't mention that to my crew either. I didn't need to, I realized as I listened to the tales of woe coming from around the galley table. The men all had similar catastrophic experiences and seemed to be engaged in a game of one-upmanship, swapping stories that grew in anguish as they proceeded. When I could no longer bear the hangdog faces, I reminded the group that we should be ready to receive the towline before Scotty arrived.

The securing of the shaft became an ordeal unto itself. Rather than a small chore you do in preparation to be towed by another vessel, it was our entire world. There wasn't chain, there was chain, there wasn't enough chain, there was too much chain. . . . We could jam pipe wrenches onto the shaft, no we couldn't, yes we could, watch this, it didn't work. . . . Okay, we'll use the chain. There were no shackles, there were shackles, there was nothing to shackle to, the shackles were too large for the chain. . . . The shackles could be ground to size, no they couldn't, the grinder didn't work, Arch fixed it, no he didn't, yes he did. . . . Another shackle could be stolen from the end of a stay wire, no it couldn't, yes it could. . . . It would be dangerous, no it wouldn't, the weather will be good, what if it isn't? “Tim is an idiot.” “Dave doesn't know what he's doing.” “I will not be responsible if this doesn't work.” “Someone's gonna get hurt if that thing lets go.” “He's a jerk.” “He's a
fuckin'
jerk.”

“Now, you've got the shaft all secure, right?” Scotty asked over the radio as he approached from the northeast.

“Roger, Scotty. We're all set here. Thanks for coming to help. I really appreciate it and will gladly return the favor anytime. Over.”

“I know that, Linda. Let's hope you don't have to. Come on!” Scotty was professional and gracious. The assistance he was providing would not only screw up his schedule but would cost him fuel and fishing time. It might cost him the most sought-after berth on the fishing grounds if this delay allowed another competitor to slip in before Scotty arrived. Yet he didn't mention it. For that I was grateful. I could not recall ever feeling so humble. Although fitting, it wasn't a feeling that I enjoyed. In fact, I much preferred pride. But at the moment I had nothing to be proud of.

It was just midnight when the lights I'd been watching on the horizon grew into the silhouette of the
Eagle Eye II.
The weather was still enough for Scotty to maneuver into place without waiting for the help of daylight. My crew stood on the bow, braced to receive a tag line from Scotty's partial crew who were in the stern of their boat ready to toss it. I watched helplessly through the wheelhouse windows as their stern swung around directly in front of my bow. The line was tossed and caught. My crew pulled, hand over hand, until the double-ended cable bridle came aboard. They quickly drew the ends of the bridle through chocks on either side of the stem and placed both eyes over the bit in the center of the bow. My men left the bow for safety reasons, and I gave Scotty the okay over the radio to tow away.

The slack slowly came out of the line as the
Eagle Eye II
eased a distance of about fifty yards from us. The line tightened, and off we went, still unsure of where Scotty was taking us. As of the last conversation, we were splitting the difference between two ports, knowing that a decision was still in the making as to which we would enter for repairs. I supposed there was no urgency in the details of our destination. We had a minimum of eighty miles to go and were making less than seven knots. So I had at least ten more hours to think. I sat back in the captain's chair and stared at the stern ahead of me as it bobbed slightly up and down in the shallow swells. Outwardly I displayed the apathy of a casual by-stander. I yawned. Beneath the surface, emotions roiled.

Being on this end of the tow rope was disheartening. It was demeaning. It represented the total antithesis of what I was about. Independence, self-reliance, and strength shrank as the strain on the line between the two boats grew. Captain of what? The
Shithawk.
My mood wasn't made any lighter by the bickering that rose from below. The crew sounded like young brothers in the backseat on a long car ride. I didn't much like fishing right now.

One by one the men came topside under the guise of offering to stand a watch. But what was clear to me was that they were really coming to get information that I could not provide—where were we going? Or they came to lament our joint baneful existence. One at a time, they hashed over every tiny thing that they had endured at the hands of Jim Budi, Malcolm, and Putz. No longer in command of my ship, I had become a middle manager with the hooking up of the towline. The litany of problems aired ran the gamut from work with no pay to expired dates on batteries. The complaints were getting paltry when Machado ran out of breath at the condition of the paint on the deck. I'd mention it to Jim Budi, I promised. I had heard from everyone except Archie. I didn't know what to do other than listen and show some compassion by agreeing with all they said. If I'd felt like their captain, rather than someone manning a barge, perhaps I would have put an end to what was sounding more and more like nothing more than bellyaching. If I'd been under my own steam, I would have responded to complaints with “Suck it up,” “Toughen up,” or “Shut the fuck up.” Maybe I had softened in the last decade.

Was my present mood a form of grace under pressure? Or was this newfound diffidence a result of the natural process of aging? There was a certain inconsistency, to boot. As thrilled as I'd been with my crew just a few short hours ago, I was now second-guessing my own choices. Perhaps my first thought should have been to hire a seasoned diesel mechanic. Maybe having friends as subordinates (and perhaps insubordinates) was a bad idea. How could I possibly chew them up and spit them out? How could I savagely berate them with one of my earsplitting, foulmouthed rants, known to make grown men wish they'd never been born? Who could I take my frustrations out on? Would any of that make me feel more in command? Being on the wrong end of a towrope zaps a gal's resolve. I sat and stared at the stern ahead of us for what seemed like hours, listening to the voices from down in the galley. I couldn't hear words. The tone was hostile. The laughter was cynical. Maybe I would have been better off with a bunch of idiots as crew, instead of these nice, smart, capable men. I knew how to handle idiots.

I wondered about my present feelings of uselessness and hoped they would soon pass. Perhaps jumping back into this world after such a long absence had been a mistake. I hadn't grown gracefully into this role of the more mature, rational captain. It was more like an abrupt dropping in from another era through some evil time warp. My words and actions were numb, mechanical contrivances. And nobody cared. Surely I had been aware that there were problems inherent in returning to this profession that I had known only as a younger woman. But I hadn't anticipated these heavy feelings that were perhaps born of my absence. Going fishing had always been so carefree in the past. It had always been a financial gamble in which losing had no real consequence other than pride. I'd never had a mortgage when I fished before. Everything I'd owned could be shoved into a plastic garbage bag and slung onto the deck from the back of a truck. And what about my responsibility for Sarai? I was indeed putting her security in jeopardy. Sure, we wouldn't starve to death if this ended badly. But there were things I wanted to be able to do for her and give her that were possible only with adequate income. Most important, I wanted Sarai to believe in me and be able to count on me. I had lived a fairly selfish life before Sarai made her entrance. I didn't want to let either of us down.

“Hey, Linny! Wow, he's towing us along pretty good,” Arch said as he entered the wheelhouse. “What are we making, six knots? Not bad.”

“I won't know where we're going until morning,” I said, anticipating the question.

“It doesn't make any difference to me where we get fixed up.” Arch smiled. “I'm not the one quitting and going home.”

A
ttrition, a fancy word for jumping ship, didn't usually begin this early in a trip. But so far this trip was anything but usual. I had to consider the fact that this was the earliest opportunity to lose crew that I had ever experienced. It is not unheard of for a man to have a sudden change of heart about fishing in general and to beat feet when a boat hits the dock. But the boat isn't supposed to hit the dock after just forty-eight hours at sea. And we hadn't set even a single hook yet. No one had real reason to be alarmed or any inkling that paychecks would be scarce or thin. This was so premature and unwarranted that I would have to consider it a bailing out rather than a graceful exit.

I recalled a similar situation aboard the
Gloria Dawn.
The mate came up to the wheelhouse, as Archie had just done, and announced that one man was considering hitting the road. I fired the entire crew in an instant, mate and all. Looking back, I could now see that I'd been extremely impetuous. Being stupid and counterproductive had never fazed me before. The mass firing had been a matter of principle. But now I couldn't remember
which
principle. I didn't have it in me to be so brash any longer. It would be much smarter to be composed and calculated and less spontaneous. “Who's quitting?” I asked calmly.

“Machado is sitting with his cell phone and waiting for coverage. He says he has bad vibes and wants to cut his losses. Dave may follow him,” Arch had confided, in what I knew was sincere concern for how abandonment might affect me emotionally. Little did my friend know about me. I would nip this in the bud.

“I can't say as I would blame them if they headed home. Please find out what their intentions are so that I can line up a couple of guys. We can't waste time at the dock waiting for crew. We've got fish to catch!”

“Yeah.” Arch paused to think. “Yeah, you're right. I know a great guy who will jump on a plane headed
anywhere
to go fishing. Want me to call him? I can call Marge and have her arrange flights. In fact, I know two guys. I should call them now and put them on standby. Want me to?”

“I have a list of guys in mind who wanted to come if I had room for them. I didn't then. Now I do. I assumed that Machado and Tim would be the guys bailing out. Hiltz is a surprise,” I said.

“Tim is here for the duration. Don't you worry about him. He's solid. As long as I stay, he stays. And I'm not going anywhere until you do. Machado is sort of miserable, and I think he's making Dave nervous.”

I knew well, from experience with hundreds of hired hands in the past, how infectious attitudes are—how one negative influence could impel an otherwise complacent member of a crew to ditch. And perhaps that knowledge had led to as many firings. It's much better to terminate one man's position than to lose two quitters. There's too much time to think while a boat is steaming. Too much rack time, too much idle time, and too much time to sit around the galley table acting as “fo'c'sle lawyers” (as my old mentor Alden Leeman had always referred to the malcontents) never resulted in the development of positive attitudes. One disgruntled man could plant a seed, and downtime—especially like this—could nurture the most fragile point of strife to full-grown petulance. Like bedsores, small complaints fester and spread with a little agitation and chafing. Putting salve on bedsores had never been my method.

“Someone aboard here is a Jonah!” I said, referring to what mariners consider a person who brings bad luck to a boat. “It's got to be Machado or Hiltz. Can you get confirmation
now
that they're quitting?” I asked, as optimistically as I could, knowing that Arch would see through my psychology but would also go along with it in trying to call a bluff. “I really need to know how many replacements to get.” Being called a Jonah was a real slap in the face. Now the ball would be in someone else's court. I may have forgotten a lot in the last ten years, but the basic game was still the same. And I believed that I was still the reigning champ of head games played at sea. “I'll keep my fingers crossed that they'll both go home.”