David Vann - A Mile Down - The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea

We could see the masthead light on my boat, arcing back and forth. I had turned it on at the end to keep the boat visible, and I had left the engines and electrical system running so that all systems would stay up, bilge pumps included. I had no idea what to hope for, whether for complete loss or recovery or something else. I was so tired, and no matter what happened, my original plans were stretched and broken. The idea of getting to Mexico on time to run my winter charters, after first sorting out the salvage mess and then getting a new rudder and probably finding new crew, seemed remote. Finding money to pay the $3,000 deductible and anything not covered by insurance, and finding money to pay the lenders and all the bills, was still the largest worry, worse by far than losing my rudder at sea. If the loan promised by John didn’t come in, I was going to go under, despite the recent loan from Rand and Lee. There wasn’t enough time to raise $150,000 from other sources. Especially once word got around about the lost rudder and the cancelled winter schedule. It seemed like I had already failed, and was just hanging on to make sure it was real.

In the morning, I climbed down into the liferaft with the first mate and one of the crew from Kiribati. My own crew had to stay on board. The captain explained to me that his company was now responsible for the boat, liable for it because of their salvage claim, and my crew was not allowed on board. They were letting me on, though, because they had to have someone who knew the boat. Placed into the raft with us was a hundred-foot bridle of very thick dock line, exactly what I had requested the day before.

The freighter circled more deftly than it had before and brought the liferaft close. The seas and wind had died down considerably. They had not blown my boat onto land during the night, obviously, which meant that we could have stayed aboard, though in that case the freighter probably would not have stayed with us all night.

When we came close to the stern rail of my boat, I climbed aboard quickly, the first back on deck. I considered telling the other two to stay in the raft, refusing to let them board, but I hesitated and they climbed up after me. I needed help with the towline, and I needed the tow. I was too tired to think clearly. I wonder now what would have happened. Would they have fought me to come aboard? Would the captain have refused to help me afterward and let me drift? Or would I have won the day, handling the tow lines myself and avoiding the salvage claim? I have no idea.

What happened was that they came aboard and we tied the bridle to the bows. They even gave me a large shackle so that when the towline was thrown to us we would be able to simply slip the shackle over and screw in the pin.

I couldn’t steer up to the freighter’s stern reliably with fouled props, and the German captain didn’t want that anyway. He was happy to pull his freighter alongside, close enough to throw a line across our deck. It’s true the seas were much calmer, the wind much lower, but what the captain was willing to do had also changed considerably.

I called him on the radio. “I see you have all of the equipment you said you didn’t have.”

“The conditions have changed,” he said. “We were unable to provide other assistance in the sea conditions that prevailed yesterday.”

“You’re a liar,” I said. “And a criminal. You put my crew and my boat at risk. You went for the salvage claim. You are not going to get away with this.”

There was a pause, then he came back on the radio. “My instructions are to tow you to Gibraltar. Are you willing to help ensure the safety of the vessel during that tow?”

“Yes I am, you sonofabitch.”

“Thank you, then. Please stand by on sixteen.”

The tow line he used was five times the length he had offered us the day before. It was long enough that the middle section stayed slack in the water the entire time, absorbing shock. It was exactly what we had needed.

To keep the boat from crawfishing side to side, we dragged dock lines, a sea anchor (a kind of underwater parachute) with a big hole cut in it, and two plastic kayaks, which swamped and darted back and forth under the surface like green lures. With all of this trailing from the stern, the boat sawed back and forth very little, and we were able to reduce the chafing of the towlines at the bows.

The tow went smoothly for the day and a half back to Gibraltar. The first mate puked a few times, seasick, then sat on the poop deck and smoked. The man from Kiribati puked a few times then slept in the pilothouse. I fixed canned meals and amused myself with the Inmarsat. To get it to stop beeping, I had to cut its power. When I brought it back up, there were finally some response messages, asking me to verify that I had set off the Inmarsat distress alarm and my EPIRB. “Just a bit late,” I typed. “I’m being towed to Gibraltar now.”

Then I sent an e-mail to Seref. “We’ve lost our rudder near Casablanca. It fell off. I can’t possibly express to you how disappointed I am in this boat.”

I checked the engine room, then turned off the engines. Everything seemed fine down there. The main salon and galley, however, were a wreck after the night of rolling. The contents of the refrigerator had spilled across the salon floor, which luckily was teak, like the deck outside, and could be cleaned. Dishes had flown out of the dishwasher and broken. Everything we had stowed under the salon desk had come loose.

The weather had become clear and sunny. The seas had steadily dropped, and by the time we made Gibraltar, they were almost flat.

I had banged my knee on something during the previous day’s towing attempts, and since then it had stiffened. By the time we began the tow, I was hobbling, and by the time we reached Gibraltar, I basically couldn’t walk. I wasn’t sure how the whole knee thing had happened.

As we entered the Bay of Gibraltar, the German captain and I were busy on the radio making plans. He would dock first and then a tugboat would moor us alongside. In the meantime, we needed to retrieve the items dragging behind. I hobbled as best as I could to help, but the first mate did most of the cutting, letting the crew member from Kiribati do most of the hauling, and the cutting was indiscriminate. By the time I yelled out, he had cut one of the kayaks free, which now was drifting out of the Bay of Gibraltar.

“You won’t do anything more on this boat without my permission,” I told him. “This is still my boat, and I’m still the captain.”

“No you’re not,” he said. “You can fuck off, as you Americans like to say. You’re going to bring me a nice income.”

“Income?” I asked.

“The first mate receives five percent, and the captain receives ten percent. That’s from the salvage claim. We also receive a bonus if the towing charges are more than the cargo from Kinitra.”

“You’re a criminal,” I said.

“The captain and I are smart,” he said, “and you are not. Poor little stupid American, out on the high seas. It’s a big world, isn’t it?”

As it turned out, that was to be one of the more pleasant encounters of the day. There is an outer wall of the Gibraltar harbor called Impound Island, which is where the larger arrested ships are kept. Enormous rusting hulks from third world countries, abandoned. Being towed past them by a freighter was like looking at my own failure, perfectly manifested. A dream and the empty hull left over when it dies.

Once the Birgit Sabban had docked, a tug pulled us close. My crew and Nancy and Barbara waved down at me, looking showered and well-rested. But before I could tie off, the man from Kiribati climbed onto my lifelines and leapt for the freighter. He caught the edge of the deck and dangled from the freighter’s side. I looked down at the thin strip of water sucking between our hulls. If he fell, he was most likely going to die. And I had no control over my boat. The other Kiribati crew and my crew on the deck of the Birgit Sabban rushed to help him, grabbing at his blue jump suit and the backs of his arms. A confusion of movement and yelling, but they pulled him aboard.