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

The German first mate standing beside me laughed. “He thinks your boat is cursed. Maybe he is correct.”

We tied off to the freighter, exchanged crew, and then the German captain informed me that the admiralty marshal of Gibraltar was coming to arrest the boat. My insurance company and the shipping company had not come to immediate agreement, so my boat would be put under twenty-four-hour guard, and I was responsible for paying for the guard. This was becoming so bad so fast, I decided to contact the law firm in Gibraltar that had set up my company and registered the boat.

We didn’t have a phone onboard, so I would have to wait until after I was arrested. While I was waiting, the German captain came by and handed me his cell phone with a call from my insurance company representative. The woman sounded friendly, but I told her I wanted to consult my lawyers.

“Why would you need to do that?” she asked. “Did you do something wrong?”

“No,” I said. “But I don’t like being arrested. I don’t feel well represented.”

“We are here to represent you. You must cooperate with us if you want us to consider coverage of your claim. We need a full written account of what happened, and we’ll send a surveyor to assess the damage. The boat will need to be hauled out. But first you must tell me what happened.”

“I look forward to working with you,” I said, “after I talk with my lawyers. In the meantime, if you could keep the boat from getting arrested, that would be a plus.”

Barbara was a lawyer, with her own firm in Colorado, and she agreed with this approach. “You have to be careful,” she told me. The boat was her asset, too, as one of the lienholders. “We’ll get through this, David. It will all work out okay.”

My crew were only slightly less anxious than the man from Kiribati to leave the boat, but we had to wait for the admiralty marshal. Nancy was the only one who would stay with me in the end, I knew. There’s an enormous comfort in knowing you won’t be left completely alone to wade through unfortunate circumstances. When I’d had problems with Grendel in Mexico, I’d been alone, and that had definitely made it worse. I knew that if and when I sailed out of Gibraltar again to cross the Atlantic, Nancy would be with me.

At the moment, Nancy was worried about my knee and made me promise we’d see a doctor as soon as possible.

When the admiralty marshal finally arrived, he was kind and apologetic. I was not personally under arrest, only the vessel. It would be moved to one of the marinas and placed under twenty-four-hour guard, with only the crew allowed to board. The documents I had to sign made it clear the boat was no longer mine, but was in the possession of the admiralty, so I asked about insurance.

“We will take out a temporary insurance policy today,” he said.

“And who will pay for that?” I asked.

“I’m afraid those costs will have to be recouped also, sir.”

The admiralty marshal could do nothing but apologize, and I didn’t press, since he wasn’t a bad guy. He posted a notice on one of our pilothouse windows saying the boat had been arrested, then left.

Only Queensway Quay, the crappiest marina in Gibraltar, could take us, and that was along a seawall, not an actual slip. I didn’t have a choice. The boat wasn’t mine anymore, and the marshal had required it be moved immediately. Queensway Quay arranged a tow, and I knew this would be part of my bill, too.

This towboat was small, about forty feet, with two crew on board. They came alongside and arranged a bridle at the bow, short trucking straps with a shackle. I wasn’t happy about how close the shackle was. It was going to bang against my bow.

“That’s all we got, mate,” the captain of the tow said.

I limped back to the pilothouse and hoped for the best. My crew cast off our lines and the towboat captain just took off. He hadn’t judged the wind or current or done anything to help us spring away from the freighter, so we were pulled along its side with our shrouds scraping, then past the bow at about ten knots, missing the next ship, moored directly ahead, by only a few feet.

“What are you doing?” I asked the captain on the VHF. “I don’t need any more damage. Try taking it easy and thinking a little.”

“I’ve driven towboats all my life, mate. I know what I’m doing.”

“You scraped us along that freighter and almost slammed us into the next ship at high speed.”

“Almost, mate. That’s the operative word here. Almost. No harm done.”

I was at the helm but couldn’t do anything without a rudder. I had tried to start my engines to assist with the tow, but they weren’t starting for some reason. I suspected the batteries were low, though I wasn’t sure how that could have happened. I would have to worry about it later. No one was allowing any time for it now.

The captain towed us at high speed, then abruptly stopped. He had to check something, and he and his mate weren’t even looking up as we drifted very quickly.

“Someone get on the bow and yell at him,” I said. “We’re going to run him over.”

I tried hailing on the VHF, but the captain wasn’t near his radio, so I followed Matt and the others to the bow. Sinking a towboat would probably look interesting. By the time I had hobbled up there, though, Matt had yelled and the captain ran forward to slam both throttles. He made it out from under my bow just in time.

“Christ,” I said to Matt. “When does it end?”

“It never ends, David. It’s a boat.”

As we entered the tiny marina, we were drifting to the side in current. The captain did a pretty decent job, though, of pulling us in a tight circle to place us against a high stone wall.

I was not happy about this wall. It looked as if it would smash us if there were any surge. I called Queensway Quay again on the VHF and asked if they had anything else, but they didn’t. Because of the boat’s size, this was the only space available in all of Gibraltar.

A thin guy came down the dock and warned us about surge. He lived on a sixty-foot tug parked inland from us on the same wall. “It comes in hard,” he said. “For just a short time, but it’ll knock the piss out of you.”

We were already using all of our fenders and spring lines, so he came back with some old tires that we roped up and hung over the side, too. A very friendly guy. Matt and Emi headed off with him, I think to share a pint. Nick went looking for a phone, and Nancy and I visited the marina office, asking again to be moved or to borrow some larger fenders, both of which they refused.

When we returned to the boat, Barbara wasn’t back, and the admiralty marshal’s guard hadn’t shown up, and I didn’t want to ignore my knee any longer, so we went looking for the hospital.

Gibraltar’s a gloomy place, always cloudy because of the rock. Nancy and I had grown oddly fond of it, mostly because of one restaurant pub called the Clipper, which serves heaping portions of comfort food. Chicken pie with mash and peas, that sort of thing. But I felt like an outcast now, unable to pay my bills, under arrest, invalid, brought back under tow when I should have been in the Caribbean.

We took a taxi up a steep hill and then had several flights of stairs. The hospital was small and grim, as they are everywhere except the U.S., where they are large and grim. The doctor was Indian. He prodded and rotated my knee, which made me yelp more than once, sending sharp pains all through my leg and into my stomach, and then told me it was just a nasty infection from the cut I had on my knee. If I had taken the time to apply a bit of Neosporin during the towing incident, I would have been fine. But of course I hadn’t even noticed the cut whenever it happened. He gave me a topical and an antibiotic and said I’d be walking normally in twenty-four hours.