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

I sat in my office under the fluorescent lights that night and finally just put my forehead down on the desk. I had been out of the country most of the time, but Amber was a smart, educated person, a Stanford graduate who had needed a job after her marriage engagement was broken off, and I was a reasonable and obviously trusting employer. I just didn’t understand.

I spent every waking hour that week in the office. I went through all of our records and updated QuickBooks, having to call Amber several times a day because records were missing or entered incorrectly. She hadn’t recorded deposits, for instance. I could find a deposit on a bank statement but had no way of knowing which three passenger payments were included in it, and she had kept no record at all. Taxes were going to be a nightmare.

I also tried to save our winter charters. I made a lot of phone calls, but the list was too old. These were potential passengers from a month or two earlier who had never received a brochure in the mail or a follow-up call from Amber. By now, they had made other plans, booked other vacations. She had let my business die.

I wasn’t convinced my new employee was going to be much better. If I’d had more time and other choices, I wouldn’t have hired her. But I didn’t have more time or other choices, and I had to have someone in the office. So I simplified our sales and customer service protocols, producing a series of sheets which told her exactly what to do at every step in all aspects of the business. The only important element I had to rely upon her for would be sales. I couldn’t return calls from the middle of the ocean.

I still didn’t have John’s loan, and I needed it desperately, so I wanted to drive down to Hemet in Southern California to see him, but he wouldn’t return my calls, and I didn’t know exactly where he was living. I had talked with him a week earlier, and he had told me then that he was delayed because the bank was slow to clear funds out of the trust. But he had assured me he was still giving the loan.

I did manage to pull in two more small loans, $5,000 and $10,000, but I was getting frantic. I was supposed to pay $35,000 in interest on December 1, a few days away, and I didn’t have enough money.

I returned to Spain trying to remain hopeful. But in my week away, the contractors had really slacked off, so I was in a panic trying to get everything done. My new crew were arriving in a few days and I planned to set sail in a week for Mexico. Everything had to be finished immediately.

So many things had to come together, it was overwhelming. I really didn’t think it could be finished on time. Further delay would mean canceling more winter charters, and possibly losing my crew again, neither of which I could afford.

The welders stayed until after 8 P.M. every day, and I had to pay overtime and tips and be there through all of it to pat their backs and do some of the work myself and keep them going.

The carpenter was high-maintenance, a young guy with long curly hair who felt he was an artist, but he did replace the deck piece and aft rail. The painters touched up the side of the boat and bow, and a few days before we were to launch, I actually had a new rudder and post in place. I still didn’t have a skeg, but the fabricator assured me it would go quickly, and it did. He brought out some pieces of steel, welded them to the hull, welded the attachment, and there it was, ugly but burly. A rudder that looked a little small to me, smaller than the last one, but which certainly would never fall off. Nick Bushnell and the naval architect approved it for Pantaenius, so that I would still be insured, then some bottom paint was brushed on and we were ready.

My new crew had arrived a few days earlier and were working hard painting bilges and such. One of them was my friend Adriana, a Mexican lawyer I’d met at Stanford who was my partner on paper for the Mexican corporation. She was going to help me obtain permits for winter charters.

The last day was an ugly rush. The bill for the marina went higher than expected, the various contractors tacking on little bits here and there in outrageous ways, so Nick Bushnell was scrambling to get more money from the insurance company and I was scrambling to get enough of my own money to cover my part. I ran completely dry in my two checking accounts and on all of my credit cards and all of Nancy’s cards. I finally had to borrow about $150 from my crew, otherwise the marina wasn’t going to let us leave. The whole thing was embarrassing.

But we did leave, and right away, the steering felt wrong. Just coming out of the travelift and crossing the marina, I was having trouble going straight. Even allowing for greater lag time in the steering, it wasn’t consistent. It felt random. I desperately wanted to hide the problem from Nick, so that my insurance would remain intact, but he could tell. Once we had cleared the channel and were on our way to Gibraltar to pick up the new anchor chain, he tried the helm.

“It does seem to be a problem,” he said. “You can probably manage it, but if you wanted to go back, I could try to present that to Pantaenius.”

“I’m screwed financially if I don’t keep going,” I said. “I can’t afford new crew or to cancel my winter charters.”

Nick raised his eyebrows and shrugged. He was my friend. He was doing everything possible to get me to Mexico where I could bring in some income. That was my highest priority, to bring in some money to pay my bills.

I kept testing the steering and decided we could make it to Mexico. It wasn’t a safety or seaworthiness issue. It was just a convenience issue. It was difficult to steer. I had to stay right on top of it, and even then, I sometimes couldn’t keep it straight. The crew would be frustrated, and our crossing time would be slow, probably six weeks, but the rudder would stay on, and we’d get used to it.

“I think I need to continue on,” I told Nick. My crew was listening, and they looked worried, but they weren’t saying anything. I had never wanted to reach this point, where I was forced to go to sea. I believed a captain should take a boat to sea only when he felt it was ready. But that would have meant giving up on the business and screwing all of my lenders and Stanford Continuing Studies and teachers and students. I had made a lot of promises.

We rounded Gibraltar, into the bay, then I had to turn ninety degrees to starboard to enter the channel for the marinas. It was hard to get the turn to begin, then I swung too far to starboard, then tried not to overcorrect, but it wasn’t turning back at all. We were heading for the rocks. So I turned farther to port, and then we swung too far in that direction. We swung four or five times before straightening out, as if I had never driven a boat before in my life.

By the time we were done taking on our 450 feet of chain, it was after dark, and I decided it was stupid for us to sail for Mexico without a good night’s sleep. The crew appreciated dinner ashore, and we all turned in early.

We left just after daylight. The crew tried hard to steer straight, but it was close to impossible. The rudder seemed to have a mind of its own, with no pattern at all. They were good crew, but they had to say something.

“It’s inconvenient,” I said in response. “But it’s not a safety or seaworthiness issue.” This was Gibraltar to Cancun, almost six thousand miles on the track through St. Lucia, a trip that would take at least six weeks, sailing twenty-four hours a day. They were dreading the experience, and I couldn’t blame them. But I didn’t feel I had a choice.

Then, about an hour and a half into the trip, we heard a terrible grinding sound from one of the engines and it lost power. I took the helm, yanked the throttles back to neutral, and went below.