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

Nothing was visible on the engine, and all its gauges and fluids checked out normal. I had a crew member at the helm run the engine at different revs, and the sound happened again at high revs, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. The engine bucked when it made the sound and was clearly under enormous strain. It could have been a bent shaft, but both shafts were turning smoothly. It could have been the starter engaging for some reason, but that seemed unlikely. It could have been something deep in the guts, I supposed, a piston somehow sticking or rusted bearings around the bases of the rods, but I didn’t know that part of the engine. It could have been something wrong with the transmission. I checked the transmission oil, but we were getting bounced in seas, and it was difficult to see much. The dipstick was scalding and had to be unscrewed with an eighteen mm socket, then pried out with two fingers, but in the look I was able to take, it looked fine.

I went back on deck and took over the helm. “We only need one engine,” I said. “Even if we can’t figure out the problem with the port engine, we can still make it on the starboard. We were going to run on one engine most of the time anyway, to save diesel, and of course we’ll try to sail as much as possible. And we can have the port engine checked out when we’re in the Canaries a few days from now. But I realize this sucks, and the steering sucks. I just need to think about it for a few minutes.”

I gave the helm to someone else and went back to sit on the poop deck with Nancy.

It was sunny and the wind and waves weren’t bad. It seemed like we could just go, and we’d make it. We had all our food, and one engine, at least, and the crew would be all right.

“I want to keep going,” I said. “But I think it would be a stupid decision. We should have both engines, and we should know what the problem is, and the steering is awful. It will be so frustrating, the crew will probably get off at the next port, in the Canaries. And then we’ll be stuck in the Canaries, with no cash and no crew and the insurance probably unwilling to cover the problems. The truth is, even if the steering and engine were fine, I don’t have any money for diesel along the way or to pay the crew when we arrive. I’m screwed. John’s loan just hasn’t come in on time.”

Nancy didn’t say anything. She looked unhappy.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll tell the crew we’re turning around. The worst would be if we got caught in a storm with steering that wasn’t right and we lost control of the boat. That would be worse, I guess.”

“This is bad enough, though,” Nancy said. “You’ll have to cancel classes, and hire new crew, and you won’t be able to pay the interest you owe…It goes on and on.”

“I know.”

“What a nightmare,” she said.

So we turned around, running on one engine. I radioed the marina in advance and let them know I had one engine and a new rudder that wasn’t steering correctly, so they gave me an easy outside slip.

After docking, I called Nick Bushnell and went looking for Fred the Perkins dealer, but Fred had just left for New Zealand. As my crew waited around for the next two days and did some work repainting bilges, I tried my best to get a quick repair. Fred’s mechanic and the mechanics from Sheppard’s and another mechanic all looked at it, but the engine wouldn’t repeat its problem. We ran it hard at the dock, in gear, with triple dock lines, but we couldn’t get it to make the sound. We did a compression test, which turned out normal. Everything else checked out normal, too. The engine problem remained mysterious, as did the rudder problem.

These problems were nothing, however, compared to my financial problems. I was calling John several times a day, leaving messages on his answering machine which, by the end, were basically pleading. I told him I was going to go under if I didn’t get the loan. I suggested giving the loan in stages, or even just giving a smaller loan.

I was at the Internet café for long stretches each evening, and under advice from Rand, my principal lender, I had sent an e-mail to all of the lenders asking for a restructuring of the loans. I told them that with the setbacks from the war in Kosovo, construction that was delayed and had gone over budget, repairs from the loss of the paint and the rudder, loss of crew, and a promised loan that had not yet materialized, I wasn’t able to pay the first interest payments that were now a week overdue. I had offered an interest rate that was too high and a payback schedule that was too quick if anything went wrong. I now needed $87,000 within the next week, at a minimum, to prevent American Express from taking legal action against me. And I had other bills. I was asking the lenders for a restructuring of the loans at a lower interest rate over a longer period of time, and I was asking for new loans to cover my bills now to keep the business afloat.

It was an unpleasant letter for the lenders to receive. They wanted more info, which I gave, and Rand gave me $24,000. We had previously agreed that, because he and Lee planned to use a lot of charter time on the boat, they would pay $1,000 per month toward operating expenses over a two-year period, so he was accelerating all of those payments into one lump sum. It was remarkably generous. But none of the other lenders seemed likely to give or loan more money. As several of them put it very clearly, they didn’t want to risk throwing good money after bad.

I finally received a short e-mail from John, titled “Nut-Vice Judas.” He had praised me on previous occasions for running a unique and risky business, for “putting my nuts in the vice” to make my dreams happen. In this e-mail, he said he couldn’t give me a new loan because of various bills and such. It was difficult to believe, however, that $3.5 million had evaporated in a few weeks, so that less than $150,000 was left. Amber must have told him not to give me the loan. That was the only explanation Nancy or I could believe.

These were grueling, shameful times. Rand suggested bankruptcy. I took offense, at first. Bankruptcy seemed unimaginable. But when no new loans came in, and Rand canceled his $24,000 check to cut his losses, which bounced a lot of checks and left my Citibank account $11,000 overdrawn, and my previous boat Grendel still didn’t sell, even at a reduced price, and my new employee wasn’t selling any new trips, and I couldn’t even get my engine fixed, I had to admit, finally, that I had failed. I took late night walks around Gibraltar, the streets empty and hollow, what was happening to my business and life shielded by disbelief. I had liked who I was — the founder, teacher, and captain for these educational charters. A man with self-made freedom. Now I was someone else, someone who had failed and was going to cheat a lot of people out of their money, plain and simple. A guy who didn’t pay his debts, a man with no integrity. I told Rand and my new employee that I was going to have to put the boat up for sale here in Gibraltar and probably file for bankruptcy, unless it sold right away for a high amount. I would write a note to the lenders explaining.

But my new employee jumped the gun. She told all of the lenders and passengers right away that I had filed for bankruptcy. She even put it on our answering machine message. Just the fact that I was considering it was supposed to be confidential, and this was outrageous. I was very angry.

One of the lenders sent me a note that she had been considering lending more money, a significant amount of money, and she was amazed and upset to learn from our answering machine that I had already filed for bankruptcy. I responded to this and other long e-mails with my own long e-mails trying to explain, but the damage had been done. I had failed in the business. I didn’t want anyone to throw away more money. On top of this, my new employee had handled the situation in the worst possible way. I hated every minute of trying to deal with this mess. I really wanted to die.