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

At the dot-com, I was switching my focus. They were still jerking me around about my bonus and a promotion and raise. They had been promising all three since late July, and now it was December and my boss, the CFO, was fired along with much of the rest of the company. He was going to stay for another month, to finish a few things and because new investment is less likely if the CFO has just left, but then he’d be gone and I’d have even less chance of getting the bonus or anything else.

The entire dot-com era was an anomaly for employees. Because of stock options, employees for one of the few very narrow windows in history were able to get back more than they put in. But that was over now. Stock prices were down, and companies were treating employees with no regard whatsoever.

On the weekends, instead of working for the company, I was fixing up Grendel for sale. When I finally listed it in January 2001, a bad time of year in a worse economy, a flood of buyers came to look at it right away. I was offering a solid boat at a reasonable price. On Saturday of the first weekend, Michael and Eva Pardee came to look at it, and they fell in love. Two days later, they put in an offer for the full asking price. Michael was also interested in what I was doing with the ninety-foot boat. He volunteered to spend a month in Spain helping me get the boat ready, and to crew across the Atlantic.

Everything was going well. In addition to selling Grendel and setting up a new company in Gibraltar (I didn’t want more foreign corporations but actually didn’t have a choice in this case), I had signed on with a clearinghouse that would hold our charter calendar for brokers, and I had found a broker who would sell trips on our boat before seeing it. This was unusual. Most brokers wait until they’ve seen a boat at one of the boat shows before they’ll book it, and we wouldn’t be at the shows until November. This broker sold our two holiday charters — Christmas and New Year’s — right away, at $21,500 for each week. He was an eccentric South African in Florida, with a grand way of speaking, and though our initial negotiations were contentious — he wanted to be our clearinghouse as well as our broker, and he wanted a twenty percent commission on trips instead of the usual fifteen percent — I was firm and he finally relented. On each of these $21,500 weeks, after broker commission and the clearinghouse and operating expenses, we would net more than $15,000.

I had worked hundred-hour weeks for the dot-com to the point of physical illness, but now I used a lot of my time at work to arrange repairs for the boat, which I renamed Bird of Paradise . First I would need to fix the mysterious problems with the port engine and steering. I talked with Nick Bushnell, the surveyor in Gibraltar, fairly often now, trying to get the boat hauled out and repaired before I arrived. But the engine did not get looked at, and when the time finally came for the yard at Sotogrande to haul the boat, after a delay because their travelift needed repair, they tried but gave up. They said my boat was too heavy. Their lift had been de-rated during the repairs and wasn’t strong enough now. They had tried, and they weren’t going to try again.

Even though there were some frustrations, I was generally happy making these arrangements for the boat; I was grateful to have a second chance. It was also a happy time because I was thinking about marriage with Nancy. We were partners moving into a good future together. This was her dream now, too, and she was putting everything on the line for it. Once Grendel sold, I had the money to buy her a ring and invited her for an evening cruise on a small powerboat along the San Francisco waterfront. It was fairly warm for mid-March, and very clear and calm. I pulled up beside a small fisherman’s chapel at Fisherman’s Wharf and asked her to marry me. She said yes, and we celebrated with dinner on the wharf.

We decided to have the wedding soon, on July 21, because there were only a few small windows of time available in the first year of our charter schedule.

The next two weeks were busy with planning the wedding and making last-minute arrangements for crew and repairs and insurance, but it all went smoothly. By April 3, when I boarded the plane with Michael Pardee for Spain, everything except the hauling of the boat had worked out perfectly.

THE BOAT DID not look good. The paint job was even worse than I remembered, and rust stains were everywhere. The stern ladder was not out, so we had to board the stern of the next boat and climb over at midships. Standing on my own deck, I was filled with despair. The deck was stained with rust and all of the wood on the huge pilothouse was gray and warped. The wooden rails were completely dried and cracked.

Michael stood on the deck of the other boat, handing our luggage over, and he shook his head. “I don’t know, David,” he said. “Maybe we should just fly back home.”

The feeling of regret was overwhelming. Everything I had done to go back into business. Four months of arrangements. I had already paid almost $30,000 to the marina and the lawyers, and I had signed the new promissory notes.

But the deal was not quite final. The sale and registration had to go through one last office in Gibraltar, so if I was willing to take the $30,000 loss, I could get out of it. I would need to think about this.

In the pilothouse, the loveliest part of the boat, we could see that some of the varnish had been preserved. But not all of it, even on the inside. For a year and four months, salt spray had blown over the breakwater behind us into the pilothouse and down below into the main salon. The throttles and engine panels were rusted and pitted, and both tables, including the beautiful one for sixteen, were weathered gray. Even up high, on the inside of the ceiling, salt crystals had chewed into the varnish. All of this wood would need to be sanded bare and revarnished. Some of it would need to be screwed down and planed where it was warping.

Down below, in the main salon, a damp salt grime coated everything. In every stateroom, too. Lots of mildew. But at least the varnish was okay in the staterooms. And they were beautiful, big staterooms, all solid mahogany.

The engine room was the most depressing. The marina had not kept the water pumped as they had promised, and it was about three feet deep, just reaching the bottoms of the engines. The water had not reached the starters and alternators, luckily, but my two electric discharge pumps — big expensive pumps — were completely submerged, as was the pump for the saltwater toilet system. And it wasn’t just saltwater in here. Somehow oil had spilled, leaving thick black sludge three feet deep throughout the entire engine room, which was twenty feet wide and fifteen feet long, with steel stringers that had many surfaces, every inch of which would need to be cleaned.

Michael and I began a truly awful month, a month in which I hated every minute of every day and we worked without taking any time off. He was doing this without any compensation, just as a favor to me. And he stuck with me through all of it and even remained cheerful.

In his early fifties and well-off after a lifetime of hard work, Michael had to endure what became a series of privations. We couldn’t use the toilets, since the saltwater pump for flushing needed to be replaced. We did have running water, but only a limited supply. We had no heating, and it was cold at night. We had no blankets. We had very little electrical power, since I was still cleaning and drying out the entire system before switching it on.

While we worked, Nick Bushnell was helping set up an appointment at El Rodeo, a marina in Algeciras, across the bay from Gibraltar. The boat needed to be hauled out for rudder modification, bottom cleaning, and new bottom paint. Like Michael, Nick wasn’t charging me for his help. He said he just wanted to see it work out for me this time. True generosity. He also found a guy named Stan who would work on the engine room and bilges, and two women to do laundry and clean the staterooms.