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

Cleaning the engine room was the worst job. Because oil scum floats, most of the water underneath could be pumped out. But that still left about a foot of sludge and all the scum on the walls going up to the three-foot mark. Stan and I went down into it with buckets and mops, filling container after container.

We were covered in black slime. Our tennis shoes were slipping in it, and we had it on our faces and in our hair. The batteries were low, so the lighting was dim, and the water was cold. We mopped and sponged all the angles and surfaces of far too many steel stringers and ribs for about ten hours straight, and when we were through, nothing was clean yet, but the thick sludge was gone.

The next day we used Jif, a household cleaning product that cuts through grease and oil like nothing I’ve ever witnessed. But it also has ammonia in it, and our engine room blowers weren’t working, so the fumes were intense. We suffered from dizziness and headaches throughout the day.

Both sailboats I’ve owned have probably shortened my lifespan. I may have some significant problems later in life from all the particles and fumes I’ve inhaled. But each time, I’ve felt I had to just keep going, because of money and deadlines. I had to get this boat ready to sail across the Atlantic in less than a month. The broker in Florida had just booked another charter for us, at the end of July. Nancy and I would be running this charter less than a week after our wedding.

The day after Stan and I finished cleaning the engine room, he began cleaning the aft bilge area and I dismantled the two big discharge pumps that had been submerged. I brought them up on deck, onto the large table, and Michael, when he was done installing his ham radio, took them apart, piece by piece, and tried to clean them out. Every day I brought him a new item. The two discharge pumps, the two engine room blowers, the saltwater toilet pump, the two extra alternators. All needed drying and cleaning, which meant taking apart and putting back together. Most of them would also need repair in a shop in Gibraltar.

After a week a slip opened up and I was able to move the boat from Sotogrande to Gibraltar. We made slow time toward the eastern side of the Rock, our bottom and props covered with a year and a half of growth, the props most likely encrusted with barnacles. The steering was difficult. But in Gibraltar the facilities were better and now we could get our work done. Fred the Perkins dealer inspected the engines first thing the next morning, finding what looked like toothpaste in the port transmission. A lot of saltwater had gotten into the oil somehow, and it had congealed over time. This was mysterious, because I had checked the transmission oil when the problem first occurred, and the mechanics who had tested the engine over the next week had all checked and somehow the problem hadn’t been visible. I still don’t understand.

The good news was that it was a cheap and easy repair. I had budgeted $3,000 for engine repair, but changing the transmission oil a few times was only going to cost about $25. It might also solve my rudder problem. If the transmission was engaging and disengaging randomly because of saltwater in its oil, that could throw off the steering.

I also found a shop that looked at my discharge pumps and engine room blowers and other electric-motor problems. All of the equipment was fried because of the salt.

In the rush to get the boat ready on time, many things did not go smoothly. Stan, for instance, the laborer I had hired, overheard me one day when I complained about him to Michael.

“Nothing ever gets done unless I’m here to make sure it gets done,” I told Michael. “It’s always been like that, in every country. I go out for a few hours to take care of pumps and see the lawyers and buy some engine spares, and when I come back, Stan has been wasting his time, doing stupid shit I didn’t ask him to do. When he’s finished with one project, he doesn’t think. He doesn’t remember what I asked him to do next.”

Right about then, I heard Stan clear his throat from down in stateroom number three. He had overheard everything I had just said. I was so tired and frustrated and ashamed, I couldn’t even do the right thing and apologize. Instead, I took off and ran some more errands.

When I returned, Stan was gone and Michael said I should try to find him in one of the waterfront bars. I went looking but couldn’t find him, so I just went back to work. Then, after I had installed the manual bilge pump and was on my way to see Fred, I ran into Michael and Stan sitting at a café. I sat down with them and apologized.

Stan was gracious about it. He was in his late fifties, a guy with bad teeth and a weathered face who had known a series of failures all his life and needed a job but didn’t need to be insulted. He leaned back in his chair, smoking, and told me, “It’s all right. I appreciate the apology, but it’s all right. I can be thick-headed sometimes, and I didn’t remember what you had asked for.”

“No,” I said. “It really is my fault. You work hard, and you do good work.”

“Well thank you,” he said. “I know how it is. Usually you’d hire a couple of Moroccans to do this sort of work, I know that. Working for this pay. But I pride myself on trying to do a good job anyway, and I like to feel at the end of the day that I’m someone, too.”

I felt awful. His disgusting racist comments aside, he still didn’t need to be treated like this by me. I treated him and Michael to a good dinner and some beers, but I felt like human garbage. Stan was living on an old twenty-foot boat in the worst marina in town. At the moment his boat was chained to the dock, impounded for overdue marina fees. And here I was insulting him. The whole situation was lousy, and I didn’t know how to fix it. Stan continued working for me, and I was careful never to insult him again, but the damage had been done.

I also began to feel ashamed of the boat. New megayachts were pulling up every day, many of them heading for a big Italian boat show, and we were tied to the back of their dock, an embarrassment with orange streaks down our hull, galvanized rigging that was completely rusted, and warped gray wood on the pilothouse. I was insulting everyone, rich and poor alike.

The work was getting done, however. I was leaving all cosmetic work for Trinidad, despite the embarrassment, but I was completing the functional work now, before the crossing.

Our last week was busy. We had four volunteer crew arriving, and they all worked hard. We installed the new rigging wires, inspected the sails, stenciled the new name on the stern, cleaned and organized the galley, took care of plumbing problems, mounted new pumps, and even bought a washer/dryer and stowed it in the engine room.

Five more crew members arrived at the end, including my uncle Doug. I was excited to have Doug on board. We had been out of touch for more than ten years after my father’s death, but had since reconciled. Now I really enjoyed seeing him, and this was our chance to spend some time together. I was also hoping to hear more about my father’s commercial fishing venture, since Doug had been his crew.

The night before we left I didn’t sleep well. I was thinking about my decision to go back into business, to try the boat a second time. The bankruptcy had separated me from any liability; I could have walked away. I had chosen to try a second time because I didn’t want to leave my lenders in the lurch and because I thought everything could work out. It was a simpler business, and I had much easier financing. But now that I was here, working on the boat, about to sail across the Atlantic, I didn’t feel the dream. The boat and the business were recoverable, but not the dream.

WE SET SAIL on May 2, on a sunny morning with light winds. We unfurled our jib right away, setting the tone for a trip we hoped would be more sailing than motoring. The channel was much calmer than during my previous attempts, and we made it past the final lighthouse on the Moroccan coast without incident.