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

I was losing it, obviously. Galen and I had grown up together. He was the first person to whom I had been able to tell the truth about my father (I told everyone at school he’d died of cancer). But now I had to get the boat done, and I just didn’t have even five minutes to discuss Galen’s feelings. I felt completely overwhelmed and incapable of being a good person.

Later that day, Galen actually apologized to me, which was amazing. Most people would have called me an asshole and left.

It’s difficult to express the chaos of the last days in the yard. It just went on and on.

We went back in the water on a Friday afternoon so we could spend the weekend in the “well,” as they call the water underneath the travelift. We were still bolting the rails, stanchions, and other fittings, and we still had a lot of work to do on the varnish.

The teak rails were actually iroko, similar to teak, and it turns out I’m extremely allergic to iroko dust. My eyes and lips puffed up from the sanding and I had red rashes all over my chest and neck, which was a nice addition to how I felt about everything.

The next morning, I went to customs and immigration to clear us out. We were going to sail the following day, Sunday, July 15. That would get us to the Virgin Islands by the eighteenth, a day before my flight home to get married. But when the large man at the immigration counter looked over my paperwork, he said I needed my former crew to appear in person to be removed from the boat’s entrance papers.

“They’re gone,” I said. “I apologize, but I didn’t know they had to come here before they left the country. They cleared immigration and customs at the airport.”

“Every crew member need to clear out before the vessel can leave.”

“They did clear out, but at the airport.”

“They need to clear out here first, to be removed from your paperwork.”

“I didn’t know this,” I said.

“You know this. We tellin’ everyone when they clears in.”

“But I wasn’t told. I really wasn’t. I’m very careful about these things.”

“You cannot clear out until all of these crew members present themselves.”

“But they’re all in the U.S. now.”

The man paused. He was a very large black man with glasses. He looked hassled. I was trying to be polite, but I needed him to let me leave. “You can pay the fine that’s $2,500 U.S. per person,” he said. “Or you can provide proof that they left the country, by givin’ me their flight numbers and dates, then I need to confirm those clearances with the central office.”

“But I need to leave tomorrow,” I told him. “I’m getting married. I’ll miss my own wedding if I can’t leave.”

“I tellin’ you the two options, sir. Your crew need to clear out before they leave.”

“But no one told me. Are you really going to make me do this?”

“I tellin’ you already.”

“I can’t pay the fines,” I said. “I honestly don’t have the money. I really don’t. I spent everything here getting work done. And now I need to leave.”

He just looked at me, unwilling to budge.

“Okay,” I said. “If I make calls right now and get you the flight numbers, how long will it take to verify with the central office?”

“They not open ’til Monday, and then it take three or four hours.”

“Monday!” I said. “I can’t leave Monday. I’ll miss my own wedding. And I came in here yesterday to clear, on a weekday, a Friday, just in case there were any problems, and I was told to come back today, Saturday, because a clearance can’t be done more than twenty-four hours in advance.”

“That’s correct.”

“But don’t you see, I’ve been caught in a trap. No one told me about the regulation when I cleared in. Then, when I tried to clear out early, on a weekday, I wasn’t allowed to clear. Now, it’s a weekend, and the office isn’t open. So I need you to help me find a solution. I need to leave tomorrow.”

This man just looked down at his nails, which were long and painted purple. They were so long they curled. Strange with an immigration uniform. He wanted me to go away, but he wasn’t willing to sign my form.

Another customer came in then, a European man in his fifties. The guy behind the counter switched his attention to this new man and took his papers. I waited politely, and after about fifteen minutes, when they were done, I tried again.

“Please,” I said. “I’m very sorry that my former crew didn’t follow the regulations, but we honestly didn’t know. And I’m sorry if I’ve offended you in any other way. I certainly haven’t meant to. Please let me clear out. I really have to leave.”

“Eight A.M. Monday morning,” he told me.

Galen and Stephen and our other new crew member, Donna, were sitting in folding chairs behind me, listening to all of this. None of them could do anything to help. The Trinis, as Trinidadians call themselves, were of course afraid of their own immigration and customs officials.

We left and went immediately to an Internet café a few doors down. “If I can’t get this info on time,” I told Galen and Stephen and Donna, “we’re just leaving anyway. And you might as well go back to the boat now. I might be awhile.”

After I’d sent e-mails and made calls, I walked back to the boat and seriously considered just leaving. To hell with Trinidad. I would never be able to come back into this country, but maybe that was okay. By the time I reached the boat, however, I had calmed down, and I reassured the crew that I wouldn’t leave until I had clearance. Stephen and Donna looked relieved.

I tried to put the immigration fiasco behind me. We would use our extra days to good advantage, to get more work done, especially on the wood in the forward seating area and on the rails, and as long as I left by around noon on Monday, I could make it to the Virgin Islands just in time, arriving the morning of the day I would fly.

Monday morning, however, presented a new problem. During my entire seven weeks in Trinidad, the wind had been calm in the early morning. But not this morning. It was blowing at over thirty knots and coming from an unusual direction, which happened to be exactly the worst direction possible. I needed to back out of the well, which had high concrete dock on each side, then there were pilings on my port side extending another several hundred feet. The wind would be blowing me directly onto them.

I talked with the crane operator about this. He was not happy.

“You leavin’ now, ya. I got other boats.” He was white, with long curly blond hair, but he had grown up here.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know there are boats waiting to be hauled out. But I can’t safely leave the dock in this wind. If I try to leave, I will most likely take out your pilings and the big motoryacht behind them. Every other early morning the wind has been low. But this morning, it’s high for some reason.”

“You leavin’,” he said. I could tell he was getting pissed off.

“Please,” I said. “As a licensed captain, I can’t do something that I know will endanger my boat and other boats. I’m really sorry, but I just can’t.”

This stand-off kept me from going to immigration and customs. We waited for the wind to die down, but it kept blowing hard. Peake’s office called me in, charged me an extra fifty bucks for my time in the well, and demanded I leave.

Finally, another captain offered to help by pushing my bow away from the pilings with his dinghy while I backed, so I agreed to try. When the captain in the dingy and the marina guys on the dock were ready, I shouted “Okay!” and put both engines in hard reverse. The heavy steel hull started sliding back right away, the engines strong, and the bow line and stern lines were loosed, but then a guy on the upwind stern line, on the dock, wrapped the end of the line around a cleat. He may have thought he was helping me swing my stern out, but what he did was disastrous.