Blue Water Read online

  At the time, Sarah and I were working as skipper and mate on a 56-foot ketch taking charters around New England and the offshore islands. We arranged the wedding between charter trips, and I stayed up until 2 a.m. hand-writing the invitations. We arrived at the dock after one long charter, had a day to clean the ship, and were wed the following day on the boat’s foredeck, cheered on by an international crowd of boating friends gathered on the deck — in various states of attire from jandals and shorts to pin-striped suits. The Reverend Crowell looked the part in blazer and straw boater, the international signal flags whipped and snapped in the breeze overhead, and right at the crucial moment I slipped the ring onto the finger on Sarah’s right hand. Pete, who had given Sarah away, whispered, ‘Wrong hand, dummy’ in my ear and nudged me with his elbow. Wrong hand, perhaps, but the right woman — we were all set for a lifetime of ocean voyaging. All we needed was the boat.

  Next autumn Sarah and I set out to sail to Florida in Annie, the 28-foot wooden yacht we had acquired while working in the boat yard at Essex. She sprang a bad leak in a gale on Long Island Sound and we left her in a friend’s boat yard at Oyster Bay, New York. A few days later we took a bus to Fort Lauderdale, and began sleeping under a tarpaulin in the back of a friend’s pick-up truck while we trudged around the marinas and yacht brokers looking for work.

  A law had been recently passed making employers who hired illegal aliens, or foreign citizens without work permits, liable for substantial fines. I quite liked the idea of being dubbed an ‘illegal alien’ — a working extra-terrestrial being outside the law — but the job market suddenly slammed shut as tightly as a giant clam under threat. We sailors had no work permits and no prospects of getting any, and jobs for us were scarce. Sarah and I began to see the same old faces every morning at the marina offices and at night in the bars where we lived off the free snacks they gave out at Happy Hour. I finally got a job rigging French-built production yachts for an importer at the Miami Boat Show. Then Sarah met an old Caribbean shipmate, and we moved aboard his yacht at River Bend Marina while he moved in with his yacht-broker girlfriend. Things were looking up.

  Sarah and I had spent years discussing the ‘right’ boat for us. We kept notes of positive aspects of yachts we had raced and delivered, and, likewise, their drawbacks. Our boat was to be our life — more than just a home or a conveyance to lug us safely across oceans. Our yacht must look good, must perform well, and must be safe and sea-kindly. We wanted a boat strong enough to take us into the stormy weather and icy seas of the high latitudes, large enough to house us and an occasional guest or two in comfort, yet small enough that either one of us could single-handedly change or reef sails.

  We would probably want to raise a family in her, so she would have to be capable of coping with that. She would have to be responsive enough to satisfy the boy-racer in me, yet sea-kindly enough to make long, comfortable ocean passages. Ideally she would have that mysterious and highly individual symmetry of line and form that suggest beauty and seaworthiness to the experienced eye. And she had to be cheap.

  A tall order? One would have thought so.

  As I walked back into the boat yard one evening after a day rigging boats in Miami, I saw Elkouba. Her faded black paint-work was streaked with red rust stains, and gaping cankers of corrosion showed through her decks. She was propped up in the ‘long stay’ back-blocks of the yard. I walked admiringly around her. Her shape suggested moderate speed and responsiveness combined with seaworthiness, and she was obviously built from steel for strength. The fin keel had a stylish rake to it and her broad beam implied that there’d be ample space below decks. The cutter rig would be easily handled by either of us. I inspected the hull closely, but in my mind I was already holding the freshly varnished tiller while the boat broad-reached across a choppy sea, tossing sparkling spray aside like handful of diamonds, sails bellying to the wind.

  She was the boat.

  Elkouba was in such a sad state of neglect and disrepair that she might even just fit our meagre budget. Looking back over my shoulder at the boat — just sitting there, waiting — I jogged off through the boat yard to find Sarah.

  I pulled up, breathless, at our temporary boat home.

  ‘Ha—have you seen that black boat in the corner of the yard?’ I panted.

  Sarah looked up. ‘Yes,’ she said calmly. ‘I reckoned that she was the boat so I spoke to the owner when they hauled her out this afternoon. We have the first option to buy her,’ she said, smugly.

  We went straight back and clambered all over Elkouba, tapping her hull to determine the extent of the corrosion, crawling through the bilges, and calling excitedly to each other as we discovered more about her construction and equipment. It looked as if she fitted just about all our criteria.

  The tatty black yacht had spent several years hosting hordes of cockroaches up a canal in the back-blocks of Miami. The teak decks had curled up like the toes of a sultan’s slippers and water had penetrated through to rust the steel decks. The sheer-line, that flowing curve of a boat’s hull from the bow to the stern, was non-existent, but she did have a collection of top-quality Goïot hatches and deck gear and her construction showed quality and titanic strength.

  Elkouba was built in Toulon, France, between 1975 and 1979 to a design by Jean Marie Finot. Her builder, Guy Simon, was an Algerian. We were told that he had named the boat after his home town. A detailed search of the atlas failed to find any such location, however, and we assumed that perhaps Elkouba was a little wadi somewhere in the Sahara Desert. Other translations of the name we have heard over the years are that Elkouba is a kind of North African sea bird, or a mythical resting-place for warriors, a sort of Algerian Valhalla. We have never really confirmed any of these explanations, however, and to us Elkouba meant a 38-foot, cutter-rigged steel yacht, our carriage to some of the world’s most exciting and inaccessible places. Our home. Our life. And the realization of most of our dreams.

  II WORKING OUR PASSAGE

  Elkouba’s current owner had received her as repayment for money he had lent the previous owner, and he was keen to sell. ‘For $12,000 US she is yours,’ he said. Sarah and I raked money from across the Atlantic and within a week she was ours. Now we really were broke. We had no work and no prospect of getting any, a broken-down wooden boat in New York and a rusty steel one in Florida. We wondered what we had inflicted on ourselves until a job offer arrived from Connecticut. We hitch-hiked up the eastern seaboard to Connecticut and signed on with Madrine to earn funds for Elkouba’s re-build.

  We worked our way back to a state approaching financial solvency, then delivered a yacht from Newport, Rhode Island, back to Fort Lauderdale. It was a rough trip, bucking the north-flowing Gulf Stream in late fall (autumn) with the first of the winter weather systems barrelling down from the Arctic, and we went via Bermuda. The boat was notable for having belonged to one of the people who had helped develop satellite navigation and had space for a huge, packing-carton-sized receiver which had been mounted near the chart table from when she had been used as a test bed for the system.

  From Fort Lauderdale we motored Elkouba up the intra-coastal waterway (ICW), a system of canals that runs along the United States’ eastern seaboard, to Fernandina Beach, just south of the Florida/Georgia state line. Much of the waterway, including the delightfully named Dismal Swamp Canal, was surveyed by George Washington’s surveyors in the 1700s for the efficient transfer of US Army men and munitions down the eastern seaboard in those pre-freeway days without facing what can be a fearsome sea passage.

  We left Elkouba, along with a comprehensive list of the work she needed, at a Fernandina Beach boat yard friends had recommended. She stayed there for two years while we worked to finance her refit, but we became dissatisfied with the quantity and quality of the work that was supposed to be being carried out on her, and with the yard’s haphazard workmanship and accounting methods, so we moved in and completed Elkouba ourselves. The sultry heat of northern Florida took its toll a
nd we stupidly worked without good protective gear. Sand-blasting Elkouba’s interior in shorts and T-shirt, the sweat streamed from my pores and I finished each day looking like a sand sculpture at a beach carnival. Just shaking my head would set off a miniature sand storm of grains being flung from my hair. We lathered her bilges with epoxy paint with only the weak breeze stirred up by a household fan to disperse the toxic fumes.

  But, in the cool of the evening, we’d walk down through the wetlands to a small jetty where a local bar served very cold beer, and chat with the good ol’ boys as the sun slowly became eclipsed by the continental USA.

  Eventually Elkouba was returned to the element she’d been designed for: seawater. Her new, red paint gleamed and reflected ripples from the muddy creek. We fired up the three-cylinder Volvo motor and powered south down the waterway to St Augustine, landing-place of the Conquistadors and oldest city in the United States.

  It took a couple of months there to complete the refit. We spent long days and nights painting, fastening, gluing and screwing joinery and fittings into the boat. Finally, Elkouba was as ready as funds and time permitted. We motored out through the ornately balustraded Bridge of Lions, negotiated St Augustine Inlet’s shallow channel to the open Atlantic, and swung her bows north towards New England and the world. At last we were really afloat, in our own boat, capable of going almost anywhere there was water, and whenever we felt like it (taking into account the constraints imposed by cyclone/hurricane seasons and pack ice).

  As we wafted along in light airs south of Cape Hatteras, a menacing grey mini-warship roared towards us from the smudge of land on the horizon and settled down to an idle about 50 metres astern of Elkouba. Sarah and I had been relaxing in the cockpit in what had been a balmy but overcast day, but the grey shadow lurking in our wake took the warmth out of the day.

  ‘Warship south of Cape Hatteras … this is the yacht Elkouba,’ I called on the VHF radio — but no reply, just the rumble of idling diesels as the ship rose and fell with the oily swell.

  We made a show of normality until, about 45 minutes later, the ship nosed closer. ‘Sailboat … this is United States Coastguard cutter Cape Hatteras,’ a voice barked by loudhailer crackled at us. ‘What is the name and nationality of your vessel … number of people on board and their nationalities, your departure port and your destination?’

  I relayed the information back by VHF, including passport numbers; and, seemingly mollified, the coastguard cutter burbled back to take up station behind us again.

  In retrospect, our situation didn’t look good in a United States recently recovering from Cold War paranoia: two foreigners in a red yacht in US territorial waters — we just had to be communists … or something.

  Eventually the cutter cruised back towards us again and the loudhailer said that a boarding party would be sent across to search our vessel. A big inflatable was launched from the back of the cutter and headed towards us with two people sitting astride a central console behind the driver, all three swaying comically in unison as the boat surged over the swell.

  The inflatable squelched alongside Elkouba and two people, in light summer uniforms and black combat boots, clambered aboard and turned to grab the submachine-guns proffered to them by the remaining coastguardsmen in the inflatable.

  ‘Captain,’ the male half of the boarding party, whose name tag proclaimed him to be ‘USCG Harvey’, addressed me, swinging to cover me with his machine-gun, and rattled off a staccato speech about how he was empowered to search our vessel for anything which constituted a breach of US navigation or civil law. We sat in the cockpit, the female half of the boarding party keeping cover on us with her gun, before I followed Harvey below to begin the search.

  We delved into all Elkouba’s lockers and compartments, under and behind bunks and seats, and deep into the bilges. We’d provisioned the boat for a trip across the North Atlantic and almost every centimetre of space was taken up with plastic containers of basic foodstuffs. We’d lift a locker lid and the coastguard searcher would spot containers full of white powder. His eyes would light up and his hand compulsively tighten on the butt of his machine-gun. ‘What’s that?’ he snap. I’d take the lid off and sniff — ‘Sugar…’, and hold it up for him to see. Maybe a pound of sugar might look like a $1m street-value stash of A-class cocaine to a nervous coastguardsman searching a blood-red boat full of foreigners.

  Meanwhile I felt Elkouba coming to life; wind filled the sails and bent the boat to leeward, and she began to soar over the swells instead of wallowing. There was also the hoarse sound of someone forcibly ejecting their breakfast out in the cockpit.

  When we’d finished below, we went on deck and found Elkouba sailing briskly with Sarah at the helm and the coastguard woman, submachine-gun across her lap and vaguely pointing at Sarah, splashily retching into a bucket.

  By now it was early evening and, with the wind, the temperature had dropped a degree or two. I asked the pair if they’d like a cup of coffee. ‘No sir,’ Harvey replied. They’d obviously said nothing about this in training school — being stuck on a moving sailboat, miles offshore, surrounded by potential drug-smuggling communists while his sole back-up was throwing up in a bucket. His eyes flicked nervously back to the grey cutter which rumbled along behind us.

  Sarah and I had a coffee, then our dinner — which Harvey eyed longingly but stoically refused a serving of. His partner, meanwhile, was hunched over the bucket and had begun to shiver uncontrollably. I asked if she’d like to borrow a jacket or sweater and she raised an ashen face. ‘No sir,’ she croaked. Eventually I grabbed a blanket from below and draped it round her shoulders — she was too weak to resist.

  Harvey had been below a few times to communicate with his colleagues on the cutter by VHF and, just after dusk, came on deck to say that the cutter would come alongside and take them off.

  The wind was about 16 knots and Elkouba was in her element under full sail when the cutter gingerly nosed up to our port quarter. Blinded by the headlights set into her bow, I concentrated on keeping Elkouba steady and was only dimly aware of the grey shape looming over my shoulder. Her skipper brought the boat to within a few inches of Elkouba with consummate skill, hands reached down from her foredeck, grabbed the female boarder and bundled her onto the cutter. The second part of the operation wasn’t as smooth. Harvey gave a yelp as his foot was caught between the cutter and Elkouba. As he was unceremoniously dragged over the cutter’s bow, I saw blood splashing from his combat boot in the headlight beam.

  The cutter coxswain called back by VHF and offered his apologies for detaining us so long. Being Sunday, he said, they’d had trouble contacting people to verify our details or make a decision about what to do with us. The crunch, cushioned by Harvey’s foot, had left a sizeable dent on our hull-to-deck join and the coxswain advised us to stop at a USCG base and fill out a damage reparation form.

  We did this in Newport, Rhode Island; but several months later when we’d arrived in Bristol, England with our cruising kitty almost entirely drained, I contacted the New Zealand embassy in Washington, told them the story and said that I hadn’t heard back from the coastguard. Within days, a letter had arrived from US Coastguard headquarters. I borrowed letterhead paper from the boat yard where I was working, compiled a generous quote for repairs (which I’d already completed myself), and a few weeks later a generous US Government cheque arrived by mail. The US Coastguard had become a major sponsor for the trip northwards.

  Meanwhile, I had an engagement to sail the Newport to Bermuda race in the maxi racer Condor, and it took Elkouba eight days to cover the 1200 nautical miles from St Augustine to Newport. For eight days of tedious light winds Sarah and I steered four hours on, four hours off. Then, after a short, sharp gale, we arrived in Newport to find the port totally fogged in and Elkouba one of the few vessels moving.

  Radar is almost a necessity in these heavily travelled, tidal and frequently fogbound waters. We’d already spent a fair bit of time there and delved deep i
nto the cruising kitty to fit a new 24-mile Furuno model, but I received a salutary lesson in its use from the skipper of an east-bound tugboat as we groped our way into Block Island Sound. The tugboat appeared on our radar screen as a single green echo off our starboard bow, and I called him on radio to confirm our course and passing distance. ‘This is the yacht Elkouba,’ I said, and gave our position. ‘Yo, sailboat,’ the laconic rejoinder came back, ‘this here’s the tugboat Trojan. I got a 500-ton barge back there cap’n, an’ if you keep going in that direction you’re gonna run right between me and it.’ I turned the radar range knob from one mile to six and, sure enough, the barge appeared on the screen to port. We groped our way into Newport in fog so thick we could barely see our bows, hopping between the cockpit and the radar screen and with a lazy swell breaking on the rocks around us.

  Newport was our first landfall in our own boat, and we were euphoric. Elkouba had shown that she was sea-kindly, comfortable and a proper passage-maker. She had proven to be everything we had hoped she would be. With reliable self-steering and a few other alterations, she would make a wonderful two-person cruiser.

  Condor, with a crew of 24 drawn from 10 different nationalities, was a bit of culture shock for me. I was sailing-fit, but nothing could prepare me for the grind of sailing a maxi boat every day. It took 10 strong men to carry the mainsail — perhaps we all thought the same thing, but it always seemed to me that I was the tallest as I staggered along in a file of sailors with the flaked (folded) sail balanced on our heads and my spine concertina-ing like a plastic drinking-straw under pressure.

  We trained relentlessly and won the Bermuda race by four hours, but I cut short the revelling in Bermuda to fly back so that Sarah and I could press on northwards; time was running out for us to make the late-summer passage across the North Atlantic to Europe.