The author’s 43-foot Young Sun cutter Zuby was heavily built. The center cockpit cutter carried the author many thousands of miles with no mishaps.
The utter amazement, shock and then shame I felt at striking made me want to puke, but I didn't have time. At impact, the steering cable parted and I found myself doing a nautical pirouette in the tidal rip at Woods Hole on the southern edge of Cape Cod. The boat then headed right back for the reef we'd just hit. Zuby, my 43-foot Young Sun cutter, had blessedly come off, but I knew that if her full, deep keel slammed aground again and caught, the tide would roll us right over. During the next hour, two decades of experience and education culminated in good seamanship and brought the vessel to safety with no personal injury. Still, I will always remember that inner voice that screamed at me as I moved from one urgent task to another immediately after grounding how could you let this happen?! In retrospect, that 30-second misjudgment came from the congruence of a long list of variables, the absence of any one of which would have found me none the wiser, making Vineyard Sound and headed for a rendezvous with old friends on Martha's Vineyard. They were to see a well-founded blue-water cruiser slip into Edgartown Harbor, skippered with expert nonchalance by a veteran seaman. The irony was inescapable in the next few days as I stepped aboard ferries and drove around in a rental car, cobbling together the insurance resolution to a catastrophic collision of plastic against rock. Over the previous 10 years, I had dodged icebergs in the Straits of Belle Isle, weathered the out-of-season birth of a mid-Atlantic hurricane on a passage from Mallorca to Antigua, and been hammered in the Gulf Stream during a Marion-Bermuda race. Along the way, I had cruised the British Virgins, made a Bahamas-Newport delivery and gunkholed the Maine coast innumerable times. Half a dozen courses and seminars on navigation, heavy-weather sailing, safety at sea, mechanics and other marine disciplines added knowledge to the offshore adventures. The experiences combined to deliver one of the variables a wee bit of hubris, admitted after the fact. I really thought I knew what I was doing. And I did, except for about 30 seconds. Woods Hole lies like a bathtub drain at the bottom of Buzzards Bay, about where the shoulder is, on the arm of Cape Cod. Twice a day, the North Atlantic sets up a white-water chute in the narrow neck between the mainland and Hadley's Island, a hundred yards into Vineyard Sound. As Buzzards Bay either empties or fills, the channel churns with a tidal rip that can reach 7 knots and produce 4-foot standing waves, nearly drowning the moored navigation markers. Well-marked, transited every year by thousands of pleasure craft and larger ships entering Woods Hole Harbor, including the big auto ferries serving Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, the channels appear deceptively benign and adequately wide on nautical charts. Two dozen navigational aids outline either approach to the right-triangle-shaped channels, with deep water all around. Inside, the triangle is home to a reef, barely exposed at low water, roiled but wickedly hidden as the tide gets moving. The vacation began quietly enough. I had left Maine a few days before and motored through a calm, lazy day to Gloucester, then chugged across Massachusetts Bay when the summer southwesterly kicked in. I made Cape Cod Canal in time to transit before dark. Motoring against the last of the tide in the canal was a snail's ride that I had no intention of repeating in Woods Hole. So after a quiet night on the south side of the canal, I hoisted anchor with a fine sunrise and set off down Buzzards Bay. The southwesterly returned with daylight and I powered southward, figuring the 10-mile run down the bay would take about two hours. An evening consult with the tidal chart showed the morning flood, when the water would begin moving southeast, starting at 6:00 a.m., so I thought to scoot through Woods Hole in good shape, kill the droning engine and raise sail to run across Vineyard Sound on a broad reach. In mid-morning, my friends were christening their infant son at an Edgartown church, and a previous call to the habormaster there assured me that plenty of anchoring room was available. A nice plan. And it worked just fine as I moved into the current, approaching the triangle around Red Ledge at Woods Hole. On the chart, the hypotenuse is labeled Broadway New Yorkers must have done the original cartography with the bottom leg titled The Strait. The channel making up the triangle height is just big, wide and deep, which apparently doesn't warrant a name. I would urge every captain to dig out your chart and label the reef This One. As I exited Buzzards Bay and turned the corner, I unfurled the small inner staysail to give me a little more power and lift. Glancing at the instruments, I noticed my boat speed had stayed the same but SOG (speed over ground) had gone from 6.1 to 10.5 knots in about 50 yards, and I marveled at the tidal force that drove into the navigational buoys, which strained like they were fighting a leash. Coming up to the can that marks the entry to Broadway, No. 3, I put the wheel over and motored toward the open water of Vineyard Sound. Putting the wheel harder to starboard, I went from 88 percent throttle to flat out. Gritting my teeth, I began talking to her, "c'mon now, baby get going, that's it," when … BAM!! BAM!! BAM!! Dumbfounded, I stood for a moment and then screamed a series of outraged then plaintive expletives. I felt like my stomach had gone right through the keel. There is nothing like the feeling of striking your boat against rock, as though you've rewarded all her grace and majesty with stunning indignity, a wound you have no right to ask of her. Though I'm coming to terms with it, a part of me will always think of her and be inconsolable. Still at full throttle, with the wheel hard over, Zuby came off the rocks and I spun the wheel to bear away from the nun. The wheel flew like a windmill and I groaned, fearing the rudder had been smashed. That worry was instantly subsumed to a more pressing concern; the boat was coming about, with the southwesterly backwinding the staysail and spinning me right back around at the reef. My eyes must have widened then because I had no illusions what the tide would do to me if she struck again. As I headed back toward the reef, I noticed an inbound auto ferry bearing down on the wide entrance channel and a small skiff bobbing at anchor near the reef with two fishermen looking at me like I'd lost my mind. Finally, the years of experience began to have an effect. I kept the staysail backwinded, which flipped me around while the tide added its push, then let the sail out to fill and counterbalance the rudder. Zuby straightened above the reef and made it over, helped no doubt by my holding my breath and standing in the cockpit on tiptoes. Then she kept going, barreling across the channel and the auto ferry's approach, headed for the mainland rocks on Juniper Point at 10 knots. The stony shore looked better than the big ferry, so I let her go 50 yards past the channel then yanked the staysail sheet loose, pulled back the throttle and raced forward. The 40-lb CQR anchor disappeared into the maelstrom and ripped the 5/16-inch chain out like fishing line. Standing on the pulpit with my boatshoe pressing the chain, I tried to slow it down all the while reminding myself not to get my foot torn off. For good measure, the staysail slapped me in the head. All 200 feet of chain sped out, checked only when the eyelet at the three-strand nylon rode jammed coming through the hawser pipe. The tide sped by, but I was at the edge of the main current, and the anchor and chain held. I quickly belayed the chain with a short piece of line, then managed to haul in enough to secure it around the samson post. Safely out of the shipping channel, with my ground tackle evidently enough against the tide, I grabbed a breath before going aft to check and see if I still had a rudder. If that barn door had torn off, I knew Zuby would be flooding. Peering over the stern, I was surprised to see the rudder still hard over but apparently unscathed. That meant something had failed in the steering mechanism. I quickly turned the aft cabin inside out as I exposed the rudder post and quadrant assembly. No damage or water there. Then I noticed the 3/16-inch stainless steering cable, or what was left of it, snapped like a worn shoelace. For the first time, I began to get a sense of the impact force when Zuby struck. I didn't have a spare cable, so I pondered for a few moments at jury-rigging another cable or using the emergency tiller, an awkward affair that had never impressed me much. I went into the nav station to get at the steering pulleys behind the bulkhead and immediately noticed the emergency bilge light on. Uh-oh. Opening the engine compartment, I could hear the water before a flashlight revealed a strong flow coming from aft and the big 3,500-gph bilge pump churning away. I flipped the switch to the 1,000-gph electronic backup pump and watched for a minute. The pumps could keep up with the flow, just barely, and I wondered if the stuffing box had let go or if Zuby had been punched somewhere above the keel. I went aft and yanked up the sole, then stared. Expecting a gush around the shaft or a spear wound in her side, I wasn't prepared to see the fiberglass torn in a jagged, delaminated rip that defied patching. In about 10 seconds I knew she was fine as long as the pumps held out, but Zuby needed to get out of the water. I jammed a small settee pillow against the flow and wedged it in, this helped somewhat to staunch the flow. Back topside, I bit my lip for a second as disappointment, angst and embarrassment washed over me. The morning sunlight sparkled off the water, and the ferry passed with several hundred people gawking from its decks. Swallowing a flash of self-pity and bitterness, I got on the VHF with a pan-pan call. Seconds later, the Coast Guard came on from Woods Hole, right around the corner, and 10 minutes later an inflatable came zooming into view. They were so young and so competent. A woman warrant officer came aboard, calmly looked over the situation and immediately called a 43-foot boat in to take me in tow to Falmouth, five miles east on Cape Cod. Ten minutes later, the bigger boat arrived and a large pump was manhandled aboard in case mine failed. By this time a SeaTow vessel was standing by, but the Coast Guard had a line aboard Zuby and I went forward to the windlass to haul anchor. Last year the windlass had quit, so I had it rebuilt over the winter and was confident as I hit the deck switch. The chain started clanking in as the Coast Guard boat tried to maintain position, but the tide was in full turn now and Zuby acted like a skittish colt. The windlass started to slip, and I grimaced, knowing its gearbox was designed to haul chain and anchor up, not pull a 16-ton vessel against a tidal bore. The 43-footer tried to relieve some of the pressure, but the officer at her helm had all he could do to stay put in the churning tide. About half the chain came in before the clutch burnt out. Naturally, I thought, remembering a book my son loved to have me read when he was young: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Now what? I manually hauled on the chain and could muscle it in slowly. The strong back of the young Coastie helped, but I figured it was a matter of time before something, like a disc, let go, so we belayed the chain and I went aft again for line. Rigging a length of 5/8-inch braided propylene to the anchor chain, I led it back around a cockpit winch to the main power winch used to raise the mainsail. When the chain reached the cockpit, I did a forward and aft scurry routine, belaying the chain at the windlass, removing the line at the cockpit, tying it again at the pulpit and repeating the process. Twenty minutes and five stutter steps later, the anchor finally cleared the surface, to my profound relief. The braided line had the feel of steel cable as it worked the anchor up and the Coast Guardsman gave it a wide berth, commenting he didn't want to loose his legs if the line parted. With the anchor up, the big Coast Guard diesels took over and I looked around as we left Woods Hole. A small sloop came out of Buzzards Bay, turned onto Broadway, cutting the corner hard, and barely missed the can to starboard. She passed 10 feet to port from the nun and motored into Vineyard Sound. I turned back to look at a towrope. Getting hauled in Falmouth was another firedrill, as the three boatyards there were all closed on Sundays. At one point I asked the Falmouth harbormaster where I could beach the boat in sand or mud and there was a long pause on the radio. He didn't tell me it was ludicrous, though as we came in, I could see that my emergency beaching contingency had no place in the cheek-by-jowl boating lineup. Finally, East Marine in Falmouth located their lift operator, and instead of enjoying a leisurely brunch with his family, he hauled Zuby out of the water. I saluted the Coast Guardsmen, interrupting their discussion of the Yankee-Red Sox game. The juxtaposition was harsh all in a day's work for them, versus a broken boat for me. As the cradle lift came out of the water, I still found it hard to believe this was all happening. In my years aboard Zuby, guests sometimes thought I had some sort of hyperactivity disorder because I rarely sat still. To me it was just the habit of constant vigilance and I prided myself on preventing anything that might possibly bring disorder. Yet there I stood, looking at a shattered keel. Thirty seconds belied my experience and it felt like a damn hard judge. The damage took my breath away. Zuby is a center-cockpit double-ender with a bluff bow that leads down to a full keel that flattens directly below the mast and extends aft to the rudder, which is fixed with two gudgeons below the prop and pivots on a 2-inch post coming through the hull. Below the prop cutout, the fiberglass looked like dinosaur claws had just ripped it apart down to the keel. The tear ran 10 feet forward along the bottom of the keel, and I realized Zuby had not really been holed, she had been torn apart. Over the next few days, every time I looked at her the damage seemed worse. At some point, I noticed the rudder, which still functioned normally, was actually canted a few degrees off the vertical. I scratched my head about that for awhile, and then it dawned on me. The only way the rudder could move at the bottom there was no damage at the rudder post was if the keel had moved. That was a dry-mouth moment. The keel could only move if it broke. The impact force again came back to me. Out of the water, Zuby's 10-inch keel had always looked indestructible. Each year at haulout, fishermen working on their draggers and long-liners in the same yard would look her over and nod. "She be rugged," a swordfish captain once remarked. Indeed, for water. Ledge is something else entirely. So we get up and get on. Thirty seconds took my boat and left me with the lessons that life provides through heartache. They were many. Before I had left Maine, I called my insurance agent to check my coverage, vaguely remembering that I had southern limits but couldn't recall just where. Eastport, Maine (Canadian border) to Cape Cod she said, adding that a binder extending it to Montauk, Long Island would be another $75. Though I didn't plan on heading south of Martha's Vineyard, I figured I might as well pay for the binder. Send it along, I said. Once I hit, everything vital worked. The bilge pumps (with a good float switch installed after jettisoning the flip switches that went on every time the boat heeled hard) and carefully shrink-wrapped electrical connections operated impeccably. Afterward, when the Coast Guardsman went through his boarding checklist, everything was to hand and I was given a clean report. Acting on an axiom an old man had given me in my youth when in doubt, find good advice, and take it I spoke with marine surveyors who had 60 years of experience between them. Desmond Connelly usually works with large fishing vessels, containerships and tankers, but he took my call and gave me 20 minutes of the best counsel I could get. I told him that I had to be utterly confident of the repairs because I could not in good faith take anyone offshore if I entertained any doubts of the integrity of my vessel. "Then act on your conviction," Connelly said, "and make sure your agent, your carrier and their surveyor knows exactly how you feel. If the keel is broken, it must be replaced, anything less is a shortcut. Remember that fiberglass is tricky and hides damage. You can be sure that what you see is only part of it. When she gave way, the damage went deep into the boat." I admitted that it stung badly to have safely crossed an ocean but wrecked in a short channel. His resigned shrug came over the phone. "It happens to good men, believe me. The boat is just a thing. No one was hurt, and you got a reminder who is boss out there." Though I mentally prepared for war with the insurance company, they were consummate professionals with a speed that astounded me. Pat O'Toole, the adjuster at Acadia Insurance in Maine, made it clear their obligation was to repair the damage and restore the boat to its pre-accident integrity. O'Toole was quick to appoint an expert marine surveyor. Ten minutes with Norm Wall relieved my anxiety that a quick and dirty job might be recommended. Wall has been in the business probably 30 years and he was a pro. Watching him sound the hull with his old wooden fid, the bifocals shining before closed eyelids as he tapped thunk, thunk, bonk I stared as he nodded and then looked at me. "She's broken badly," he said. "Sorry." Later that morning, after he left to file his report with Acadia, I went topside and sat in the sun. Since Zuby's keel is concrete encased in fiberglass, restoration would mean turning the boat inside out like a pocket, including de-rigging, removing the engine, shaft, bulkheads, sole, fuel, water and holding tanks to expose, remove and replace the keel. What a job. When repairs cost 80 percent or more of the boat's value, Acadia declares it a total loss, offers first refusal salvage rights to the owner and if declined, sells the boat for salvage. With a half century behind me, I didn't want another huge project, so within 10 days I received a check for the full insured amount. Now, weeks later, the replay only happens several times a day and in my dreams. Several things stand out. First and foremost, I didn't need to take Broadway. Although direct and marginally shorter, it cut across the tide. Part of the hubris that's how I view it now came from motoring, which may be a male thing. A throbbing diesel underfoot seems to connect the throttle with our testicles and we figure we can go anywhere we want. The irony is if I'd been under sail, I would never have left a reef to leeward when I could easily go around in deep water, and just a moment's consideration of what would happen if the engine sputtered in the middle of Broadway would have altered my route. Hindsight is clear as that morning was. Secondly, I could have waited. Two-and-half hours after the turn, Woods Hole becomes treacherous. "Happens half a dozen times a year," Wall commented, looking Zuby over. "I nearly lost a vessel there, years ago. One of the worst holes on the East Coast." At slack tide, or within a half-hour either way, I could have gone through without getting shoved. But near or at full bore, the tidal rip is awe-inspiring and unrelenting. My old Coast Guard friend recalled taking an oceangoing tug, full throttle, through at mid-tide, against the current and staring from the wheelhouse at the same can 10 feet from the tug for a half-hour. The abrupt about-face of that morning remains indelible. One moment a leisurely cruise into a summer's morning, the next an adrenaline rush to keep my vessel from getting smashed or sinking. An enduring lesson from this is the simple reality of the word emergency. Time just collapses and what is left behind in preparation becomes a matter of luck or vengeance. Zuby's emergency tiller, for example, was close to useless and if I'd been in any kind of seaway or unable to anchor, I would have had precious little reaction time. The tiller fits over the quadrant in the aft cabin, so I would have had to steer with one foot, the other balancing on the vanity while my head poked out of the rear deck hatch. Steering mechanisms are unlikely to fail at a convenient time, and what was once an annoying case of bad design became critical within seconds. In this case, good fortune intervened and my ground tackle took hold, but sudden steering loss brings miraculous appreciation of a handy and reliable emergency tiller. Also, I had fids and epoxy available, but no designated pliable material like thin plywood that could have immediately been cobbled into a makeshift patch. Though prepared for a ruptured seacock or a hole in the fiberglass hull, I had never given thought to jagged rips. However, gushing seawater has a memorable sound all its own, the charge of dread. In Edgartown, my friend's son was christened without me. Later that day, I arrived on a ferry, still shell-shocked and barely sociable. With me came the haunting sense that I suddenly felt a kinship with all the captains who have lost their ships at sea. By that scale, my grounding was a minor hiccup, but it didn't feel that way. On a deeper level, I caught a glimpse of the anguish and stoicism that must have gripped the men who realized they had to go down with their ships. If wisdom is the exercise of good judgment, which is gained from enduring the consequences of bad judgment, I'm a better seaman. Another solid dose of humility has come with nothing more bruised than my pride and a material object. For me now, therein lies the value of a painful experience. Confidence on the water takes years of effort, but it is a knife's edge. The sea rules with such profound indifference; assume anything at your peril. Only a moment is necessary to remind us who out there really is boss. Laurence Eubank lives in South Portland, Maine.
Putting the wheel harder to starboard, I went from 88 percent throttle to flat out. Gritting my teeth, I began talking to her, "c'mon now, baby get going, that's it," when … BAM!! BAM!! BAM!!
Dumbfounded, I stood for a moment and then screamed a series of outraged then plaintive expletives. I felt like my stomach had gone right through the keel. There is nothing like the feeling of striking your boat against rock, as though you've rewarded all her grace and majesty with stunning indignity, a wound you have no right to ask of her. Though I'm coming to terms with it, a part of me will always think of her and be inconsolable.
Still at full throttle, with the wheel hard over, Zuby came off the rocks and I spun the wheel to bear away from the nun. The wheel flew like a windmill and I groaned, fearing the rudder had been smashed. That worry was instantly subsumed to a more pressing concern; the boat was coming about, with the southwesterly backwinding the staysail and spinning me right back around at the reef. My eyes must have widened then because I had no illusions what the tide would do to me if she struck again. As I headed back toward the reef, I noticed an inbound auto ferry bearing down on the wide entrance channel and a small skiff bobbing at anchor near the reef with two fishermen looking at me like I'd lost my mind.
Finally, the years of experience began to have an effect. I kept the staysail backwinded, which flipped me around while the tide added its push, then let the sail out to fill and counterbalance the rudder. Zuby straightened above the reef and made it over, helped no doubt by my holding my breath and standing in the cockpit on tiptoes. Then she kept going, barreling across the channel and the auto ferry's approach, headed for the mainland rocks on Juniper Point at 10 knots. The stony shore looked better than the big ferry, so I let her go 50 yards past the channel then yanked the staysail sheet loose, pulled back the throttle and raced forward. The 40-lb CQR anchor disappeared into the maelstrom and ripped the 5/16-inch chain out like fishing line. Standing on the pulpit with my boatshoe pressing the chain, I tried to slow it down
all the while reminding myself not to get my foot torn off. For good measure, the staysail slapped me in the head. All 200 feet of chain sped out, checked only when the eyelet at the three-strand nylon rode jammed coming through the hawser pipe.
The tide sped by, but I was at the edge of the main current, and the anchor and chain held. I quickly belayed the chain with a short piece of line, then managed to haul in enough to secure it around the samson post. Safely out of the shipping channel, with my ground tackle evidently enough against the tide, I grabbed a breath before going aft to check and see if I still had a rudder. If that barn door had torn off, I knew Zuby would be flooding. Peering over the stern, I was surprised to see the rudder still hard over but apparently unscathed. That meant something had failed in the steering mechanism.
I quickly turned the aft cabin inside out as I exposed the rudder post and quadrant assembly. No damage or water there. Then I noticed the 3/16-inch stainless steering cable, or what was left of it, snapped like a worn shoelace. For the first time, I began to get a sense of the impact force when Zuby struck. I didn't have a spare cable, so I pondered for a few moments at jury-rigging another cable or using the emergency tiller, an awkward affair that had never impressed me much. I went into the nav station to get at the steering pulleys behind the bulkhead and immediately noticed the emergency bilge light on. Uh-oh.
Opening the engine compartment, I could hear the water before a flashlight revealed a strong flow coming from aft and the big 3,500-gph bilge pump churning away. I flipped the switch to the 1,000-gph electronic backup pump and watched for a minute. The pumps could keep up with the flow, just barely, and I wondered if the stuffing box had let go or if Zuby had been punched somewhere above the keel.
I went aft and yanked up the sole, then stared. Expecting a gush around the shaft or a spear wound in her side, I wasn't prepared to see the fiberglass torn in a jagged, delaminated rip that defied patching. In about 10 seconds I knew she was fine as long as the pumps held out, but Zuby needed to get out of the water. I jammed a small settee pillow against the flow and wedged it in, this helped somewhat to staunch the flow.
Back topside, I bit my lip for a second as disappointment, angst and embarrassment washed over me. The morning sunlight sparkled off the water, and the ferry passed with several hundred people gawking from its decks. Swallowing a flash of self-pity and bitterness, I got on the VHF with a pan-pan call. Seconds later, the Coast Guard came on from Woods Hole, right around the corner, and 10 minutes later an inflatable came zooming into view.
They were so young and so competent. A woman warrant officer came aboard, calmly looked over the situation and immediately called a 43-foot boat in to take me in tow to Falmouth, five miles east on Cape Cod. Ten minutes later, the bigger boat arrived and a large pump was manhandled aboard in case mine failed. By this time a SeaTow vessel was standing by, but the Coast Guard had a line aboard Zuby and I went forward to the windlass to haul anchor.
Last year the windlass had quit, so I had it rebuilt over the winter and was confident as I hit the deck switch. The chain started clanking in as the Coast Guard boat tried to maintain position, but the tide was in full turn now and Zuby acted like a skittish colt. The windlass started to slip, and I grimaced, knowing its gearbox was designed to haul chain and anchor up, not pull a 16-ton vessel against a tidal bore. The 43-footer tried to relieve some of the pressure, but the officer at her helm had all he could do to stay put in the churning tide.
About half the chain came in before the clutch burnt out. Naturally, I thought, remembering a book my son loved to have me read when he was young: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
Now what? I manually hauled on the chain and could muscle it in slowly. The strong back of the young Coastie helped, but I figured it was a matter of time before something, like a disc, let go, so we belayed the chain and I went aft again for line. Rigging a length of 5/8-inch braided propylene to the anchor chain, I led it back around a cockpit winch to the main power winch used to raise the mainsail. When the chain reached the cockpit, I did a forward and aft scurry routine, belaying the chain at the windlass, removing the line at the cockpit, tying it again at the pulpit and repeating the process. Twenty minutes and five stutter steps later, the anchor finally cleared the surface, to my profound relief. The braided line had the feel of steel cable as it worked the anchor up and the Coast Guardsman gave it a wide berth, commenting he didn't want to loose his legs if the line parted.
With the anchor up, the big Coast Guard diesels took over and I looked around as we left Woods Hole. A small sloop came out of Buzzards Bay, turned onto Broadway, cutting the corner hard, and barely missed the can to starboard. She passed 10 feet to port from the nun and motored into Vineyard Sound. I turned back to look at a towrope.
Getting hauled in Falmouth was another firedrill, as the three boatyards there were all closed on Sundays. At one point I asked the Falmouth harbormaster where I could beach the boat in sand or mud and there was a long pause on the radio. He didn't tell me it was ludicrous, though as we came in, I could see that my emergency beaching contingency had no place in the cheek-by-jowl boating lineup.
Finally, East Marine in Falmouth located their lift operator, and instead of enjoying a leisurely brunch with his family, he hauled Zuby out of the water. I saluted the Coast Guardsmen, interrupting their discussion of the Yankee-Red Sox game. The juxtaposition was harsh
all in a day's work for them, versus a broken boat for me.
As the cradle lift came out of the water, I still found it hard to believe this was all happening. In my years aboard Zuby, guests sometimes thought I had some sort of hyperactivity disorder because I rarely sat still. To me it was just the habit of constant vigilance and I prided myself on preventing anything that might possibly bring disorder. Yet there I stood, looking at a shattered keel. Thirty seconds belied my experience and it felt like a damn hard judge.
The damage took my breath away. Zuby is a center-cockpit double-ender with a bluff bow that leads down to a full keel that flattens directly below the mast and extends aft to the rudder, which is fixed with two gudgeons below the prop and pivots on a 2-inch post coming through the hull. Below the prop cutout, the fiberglass looked like dinosaur claws had just ripped it apart down to the keel. The tear ran 10 feet forward along the bottom of the keel, and I realized Zuby had not really been holed, she had been torn apart.
Over the next few days, every time I looked at her the damage seemed worse. At some point, I noticed the rudder, which still functioned normally, was actually canted a few degrees off the vertical. I scratched my head about that for awhile, and then it dawned on me. The only way the rudder could move at the bottom
there was no damage at the rudder post
was if the keel had moved. That was a dry-mouth moment. The keel could only move if it broke.
The impact force again came back to me. Out of the water, Zuby's 10-inch keel had always looked indestructible. Each year at haulout, fishermen working on their draggers and long-liners in the same yard would look her over and nod. "She be rugged," a swordfish captain once remarked. Indeed, for water. Ledge is something else entirely.
Three days later, after multiple calls with the insurance company, conversations with several craftsmen and two experienced marine surveyors, I sat alone in the cockpit, high above the concrete wharf, and accepted that the repair cost to put Zuby back in original shape approached the value of the boat. From an insurance standpoint, she was a total loss. On another beautiful summer morning, I felt my loss. Zuby was a boat I trusted, that I had lived aboard and raised a son on for several years. When it finally all settled in, I put my hands to my face and wept.
So we get up and get on. Thirty seconds took my boat and left me with the lessons that life provides through heartache. They were many.
Before I had left Maine, I called my insurance agent to check my coverage, vaguely remembering that I had southern limits but couldn't recall just where. Eastport, Maine (Canadian border) to Cape Cod she said, adding that a binder extending it to Montauk, Long Island would be another $75. Though I didn't plan on heading south of Martha's Vineyard, I figured I might as well pay for the binder. Send it along, I said.
Once I hit, everything vital worked. The bilge pumps (with a good float switch installed after jettisoning the flip switches that went on every time the boat heeled hard) and carefully shrink-wrapped electrical connections operated impeccably. Afterward, when the Coast Guardsman went through his boarding checklist, everything was to hand and I was given a clean report.
Acting on an axiom an old man had given me in my youth
when in doubt, find good advice, and take it
I spoke with marine surveyors who had 60 years of experience between them. Desmond Connelly usually works with large fishing vessels, containerships and tankers, but he took my call and gave me 20 minutes of the best counsel I could get. I told him that I had to be utterly confident of the repairs because I could not in good faith take anyone offshore if I entertained any doubts of the integrity of my vessel.
"Then act on your conviction," Connelly said, "and make sure your agent, your carrier and their surveyor knows exactly how you feel. If the keel is broken, it must be replaced, anything less is a shortcut. Remember that fiberglass is tricky and hides damage. You can be sure that what you see is only part of it. When she gave way, the damage went deep into the boat." I admitted that it stung badly to have safely crossed an ocean but wrecked in a short channel. His resigned shrug came over the phone. "It happens to good men, believe me. The boat is just a thing. No one was hurt, and you got a reminder who is boss out there."
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The author's boat on the hard.Though I mentally prepared for war with the insurance company, they were consummate professionals with a speed that astounded me. Pat O'Toole, the adjuster at Acadia Insurance in Maine, made it clear their obligation was to repair the damage and restore the boat to its pre-accident integrity. O'Toole was quick to appoint an expert marine surveyor. Ten minutes with Norm Wall relieved my anxiety that a quick and dirty job might be recommended. Wall has been in the business probably 30 years and he was a pro. Watching him sound the hull with his old wooden fid, the bifocals shining before closed eyelids as he tapped
thunk, thunk, bonk
I stared as he nodded and then looked at me. "She's broken badly," he said. "Sorry." Later that morning, after he left to file his report with Acadia, I went topside and sat in the sun.
Since Zuby's keel is concrete encased in fiberglass, restoration would mean turning the boat inside out like a pocket, including de-rigging, removing the engine, shaft, bulkheads, sole, fuel, water and holding tanks to expose, remove and replace the keel. What a job. When repairs cost 80 percent or more of the boat's value, Acadia declares it a total loss, offers first refusal salvage rights to the owner and if declined, sells the boat for salvage. With a half century behind me, I didn't want another huge project, so within 10 days I received a check for the full insured amount.
Now, weeks later, the replay only happens several times a day and in my dreams. Several things stand out. First and foremost, I didn't need to take Broadway. Although direct and marginally shorter, it cut across the tide. Part of the hubris
that's how I view it now
came from motoring, which may be a male thing. A throbbing diesel underfoot seems to connect the throttle with our testicles and we figure we can go anywhere we want. The irony is if I'd been under sail, I would never have left a reef to leeward when I could easily go around in deep water, and just a moment's consideration of what would happen if the engine sputtered in the middle of Broadway would have altered my route. Hindsight is clear as that morning was.
Secondly, I could have waited. Two-and-half hours after the turn, Woods Hole becomes treacherous. "Happens half a dozen times a year," Wall commented, looking Zuby over. "I nearly lost a vessel there, years ago. One of the worst holes on the East Coast." At slack tide, or within a half-hour either way, I could have gone through without getting shoved. But near or at full bore, the tidal rip is awe-inspiring and unrelenting. My old Coast Guard friend recalled taking an oceangoing tug, full throttle, through at mid-tide, against the current and staring from the wheelhouse at the same can 10 feet from the tug for a half-hour.
The abrupt about-face of that morning remains indelible. One moment a leisurely cruise into a summer's morning, the next an adrenaline rush to keep my vessel from getting smashed or sinking. An enduring lesson from this is the simple reality of the word emergency. Time just collapses and what is left behind in preparation becomes a matter of luck or vengeance.
Zuby's emergency tiller, for example, was close to useless and if I'd been in any kind of seaway or unable to anchor, I would have had precious little reaction time. The tiller fits over the quadrant in the aft cabin, so I would have had to steer with one foot, the other balancing on the vanity while my head poked out of the rear deck hatch. Steering mechanisms are unlikely to fail at a convenient time, and what was once an annoying case of bad design became critical within seconds. In this case, good fortune intervened and my ground tackle took hold, but sudden steering loss brings miraculous appreciation of a handy and reliable emergency tiller. Also, I had fids and epoxy available, but no designated pliable material like thin plywood that could have immediately been cobbled into a makeshift patch. Though prepared for a ruptured seacock or a hole in the fiberglass hull, I had never given thought to jagged rips. However, gushing seawater has a memorable sound all its own, the charge of dread.
In Edgartown, my friend's son was christened without me. Later that day, I arrived on a ferry, still shell-shocked and barely sociable. With me came the haunting sense that I suddenly felt a kinship with all the captains who have lost their ships at sea. By that scale, my grounding was a minor hiccup, but it didn't feel that way. On a deeper level, I caught a glimpse of the anguish and stoicism that must have gripped the men who realized they had to go down with their ships.
If wisdom is the exercise of good judgment, which is gained from enduring the consequences of bad judgment, I'm a better seaman. Another solid dose of humility has come with nothing more bruised than my pride and a material object.
For me now, therein lies the value of a painful experience. Confidence on the water takes years of effort, but it is a knife's edge. The sea rules with such profound indifference; assume anything at your peril. Only a moment is necessary to remind us who out there really is boss.
Laurence Eubank lives in South Portland, Maine.
