The Cure for Anything Is Salt Water Part 3

There was something about looking at the coast from a distance: an awareness that I was not-for now-a part of life on earth, an ant on the farm that toiled back there, that stopped to pump gas and get groceries, that had dentist appointments or social obligations. I felt apart, invigorated, clean. This was my life right now-standing at the helm, checking the GPS coordinates against the chart, keeping an eye on the radar and the autopilot, stepping outside with the binoculars to determine a far-off freighter's course switching to WX on the VHF for the weather report and turning up the volume every time I heard a Coast Guard bulletin. Just running my little s.h.i.+p.

But there was plenty of time, too, for thought. Mine is a restless mind, but the rhythms of life aboard seemed to quell that combustion chamber where compressed thoughts ignited worries. When I thought, I reflected idly. I didn't try to figure stuff out, resolve anything, take it apart and understand it-these were all hallmarks of my landlubber mind.

I have always been good at what I can understand. But who understands love or the reason it falters? My failure at that one thing I valued more than all others had played a big role in my decision to veer off a straight life course. And now, at sea, I found myself able to review pieces of my past without too much a.n.a.lysis. It was like throwing away the microscope and suddenly realizing you could see better with your naked eye.

When I was 24 I had a girlfriend named Maud. She was eight years older than I, but she was so young at heart that when she walked down 14th Street in New York City, 16-year-old homeys would come up to her and tell her she was dope.

She wore Converse high-tops almost every day, with jeans and one of those black-and-white tweedy windbreakers with leather sleeves. She had leopard patterns carved in the hair on the back of her head and she had faux-marbleized her old-model Volvo wagon. She was a very talented writer, photographer, and chef. She also drank a little too much and was truly agoraphobic. But what drew me to her was her almost pathological charm. She was always promising to call people or see people and then blowing them off but winning them back. She did that with me, too, and the power of her regret was always so much more endearing than her carelessness was painful.

We met when I was living in Nantucket, painting houses and trying to figure out what I really wanted to do. Maud and I developed a ritual of dinner and a movie once a week. I would ride my motorcycle to the Finast and pick up steaks and artichokes, get a bottle of red wine, and then rent a couple of movies she'd selected. I had watched very little television and seen very few movies during my childhood. Maud gave me a crash course in great films. We would drink wine and talk about art and literature and politics while she cooked. When dinner was ready, we'd sit in her darkened living room in Adirondack chairs with our plates on our laps and watch Mildred Pierce, followed by Double Indemnity. Or I Want to Live, followed by Hiros.h.i.+ma, Mon Amour.

After about a year, I felt discouraged by our intense yet casual relations.h.i.+p and by life on the island. I thought Maud didn't take me seriously because I was younger. In fact, she often pushed me away with the excuse that I shouldn't be weighed down by someone with as many problems as she had.

Eventually, I gave up and moved to New York. Within a few months, Maud surprised me by following. We shared a loft on 19th Street with the landlord's cat.

Maud, who let's not forget was agoraphobic, got a job at a sewing pattern company, where she had to ride an elevator every day and punch in and out, like a regular stiff. She was a trooper. I, meanwhile, had fallen into a highly coveted job as an editorial a.s.sistant at Houghton Mifflin. I worked with people my own age who were smart and funny and ambitious. I did well there, and when I came home flushed with my minor successes, the loft seemed dark and dreary. Maud was depressed and, increasingly, she depressed me.

I was offered the impossible after six months, a promotion to a.s.sistant editor, contingent on moving to the Boston offices for a year. It was a great opportunity, and I also suspected it was the only way I'd ever find to break free of my debilitating love for Maud.

My first month in Boston, I stayed in Cambridge, house-sitting for my new boss's neighbor while I hunted for an apartment. I still remember the smell of my landlord's perfume. It was cloyingly funereal and it seemed to have permeated everything, including my sinuses. Even when I left the house, that scent suffocated me. It also seemed like the snow never stopped falling that winter. All I did was work and come home, work and come home. I missed New York and I didn't like Boston. At night, I'd call Maud, who'd gone back to Nantucket. Each night our conversation would start off well and spiral into recriminations and despair. One night I couldn't stand it anymore and started to quietly cry.

"What's the matter?" Maud asked, suddenly alarmed.

"You know, I just can't take it anymore. I worry so much about you and about how depressed you are, and I just don't know what to do to help you. It makes me so sad."

There was a pause from her end, and then she said, with some exasperation, "Are you kidding? Come on. You know me. This is how I am. I'm always depressed."

And it was as though someone had lifted a rock off me.

She was right. But I had no idea that she knew that-and once I did, it made all the difference.

Twenty years later, hardly a day goes by that I don't think of her and our jokes and our movie nights. Part of me still feels guilty, like I abandoned her after she summoned the bravery to face New York.

But I look back on this relations.h.i.+p with the knowledge that having saved myself, I will have the luxury of adoring her forever.

DAY D R EA M I N G AT T H E H E LM didn't distract me from watching the instruments, checking the horizon and keeping an eye on the weather. Around 1:00 p.m., the sun faded and the direction of the wind changed. By 2:00 p.m. waves started to roll us gently from side to side and the autopilot required some attention to keep us on course but comfortable. Puffy c.u.mulus clouds obscured most of the sky's bright blue by 3:00 p.m., and around 4:00 p.m. they had become more threatening c.u.mulonimbus clouds. Another storm was on the way. This was a fairly predictable weather pattern each day, with a burst of rain and light wind moving through in the late afternoon and then dissipating. But today the skies got darker and darker, the wind got stronger and the rain didn't come.

We were in for some more serious weather. The cloud bank chasing our stern rolled ominously toward us as John took the helm and I went below to secure loose items: the television, some gla.s.ses, books. Tightening the portholes, I chuckled when it occurred to me that I was actually "battening down the hatches"-it was the first time I understood the urgency in a phrase I had used so thoughtlessly a million times before.

When I was satisfied that everything was as secure as possible, I went back to the helm with our foul-weather gear. The dogs had already taken up their anxious positions. I think both John and I felt a little giddy. Adrenaline flooded my system as I contemplated the unavoidable emergency that was blocking our way. It was as though we were preparing for a siege, since there wasn't much we could do but brace ourselves and forge ahead. Maybe that's why I didn't feel scared.

Fear comes with the knowledge that you can change your situation-get help, escape, overpower your attacker. We had no such options. We were about to practice the nautical equivalent of pa.s.sive resistance. Our goal was not to overcome but to endure. I felt a sense of exhilarated fatalism. Hang on, here we go.

The sea was rough and the winds were blowing harder and harder, but the Bossanova was a champ. She held her own, bounding through the rough waves like an amphibious tank.

Though it was quickly clear that the boat could handle this weather, John and I had never seen lightning like this before.

Of course, the open horizon and dark sky provided a particularly ominous palette, and I couldn't shake childhood memories of grown-ups rus.h.i.+ng us from the pool or pond when lightning started to flash. The dogs cowered in the corner: Samba was shaking from head to toe and Heck's beard was damp, a sure sign he was nauseous. John and I jumped every time a flash illuminated how very small we were and how very big the sea was, all around us.

For an hour, we tossed up and down on the gray-green waves, deafened by the grumbling thunder and sharp cracks of terrifying lightning, which were dangerously in synch. Rationally, I felt that we would be okay, that we wouldn't be hit and that even if we were, we'd survive. But this lightning was huge and getting closer and closer.

There's something particularly rattling about being in a small steel boat in a very big body of water with no other targets around. I wasn't sure that rubber-soled deck shoes were going to help if nature decided to fling some pyrotechnics our way. What I didn't know was that a steel boat was the safest place to be. Since steel conducts electricity, a lightning bolt would run through the hull to the ground (the sea) with little resistance. A wooden or fibergla.s.s boat was much more dangerous-if lightning struck, the resistance of fibergla.s.s or wood could potentially cause the bolt to blow a hole in the hull. In any event, a boat's electronics could be damaged by a strike. When lightning appeared on the horizon, a good emergency measure was to place a handheld VHF radio in your oven or microwave, which provided a natural faraday cage. If you were struck, your communications channel would still be working, making it possible to call out a Mayday as you sank.

Gradually, the waves calmed a little and the wind faded to a stiff breeze, even though the sea remained rough. The worst of the front just turned and wandered off, like an exhausted bully with attention deficit disorder. The only lingering threat was the lightning, and we watched a dazzling exhibit of it as we pulled into Oba.s.saw Sound, Georgia, and dropped anchor.

The chart indicated that this was about the best we were going to do in terms of shelter. Charleston would have to wait one more day.

That night, the wind whipped the waves against the steel hull, and the master stateroom, where the dogs and I slept, rang like a kettledrum. I tossed and turned and worried vaguely about the alarm not going off if we dragged our anchor. Every now and then I'd go up to the pilothouse and check our position against lights on the sh.o.r.e to be sure we hadn't moved. I had never used this GPS function before and I didn't trust it.

It was a relief when the sun finally came up, though I had barely slept. The waves had died down toward sunrise and the water was still and bright. We hauled up the anchor and headed back out, aiming for Charleston and a little R&R with the son of a Chapman cla.s.smate who ran a marina there.

I suppose many people would find life aboard a boat boring. I think John, who liked his creature comforts and was more outgoing than I am, sometimes felt a little caged and anxious. But my normally restless mind was quieted aboard the Bossanova. The little tasks of running the boat-checking the water flow in the salt.w.a.ter strainers, keeping an eye on the oil pressure, scanning the horizon with binoculars, keeping track of our position on the chart and listening for Coast Guard updates on the VHF-were enough for me. I was vaguely aware that I spent much of each day with a goofy grin on my face. (I remember Captain Bob had once laughed at my perpetual smile and said that this was why he taught-to see the joy that every now and then one made-for-the-sea student would show.) From time to time the thought would pa.s.s through my head that I had no right to be running a s.h.i.+p like this, but the realization that I was actually doing it made me feel accomplished and proud. So I would rarely read while underway, preferring to stay focused on my boat, my command of our journey.

Sometimes, if John was on watch, I'd take a chair out on the bow and bask in the sun or watch the water for wildlife and other boats in the distance. But I never ventured far from the helm or escaped the present.

Today was another peaceful day with good weather and no mechanical problems. We reached the approach to Charleston around 3:00 p.m. John struggled against the usual afternoon waves that kicked up, getting progressively worse and becoming a strong beam sea as we got closer. We were eager to get ash.o.r.e, and had plans to join our friend's son for dinner, but I decided we had to adjust course to minimize our roll, even though that would take us out of our way. That helped postpone our rocking, but when we finally entered the channel, we had run out of avoidance techniques. I took the helm. We were really rolling from side to side now.

Complicating our rough ride through the channel entrance was a wicked current running against us. We should have been making about 8 knots on our way in, but we were running around 3.5 knots. Not only were we being tossed from side to side, but we were going to be tossed from side-to-side for twice as long as we would be normally.

Samba and Heck were now each trying to occupy the same cubic foot of s.p.a.ce in the very corner of the settee. It would have been comical if they hadn't been so terrified. (And these are two tough little Jack Russells, the breed they send into holes on the South African savannah to flush out hyenas!) I explained in soothing tones that everything was fine, but they were definitely not buying it. Why couldn't we be in a normal house right now, with a normal yard, where we could chase normal cats and disobey a normal mother? I imagined them wondering poor little guys.

Down below I heard a ma.s.sive crash and said a small prayer that my tiny flat-screen television had not been broken.

I snuck a glance behind me and it looked like backstage at the Steel Wheels tour. The salon was littered with my possessions: obviously, I hadn't done a good enough job of stowing and securing. The television was lying on its side, a good eight feet from where it should have been. If it still worked, it would be a miracle.

I finally felt my temper fraying. I was tired and I was fed up with fighting nature. John had the sense to steer clear for a few minutes while my seething turned to simmering and then blew over.

As we pa.s.sed through the jetties, the waves flattened out a little, but we continued to combat the strong current. Charleston Harbor is one of the busier American ports, and we stayed alert as several large cargo s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sed us by, both coming in and going out. I braced us for wake and angled the bow into it as these vessels pa.s.sed. We were fine.

Then, coming up behind us on our port side was a ma.s.sive container s.h.i.+p from the Evergreen line. The aptly named Ever Racer appeared to be going much faster than the other s.h.i.+ps we'd encountered. John got on the VHF and tried to raise their bridge but got no response. The Ever Racer just barreled by us. I was ready at the wheel, and John positioned himself to let me know what was coming. We had one large wave of wake. I steered us over it on an angle and we did fine. Then John shouted out that we had another coming our way. Again, we were ready, and it was big but manageable. John took another look and said, "Whew. We're clear, Mare," and then, as we both relaxed a little, we were suddenly up on the edge of something big that came from nowhere.

I was at the helm and doing my best but we were riding right on the crest and I could feel that I had absolutely no control. It all happened very, very fast, and there was no real time for panic. We were heeled over at a 35-degree angle to the water-John could probably have reached out and touched it!-and I thought, This is it. We're going to capsize in Charleston Harbor. I felt a stab of anxiety about the dogs, who were not wearing life vests, though it didn't occur to me to worry that we didn't have them on either. I had a quick mental image of the Bossanova, rolled so far over that she took on water through the pilothouse doors and swamped on her side. I imagined being towed to sh.o.r.e, the engine ruined by water. I even felt a flash of shame, though I knew it wouldn't be our fault. All of this ran through my head in a split second and I knew only luck might save us.

We did not capsize. Somehow, we managed to race down the face of that wake at a terrible angle and then right ourselves. The Ever Racer sped ahead without any indication that they had almost capsized us.

I was furious, absolutely fuming, and I have to admit, I couldn't let it go. I felt that we'd narrowly avoided the worst possible fate, through no fault of our own, and I wanted that boat to pay. I thought seriously about calling the harbor master and reporting the vessel, but in the back of my mind I feared we'd wind up in the nautical version of one of those trucker movies. You know, where the psychotic guy in the eighteen-wheeler is terrorizing a couple on vacation. I could just imagine us being chased up the coast by some salty freakshow who'd gone 'round the bend from all those years on the high seas. I decided not to risk it but I remained livid. It was hard not to be when we'd come so close to disaster. Weeks later, when my anger had abated, but not my desire for revenge, I looked up some online facts about Ever Racer.

She was part of the Evergreen Marine Corporation, a fleet of 150 container s.h.i.+ps with a combined capacity of four hundred thousand 20-foot containers. The company's biggest claim to fame was a record fine of $25 million from the U.S. government for the deliberate discharge of oil waste into the Tacoma River. The bully who almost swamped us had a gross weight of 53,358 tons, and her speed was 23 knots. That may not seem very fast but the no-wake zone in a harbor is generally 5 miles per hour and a s.h.i.+p like this can take up to 4 miles to come to a full stop. So, you can see why any extra speed in a slow zone could be incredibly dangerous. I toyed with starting a campaign to have all boats wear big stickers on their sterns, like tractor trailers, with an 800 number for filing complaints. But out on the sea, might was more or less right.

Despite the near capsizing, we chugged safely into the Charleston marina and tied up at twilight. Unfortunately, we were accidentally put in a slip that needed an adaptor to deliver 30-amp power. One dockhand waited with us and I walked the dogs while another dockhand searched for an adaptor. . .and searched. . .and searched. They couldn't locate a single adaptor and were profusely apologetic for having put us in a slip with 50-amp power. They did have an open 30-amp spot on the other side of the marina, if we wanted to move.

It's difficult to explain. We really did need to recharge our batteries overnight. But I simply couldn't bring myself to fire up the engine, cast off the lines, move the boat into a new slip and tie up again. I just did not want to be on that boat for another minute that night.

The dockhands offered us some complimentary ice to help keep our perishables cold until morning. John and I said,"Sure, thanks," and sat in a silent, exhausted heap on the dock in the dark. This time, our close call had not left us feeling elated or triumphant. We were worn out. Depleted. Sick of the struggle to get from one place to another safely. After a while I said, "John, I can wait for the ice. Why don't you go grab us a table for dinner and I'll be right up."

I didn't have to ask twice. John got up and said, "Mare, I'll take you up on that. I really need to do some power-drinking but I'll save you a seat."

When I finally made it up to the marina hotel, it was after ten o'clock. I had dreamed of an uneventful arrival in the late afternoon, a great berth and a VIP greeting from a couple of dockhands waiting to tie us up and escort us to the marina manager, who had invited us to a barbecue with his family.

The slip was not great, the manager was gone and the sunset barbecue was long over. Of course, the kitchen had closed, too, so there would be no dinner. But John had already made fast friends with the young bartenders, particularly the female ones, and was buying everybody shots.

When I parked myself next to John in a warm, safe place where one television above the bar was broadcasting headline news and the other showed a baseball game, I was happy. Not jubilant-just delightfully relieved. John bought me a shot; no Domaine Ott had ever tasted as good. Three days of narrow escapes had finally taken their toll, and John and I were both suffering from c.u.mulative fatigue.

The bartenders arranged and rearranged a large squadron of single-serving airplane-size bottles on the counter behind them, just beneath a big plate gla.s.s window with a view of the harbor. Apparently, in South Carolina, this was the only bottle size that bars were allowed to carry. I could imagine that some good-old-boy who had a lock on the importation of minis also had a lock on a couple of key legislators. It was the silliest thing I'd ever heard of. And yet I ordered another one. John was regaling our new friends (in an increasingly loud voice) with the story of our near-disaster earlier that evening.

"Yeah," said two of the barkeeps, almost in unison, "we saw a container s.h.i.+p coming through here today that we noticed was going way too fast." We didn't need independent confirmation, since we had almost rolled out there, but it was nice to know that these people, who watched the traffic day in and day out, had observed our reckless nemesis.

I decided soon after to call it a night and go back to the boat and the dogs. I slept like a log, and never even heard John when he returned. In the morning, as I made coffee and John emerged bleary-eyed from his stateroom, I suggested that we take a day off. John looked like he was going to weep with grat.i.tude.

" That would be excellent," he said. "You read my mind. I just think that after the last few days, we could use a little R&R."

I tallied our hours underway and saw that we had run for seven hours on Wednesday, twelve on Thursday, seventeen on Friday, twelve on Sat.u.r.day and twelve and a half on Sunday. No wonder we were fried.

After a long walk around the marina complex with the dogs, and lunch at the bar with John, I did some laundry, enjoyed a piping hot marina shower and sat by the pool in overcast weather to do some reading.

At one point, I looked up to see the Ever Racer heading back toward the Atlantic. Still infuriated enough not to care that I looked like a raving lunatic, I ran to the end of the pier, jumped up and down to attract the bridge's attention and then raised my middle finger defiantly. There. That would teach them to mess with me.

That night, I rejoined John at the bar. He hadn't left it since they'd opened at 11:30 a.m. and he was in a great mood. He'd been watching baseball, drinking beer, and flirting with the pretty bartender from the night before. I feared that a certain amount of denial was at work, and that when we had to push off the next morning, John would cling to a piling and wail as we pulled away from the dock.

But he was stoic. He looked a little grim, and perhaps hungover, as he manned the lines and I backed us out at 0800 hours. We had conferred on the best way for me to maneuver us out of a rather tight spot.

The Bossanova has a left-turning propeller, which means the boat pulls to starboard when you are in reverse. I had this in mind as I planned our exit, of course. But the "prop-walk," as it is called, was augmented by the strong current, and suddenly our stern was swinging powerfully toward the dock. I had to turn the wheel hard to port and really hit the fuel to correct us in time. Some idiot on the pier shouted hysterically-as though that would help! But we powered away in time to avoid a collision with the concrete fingers. Still, it was extremely embarra.s.sing and a tense way to start the day. Once we were back in the river, the strong current that ran against us on the way in was running with us as we left Charleston, so we were exiting the channel into the vast Atlantic in less than half the time it had taken us to fight our way in.

Neither of us felt sad to see Charleston slipping into the distance behind us. It was the scene of our closest call so far and our day off there had been more of an emergency Band-Aid than a fun vacation. It was good to be back aboard.

CHAPTER SIX.

O, G.o.d, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small.

-ANONYMOUS.

Burrells Inlet, South Carolina. If you're ever in the neighborhood, stop by. Tucked back behind a strip of sh.o.r.eline north of Pawley's Island and south of Myrtle Beach, it was one of the friendliest places we visited. We had headed in a little early, after a blessedly uneventful day underway. The inlet was easy to run and opened onto a serene and gorgeous landscape-the late-afternoon sun setting lush patches of wetland ablaze with light. It seemed like we had entered another world, a secret spot that was amber and languid. After Charleston, which had been both difficult to get in and out of and very expensive, we were ready for a harbor that was distinctly not commercial. We had found it.

As we pulled into the little marina we'd found for the night, a small crowd of people came out to watch us tie up.

Most of them had beers in their hands, but they were young and old, tattooed and preppy. A little boy hung around his father's knees and peeked shyly out at us. As I went below to make sure the battery charger was on and everything looked good in the engine room, I heard John talking to the folks on the dock. He had secured the lines and then immediately dipped into the cooler of Bud Light he kept on deck. Now he leaned against the hull with one hand and punctuated his conversation with the beer in his other. John knew the answer to every question about the Bossanova as well as I did, and it made me laugh to hear him-mostly because I could have sworn I heard a swell of proprietary pride behind his expansive responses. Listening to him now, you'd never guess that he was a fan of cigarette boats and Carolina-style sport fishers.

Every time some slick Miami Vice-style boat whizzed past us, John would grow positively misty-eyed as he watched it fade quickly from the horizon. But I suspected he was starting to fall for the slow and s.h.i.+ppy Bossanova. Maybe it was the st.u.r.dy way she'd carried us through some rough spots where a fast, planning race boat would have bounced around like a toy. Or maybe it was just another case of Stockholm syndrome.

It's hard to believe two people could spend as much time with each other as John and I did without getting a lot more intimate. Though we spent long hours in the pilothouse together, our unspoken agreement to avoid topics of dissension eliminated most conversational avenues. We whiled away the hours talking about Chapman pals and incidents, telling each other funny stories about our friends, planning our voyage strategy and listening to any kind of music we could agree on, which usually fell in that middle ground that neither of us loved.

The most personal things I ever found out about John were these: right after college, he got married and shortly thereafter divorced; and his previous career was so stressful that before he'd turned 30, he had high blood pressure and terrible insomnia. Both of these revelations surprised me. The John I knew now was a happy bachelor and as fun-loving as they came-a throwback to the Rat Pack. There was something innately good about John, something irrepressibly bighearted that balanced out his many less-enlightened qualities.

But ours remained a friends.h.i.+p built entirely on our seafaring adventure, our Chapman bond and mutual but affectionate scorn for our highly divergent world views. It occurred to me that maybe we recognized and liked in each other the will to walk away from other people's idea of success. We both knew how to relax and enjoy life, too. Whatever it was that bound us, it was working. We were getting along great, despite all our differences, long hours and constant companions.h.i.+p. On later, shorter voyages with people I knew much better, I found my nerves somewhat frayed by familiarity in such close quarters. John and I were a working crew, and we got along like two people who had a job to do but wanted to enjoy it as much as possible. It was oddly ideal.

While John continued to field questions from new fans of the Bossanova, I snuck off with the pups for a walk around the neighborhood, which was about one city block wide, with a main street running down the middle, ocean on one side and wetlands on the other. I sat for a while and looked out at the Atlantic-it seemed so different from this perspective. Here was a beach like the ones we visited on family vacations with our Hi-C and sandy sandwiches, where the seaside smelled like coconut suntan lotion, and the sound of the surf as you dozed off battled with the regular ponks! and occasional laughter of a couple playing Kadima. Here, the ocean was content to mute its destructive force by sending its quiet tide as an insidious invader of the sandcastle you'd worked on for hours. It was lovely, but it bore no resemblance to out there. A good reminder that it's all about perspective.

After I put the boys back on the boat, I joined John in the bar above the little store at the marina. It was a small, quiet, nondescript joint, with a magnificent view of the sun setting over the wetlands. Country music played on the jukebox. To my left was a guy of about 22, with spiky hair and multiple piercings. The bartender was a young lady with a midriff- baring s.h.i.+rt. The fellow at the end of the bar, to John's right, was an older man in a striped golf s.h.i.+rt. John had a couple of beers and I had a couple of vodkas, and we chatted with our barmates, who were, like people we met almost everywhere we went, intensely curious about the Bossanova and our journey.

When the sun had set, we thought of food and bed. I went home to the boat and the boys to see what I could throw together, and John decided to try the seafood place down the way. In the morning, we picked up a few staples at the little store and paid $40 for our dockage. It had been a wee spot of lazy heaven-easy to get to, laid-back and welcoming-a great change from our recent urban challenges.

Later that afternoon, the skies darkened just as we reached Cape Fear, and we decided to put in to Bald Head Island for the night. At first glance, we were happy with our choice. The island was home to a resort community of tastefully fancy houses-mostly large, s.h.i.+ngled variations on Victorian. There were two restaurants-one formal, one informal-and a place to do laundry. There were no cars allowed on the island-everybody got around by golf cart. It seemed quaintly luxurious.

When we got up the next morning to another dark sky and a lousy forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, otherwise known as NOAA, we decided to stay put and get some ch.o.r.es done.

Since we were low on supplies, John and I rented a golf cart to go to the island's supermarket. It was chock full of flavored coffees, $10 sandwiches with sundried tomatoes on ciabatta, embroidered baseball caps and organic Angus steaks, but it was notably lacking in the small basics which couldn't sustain a 200 percent markup. The nearby hardware store sold expensive teak lawn furniture and huge stainless steel grills, but not the batteries we really needed. Just one extra day was wearing away Bald Head Island's scenic patina and revealing a place that seemed more like a stage set than a real town. Suddenly, it seemed that every other golf cart conveyed a blond family in madras shorts and a golden retriever (who was invariably named Max). I found myself pining for the pierced kid from Murrell's Inlet. That afternoon, when the skies cleared and the rain stopped, I felt restless. I tried to focus on being productive, but the day had a wasted quality. I didn't want to be hanging around an expensive marina, twiddling my thumbs. I was ready to go back to sea.

The following morning, the weather was lousy again. We listened to a marine forecast that promised intermittent storms all day, but we decided we just didn't want to forfeit more time. We agreed we would go out but stay close to land and keep a constant watch on the weather.

A few miles offsh.o.r.e, we realized we'd made a mistake. The sea was rough, the skies were dark and we were going to be running in the vicinity of the infamous Frying Pan Shoals, a long line of submerged but treacherously s.h.i.+fting sand and rock that extends 20 miles offsh.o.r.e and sweeps up the coastline. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all, so we hightailed it back toward land. Our compromise was to run in the relative safety of the Intracoastal Waterway for a day or two.

Not long after we turned back, we heard the Coast Guard on the VHF. A pleasure boat named Spring Fever with a family aboard was taking on water off the Frying Pan Shoals. The Coast Guard asked repeatedly for lat.i.tude and longitude but the boat's GPS was down. We could imagine how scared they were, 15 or more miles offsh.o.r.e in lousy weather, in need of immediate a.s.sistance but with no real idea where they were.

In a situation like this, the Coast Guard has a very specific drill. They run through a series of questions for the captain in distress: What is your exact location? Could you please describe your vessel? How many people are on board? Is anyone injured? Is everyone wearing a PFD (personal flotation device)? Are you or your vessel in immediate danger? How much water have you taken on? In this instance, as in others, we could sense the frustration of the boat owner, not from what he said (because we could only hear the Coast Guard's side of this conversation) but because we could hear the Coastie trying to calm him. Sir, I understand your GPS is not working. But do you have an approximate idea of where you are? Could you check the GPS again?

Is it still not working?

Okay, first, let's admit our sinking boater was an idiot if he knowingly set out with a broken GPS and without taking bearings to mark his position on a paper chart. But the Coast Guard dispatcher's persistence was maddeningly robotic. If he didn't get an answer to any one of these questions, he just stayed on it, asking repeatedly. I later recognized that there was probably a method to this madness. The dispatcher is maintaining constant communication and asking for specific information from someone who might otherwise be hysterical or trying to do too many things at once. On the other hand, it's probably infuriating to describe the exact color of your vessel as you watch her hull sink beneath the water. . .

John and I were amazed by the distress calls we heard over the VHF. It was both compelling and upsetting because these were very real emergencies at sea, and never very far from our location. We heard something dramatic almost every single day we were underway. There was a 90-foot fis.h.i.+ng vessel that had taken on four feet of water in the engine room. There was a man overboard. There was a pleasure boat swamped at an inlet. There were several Maydays that the Coast Guard sought more information on after losing all contact. There was a fire. There was a captain who had a heart attack at sea.

We even heard the Coast Guard alert mariners to a plane that had crashed into a bay. John and I took bets on what could possibly be next: an outbreak of s.h.i.+pboard leprosy, a spontaneous combustion, a boat being used as a crack house?

It was frustrating that we often had no idea how these emergencies were resolved. Imagine the suspense: it's a real life-and-death situation, but you don't get to know the ending. VHF action aside, the Bossanova and her crew had a gray and dreary day on the ICW. We ran from 0815 to 1800 hours, taking turns at the helm, as the day slipped slowly away, then anch.o.r.ed off the main channel near Mile 246.

I T ' S ODD T HAT T H E longest love relations.h.i.+p of my life is also the one I think of the most dispa.s.sionately. Or maybe that's not odd at all. Laura and I had probably wrung every ounce of emotion from our partners.h.i.+p long before we came to an end.

I was 28 when we were set up on a blind date. We met at a cozy bistro in the West Village where we drank too much red wine and ate pate. She was three years younger than I, pretty, a prep school and Ivy League graduate, a champion athlete, well-read, relatively up on current events. What wasn't to love? We hit it off and six months later, she gave up her charmless studio in Brooklyn and I gave up my charming studio on Perry Street and we moved in together.

Laura was a struggling singer-songwriter and a highly paid tutor on the side. She really didn't have much money, but like many performers, she pampered herself: healthy foods, long sessions at the gym each day, summers in the country. On the one hand, she professed to adore me. On the other, she would often claim she'd kill herself if she didn't make it as an artist. It's not a statement that falls on the beloved's ears ringing of adoration. I tried to make her see that her life was happening right now-not when she got a record contract-and that it was really pretty d.a.m.n good.

We had close friends and family. We had a dog we were both besotted with. We had weekends in the countryside where we cooked great meals, watched movies, went hiking. And, oh yeah, we loved each other. I thought that should have some small value, at least.

I did everything I could, of course, to help Laura professionally: rallied my friends to attend every show, helped address invitations, used whatever contacts I had to get people of influence to hear her. She wasn't the next Joni Mitch.e.l.l, but Laura had as much talent and dedication as many people who make it-it just didn't happen for her. And she had a stardom clock ticking away just the way some women have a baby clock. Laura believed that if she didn't make it by the time she was 40, she wasn't going to make it, and 40 was no longer terribly far away.

I knew I could never replace the success she wanted, so ours was a strangely un intimate love-sometimes companionable, sometimes stormy, but it seemed as though all of our emotional exchanges, whatever their flavor, happened across a chasm of s.p.a.ce between us. To be fair, I didn't react well to Laura's increasingly hysterical demands on my attention. I had no idea how to make her feel whole and I grew to resent the fact that my best efforts were obviously not good enough.

I realized at some point that though she loved many things about me-my sense of humor, my career, my looks-Laura really didn't love me. She loved a hologram of me, and that was why I felt so lonely, so far from her.

We broke up after four years. Three months later, we got back together. Things were different, though not necessarily better, and two years later, we broke up for good. Six years of my life, and until last year, when I saw her, I felt only friendliness, kindness, a topical interest in how she was doing-not that I didn't go out of my way to help her, subletting her my cheap apartment when I went to Pennsylvania, giving her comments on her proposal for a book about not making it as a singer-songwriter and introducing her to agents.

I could say more about the lousy things she's done since then, but I will take the high road. I still don't understand how I could have spent so much time with someone who clearly cared only for herself. Never mind. I don't even want to know. The main thing is that although I will no doubt make plenty of other mistakes in my life, falling for a narcissist won't be one of them. Thanks to Laura, I've got antibodies galore.