Gillian and I were officially retired, Jazz was finally ours, and there was a second bottle of champagne cooling in the galley fridge. Tim had spent a couple of days showing us the ropes. We knew so little, and Tim had so much to say, that it was pretty much a blur. I was glad Gillian was there with me. She was smart. She didn't waste any time trying to understand what she heard, but concentrated on simply writing down everything the man said. Even now, years later, I sometimes refer to the notes she made that day.
"To switch port and starboard fuel tanks, just.... The generator pre-heat switch... the tank has a sight gauge right there", and so on.
Now Tim and Joan had gone, driving off in their new motor home to cruise the asphalt seas. Gillian and I had moved out of the motel and were living on Jazz at the Pilothouse Marina in Key Largo, south of Miami, waiting for Paul Browne, who was driving across Florida from his home near Tampa. Paul was an experienced Trawler Guy who used to own a Pilgrim, When we bought Jazz, Paul offered to come with us on our first cruise to "help with the butterflies."
I accepted instantly and enthusiastically. I didn't let on to Paul, but 'butterflies' was the understatement of the decade.
Tim had let me take the wheel for three or four minutes during the survey. But that was it, the sum total of my experience handling a big boat. Four minutes. And as for docking, get outa here. I had no experience.
Nervous doesn't convey the right idea. It was 'way beyond nervous. I was scared. It seemed I was supposed to get aboard a boat that cost more than your average house, and go ambling around the Atlantic Ocean like I know what I'm doing and then, get this part, bring it back to the marina where I can hit all these other really expensive boats and embarrass myself for life, and dock the thing without destroying the dock or poor innocent Jazz, who has no idea yet what kind of klutz just bought her. These thoughts and grimmer ones ran through my head.
Nevertheless, Paul wasn't due for a few days, and you know how guys are.
I somehow got the idea that we should take Jazz out for a little cruise before he came, just to prove we could do it. When I told Gillian we were going to take Jazz out all by ourselves, she looked at me as if I had lost my mind. She began referring to the plan as "The Suicide Mission"; but to her credit, she agreed to come.
Early the next morning, I started the engine, and started to untie the dock lines. At this point, I experienced a faltering of confidence. I could see Gillian's point perfectly. It was a suicide mission. We might never come back. The Atlantic was a big ocean, and deep.
I shook myself and kept on untying the dock lines.
I saw Gillian holding the VHF (Very High Frequency) marine radio microphone, and remembered we'd both heard Joan make a security call before entering the canal leading to Hawk Channel. The Marina is on a man-made lake at the end of a long canal on the Atlantic side of Key Largo. The canal is so narrow that large vessels can't pass each other, which is why you call on the radio to warn everybody you're coming.
Gillian pressed the transmit switch as if she'd done it a thousand times, and got off an impeccable “Securite” (pronounced secure-it-tay) message.
“Securite, Securite, Securite. This is the motor vessel Jazz outbound on the Pilothouse Canal. Concerned traffic please reply on channel one-six..” I touched her arm. My Babe. What a pro.
I eased Jazz into reverse, still at idle speed, and we backed slowly out of the slip. Fortunately there was no wind. We were free of the dock but I noticed Jazz was backing to starboard, rather than backing in a straight line, and remembered something Tim had said about a left-turning propeller. “It doesn’t matter what position the steering wheel is in. Pilgrims always back to starboard, unless there is wind or current and then they may decide to back to port.” Hmm. Helpful, I thought.
And what was waiting to starboard? An expensive Grand Banks trawler, just arrived, that looked as if it had been recently painted. I realized if we kept doing what we were doing, we were going to back right into its stern.
But was Jazz’s bow out far enough out so I could start going the other way? I leaned out to look and saw we had gathered a small group of spectators on the dock. Dennis from Colorado was there. Dennis keeps a dozen or so fishing rods in a rack mounted overhead in the back deck of his cruiser. Penny and her husband came running from the trawler up at the end of the row. Karen and Joe showed up too. They live on the big ketch down near the marina office. There was also a guy I didn’t know wearing shorts and a floppy hat.
“Keep backing up,” Joe suggested.
“Put her in forward,” said Dennis.
“Try the bow-thruster,” yelled the guy I didn’t know.
The bow-thruster. I hadn’t thought of that. I flipped it on and told it to move the bow to port. WHIRR. Cool. Whoops. Bow to port always means stern to starboard and if we get much closer to the trawler beside us we’ll be scraping her new paint. Try the other way. WHHHRRRR. Bow to starboard swings the stern to port, away from the new paint. Then just a little more reverse and whew, we’re far enough out to turn safely into the channel.
“Good luck!” called someone on the dock. I smiled and waved, trying to look confident, but thinking, “We’ll need it.”
We’d managed to back out of the slip, big deal. Now all we had to do was negotiate the narrow canal, survive the open Atlantic ocean, get back down the same canal without a head-on collision with another boat, and somehow get Jazz back into the exact same spot I’d been stupid enough to leave a few minutes ago. I had wondered why so many boats never leave their slips; I now achieved a perfect understanding.
But I was determined, being too proud to quit now, so we made our way slowly down the canal to the sea. Did I mention the weather was excellent? If this was to be our last day on earth, we had chosen a good one. There were some of tho se wispy clouds you get in the Keys, warm sunshine, and a gentle breeze from the west. When we got out into the Atlantic, Jazz moved easily in the light chop, handling the larger waves easily and totally ignoring the smaller ones.
We left the land and headed further out to sea. Jazz responded quickly to the wheel as I experimented with hard turns to port and starboard, cheerfully crossing her own wake as we went in tight circles. What a feeling, your own boat on the open ocean for the first time. I let out a delighted whoop and gave Gillian a big hug. She hugged me back with a big grin. I was glad to see that she was as excited and pleased as I was.
Not wanting to push our luck, we stayed out less than an hour. Gillian made another perfect Securite radio call, this time saying, “Motor Vessel Jazz inbound on the Pilothouse Canal.” No one answered and we saw no other boats as we returned through the canal. Good. Now all I had to do was manage the docking. I had a paper bag ready to pull over my head in case it became necessary to slink away unrecognized.
Some weeks back, I had a dream about docking Jazz. In the dream, I tried to back Jazz into a narrow slip between two other boats, as I was required to do in a few minutes. The dream docking didn’t go well. I somehow got moving too quickly in reverse and smashed Jazz’s poor stern into a 50-foot sailboat, destroying twenty feet of her mahogany side railing. We bounced off the sailboat and overcompensated in forward gear, running straight into a large motor cruiser in the slip opposite the sailboat. We punched a gigantic hole in her side with our bowsprit. As I frantically backed away with ugly grinding noises, the wind caught us and Jazz was swept helplessly across the marina channel to crash broadside into a new Krogen 48 Trawler at the fuel dock. The force of the impact caused the fuel hose to jump free, spraying diesel fuel all over both Jazz and the Krogen, now hopelessly locked together. Thankfully, I woke up before the fire started.
But that was just a dream and this was real. Gillian looked more and more worried the closer we got. Some of the folk who’d seen us off came running. I heard Joe call “They’re coming back. Let’s get over there.” He sounded worried, too. I was too busy to worry. One hand on the throttle, one on the gearshift, I gently eased Jazz into position, and got her lined up more or less pointing at the slip. We came slowly to a stop. Perfect. The only trouble was, we were twenty feet short of the dock.
While it wasn’t exactly a perfect docking, or even a docking at all, it was - you have to admit - an improvement on the dream. We sat there motionless for a few seconds. I took a deep breath, and moved the throttle gently forward. We crept closer.
Gillian threw a line. She missed on her first try and the line fell in the water. Her second throw was better, hitting Dennis squarely in the chest with the soaking wet line. To his credit, he barely flinched and soon had the line passed around a cleat. I changed gears and used reverse to slow and stop the boat. Gillian kept throwing lines, getting better with practice, and willing hands tied them fast. We gently bumped the dock. I shut off the engine and took another breath. We had done it!
Everyone knew we were soloing, and there were plenty of congratulations and high fives, but the official pronouncement came from Joe, who had been boating since about the time I finally learned to tie my own shoelaces.
“They say that a good docking is any docking that doesn’t involve calling your insurance company. I hereby declare this to be a good docking!” Joe said loudly. We all laughed. A few people clapped.
I shared a smile with my brave Gillian, and felt like a hero.
Press BACK on your Browser or Home