Chapter 5: Day 1

And You Thought We Were Uncomfortable on the Vans

Thirty hours on a van in the middle of a rain storm. Greasy biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Greasy, rained on pizza for lunch. Hotdogs and hamburgers for dinner -- with grease, of course. What better time to set out to rough seas?

That bottle of Jack Daniels in the cargo van probably had something to do with why all the people from that van were so anxious to drive the passenger van when we hit Florida. It also had a lot to do with why so many people from the passenger van were so anxious to transfer to the cargo van at the same time.

For me, the day started with a rest stop sometime around 12:30 AM, in Jacksonville. The people from the passenger van piled out into the parking lot of a convenience store, mumbling "Where the hell are we?". The people from the cargo van piled out in the parking lot, alternately shouting "who gives a shit?" and "I'm driving the next leg." I was too tired to consider the ramifications of all this.

Bob Ericson volunteered to drive the final leg in the cargo van, and Paul Meredith volunteered to drive the passenger van. For most of the way, we'd been making pretty good time, when we weren't taking half hour potty stops that is. And, for most of the time, we got drenched. It seemed that there was a rain storm that'd fallen madly in love with our entourage, and all it could think to do was follow us around and shower its affection onto us. Enhancing the gloom of that downpour were several phone calls from Georgia, telling us of the bright, sunny weather that was awaiting us, and that we never quite caught up to. In the end, the rain storm followed us all the way to Fort Lauderdale, and we never got to see Georgia's sunny weather.

It was about the time that Paul turned the helm over to Ron Francey for the final leg that this rain storm caused us a real problem. Ron was somewhat concerned that the van felt like it was hydroplaning on the wet roads, and elected to drive a little more conservatively, or at least nearly legally. Bob (in the cargo van), possibly bolstered by that bottle that'd been passed around earlier, thought that the proper response to hydroplaning was to drive faster, which he did. Thus the cargo van, complete with four people and the only copy of the directions to the marina, disappeared over the horizon, not to be seen for the rest of the trip down.

This, and the fact that it was very early in the morning, put a damper on the giddiness from the previous evening. Those of us in the passenger van got to spend a lot of time driving aimlessly around Fort Lauderdale until we found the other van and the boats.

In the end, I guess we made it to Fort Lauderdale in one piece. I do mean "one piece," because we were in such close quarters in that passenger van, with such humid air, sweaty people, and tons of junk food rattling around loose, that we really were all stuck together into a single piece of unbathed humanity by the time we got to the boats.

We trooped off the vans to find that while Georgia and many of the others were already there, they were also asleep. This was reasonable, as we'd shown up at about 7:00 AM, so we decided to take a quick trip to the Denny's for an ill-advised breakfast.

Most of the daylight hours were spent unpacking the vans, packing the boats, packing the boats some more, shopping for last minute supplies, and cursing the rain. Mostly cursing the rain. After all, the weather in Fort Lauderdale had been in the 80s with clear skies for most of the week, right up until we arrived with that amorous thunderstorm in tow.

There were boat meetings, captains' meetings, crew meetings, pizza meetings, food meetings, and meetings in general. Most everyone got to meet most everyone else, and most everyone got to arrive at the conclusion that everyone else had a nicer boat or nicer crew. Most of this was something of a surprise, due to the last minute cancellation of the Southern Cross, which had made an unexpected trip to the boat doctor to have its bent propeller shaft looked after. As a result of the cancellation, Georgia chartered another boat and reassigned everyone's boat and berth.

This presented two problems for me. Maybe three. One was that I was no longer on the Vanessa Rose, which was coolest looking boat (even counting the Southern Cross). Another problem was that the sleeping assignments given to Robert and me had been changed from an aft berth (which most nearly resembled an actual bedroom) to a forward "V" berth (which most nearly resembled a V-shaped single bed with cabinets intruding on everything). The last problem was that I was handed a tee-shirt with obviously out of date artwork. For starters, they misspelled "Vanassa", and for seconds, the list of boats no longer included the Southern Cross. For that matter, the badges issued to us had equally out of date boat assignments.

Other than that, there were few real high points of the evening. Few, but not none, as Tom Blocher, having decided to take a long walk on a short pier, gave us an inspired demonstration of cartoon physics, when he discovered that you don't actually fall into the water until you look down to discover that there's no pier underneath. Witnesses said they saw him, just as his feet were about to hit the water, holding up an Acme "Oh Shit" sign. After shimmying up a barnacle encrusted pier leg, he emerged relatively unscathed, although he did spend the rest of the evening with a "cat that just fell into the toilet for the first time" demeanor.

Kathy had done an impressive amount of grocery shopping, and everyone else had done an impressive job of bringing all their worldly belongings, so most of the afternoon was spent packing the boats and cursing the rain some more. It was during this time that we were introduced to our chartered boat (the Sea Galls) and our chartered Captain, Judy. Judy filled us in on some of the more delightful aspects of sailing on this charter boat, that included

To tell the truth, the prospect of sharing an enclosed space (with a total volume that's a little smaller than that of most living rooms) housing a wastebasket full of used toilet paper, didn't quite appeal to me. I resolved to not have to go potty for the rest of the trip, although it was still questionable as to whether I could expect any meals to get any farther than my stomach. Not surprisingly, I spent most of the trip looking cross-eyed.

All together, we had four boats:

Vanessa Rose -- Better known as the Nasty Nessa, the "A-List" boat that Georgia commandeered after the Southern Cross crapped out. Its roster included:

Sea Gals -- Also known as the Sea Slugs, the "B Ark." Last into port, first in trouble. Generally the sort of telephone sanitizing misfits that I like to hang out with.

Nueva Vida -- Better known as the Vel Vida, populated by the normal people on the cruise.

Bold Response -- The "Brit Ship," known as the No Response and perhaps a bit bold in its marked lack of living quarters below deck.

While still in port, Robert and I got to pull the first cooking duty, which was to prepare hot dogs and hamburgers for everyone. It was a particularly fortunate shift, since it could be done while still in port, and before everything started rocking and everyone started puking. And, what better material to fuel that upcoming barf-fest than hot dogs? In this respect, dinner went pretty much as planned, and in at least one case, served its purpose admirably.

The last part of the preparations was trying to get all the hatches to stop leaking -- a task that we never made any progress on. The problem in the V-Berth was ultimately fixed by putting a trash bag over the hatch, and putting a boat called a "Zodiac" on top of the bag. That reduced the steady stream of leakage to a somewhat contained, water torture rate of drip.

We set sail from Fort Lauderdale sometime around 9:00 PM. "Set sail" is used loosely here, because either there wasn't any wind, it was blowing in the wrong direction, or we just had our boats pointed in the wrong direction. Consequently, we spent the first few hours under diesel power. This was one of the first nice things I learned about Judy: her aversion to screwing around is so great that she doesn't hesitate to run the engine. None of this tacky sailing into the wind crap that Georgia's so fond of, just put the pedal to the metal, and let's fly outta here!

We had to follow an obstacle course to get out of the marina and into the ocean at large. The marina was on the inside of that narrow island that runs down the east coast of Florida near Miami and Fort Lauderdale, and the first task was to get onto the other side of it. This meant heading the wrong way down the channel, pulling a U turn right after the HoJo's, driving under two draw bridges, past a couple of bloated cruise liners, nearly getting hit by a freighter, and coming so close to an ICBM sub that we could see the glint on the guards' M-16s.

Georgia's original idea for the trip was that in the event of night sailing, there'd be round the clock watches where people would take turns (in pairs) sitting on deck in the middle of the night, making sure the boat was going where it was pointed, and making sure it didn't hit anything. Robert and I pulled the midnight to 3:00 AM shift -- my favorite one, by the way -- but like all other planning, the execution didn't exactly match the planning.

We were driving through some pretty choppy waters, or, whatever they call it, because there was lots of bouncing around. We'd all stocked up on Dramamine, or some suitable substitute, which was a darn good thing, lest the deck get totally covered in partially digested pizza and hot dogs. Judy stayed up for the entire evening, watching over everything.

And the watch shifts were universally ignored. Well, the first one seemed to work as advertised. Gary, Tom and Paul sat up on deck with Judy, and the rest of us, after getting suitably bored with watching the boat smash around on the water out in the middle of nowhere, went below decks to try to sleep.

Now, the first thing they tell you on a boat is that if you have the slightest fear of getting seasick, you should go above deck, suck down some fresh air, and try to do something to distract you from your nausea. Notice how this exactly contradicts the notion of going below deck and doing absolutely nothing but sleeping.

Laying down in the "V-Berth" (the front of the ship, for anyone that cares), getting rocked around in the very section of the boat that hits the waves first, I found that sleeping took some degree of concentration. I'd already discovered on a previous trip that closing my eyes and pretending I was on my waterbed with someone kicking helped a whole lot. It's just that this time, someone was kicking me, and I kept finding myself airborne, which ultimately made my waterbed idea a little strained.

Still, Robert and I both managed to get some sleep, even if we weren't very comfortable about it. Later, I found that people on some of the other boats didn't even consider sleeping in a V-Berth on seas like that as being a viable option, so in the end, I guess we did fairly well.

And, so ended our first day at sea.


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