May 27, 2005. 0930. 25°41′16″ N., 80°10′26″ W.
I wake up this morning to the sound of Albacore’s big diesels. No, wait. That’s not right. I’m blasted out of my rack this morning by the mind-erasing roar of Albacore’s big diesels. The forward bulkhead in my cabin is the aft bulkhead in the engine room, and I think the starboard engine’s block is actually touching it. When the Captain turns the crank or pushes the button or lets the hamster out of his cage or whatever he does to start the engines, it sounds like we’re under attack by the Japanese. I sit straight up and prang my melon on the overhead again — second time in two days. I roll out of my rack completely forgetting that it’s four feet to the deck; I drop like a rock, still mostly asleep, no idea where the hell I am.
Then I remember: I’m at sea. And then it’s all okay.
Rubbing the fresh bruise on my forehead, I come aloft to find that we’re still at anchor. The wind has shifted during the night, bringing us perfectly about so that we’re facing in the opposite direction, our bow pointed south-southwest. Now I understand why Cap’n Bob was so careful about selecting our spot. We pivoted around the anchor like a flag on a pole. A few more feet on the anchor line and we would have run aground, or worse, collided with a sailboat that anchored off our starboard beam. But we didn’t, and the sun’s peeking over the stern, and the day seems full of promise.
We weigh anchor in some fashion that involves little nudges on the throttle; I’m too sleepy to really follow the details, but I can feel the boat rocking beneath me. Soon enough we’re clear to navigate, and thanks to the wind we’re pointed in almost the right direction. We round the southern tip of an island that the chart tells me is called San Marino and head due west, past another little island called San Marco. A gentle turn to the south puts us in line with the channel that runs beneath the MacArthur Causeway and under Port Boulevard. There are cruise ships in port; they must have come in during the night, because they weren’t there when we last passed this way.
Once we round the western edge of the Port I get my bearings: Dead ahead is Brickell Key and the channel we followed yesterday. We retrace our steps around Brickell Key and under the Rickenbacker Causeway, but once we return to Biscayne Bay the Captain orders us to head due south. He doesn’t tell us where we’re going, and we’ve learned by now not to ask, but from the chart — I’m still playing navigator while Dave mans the helm — I can see that Virginia Key is off to the east and that Key Biscayne lies ahead. I also know that we’ve got to be back in our home port by noonish in order to pick up the parts to fix our starboard generator. “Noonish,” I said. Being at sea imparts an implicitly casual attitude toward shore timetables. We’ll get there when we get there.
Once we’re on course, the Captain goes below to do whatever it is he does. I assume he sticks his head out of a porthole every so often to make sure we’re not doing anything fatally — or worse, expensively — stupid, but I never actually see him do it so I can’t be sure. Dave and I man our stations in silence, thinking our own thoughts. Actually, I’m thinking my own thoughts, since I have nothing in particular to do at the moment. If Dave is anything like me, he’s thinking, “Oh crap, oh crap, I hope I don’t run into anything, oh crap.”
After half an hour, Cap’n Bob returns to the bridge and tells us to make our course four points south of east. Dave executes a smooth turn to port — he’s getting good at this — and points us toward the mouth of what looks like an inlet or a cove. “Hurricane Harbor” is what the skipper calls it.
I wrote yesterday about how things happen really slowly and really quickly on the water. It’s still true. We’re just kind of crawling along with the western shore of Key Biscayne off in the distance, then bam. We’re in the mouth of the cove and there’s land everywhere and I start to get nervous. Captain Bob acts as our harbor pilot, giving Dave gentle orders which he follows in perfect silence. We come around to the left and head for a spot that looks to be about ten feet narrower than our boat is wide. We’re so close to land at this point that I can look through the windows of one of the houses on shore and see that they’re watching “Good Morning America.” I can see what Diane Sawyer is wearing. I can read the names of the magazines on the coffee table.
And then we’re through, into a wider but still awfully small part of the cove. There are some giant yachts tied up here, hundred-footers and more. The closest one off our starboard bow has a full-size helicopter on it. Albacore, at seventy-two feet, seems puny by comparison. Then I remember that Columbus’ Santa Maria was only sixty feet from stem to stern.
The Cap’n takes the helm and nudges us next to an unoccupied dock. He sends Dave for’ard and me aft to handle the lines; I throw a hawser — a four-inch-thick loop of rope — around the dock piling and hitch it to the port-side stern cleat. Dave makes fast the bow line, and we’re docked. Captain Bob disembarks and talks to some people on the dock. He tells us later that he’s negotiating with them to make use of their dock during hurricane season; here on the western side of Key Biscayne, this little cove is well sheltered from the monster storms that will come later in the year. They strike a deal: Bob will get to use the dock, and in return he’ll pay to have their pilings replaced in the fall. Each piling, he tells us, costs about a thousand dollars to replace. I count quickly and swallow hard. Bob lives in a whole different world.
While Bob’s ashore, Dave and I stand by on the afterdeck to handle the lines. Every once in a while, somebody looks up at us and waves. Dave whispers to me, “I wish we had uniforms.” I look down at myself: grey tee shirt, khaki shorts, sandals. I look at him: grey tee shirt, khaki shorts, sandals. “We practically do,” I whisper back.
In a few minutes Bob will return to the boat and we’ll cast off, heading back across Biscayne Bay to our home port. There we’ll get the parts we need to fix the starboard generator, and then we’ll be off down the Keys, delayed but underway at last.
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