We're Not Gonna Make It

“We’re noooooot gooonnnnnaaaa maaaaaaake iiiiiit!” Tim cries as he fights the helm with gloved hands, his voice barely audible above the thirty-knot gusts and thrumming diesel engine, icy wind cutting the slight bit of skin left exposed by his balaclava, behind him, river whitecaps flaring up in the bright morning sun. On our starboard side, about twenty meters out, our buddy boat, S.V. Fayaway, a Cape Dory 28, beats across the three-foot wind chop, cresting a wave and showing her keel before plunging into a trough and spreading glittering angel wings of spray; her crew, Captain Avery and First Mate Hayden, look almost like a mirror image of us, one steering, the other standing by to assist with whatever might arise, both bundled head to toe in full foul weather gear, tethered to the boat by the harnesses of their automatically inflating personal floatation devices, devices I hope none of us will need today, the water is far too cold, the conditions far too rough, one who fell in would surely find hypothermia before rescue.

“Not funny!” I yell to Tim, wondering if my eyes are catching the smile beneath my own balaclava. “What did I say about that joke!?”

“We’re not on the ocean yet!” I can almost hear the laugh in his voice as he glances at the chartplotter and compass and makes a slight heading adjustment. Since leaving Baltimore almost four weeks ago, we have spent very little time hand-steering, but neither of us trust the autopilot with what faces us today crossing the Neuse River south to Beaufort from Oriental, North Carolina. After leaving the dock in Baltimore and spending six days motoring his vessel, our vessel for this trip, S.V. Ambition, a Watkins 29, down the Chesapeake Bay and Intra-Coastal Waterway and sailing the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, for two weeks we have waited in Oriental. The first week, for Fayaway. The second week, for a weather window. For the past four days, a bomb cyclone winter storm has cut east across the country, trailing devastation. The worst of it is past, but if we want to catch our ideal window for sailing offshore from Beaufort, across the Gulf Stream, and down to the Bahamas, we cannot wait for the local weather to stabilize. So here we are, motoring across a hellish river on a frigid day best spent at dock. Easily the most dramatic Christmas Eve of my life, so far. “Wow! Jesus Christ!”

I follow Tim’s gaze back to Fayaway just in time to watch her roll her leeward toe rail out of the water. From my seat in our cockpit, I can’t see her windward side very well, but I assume that, like ours, it is accumulating a thickening sheet of ice from spray flash-freezing on the deck and cabintop. We take a strong breaking wave on our starboard side that rolls us as badly as Fayaway.

“This feels a little dangerous.” The humor has left Tim’s voice. I glance at our rigging, our furled sails, our instruments. We’re a little under halfway across the river. Winds holding around twenty-five knots. Part of me thinks we should be sailing. With both sails heavily reefed, the boat shouldn’t be overpowered, and she would be much stabler. Sailboats are made to sail, after all. A gust of thirty-two knots. The headsail we can deploy from the cockpit, but to raise the main, someone has to go to the mast, along the highside, the side thick with ice. Right now, someone would be me, and I don’t love the idea of risking my life to hoist a sail when a mere thirty minutes more of motoring should see us in much calmer waters.

“Turning back wouldn’t be much safer,” I say, glancing back toward Oriental and all the sharp water between. “We’re halfway now.” We could turn back, of course. It might even be a little safer than ploughing onward. But what we don’t say right now, what, perhaps, we cannot say, is that turning back would mean missing our weather window, would mean not getting to sail the open ocean, the very desiderata of the whole trip. The old cliche that it is not the destination but the journey that matters is for us both falsely true and truly false, for the destination of the Bahamas was selected as a landing from the true destination, the ocean passage between. To lose our chance at the ocean, to wait and be forced to hug the coast or, worse, putter down the intracoastal ditch to Florida and then hop across to the islands, would be to never arrive at our most important destination. As much as we want the clear waters, warm days, coral reefs, sandy beaches, and all else sailors associate with the Bahamas, to leave land far behind, to throw ourselves upon the open ocean, to submit ourselves to the test of winds and waves far beyond the reach of safe harbors, to glide abyssal depths and climb mountainous swells, that is what has driven us on, that is for what we reach, and for that we will risk, not everything, we are not stupid, but we will risk, we will sacrifice.

Tim steers our Ambition steady, crashing through waves spraying the boat with more and more ice. Some spray even finds us back in the cockpit, and we get a small taste of the death through which our hull beats. Fayaway has fallen a bit behind and I watch down her bow as she pitches and rolls, her silver mast flailing helplessly against the sapphire sky. I hail them on the radio to see how they’re doing. They do not respond. Either their radio is off or they are too much in the fight to answer. Either way, there is nothing we can do for them. Here on the Neuse, Ambition and Fayaway are together only in shared aloneness. Ahead, the first green channel marker for Adams Creek appears. Beyond, nestled between towering pines, the waters calm, not to glass, but almost. Between there and here, as the waters shallow, the waves seem to grow even more, the winds, funneled by the landscape, howling ever more fiercely. To enter the creek, we must thread between two shoals, as the battering winds try to drive us aground. I wish there was more I could do, but helming a sailboat under power requires one set of hands, no more, so instead I simply sit, waiting, repressing growing helplessness so that I can be relaxed and ready should some emergency find us. I don’t like feeling like I have no control on the water, especially on a day like this. But I know I can trust Tim, fully. He has never let me down, and we have made it this far. We will make it to the coast, and from there we will step from land onto the deep. We have trusted our lives to each other and our vessel, and the next few days will tell if we’re not gonna make it.