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Authors: Michael Hurley
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as I was making way under engine power toward the bascule bridge, I lost my bearings in the channel while looking down at a handheld GPS unit. I was having trouble finding my boat’s position on the blasted display. When I looked up, I noticed the bottom shoaling quickly on the depth sounder. Thinking I must be to starboard of the channel, I swerved to port, then felt a sudden downward lurch at the bow and an unwelcome firmness at the stern that signaled I was aground.
I had nosed into the mud of Town Creek, having strayed out of the narrow and unforgiving channel in my eagerness to get underway. It must have been eight or nine o’clock when this happened, and on the eve of Thanksgiving, no less.
Emblematic of the efficiency of the American maritime industry that I was sure I would miss wherever I was headed, a towboat was on my location in twenty minutes. In ten minutes more, the tow had turned the nose of the Gypsy Moon a few yards in the right direction, and not fifteen minutes after that, I was gliding through the channel, talking on the ship’s radio and saying thanks and good night to the bridge tender. There was nothing between me and the open sea.
Chapter 13
A Wandererâs Vigil
The seas at the entrance to Morehead City remind me of the inside of a washing machine most any day. Tide and season merely determine whether youâre going to get the wash or the spin cycle. On this night, though, the waves rolled in long and slow, and the Gypsy Moon made her way gently out to sea. I chose a distant marker before making the turn to the south that would put me on a heading for Masonboro Inlet, at Wilmington. The winds were light from the northwest, and with her big drifter set out to port, the boat dipped her shoulder slightly and began the familiar jog that meant she was making good time on a broad reach.
Out on the ocean, there was not another ship as far as my eyes could see. The quarter moon was gone and so was the rain, but the clouds obscured the stars. I set the autopilot and kept up a watch in the cockpit until the lights from Atlantic Beach, just south of Morehead City, began to fade astern. With the bow pointed out to sea, all sheets running fair, and the sail pulling well, I set the egg timer above my bunk in the pilot berth to ninety minutes and closed my eyes.
There is something inherently holy about wandering, and that holiness enriches the wanderer so much that the voyage itself becomes the destination. In that first sacred hour of silence at sea, my thoughts collected around the decision I had just made, where I had been, and where I was going. It was hard not to notice that I was alone on a holiday set aside for families to gather around one another and give thanks. Although my solitude was self-imposed, it ran deeper than the mere proximity of people with whom I might have shared a meal and a laugh. It was impossible to overlook that I had come to a point in my life when I was, whether on land or at sea, truly, truly alone.
I had wanted my children to be with their mother and hadnât bothered to insist on a formal visitation schedule because they were already in high school when my marriage ended. But I wasnât prepared for how rarely I would see them. Although it was hard to determine how much of this was due to the alienation of divorce and how much was simply the norm, as teenagers with cars and friends and plans of their own begin to pull away from parents, the effect was the same.
I no longer had a job, it seemed, as a husband or a father. The powerful motivation those vocations supplied had accounted for virtually every success I had achieved since the age of twenty-three. They were jobs I had once done very well, but I was now unemployed in the most abject sense of the word. I wanted nothing so much as I wanted to âworkâ again.
My mind wandered to a church in Aspen, Colorado, where I had spent a chilly Saturday afternoon nearly three years before. It had been snowing
I had nosed into the mud of Town Creek, having strayed out of the narrow and unforgiving channel in my eagerness to get underway. It must have been eight or nine o’clock when this happened, and on the eve of Thanksgiving, no less.
Emblematic of the efficiency of the American maritime industry that I was sure I would miss wherever I was headed, a towboat was on my location in twenty minutes. In ten minutes more, the tow had turned the nose of the Gypsy Moon a few yards in the right direction, and not fifteen minutes after that, I was gliding through the channel, talking on the ship’s radio and saying thanks and good night to the bridge tender. There was nothing between me and the open sea.
Chapter 13
A Wandererâs Vigil
The seas at the entrance to Morehead City remind me of the inside of a washing machine most any day. Tide and season merely determine whether youâre going to get the wash or the spin cycle. On this night, though, the waves rolled in long and slow, and the Gypsy Moon made her way gently out to sea. I chose a distant marker before making the turn to the south that would put me on a heading for Masonboro Inlet, at Wilmington. The winds were light from the northwest, and with her big drifter set out to port, the boat dipped her shoulder slightly and began the familiar jog that meant she was making good time on a broad reach.
Out on the ocean, there was not another ship as far as my eyes could see. The quarter moon was gone and so was the rain, but the clouds obscured the stars. I set the autopilot and kept up a watch in the cockpit until the lights from Atlantic Beach, just south of Morehead City, began to fade astern. With the bow pointed out to sea, all sheets running fair, and the sail pulling well, I set the egg timer above my bunk in the pilot berth to ninety minutes and closed my eyes.
There is something inherently holy about wandering, and that holiness enriches the wanderer so much that the voyage itself becomes the destination. In that first sacred hour of silence at sea, my thoughts collected around the decision I had just made, where I had been, and where I was going. It was hard not to notice that I was alone on a holiday set aside for families to gather around one another and give thanks. Although my solitude was self-imposed, it ran deeper than the mere proximity of people with whom I might have shared a meal and a laugh. It was impossible to overlook that I had come to a point in my life when I was, whether on land or at sea, truly, truly alone.
I had wanted my children to be with their mother and hadnât bothered to insist on a formal visitation schedule because they were already in high school when my marriage ended. But I wasnât prepared for how rarely I would see them. Although it was hard to determine how much of this was due to the alienation of divorce and how much was simply the norm, as teenagers with cars and friends and plans of their own begin to pull away from parents, the effect was the same.
I no longer had a job, it seemed, as a husband or a father. The powerful motivation those vocations supplied had accounted for virtually every success I had achieved since the age of twenty-three. They were jobs I had once done very well, but I was now unemployed in the most abject sense of the word. I wanted nothing so much as I wanted to âworkâ again.
My mind wandered to a church in Aspen, Colorado, where I had spent a chilly Saturday afternoon nearly three years before. It had been snowing
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