Charleston City Marina is staffed by platoons of mannerly and officious southern boys in starched uniforms who no doubt come from what in an earlier day might have been called the “better families.” They gave no appearance in the least of needing my business or my money, but they required a considerable sum of the latter for the privilege of taking on the Gypsy Moon until repairs could be completed.
I spent the next four hours maneuvering a wheelbarrow up and down the ramps of the marina, offloading a mountain of supplies and provisions from the Gypsy Moon into a rented compact car. I wasn’t altogether sure how extensive the needed engine repairs would be or whether I could afford them. I was also, in my heart of hearts, less enamored of the idea of continuing the voyage than I had been two days earlier. What had once seemed so exciting and adventurous in the telling was turning out to be damned lonely and expensive in the doing. Feverish thoughts again came of selling the boat. I knew that would be rash, but I decided to strip her of anything of added value before I drove back to Raleigh. I wanted to be ready to let her go, if it came to that.
This experience of remorse and others like it, as the voyage continued, taught me something about myself. I know that I come too quickly to these overreactions of despair. I know but often fail to learn that I must give time and temperament their due. At that particular moment, I was greatly discouraged and more than a little embarrassed, frankly, that my once-grand adventure had come to naught. I didn’t know it then, but that fog was about to clear.
Chapter 22
The Sirenâs Song
After returning to Raleigh, I received welcome news from the mechanic: my transmission problem was merely a parted cable that would be easily replaced, and the cost of a new drive unit on the autopilot would come in well south of my worst fears. The voyage was suddenly back on, my melancholy woes were just as quickly forgotten, and Nassau loomed even closer than it had before. With any luck, I thought, Iâd be there by Christmas and just in time for Junkanooâthe Bahamian answer to Mardi Gras. I made plans to meet the boat on Friday, December 18, and set sail the following morning.
Not long after this happy news, another cheerful message came my way. It was a message of the most profound consequence for my life, though I surely didnât know it at the time. A woman named Susan, in South Carolina of all places, shared with me this intriguing prayer in an e-mail: âGod, I wish I lived closer.â It seemed then that Godâs in-box did runneth over.
She was responding to the online dating profile that I, carried away in a gush of hope and narcissism that spring eternal from the same well, had posted on Thanksgiving Day. On that day, after arriving alone again at another forlorn marina, I had resolved to cast my fate once more to the winds of the Internet. For all I knew and truly for all I had expected, my fate had been carried only briefly aloft on those winds before getting stuck in an unseen tree, there forever to remain. The early returns had not been promising. But this message from a lovely lady in South Carolina most certainly was.
Looking at her picture, what I noticed as soon as I recovered from the initial distraction of her impossibly long legs, rapturous hips, and flowing blond hair, and the careless typographical error concerning her age (only one year younger than I), was something about her face, and specifically her eyes. I donât mean her beauty, though beautiful she certainly is. It was something else. It was something new. It was something important.
The human mind, with its power to perceive the finest nuances of emotion, character, and intention in the face of another, is a wondrous thing. A child need only glance at his mother to know affection, approbation, or anxiety. What I saw in Susanâs photograph that day eluded my powers of description,
I spent the next four hours maneuvering a wheelbarrow up and down the ramps of the marina, offloading a mountain of supplies and provisions from the Gypsy Moon into a rented compact car. I wasn’t altogether sure how extensive the needed engine repairs would be or whether I could afford them. I was also, in my heart of hearts, less enamored of the idea of continuing the voyage than I had been two days earlier. What had once seemed so exciting and adventurous in the telling was turning out to be damned lonely and expensive in the doing. Feverish thoughts again came of selling the boat. I knew that would be rash, but I decided to strip her of anything of added value before I drove back to Raleigh. I wanted to be ready to let her go, if it came to that.
This experience of remorse and others like it, as the voyage continued, taught me something about myself. I know that I come too quickly to these overreactions of despair. I know but often fail to learn that I must give time and temperament their due. At that particular moment, I was greatly discouraged and more than a little embarrassed, frankly, that my once-grand adventure had come to naught. I didn’t know it then, but that fog was about to clear.
Chapter 22
The Sirenâs Song
After returning to Raleigh, I received welcome news from the mechanic: my transmission problem was merely a parted cable that would be easily replaced, and the cost of a new drive unit on the autopilot would come in well south of my worst fears. The voyage was suddenly back on, my melancholy woes were just as quickly forgotten, and Nassau loomed even closer than it had before. With any luck, I thought, Iâd be there by Christmas and just in time for Junkanooâthe Bahamian answer to Mardi Gras. I made plans to meet the boat on Friday, December 18, and set sail the following morning.
Not long after this happy news, another cheerful message came my way. It was a message of the most profound consequence for my life, though I surely didnât know it at the time. A woman named Susan, in South Carolina of all places, shared with me this intriguing prayer in an e-mail: âGod, I wish I lived closer.â It seemed then that Godâs in-box did runneth over.
She was responding to the online dating profile that I, carried away in a gush of hope and narcissism that spring eternal from the same well, had posted on Thanksgiving Day. On that day, after arriving alone again at another forlorn marina, I had resolved to cast my fate once more to the winds of the Internet. For all I knew and truly for all I had expected, my fate had been carried only briefly aloft on those winds before getting stuck in an unseen tree, there forever to remain. The early returns had not been promising. But this message from a lovely lady in South Carolina most certainly was.
Looking at her picture, what I noticed as soon as I recovered from the initial distraction of her impossibly long legs, rapturous hips, and flowing blond hair, and the careless typographical error concerning her age (only one year younger than I), was something about her face, and specifically her eyes. I donât mean her beauty, though beautiful she certainly is. It was something else. It was something new. It was something important.
The human mind, with its power to perceive the finest nuances of emotion, character, and intention in the face of another, is a wondrous thing. A child need only glance at his mother to know affection, approbation, or anxiety. What I saw in Susanâs photograph that day eluded my powers of description,
Similar Books
