John Kretschmer - At the Mercy of the Sea: The True Story of Three Sailors in a Caribbean Hurricane

AT THE Mercy OF THE Sea

THE TRUE STORY OF THREE SAILORS IN A CARIBBEAN HURRICANE

JOHN KRETSCHMER

Copyright 2007, 2008 by John Kretschmer. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-174306-8

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To my mother, Jeanne Kretschmer

AT THE Mercy OF THE Sea

But it was another thought that visited Brother Juniper: Why did this happen to those five? If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan. And on that instant Brother Juniper made the resolve to inquire into the secret lives of those five persons.

Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

I WAS unusually nervous as I stood to speak. The funeral home chapel was simple, well lit, and generically ornamented to offend no Christian, even a lapsed one. It was almost cheery. But I was feeling unsettled on that drizzly November morning in the South Carolina hill country. Shifting my feet and trying not to stare at the flag-draped casket, even then, just days after my friend Carl Wake had been fished out of the faraway Caribbean, I sensed a deeper tragedy beyond the immediate sadness.

Carls people were hoping that I might offer some insight into what had happened, how his grand plan to sail the oceans of the world had been prematurely snuffed out by a wrong-way hurricane. Perhaps they hoped I could make some sense of his death and explain why it hadnt been for nothing. My voice was shaky as I told the small gathering that I had known Carl only three years. I said that I knew him as a friend, as a dreamer, and as a sailor, which I believed was about the best way to know anybody. I said that I understood the spirit of his quest as well as I understood anything in life.

I tried to continue, but no recognizable words left my mouth, which was probably a good thing. I knewand Im sure many of them did toothat the motivations for his voyage were tangled. They ranged from the familiar desire to escape societys shackles, to a lurking resentment about the life cards hed been dealt, to cautious hopes for happier days beyond the horizon. At age 53 he had stood alone with his fragile dreams.

The dreams of the young are white-hot. Given the slightest encouragement, they burn like wildfire. The young are stopped by lack of means, rarely by lack of dreams. But Carl was not a brash young man with reckless visions. He had been dreaming his last dream, not his first, and it takes an effort of will to summon one last dream when so many have turned sour. Carl had means but no illusions; he was old enough to have learned, in the poet Donald Justices words, to close softly the doors to rooms he would not be coming back to. His greatest advantage was his acute awareness that he had no time left for procrastination.

I chose not to explain to Carls family and friends that his death was haunting me. I had been one of Carls sailing mentors, one of the so-called experts he relied on. I had helped him find his boat and talked him into buying it. I had given him a two-bit pep talk on the phone the day before he shoved off on his fateful singlehanded passage from the Chesapeake Bay to the Caribbean islands. I had been scheduled to sail to the islands a week later, and we had planned a rendezvous in St. Thomas. I didnt tell his teary-eyed nephew and silent niece how I had ignored the anxiety and weariness in his voice, or how he had lingered on the line. Pressed for time, I had assured him that everything would be fine.

The forecast looks good, I had told him with thinly disguised impatience, and the tropics are clear. Youve got yourself a nice weather window. Then, in a big-brother tone the memory of which will always make me cringe, I reminded him that fatigue, not weather, was his chief concern. It doesnt matter when you get to St. Thomas, just that you do get there. If you want a goal, make it before Thanksgiving so you can buy me dinner. Take it easy, Carl. Suck the marrow out of the experience. This is what youve been dreaming about. Dont forget to eat and sleep. Have a great passage. Ill see you in about three weeks, amigo.