Seaworthy Page 6

  Two long minutes later, Tim had the cover off the cylinder head that had produced the knock, exposing a series of rusted engine parts. “I thought this engine was just rebuilt. It looks like it was full of water at one time.” Tim’s disgust clearly pierced the din of our surroundings. “Here’s the problem,” he added, pointing at the arch-shaped chunk of steel known as the bridge, which supports the rocker arms. “This is loose. Look, this arm fell off to the side and was banging against the cylinder housing instead of the top of the piston. Jim Budi said this engine had just been rebuilt. Pretty sloppy!”

  “Can you fix it?” I asked.

  “We can put it back together. But we don’t have a torque wrench or feeler gauges,” said Arch. “I guess we can’t make it any worse, and we can’t run it the way it is. But these straight-six Cumminses are great engines, and easy to work on.” Tim and I agreed that trying to fix the problem, even if the attempt failed, was better than doing nothing, and he and Arch went to work at their best guessing for torque, spaces, and lineups of the rusted parts. “These are all loose,” Arch kept repeating, shaking his head in disbelief. There was a lot of conversation speculating on the condition of the parts that were used in the rebuild and the haste with which the job must have been done on the boat away from the docks. I tried not to contribute much in the way of bitching, but I was with the men in spirit in my total dismay at our present situation. I prayed that the engine would be fine to run slowly so that we could make landfall under our own steam and avoid the dreaded tow.

  The engine compartment’s noise and heat finally sent me topside for a breath of air and a look around to ensure that we weren’t in the path of any oncoming traffic. Hiltz and Machado stood in the entryway at the main deck level. They had listened to the shouted conversation that had risen with wafts of heat and fumes from below, so they knew all that there was to know. “It looks a little crowded down there, but if you need help, we’re here,” said Machado. “The engine room ain’t my thing.”

  “Thanks. I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Tim and Arch have it under control. I’m going up to peek at the radar.”

  “I just looked,” said Hiltz. “There’s nothing around. We’ll keep a lookout for you. Do we need a tow? Are you going to call Scotty?”

  “I’m hoping we can limp to Nova Scotia and not have to bother Scotty. We’ll know in a few minutes,” I said, and forced myself back down into the uncomfortable heat and noise. The last of Hiltz’s mantra about his only desire being to catch fish was quickly drowned by the sound of the generator. I felt like an automaton, going through motions without external motive. I was acting and not reacting. Acting as captain was not the same as being captain.

  Arch and Tim were both greasy and rusty from fingertips to massive mid-forearms. Tim’s usual boyish look had turned to a grimace, and his freckles were lost in redness. Arch appeared unruffled, and this I attributed to his age. Tim tightened the last bolt securing the head cover and gave Arch a look of desperation. “I don’t like it,” he said.

  “I don’t like it either,” Arch replied. “But it’s the best we can do. We don’t have the right tools, and we don’t know the history here. We can call for a tow, or we can start the engine and hope it’s good enough. The engine is already broken, Tim. It’s not your fault.” Tim nodded and smiled a brief thanks to his friend for removing whatever he was carrying in the way of false responsibility for our troubles.

  “Ready to try her?” I shouted. Arch crossed his fingers and stepped back from the engine. Tim hovered over the work site and chewed his lower lip. I hit the toggle starting the Cummins and listened intently, poised to shut the engine back down if necessary. She sounded good. Could we be this lucky? The prospect of success scintillated in a far corner of my mind. I barely dared to breathe. Tim and Arch got busy with the temperature gauge, checking the six-cylinder heads for any sign of abnormally high readings. Satisfied that everything was okay at idle, I signaled that I was going to the bridge to put the boat in gear and try the engine under a slight load. I hustled up the two flights of stairs while the men took positions to relay verbal commands from wheelhouse to bilge.

  I put the boat in gear with every ounce of anticipation in the balance, waiting for an explosion—or nothing. The engine could suddenly seize up, catch fire, or come unglued, I knew. Or it could run smoothly all the way to the fishing grounds and then blow up. Or it could be fine for the next several years. I hoped that Timmy was clear of the engine as I pushed the throttle up a hair. I recalled a generator aboard the Hannah Boden that blew up because of lack of oil. A red-hot chunk of steel from the block had flown across the engine room and directly into the engineer’s boot, where it traveled down to the top of his foot and burned a deep and dirty hole before he could get the boot off. I yelled to Hiltz to tell Timmy to stand back from the engine and heard the request echo down through the chain of voices before I dared to ease on more throttle.

  We were up to 1,100 rpm, and I was as nervous as anyone would be after lighting a fuse and wondering if that particular firecracker would be a dud or a bell ringer. Waiting for an explosion that may or may not happen is a strange feeling, and one that I had never experienced at the hands of my means of propulsion. The tipping point was 1,150 rpm. I hadn’t removed my hand from the throttle control when I heard the clatter from below. The knocking was worse this time around, as if someone were inside the engine and trying to get out with a sledgehammer. I heard the screams come up the chain to kill the engine, and I had already done so when the last link yelled, “Shut her down!”

  “No shit,” I whispered to myself. This was absolutely the worst of all possible scenarios. Twenty-four hours into my epic comeback trip, and here I was, drifting with a blown engine. “Fuck,” I said, a little louder.

  “We’re done, Linny. I guess you better call for a tow,” Arch said matter-of-factly. “I have to go down and cheer up the guys. They’re all bummed out. Things could be a lot worse. I mean, no one’s hurt or dying, right? It’s just a machine, and it can be fixed.” And his neatly combed blond head vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving me behind to come to grips with the fact that I had a lot to learn from Archie’s reaction and attitude. A much younger Linda Greenlaw would have been enraged at this point and savagely lashing out at anyone and anything. A younger me would throw things and use language that even the crew would find crude. Now I seemed to be adopting a never-let-them-see-you-sweat style of dealing. The out-of-body-experience feeling lingered with the perception of myself as not doing anything. Was this a complication that had come with my newfound, mature confidence? I finally resolved that this change was just part of a natural evolution, not a conscious effort to appear cool. I remembered the last flat tire I’d had, and knew I hadn’t kicked it even without witnesses. Maybe land-based Linda had imprinted onto seagoing Linda.

  “Eagle Eye II, Seahawk. Pick me up, Scotty?” I called over the SSB radio.

  “I’ll bet I could!” Scotty’s response was quick and cheerful. “What’s happenin’, Linda? Come on.” I quickly explained my situation to Captain Scotty, including the part about needing a tow to Nova Scotia for repairs, and never uttered a foul word. I gave him my present position and distance from Halifax, the closest harbor that I knew would have proper support, which was sixty-two nautical miles to my north. “I’m on my way. I should be to you just before midnight. Have you spoken with Jim or Malcolm? Come on.” He asked about contact with the boats’ owner and manager. I confirmed that I had not yet delivered the bad news to upper management and would, now that I had lined up a tow. I thanked Scotty profusely before ending my transmission, as I knew how badly he wanted and needed to get his boat to the grounds and begin putting fish aboard.

  The ultimate exercise in humility was waiting helplessly for someone to come to your rescue, I realized. The prospect of being on the wrong end of the tow rope was something that I could only think of as complete and total subservience. How could I maintain any illusion of being
captainly while in such a state of submission? Because I’d never been in this particular predicament before, I couldn’t draw on past experience to know how to feel or what to do or how to act.

  Scotty had been a friend for many years. And seeing as both of our boats were owned, at least in part, by the same man, he really couldn’t have said no to my request for rescue. I could have called the Canadian coast guard for a tow. But that would have taken longer and been more complicated. And time was money. Every day that we missed fishing was one day closer to the end of the season and one day more beyond the peak moon phase. If we averaged two thousand pounds a day and received four dollars per pound for our catch, we were missing out on eight thousand dollars each day that we were delayed. I was sure that Scotty was capable of doing the same math. Maybe I should have insisted on a mechanic going over the newly rebuilt engine before we left Fairhaven. But we had been in such a hurry to get off the dock with the same calculations and knowing that Scotty was leaving, that thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I’d been told that the boat was ready to go fishing, and I had believed it.

  I fretted around the wheelhouse for a minute before picking up the satellite phone to call Jim Budi. I remembered, way back, putting off reporting a blown generator engine to its owner for three weeks. Of course, running the generator with no oil had led to that calamity. And I had to accept responsibility for inadvertently pumping all the oil out while the engine was running. Not to mention my part in turning off the low-oil-pressure alarm because the ringing was bothering me, which resulted in bypassing the automatic shutoff. This was much different. I did not feel at all responsible for the Seahawk’s present mechanical malfunction. It’s just hard to deliver bad news.

  I was spared the awkward call when the boat’s satellite telephone didn’t work. So much of the Seahawk’s electronic equipment was outdated, or just plain broken and not repaired, that I wasn’t surprised to hear the faint, hollow ringing of dead air in the phone’s handset. Archie appeared with his phone just as I was getting ready to radio Scotty and ask that he use his phone to relay my predicament to our shared boss. “Do you need my phone? That thing”—Arch pointed to the boat’s phone—“is a piece of junk. Can you believe the engine? That was the only part of the boat I wasn’t worried about.” Arch screwed the antenna wire into the bottom of the bulky phone and held it out for me to use.

  I found Jim Budi’s cell-phone number on the margin of the chart where I had scribbled it. I dialed. He answered. I reported. He responded. I hung up. “Jim will call Malcolm, and they’ll line up a mechanic and let us know what the arrangements are,” I said to Arch. “Scotty will be here in about six hours. The shaft will need to be secured before we get hooked up with the towline,” I said, thinking out loud. “Is there any chain aboard?” I asked, knowing that chain was the only reliable way to lash down the propeller shaft to keep it from turning while we were being towed. If the shaft spins without the engine running, there is no oil cooling and lubricating the reverse gear and there is great risk of frying the transmission. We certainly didn’t need anything more to keep the mechanic employed or to further delay our fishing trip.

  “The guys are searching for chain.” I should have known that Arch would already have thought of it. “The coals are perfect. We might as well have dinner. It’s a beautiful night.” God, I wanted to be as cool as Archie was right now. I agreed that we had nothing else to do until Scotty arrived, and although I had no appetite, I would happily eat steak and try to think of something positive—like the weather.

  By the time I had taken two bites of my meal, all the positive conversation had been exhausted, making the food hard to swallow. Even Archie had engaged in, and seemed to rather enjoy, bashing the mechanic, Malcolm MacLean, Jim Budi, and Malcolm’s son Putnam, whom the guys had tagged with the name Putz. Complaints were numerous, wide-ranging, and totally warranted. Because they were raging mad, there was a no-holds-barred attitude in my crew’s conversation, and I learned a few things that the men had perhaps sheltered me from during our happier, albeit short, past. Among other niceties, I was informed that the vessel of which I was in command was now known among the crew as the Shithawk.

  The men were discouraged, and why wouldn’t they be? I felt as broken as the engine. But the difference was that I was putting on a “bright side” face. I knew from past experience that if I showed my true colors, I would not stop at verbal abuse. A fire ax once thrown through a television screen flashed in my memory. No, I couldn’t go there. I really had to make a conscious effort not to join the ranks of despair and to hope that the crew would soon follow suit. Leading by example had always worked in the past. But would the crew follow a phony? I wondered. Because all I had to do was wait helplessly for a rescue, I had nothing to lead them toward but a good attitude while we waited. I’d said before that fishermen have two ways of talking about bad situations: “This sucks” and “This really sucks.” Well, this really sucked. The confusion created by the conflict between inward toil and outward calm resulted in my feeling like a total android.

  I spent the dinner hour running back and forth between the galley and the wheelhouse, like a toy on a string, reporting no news to the crew. Scotty had radioed to tell me that he was communicating with Malcolm, as the boss could not get through to me on the Seahawk’s satellite phone. This suited me fine, as I really had no control over the arrangements and had no real opinion other than that I hoped we would not be laid up at the dock for long. This did not need to be voiced, as I knew it was in everyone’s best interest to get our show back on the road as quickly as possible. At the very end of the line of decisions, opinions, and communication, I felt that this was the beginning of the end for my captaincy. I felt the burden of responsibility to my crew more than ever. I knew they were doing the math in their own heads and feeling gloomy about opportunities being missed, financial ones as well as life experiences.

  Our schedule hinged on how serious the damage was to the engine and how accessible parts would be. I recalled a total rebuild on the Hannah Boden’s main engine done in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and a generator repair I endured aboard the Gloria Dawn in Province-town, Massachusetts. In both cases my crew was virtually ready for detox by the time we were back under way, and we had been forbidden by officials to return to either harbor. Both of these episodes were the sort that created sleepless nights. I didn’t mention these stories to my crew. But my experiences with repairs in ports other than the vessel’s home were uniformly long and unpleasant. Every day we spent at the dock was another day further off the moon we’d be when we got fishing. I didn’t mention that to my crew either. I didn’t need to, I realized as I listened to the tales of woe coming from around the galley table. The men all had similar catastrophic experiences and seemed to be engaged in a game of one-upmanship, swapping stories that grew in anguish as they proceeded. When I could no longer bear the hangdog faces, I reminded the group that we should be ready to receive the towline before Scotty arrived.

  The securing of the shaft became an ordeal unto itself. Rather than a small chore you do in preparation to be towed by another vessel, it was our entire world. There wasn’t chain, there was chain, there wasn’t enough chain, there was too much chain… . We could jam pipe wrenches onto the shaft, no we couldn’t, yes we could, watch this, it didn’t work… . Okay, we’ll use the chain. There were no shackles, there were shackles, there was nothing to shackle to, the shackles were too large for the chain… . The shackles could be ground to size, no they couldn’t, the grinder didn’t work, Arch fixed it, no he didn’t, yes he did… . Another shackle could be stolen from the end of a stay wire, no it couldn’t, yes it could… . It would be dangerous, no it wouldn’t, the weather will be good, what if it isn’t? “Tim is an idiot.” “Dave doesn’t know what he’s doing.” “I will not be responsible if this doesn’t work.” “Someone’s gonna get hurt if that thing lets go.” “He’s a jerk.” “He’s a fuckin’ jerk.”

  “Now, you’ve got the shaft al
l secure, right?” Scotty asked over the radio as he approached from the northeast.

  “Roger, Scotty. We’re all set here. Thanks for coming to help. I really appreciate it and will gladly return the favor anytime. Over.”

  “I know that, Linda. Let’s hope you don’t have to. Come on!” Scotty was professional and gracious. The assistance he was providing would not only screw up his schedule but would cost him fuel and fishing time. It might cost him the most sought-after berth on the fishing grounds if this delay allowed another competitor to slip in before Scotty arrived. Yet he didn’t mention it. For that I was grateful. I could not recall ever feeling so humble. Although fitting, it wasn’t a feeling that I enjoyed. In fact, I much preferred pride. But at the moment I had nothing to be proud of.

  It was just midnight when the lights I’d been watching on the horizon grew into the silhouette of the Eagle Eye II. The weather was still enough for Scotty to maneuver into place without waiting for the help of daylight. My crew stood on the bow, braced to receive a tag line from Scotty’s partial crew who were in the stern of their boat ready to toss it. I watched helplessly through the wheelhouse windows as their stern swung around directly in front of my bow. The line was tossed and caught. My crew pulled, hand over hand, until the double-ended cable bridle came aboard. They quickly drew the ends of the bridle through chocks on either side of the stem and placed both eyes over the bit in the center of the bow. My men left the bow for safety reasons, and I gave Scotty the okay over the radio to tow away.