The Atlantic Crossing

As soon as the sailboat rounded the point of land that for generations sailors had called “The Lizard”, Steve raised the sails and cut the small diesel engine.  With any luck, for the next three to six weeks, the crossing would be done with wind power alone.

As soon as the diesel died, Steve was struck by how comparatively quiet the boat was.  To be sure, there was still plenty of sound, but each sound meant something:  it was if the waves and the boat were talking to him (and it was not just the pounding racket of what his father had called the ‘iron spinnaker’).  

Steering south, Steve thought the 42’ ketch should reach the Canaries in roughly a week.  From there, it was roughly a month to Fort Lauderdale.  The long-range weather forecast was favorable—not that Steve really trusted it for more than a few days into the future—and as long as the November winds stayed favorable, the small boat should average roughly 7 knots throughout the crossing.

Steve made minute—and admittedly, probably unnecessary--adjustments to trim the sails, then reached a hand over to the instrument panel.  For long seconds, his hand hovered just over the switch, as if the hand itself, was unwilling to flip it on.  “Quit being stubborn,” he thought to himself and flipped the switch with more force than necessary.

For a moment, the only sign that the electronic brain was working was a green light on the instrument panel, then Steve heard the soft hum of electric motors as the autopilot adjusted the sails.  Steve felt, rather than saw, the bow of the ship move slightly to port.  For the next few weeks, Steve’s main job was to watch the computerized autopilot like a hawk, for all of the steering and navigation would be accomplished by a computer relying on GPS data provided by satellites circling the earth.

Steve’s main navigation job was to select the three waypoints for the computer to plot a course.  The first was 50 miles south of the Canary Islands, the second was the channel marker buoy outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the third and last waypoint was a mile past the channel marker when manual control would be returned to him.  Other than hovering over the computer like a worried mother, Steve’s main jobs would be keeping an eye on the weather and feeding himself.  Well, that and the other endless maintenance jobs required by any vessel afloat. 

Though impressed with the accuracy of the new computerized system, Steve wasn’t really sure he trusted the new autopilot.  A writer by trade, Steve knew all about the old mechanical wind vane autopilots he had used ever since his father had taught him how to sail.  You could watch one of the old contraptions and within five minutes, could learn exactly how it worked and intuitively could know what it could and could not do.  A relatively simple system, its very simplicity inspired trust.  These new systems, however, bordered on magic.  At any given moment, the computer brain could tell you exactly where you were, your present speed, your average speed, and even make an accurate prediction of when you would arrive at your next waypoint.  But, the entire operation happened inside its little computer chips, something no captain of a ship could watch.

Steve had written an article praising the old mechanical steering systems for a popular sailing magazine, admitting his bias and stating that the main reason he didn’t like the new computerized steering systems was that he probably didn’t understand them.  He had pointed out that in the early days of sailing, man had trusted to magic to guide his ships.  Then for hundreds of years, sailors had increasingly used technology and math to navigate:  their compasses, sextants, and chronometers were scientific instruments.  Now, with computers and satellites whose workings you couldn’t see—it felt like a return to magic.

Almost immediately, one of the larger manufacturers of GPS navigation devices had made him a proposition he really couldn’t refuse.  The company would install a new computerized autopilot on his boat and would retrofit it to handle the automatic steering system, in return for which, Steve would sail his boat across the Atlantic, then write a new magazine article about the trip.  The magazine was equally enthusiastic and Steve really couldn’t afford to pass up the opportunity.

In due time, his boat was modified to accommodate the new system, the largest changes having been the installation of solar panels and additional storage batteries to power the system.  Unless the weather changed and the solar panels didn’t get enough sun to sufficiently recharge the batteries, it would probably not be necessary for Steve to start up the diesel motor at all.

While waiting for November (the start of the best season for Atlantic crossings), Steve had spent his time learning about the new self-steering system and planning for his crossing.  While this was his first solo crossing, he had been a crew member on a similar crossing three years earlier, as well as on numerous shorter trips between England and the Canary Islands.  Waiting for the weather to be right for a crossing, Steve had found himself increasingly excited about the trip.

Now, with the boat underway and being piloted by a computer that Steve both admired and feared, he decided to do something useful and eat lunch.  Making his way to the companionway leading below deck, he took the first two steps and disconnected the safely line from his harness.  Since Steve was sailing alone, he had no intention of taking a single step above deck without wearing the harness securely attached to the safety line.

The safety line was connected to a jackline that ran down the centerline of the ketch.  If he somehow still managed to fall overboard, the harness also had a CO2-inflatable flotation device.  He had once talked to the captain of an American Coast Guard Cutter who told him that fully half of the bodies the Coast Guard fished out of the Gulf of Mexico were men with the fly of their pants down.  The assumption was that the men had walked to the stern to relieve themselves when sudden motion of their boats had sent them overboard.  Steve had no intention of dying so foolishly.

Until he had rounded the Canary Islands, Steve had done little more than double check the systems, tracking the boat's progress on an old-fashioned paper chart.  Now, on course from there to Fort Lauderdale, Steve had twice inputted small corrections into the system to avoid squalls in the distance, neither of which was a serious threat to his crossing.  Steve knew that he had decided to input the two small detours into the system more to play with the computer than for any actual necessity.  He was forced to admit that he was having some doubts about who the captain of the vessel really was.

Five weeks into the crossing, Steve was just 5 nautical miles off the US coast when his cell phone rang for the first time in weeks.  Answering the call, Steve learned that the magazine had arranged for a photographer to meet him at the marina, Bahia Del Mar, in Fort Lauderdale.  For the first time since leaving Portsmouth, Steve suddenly thought about his appearance and how the photos would look in the magazine article.

Steve unclipped the safety line from his harness and rushed to the head to do a quick wash and shave—he would have to hurry, as the boat was nearing the next-to-last checkpoint, the channel marker buoy.  A single mile past that point, the self-steering system would turn itself off, returning manual control of the ship back to Steve.

Steve was on his hands and knees desperately searching the head’s small locker for his razor when the collision occurred.

Three weeks later, at the Coast Guard hearing in conjunction with the Broward County Sheriff, it was determined that the self-steering mechanism had (as it had been programmed to do 3,000 miles earlier), steered directly to—and right over—the channel marker buoy, rupturing the sailboat’s fiberglass hull in multiple locations.  The collision had probably knocked the captain of the sailboat—the only occupant—off his feet and knocking him unconscious.  He had drowned when the vessel sank in the channel within sight of the shore.

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Note.  This is a work of fiction, based loosely—very loosely—on an actual accident that occurred near Fort Lauderdale about a decade ago.  And, the part about sailors falling off the sterns of their ships while relieving themselves?—It’s also true, unfortunately.

This blog was started 12 years ago on a whim that turned into a stubborn habit, and since then has become an obsession.  It so happens that the first story was about a sailboat.  Since this is the 600th entry in a row without missing a week, it felt only right to make up another story about a sailboat.