Fair Winds, Capt. Mike

Much has passed without comment, as you can infer from the datestamps, or just from having lived through the last couple years yourself. It’s not an excuse, I own this blog, not vice versa. Sometimes what’s inside can’t get down onto black and white for me and it isn’t mere laziness.

I just didn’t want to turn this into an obituary column. Reality doesn’t often consult my wants, more a pity.

The call came to me as we were on big island, trying to figure out where to get Max his vaccines for school -remember when vaccines were an easygoing no-hurry part of our routine? July 29th, or 30th? 2019. Yeah it’s getting on two years. It’s definitely time to put ink on dead tree, or at least electrons on a drive somewhere.

The receipt of the news is still a grey fog shot with hard rain and hot vapor over Puerto Rico highway asphalt- really all I remember clearly until I boarded the flight out to St. Thomas. Sara just reminded me that acutally it was Freddy who called, and that she answered the phone, as I had all I could handle with downpour and traffic in San Juan, trying to bring little Max around to the idea that a quick shot in the arm was certainly worth the amazing payoff in ice cream to follow.

I remember I parked on the margin as quickly as I could as Freddy stumbled through the words, and I dumbly repeated them. Capt. Mike Nisius, was dead. Suddenly, without warning, a pulmonary embolism, aboard their cutter anchored off Charlotte Amalie in St. Thomas. Laura tried to resuscitate him, but he was gone at the age of forty-five, leaving her alone at anchor to cope with what remained, their cat, and dog aboard a boat undergoing engine repair at the early side of hurricane season. She had managed to wave down a passing vessel and they brought Mike ashore, and started to deal with the misery.

I simply switched to auto-pilot. Sara booked me airplane tickets – second time I’d flown in over a decade. Avalon was berthed in Sunbay Marina, snug as weather was beginning to spin up in the Caribbean. It was just a matter of flying out, helping Laura to pick up Mike’s ashes, and help her sail back to Puerto Rico. Freddy and Val, my island parents, were flying back out to St. Thomas after having just returned to Vieques from spending a week sailing around with them. They were helping her get things together and keep together, but they weren’t going to make the passage back to deliver Surely Sea home. I was lucky to have the stress of immediate necessary action to take, to help a dear friend, and to meet an obligation to someone close who passed.

If you know what it’s like to lose someone suddenly and then try to inadequately tie up the frayed line of the part you’re able to reach, then I won’t bore you. You already know.

If you don’t know what it’s like, I can’t really explain it beyond the desolation, hot rage, disorientation, and eventually just envy. Especially with Mike, because as much as it’s uncool to say, in this case, it probably should have been me; I came here to run out the clock as pleasantly and painlessly as possible. Mike had a lot of living he wanted to pursue down here. But humans, at least in this part of our evolution, don’t get to decide to continue living. The end will come for you when it comes. The conversations we put off, that which gets left unsaid just hangs there and follows behind those who remain.

I’ve lost a score of friends since moving to Vieques. It’s a steady drumbeat, a dark feature of living this way. Most of them I had met on-island. With Mike it was different. I knew him before, when I was doing time on the docks at Little Creek. People like Mike and me are not easy to get along with. Of course not – “easy” people can’t do what we do. This life will run them right over. Or perhaps we came here to do this and it just made us more of what we are – cynical, at times ruthless, eager to make sacrifices that would horrify the well-adjusted folk ashore. Maybe I’m just speaking for myself though. Although we shared the big-ticket philosophical and pragmatic points, Mike and I differed wildly in the optional packages, happiness and fulfillment being among them. Mike seemed to have built a better infrastructure there than what I struggle with. Although we often disagreed, I valued his thoughts, I miss arguing with him sometimes more than I miss agreeing with him.

Mike, Laura, and their dog Abby Jean, sailed down here on Float On from Virginia, with his dad aboard as crew. Mike had planned this since shortly after I came to Vieques. This was their jumping off. In the years they had in Vieques, they weathered a couple hurricanes, lost their boat, gained another one. They became invested in the community, worked, loved, and experienced this weird, poorly-defined lifestyle we all come to terms with here. They moved aboard Surely Sea and set off again into the blue.

“Leave it to Mike to go out after a perfect week,” Laura recounted that in the past few weeks he had spent time with his parents and sibs, talked with his kids, went cruising with Freddy and Val, and was in the process of fueling up their dinghy to take Abby for a walk after breakfast when he checked out suddenly, silently.

Laura and I forced ourselves to eat, manage the engine repair, try desperately, unsuccessfully to remember passwords, contacts, and accounts that belonged to Mike which she now needed. Freddy and Val returned yet again to Vieques. We collected Mike’s ashes a few days later and carried them back along the waterfront of Charlotte Amalie under sunny skies that would soon turn to a storm. Laura and I sailed for Fajardo with gale bearing down, that would overtake us. I stupidly chose not to stay put in the anchorage back in Yacht Haven, and I’m usually the most vocal advocate of remaining in a safe place on a bad day. The doppler radar told the whole story before we even weighed anchor. But my mind was closed around the bright proposition of getting the hell out of St. Thomas and back to Puerto Rico waters. The irrational imperative to be back with Sara and Max, to secure Avalon, to grieve at my own leisure overwhelmed my sensibility.

All hell did certainly break loose. The leakless propshaft seal leaked whenever the propeller spun and the engine was unhappy with what repairs we’d made with the help from a skilled mechanic on St. Thomas. It just wasn’t enough. The running rigging snarled and knotted as I struggled to furl the jib and run out the staysail, until we simply had to do with what we had up.

I’d completely and utterly lost my mind on a couple occasions on that crossing of the Virgin Passage. Or perhaps I didn’t have much mind to begin with. I spent more time screaming than usual at a rig I wasn’t completely familiar with, trying to round her up into a tack and being caught in irons and falling away again, no matter how hard I backed the jib.  Laura as always was patient with me and my madness, even as she was clearly all lost at sea. In a white-out with horizontal rain whipping us and the seas building quickly as the trades blew against the change of tide, I consulted a wrapped up cell phone’s navigation app, knowing the sharp teeth of overlapping reefs just windward of Culebra were waiting, and we’d be in a dire position should both engine fail and the sheets remain fouled. At one point I abandoned the helm while Laura dealt with the chaos below deck and staggered through the whipping rain to pull free the staysail sheet from the jib furler without resorting to untying with a knife. Laura admonished me for going on deck without harness or lifejacket and I had to admit I didn’t really have an idea what I was thinking doing it. I wasn’t really thinking. I wanted to lose myself in the act of sailing, become the boat and forget everything else that wasn’t that. But this wasn’t my boat and the immediate danger to leeward was clearly expressed by the fathometer’s shrinking depth. If we were driven onto the reef in this gale, we’d be lucky to escape with our lives, the boat would surely be lost. It was unlikely any help would arrive in time in this blow.

There was a lucky break in the squall line, the rain settled for a minute into a mere downpour, visibility increased and we sighted Culebra’s southwest buoy. We narrowly rounded it and came about safely leeward of Arecife Culebrita. We wrestled Surely Sea into Ensenada Honda de Culebra, threading through the narrow, deep cut in the reef at the mouth. After a struggle to secure the sails and coax the motor to make way back against the wind, we put the anchor down, and collapsed beaten and sore.

Capt. Nate came over from Vieques the next morning to give us a hand untangling the previous day’s mess and then run to Fajardo, a smooth sail downwind with little to show for the previous day’s storm. With great anxiety we planned the approach, weighing whether to summon Sea Tow and pay the cost to get us the last quarter mile to the dock. Somehow we managed to get the engine to spin up enough to get us into the slip at C dock without having to enlist the aid of the tow. The downwind landing was milder than we expected, which was fortunate, since the transmission only reluctantly spun in reverse against the trades. I was so happy to see Sara and Max waiting on the docks under clear skies, safe, secure, as much as our way of life permits.

The near-blind cat Mike rescued just before Hurricane Maria decided to lounge out that night on the solar panels -his usual haunt, except they were folded down and secured. Frankie just jumped over the side into the space they usually occupied and fell into the drink. I stripped and went in after him in the dark. We emerged wet, equally naked, indignant, using the dive platform of a powerboat tied up a few slips down, with a crowd in raucous mid-party, averting their eyes, politely attempting not to add insult to injury, at least until we staggered away out of earshot. But that is living, persisting. It’s how you know you’re still here, wherever and whatever “here” seems to be. A few light feline scratches are almost worth the notice. Almost.

Max, at six and a half years, asked Laura about Mike, where was he, what happened to him, what happens next. In spite of her pain she answered him clearly, functionally, lovingly, and now he too begins to understand this part of life.

So here’s to you Mike, ending on a high note, the high note.

I knew it was time to write this because it’s been almost a year since the last time I inadvertently started to text him without thought. What tech does to us. For the first few months I caught myself doing that at times. Laura says it’s okay, that it helps. I’ve also met him in dreams. He’s always aware he’s gone and seems completely unconcerned about it there. It’s usually at the bar, where a lot of my dreams unfold. I haven’t seen him in my sleep lately though. Perhaps we’ve already discussed all that we can in that venue.

It was almost impossible to put any real thoughts into writing without first spilling this out of the bottle. I’ve emptied a lot of bottles in this time, but these words persist in floating back from the mouth, like chipped cork, perpetually rising up until at last flushing out into the glass of the one who finally empties it.

And in the interim I lost yet another friend from Vieques as well. Not entirely unexpected with this one, but another blow on the drumhead. It’s hard to work up the emotion I should feel. Grief fatigue.

We’re here for a good time, not a long time. Mike would’ve chided me for taking so long to just get over it. Well I’m not getting over it Mike, but I will get on with it. Again.

Laura and the fur-children are in Virginia. She’s become a grandmother of human kids as well – twice. She’ll be coming down to visit in a few months again. We’ll wear masks and sip on drinks at a distance. Or perhaps with our vaccinations the situation will be less dire. COVID is another thing Mike missed out on.

Most of the loose ends have been tied up, or sheared off. At least those I can help grasp. Surely Sea has a new prospective owner. I helped him and my friend Gustavo who refitted her put into the yard at Isleta Marina a couple months ago, to have another go at that damn propshaft seal. I think it’s solid now. The engine hums evenly even at those absurd RPM that Yanmars seem to desire. She is a beauty. Avalon sits across from her at Sunbay Marina now as the winter tradewinds run blisteringly, driving a cold, dry wind below deck and sudden unpredictable squalls briefly cross over us sending our dock lines squealing and grunting in protest.

There are quarantine adventures in plenty to discuss, I’ve spent more time ashore in 2020 than I have in the last ten years. And I’ll have the opportunity to write about them too, I expect.

Meanwhile, next week we make for Vieques to find our mooring in Esperanza for the first time in nearly half a year.