Sea Stories: Galveston to Fidel

I have said this before, I didn't know my Dad well. He and my Mom split before I was two and I rarely saw him. What I did know came partly from what others told me; my grandmother, my uncle, people who all had definite opinions about him. As for me, I have memories that are relatively few but quite clear (to me, at least). Once, when I was very young, he showed up at our house and I answered the door (door chain still in place) and this man asked to see my mother. I asked who he was and he said, "I'm your Dad." I closed the door and went in and told my Mom that some man who said he was my Dad was outside. I also remember spending a weekend on a boat he stayed on (co-owned?) with a doctor named Phil (how do we remember such stuff?). Mostly I imagined him based on the little I knew of his work at sea and a wooden frame he made for me with a fuzzy, black and white photo of Mac on the bridge of some giant ship on which he was, at that time I believe, a Bosun's Mate. Don't get me wrong, it was not all dolphins and sparkles. Some of my memories are benign and some are quite dark. My father was not a simple man.

One memory stands out in my mind, though, as TERRIFIC. It was something I completely expected (maybe even hoped for on some level) while being with my Dad; something adventurous, implausible, reckless and, well, fun. It was one of those cases where my description of him to friends seemed accurate: My Dad was a walking Jimmy Buffet song.

This is NOT Ariel, but an Irwin 52 that reminds me of her
 -uncredited photo

For context I will try and keep it short. In late summer of 1988, when I was 23, my father called and asked if I wanted to sail from Galveston, TX to the U.S virgin Islands. It turned out that he had traded his house in Maine for a 52 foot sailboat. Yes, yes he did. My stepmother and half-brother were already down in Charlotte-Amalie and were waiting for my Dad to bring Ariel, their new home, down to the warm waters of the Caribbean.

WELL OF COURSE I SAID YES and I met my father and his quirky friends in Texas. This bunch included one of his shipmates from his Merchant Marine days, Dean, and a "crewman" he brought on because the guy was an electrician and wanted a ride to the USVI. I was to learn not much later that he had never sailed and thus spent much of the first five days locked in his cabin with debilitating seasickness-which wasn't eased by the fact that his cabin was in direct line of the diesel fumes emanating from the engine...And yes, we all told him, to no avail, that he would feel better with some fresh air.

The one time the electrician did venture out was the day we left Galveston and we were still in the huge bay. Mac put him at the helm to get the guy used to it and it ended up a near-disaster. I was down below, unpacking, when I heard Dean and Mac yelling at this poor guy. I poked my head out of the hatch above my forward v-berth to see a huge black mass engulfing my view. Electrician man had sailed us into the path of an oncoming freight ship (you know, those really big ones that carry lots of those big containers that carry things like cars). I still have no idea why he thought IT would move for US-it probably didn't even know we were there. Mac heaved Ariel to starboard and we got out of the giant ship's way, but we took a beating from the wake the massive thing created as it went by. I didn't see much of the electrician after that, until we reached the Florida Keys and he left the boat, for good.

September, 1988 saw a massive hurricane hit the western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Gilbert killed hundreds of people during its trek across the sea, first making landfall on the Yucatan peninsula, then back into the Gulf before making its final landfall on mainland Mexico. At one point the monster storm was a Cat 5 and wreaked havoc on everything in its path and within hundreds of miles in every direction from its eye. We sailed after Gilbert had come and gone, but its destructive force would shape my father's decision making and add some definite spice to the trip.

After we bid adieu to the electrician and stocked upon provisions in Key West the sail was somewhat uneventful, in a gorgeous-I-can't-believe-I-am-here sort of way. Every morning we were greeted by dolphins playing in our bow wake, flying fish landing on the deck (and yes, the bunny hugger in me went and slipped them back into the water whenever they were alive), and huge manta rays leaping completely out of the water. We had left the deep azure blue of the Gulf behind and had entered the pale turquoise of the Caribbean with no fuss or muss.

In charting our course to the USVI, my father made the decision to go down the "back side" or west side of the Bahamas between them and Cuba. The sea in this region is quite shallow across the huge shoal that is the Great Bahama Bank and Gilbert's recent run had played with sea levels such that Mac was not so trusting of his charts. There are countless cays and islets in this area; small, uncharted masses that are not much more than old exposed coral heads surrounded by submerged, jagged reef structures that could rip through Ariel's hull. Thus, Mac made the decision to make the down run closer to Cuba than to the Bahamas. This was no big deal as long as we stayed at least the 12 nautical miles offshore that made up the international water border. The thing about sailing in the Caribbean is that between the sun, the animals, the drift and the beer, it is easy to let attention lapse. Suffice it to say that we got closer to Cuba than we should have; closer than they wanted us to be and they were about to let us know it.

One night, as I was reading in my bunk, I heard what sounded like a fairly large boat coming near us. This seemed odd as we hadn't seen any other boats since we had left the Keys; only far off freighters making their way north. I wandered back to the companionway and came out on deck. Not only was it a big boat, it was a small ship. It looked like some old, rejected Soviet gunship; something you'd see in a propaganda film from the 1950s. This ship, however, was shining its spotlight on us and moving ever closer, readying itself to come along side.  It was moving faster than we were and suddenly I figured I had better run up to the bow and throw a fender over the side so the damn metal boat wouldn't smash into our port side. The ship's deck was significantly higher than ours and any collision would have pitted our gunwales against a metal hull. Just as I threw the fender I was met with something I had never, ever seen before...From above Ariel I saw something jump over the side of the gunship and onto our deck. I was flabbergasted and my first thought was whether this guy was ok. I ran up to him and asked if he was fine at which time he raised himself up, pointed an automatic weapon at me and started speaking fiercely fast in Spanish.

Our "captor" was terrified. He was my age if not younger. I imagine he drew the short straw for who was going to jump from their ship to our boat. He was lucky he didn't break a limb, especially in his leather-soled shoes on a wet deck in the dark on a pitching sea. I had never had a gun pointed at me before and I put my hands up, asked him to please speak "mas despacio, por favor" (more slowly, please), and gathered from the gesturing with his weapon that we should move towards the cockpit where my Dad sat, slightly dumbfounded in an amused sort of way, and Dean was positively doe-eyed (no doubt thinking of stories he'd read of people getting thrown into Cuban  jails never to be seen again). At the sound of my Spanish, the "jumper" (I don't remember his name) relaxed a little and told us to follow the Cuban ship into the harbor.

Once inside the small protected bay, we tied up alongside the Cuban ship and then the Comandante and a couple of his officers came on board. They searched Ariel from bow to stern but not in any kind of destructive or invasive way. On the contrary, they were quite respectful and asked us to move things like seat cushions and to open drawers and cabinets. They confiscated our passports, our charts and then tried to take the radio mic, but it was not removable without breaking so the Comandante simply asked us not to use it (Ok!). As the only one who spoke a modicum of Spanish I was named translator and when they asked questions I would do my best to translate using my high school Spanish and lots of hand gestures. You can probably guess that this was a long and tedious process. Mac had thoughtfully dumped his stash of (for you innocents out there) "tobacco" when the Cubans first started moving closer to us, but he didn't throw his guns overboard. Early in the trip I asked why he had guns and he said that the Caribbean still had pirates but these drove cigarette boats, smuggled drugs and favored stealing sailboats (and killing the owners) as cover for their operations. When the Cubans asked about their purpose, I simply said the only word in Spanish that I remembered for "bird" and that was "paloma" (high school Spanish, remember!). The answer satisfied them as they all seemed to understand the need for hunting (whatever). I assume by now you are getting afraid for us, as these folks have clearly savage intentions for our little crew - not.  The men left the boat and got on their radio with someone further inland; a higher up, we presumed. It was obvious from our eavesdropping that someone wanted to know more about us and was making the Comandante go through the entire formal procedure. So, he and his officers came back on board and started asking us questions. The Comandante was a small, quiet, older man who Mac was convinced was given this gig as a reward for supporting El Jefe during the Revolucion. Could be, but he seemed kind and fatigued and not really that interested in keeping us or filling out the mountain of forms they brought with them.

Late into the night, after telling them every specification of the boat, everywhere we had been on this trip, where we were going and might stop on the way. After copying down passport info, serial numbers from every piece of technical equipment we carried. After looking at the engine, the anchor, the sails, the cabins and everything in between, the Cubans thought they finally had enough info to take back to their superiors. Frankly I was surprised at that point that they didn't know my shoe size, how many fillings I had and my 6th grade teacher's name. But that bit being done, now we just waited. We were tired. My Dad was nervous and I couldn't figure out why. Surely he had seen more nerve wracking situations than this in his decades at sea? I finally asked what was bugging him and he shook his head a couple of times and finally blurted out, "Your Mother is going to KILL ME."

As the night (morning) wore on we relaxed because it made no sense to do otherwise. I wandered to the bow and looked out over what little I could see of the bay. There were a few lights on the pier where the ship was tied and a light somewhere under the water that cast an eerily beautiful glow. I must have zoned out a little staring at the water when suddenly a shadow swam gracefully through the light. The unmistakable shape of a hammerhead shark slipped through the water and brought me back to my senses. Two crewman across from me on the ship saw the same sight and laughingly asked if I wanted to go swimming. That interaction started other crew members chatting with me and soon it seemed the entire crew was topside flirting with the Americana. They were all so young, like soldiers everywhere I suppose and the truth is, they were just like me. We clearly had much more in common than we had differences, even down to the music we listened to ("You like Tina Turner-so do we!"). After a while, Mac suggested I ask them for a newspaper to take as a souvenir. When I asked them, they suddenly got a bit suspicious, as if taking one day's worth of news would somehow shift the balance of power between Cuba and America...But when I explained that without something to show back home, NOBODY would believe this happened, they understood and one of the sailors got an idea, ran below and came back with a book that he presented to me as a gift. The book's title was "Fidel y la Religion" and was comprised of many interviews with the Cuban Leader by a Cuban academic. Frankly, it was fantastic! Where else could I find such a book? I thanked him and asked if he would sign his name, and they did one better, they listed the entire crew on the inside cover. It was, in a word, awesome.

Finally, at about 3am the Comandante asked to come aboard (as if he had to ask?). He told us we were free to go and he returned our belongings. He also said we were welcome to stay if we wanted to until daylight. Mac asked me to ask which would be better for them and he politely said it would be better if we left as soon as we could. It was a very anticlimactic ending to what should have been an international incident! Instead, we shook hands, wished them all well, hoped for a time we could visit legally, untied Ariel and raised the fenders. We motored out of the bay and I went to bed.

The next morning we were greeted by the same gunship coming up to us, but this time it was blaring its horn and the crew was waving enthusiastically in one last goodbye. In our own little way we felt we did wonders for Cuban-American relations that night. And we felt extremely privileged and special. We learned later that before us, the New Zealand, a challenger for the America's Cup that year was being carried by a ship that was intercepted by a gunboat and detained for a short time in the small Cuban port of Punto Cayo Malo. Coincidence? I think not.

My Father, Malcom, Arthur Bedell (Mac to everyone) would have turned 70 today. And although he and I didn't share many adventures together, we shared some really good ones (more on those later). Happy Birthday Mac. With love, always. oxo

Unfortunately, the only pic I have with Mac-1988, somewhere in the Caribbean