The Storm of '94

Salt and Crossing

Chapter 15: The Storm of '94

The storm arrived on November 19, 1994, and it arrived the way the storms that matter arrive — not from the forecast, which had predicted gale-force winds and heavy seas and which Harlan had read and absorbed and weighed against his experience and against the Constance's capabilities, but from the water itself, from the channel's transformation, the channel becoming in the space of two hours a thing that Harlan did not recognize, a thing that his six years as captain had not prepared him for, a thing that the thirty-four years that would follow would measure themselves against, every subsequent storm compared to this storm, every subsequent crossing compared to this crossing, the crossing that lasted forty-seven minutes and that taught him what the channel could become when the channel decided to become it.

The morning had been ordinary. The 6:15 crossed in twenty-three minutes, the extra minute attributable to a northeast wind at fifteen knots, a wind that was not a gale and not a storm but was the beginning of the system, the leading edge, the storm's advance guard testing the channel's defenses the way a wave tests the shore's resistance, lightly, without commitment, the commitment coming later, the commitment coming at 9:00 when the barometer dropped four millibars in thirty minutes and the wind shifted from northeast to north-northeast and the wind speed increased from fifteen knots to twenty-five and then to thirty and then to thirty-five, the increase not gradual but stepped, the wind climbing in increments that felt like decisions, the storm deciding at each step to become more, to push harder, to commit further.

Harlan was in the wheelhouse at 9:15 when the 10:00 crossing's passengers began arriving at the Port Clement terminal. He was watching the channel. The channel had changed. The channel that had been a fifteen-knot channel at 6:15 was now a thirty-five-knot channel, and the difference was not a matter of degree but of kind, the way the difference between a pond and a river is not a matter of degree but of kind, the moving water a fundamentally different thing from the still water, and the thirty-five-knot channel was a fundamentally different channel from the fifteen-knot channel, the wind having converted the surface from a chop to a seaway, the waves no longer the short, steep waves of a moderate wind but the longer, higher, more organized waves of a gale, the waves marching in from the northeast in ranks, the ranks orderly, disciplined, the waves' organization the evidence of the wind's sustained force, the force having been applied long enough and over a sufficient distance — the fetch, the open water over which the wind blew, the fetch in the channel limited by the channel's length but supplemented by the bay's fetch, the waves entering the channel from the northeast having been built over the full length of Penobscot Bay, twenty miles of open water, and the twenty miles of fetch produced waves that were larger than the channel alone would produce.

Six feet. The waves were six feet, measured from trough to crest, and six feet in the channel was not six feet in the open ocean, because the channel's shallow margins and irregular bottom compressed the waves, shortened their period, steepened their faces, and the steepening was the danger, the steepening the thing that converted a wave from a roller into a breaker, from a thing that lifted the hull to a thing that struck the hull, and the six-foot waves in the channel were breaking, were showing white at their crests, the white the evidence of the breaking, the foam the wave's surrender of its organized form, the form collapsing into turbulence.

He considered canceling. The consideration was the captain's prerogative, the captain's responsibility, the weight that the captain carried every storm day, the weight of the decision that said: we cross or we do not, the passengers ride or the passengers wait, the island is served or the island is not served, and the decision's weight was proportional to the island's need, the need for the crossing that was the need for the mail and the groceries and the medical appointments and the commuters and the schoolchildren, and the need was real and the storm was real and the decision was the place where the real met the real.

He decided to cross. He decided because the Constance was rated for twelve-foot seas and the seas were six and the margin was sufficient and his experience — six years then, not thirty-four, six years of crossings including three Novembers and eight gales — told him that six feet was manageable, was within the Constance's envelope, was within his envelope, and the two envelopes — the vessel's and the captain's — must both contain the conditions for the crossing to be safe, and six feet at thirty-five knots was inside both.

He was wrong. He was not wrong about the six feet or the thirty-five knots, which were accurate at 9:30 when he made the decision. He was wrong about the storm's trajectory, the storm's intention, the storm's plan for the next forty-seven minutes, because the storm was not finished, the storm was still building, the barometer still falling, the wind still climbing, and the storm's building would produce conditions that were not six feet and thirty-five knots but eight feet and forty-five knots and then, at the crossing's worst moment, at the moment when the Constance was in the channel's center with no option but to continue, ten feet and fifty knots, the conditions that exceeded not the Constance's rating — twelve feet, the rating held — but Harlan's experience, the six years that had not included this, had not included the thing the channel was becoming.

The 10:00 departed. Five cars. Fourteen passengers. The horn sounded, the lines came off, the engines engaged, and the Constance moved into the channel, and the channel received her the way the channel received everything — without preference, without accommodation, the channel's conditions the channel's conditions, the conditions not adjusted for the vessel's comfort or the captain's experience, the conditions simply the conditions, the fact of the water at this moment, in this wind, at this state of tide.

The tide was the problem he had not calculated. The tide was ebbing, the water flowing southwest, and the ebb was strong — a spring tide ebb, two and a half knots — and the ebb ran against the northeast wind, and the running-against was the recipe, the formula that the channel used to produce its worst seas, the wind pushing the water northeast and the current pulling the water southwest and the two forces meeting in the channel's center and the meeting producing waves that were not the wind's waves or the current's waves but were the waves of opposition, the waves of forces in conflict, and the conflict waves were steeper and shorter and more violent than either force alone would produce.

Four minutes in. The first wave broke over the bow. Not spray — green water, solid water, the top two feet of a wave that the Constance's bow had not risen over because the bow had not had time to rise, the wave's period too short, the time between waves too brief for the hull to complete its response to the first wave before the second wave arrived, and the second wave's arrival while the bow was still descending from the first wave was the breaking, the water coming over the bow rail and cascading onto the car deck, the water green and cold and heavy, the water's weight measured in tons, the tons of seawater that the car deck was not designed to hold and that the scuppers drained as fast as the scuppers could drain, but the draining was not fast enough because the next wave arrived before the previous wave's water had cleared, and the accumulation began.

Harlan reduced speed. He reduced from nine knots to seven and then to five, the reduction a retreat, the captain yielding speed to the sea's conditions, the yielding a trade — speed for safety, time for stability, the extra minutes purchased with the reduced knots, the purchase the only option because the only other option was to turn back and the turning-back was not an option because the turning would place the Constance beam-to the seas and the beam-to position in eight-foot breaking seas was the position that invited rolling, that invited the conditions under which a vessel could capsize, and a vessel could not capsize if a vessel's captain refused to place the vessel in the position where capsizing was possible, and Harlan refused, and the refusal was the seamanship.

The wheelhouse windows were white with spray. The spray was continuous — not the intermittent spray of a moderate sea but the constant, pressure-washing spray of a gale, the wind driving the wave tops horizontal, the spray hitting the wheelhouse glass with a force that sounded like gravel thrown at a window, the sound continuous, percussive, the soundtrack of the crossing, and through the spray the channel was invisible, the shores invisible, the markers invisible, the world reduced to the radar screen's green glow and the GPS's numbers and the compass's bearing and the engines' sound and the hull's motion.

The hull's motion was the crossing's new language. The hull was speaking, was communicating through the deck plates, through the wheel, through the vibrations that traveled from the water through the steel through the man's feet and hands and into the body's inner ear, and the language was a language Harlan had not heard before, had not felt before, a language that said: this is new, this is beyond what you know, this is the channel at a state you have not experienced, and the not-experiencing was the fear, the fear's source, the gap between the experience and the conditions, the gap that the six years had not closed because the six years had not included this storm, this wind, this tide, this combination.

He was afraid. This was the fact. The fact that he did not share with Tommy, who was in the passenger cabin, belted in, the protocol followed, Tommy unable to see the conditions from the cabin's windows because the cabin's windows were below the wave crests and the wave crests were all that was visible, the waves' white tops and the gray sky and the spray and the chaos, and Tommy was afraid too — Harlan knew this, knew it because fear in these conditions was rational, was the appropriate response, was the body's recognition that the conditions exceeded the normal and that the exceeding was the danger — but neither man's fear was spoken, neither man's fear was communicated, the fear held inside the way the channel held the current, internally, powerfully, the holding the discipline and the discipline the professionalism and the professionalism the thing that kept the hands on the wheel and the eyes on the instruments and the mind on the crossing.

Twelve minutes in. Halfway. The equilibrium did not come. The equilibrium — the stillness, the balance, the moment at the channel's center — was absent, was overridden by the storm's forces, the competing currents overwhelmed by the wind and the waves, the balance that the calm crossing produced erased by the gale, and the absence of the equilibrium was the absence of the familiar, the absence of the signal that said halfway, the signal that Harlan's body relied on, and the absence was disorienting, was the loss of a navigational reference that was not on the chart and not on the radar but was in the body, and the body's reference was gone.

He navigated by instruments. He navigated by the radar's green circle and the GPS's position and the compass's bearing, the instruments the navigation now, the body's navigation suspended, the feel suspended, the feel replaced by the numbers, by the data, by the electronic representations of position and heading and speed that the instruments provided with their inhuman reliability, their indifference to the conditions, the instruments not afraid, the instruments not feeling the hull's unfamiliar motion, the instruments simply measuring and displaying and measuring again, and the measuring was the navigation and the navigation was the crossing and the crossing was continuing because the captain was at the wheel and the engines were running and the instruments were measuring and the vessel was moving, moving at five knots through ten-foot seas, moving because the moving was the only option, the only alternative to the not-moving, and the not-moving in the channel's center in a November gale was not an option because the not-moving was the drifting and the drifting was the ledge and the ledge was the ending.

Twenty-two minutes. The canonical crossing time. Twenty-two minutes and the Constance was not at the Dunmore terminal but was still in the channel, was still two-thirds of a mile from the harbor entrance, was still in the open water where the waves were largest and the wind was strongest and the current's opposition to the wind was most violent, and the twenty-two minutes' passing without arrival was the storm's arithmetic, the storm having added minutes to the crossing the way the construction zone would later add minutes, the storm's minutes the cost of the reduced speed, the price of the safety, and the price was time and the time was the crossing's new duration, the duration unknown, the duration dependent on the storm's trajectory and the tide's state and the captain's speed and the captain's ability to continue.

He continued. He continued because the continuing was the only thing. The wheel was in his hands. The hands were white at the knuckles. The arms ached — the ache that November crossings always produced, the ache of holding the wheel against the wind's push and the current's pull, but this ache was deeper, was the ache of holding against forces that exceeded the normal ache's forces, the ache a measure of the storm's intensity, the body's accounting of the conditions.

Thirty minutes. He could see the breakwater. The breakwater appeared on the radar first — the solid return of the granite blocks, the breakwater's signature on the screen — and then through the spray, through the brief clearings that the wind produced when the spray thinned for a second, the clearings that were not visibility but were glimpses, were the storm's intermittent concessions to sight, and through the glimpses Harlan saw the breakwater, saw the harbor entrance, saw the dock, saw the destination.

The harbor entrance was the problem. The harbor entrance on an ebb tide with a northeast gale was the hardest approach the Constance could make, the current running across the entrance, the wind pushing the ferry south, the entrance narrow, the breakwater close to starboard, and the close-to-starboard was the danger because the wind pushed toward the breakwater and the breakwater was granite and the granite did not yield, did not accommodate, did not move aside for a vessel that was being pushed toward it by fifty knots of northeast wind.

He had to time the approach. He had to enter the harbor between wave sets, in the relative lull that occurred every five or six waves when the wave train paused, the pause not true calm but reduced violence, the reduced violence the only window in which the turn could be made, the turn that would bring the Constance from the channel's northeast-southwest track to the harbor entrance's east-west track, the turn that would place the Constance beam-to the waves for approximately thirty seconds, the thirty seconds that were the approach's danger, the thirty seconds during which the beam-to position exposed the ferry to the rolling that the gale could produce.

He waited. He held the Constance two hundred yards off the entrance, the engines at idle, the hull drifting, the drift controlled by the wheel and the engines, the engines at idle producing enough thrust to maintain steerage, the steerage the minimum control, the control that prevented the drifting from becoming the helplessness, and he waited for the lull, the pause in the wave train, the window.

The window came. He felt it in the hull — the motion changing, the waves' rhythm shifting, the interval between impacts lengthening, the lengthening the lull's signature, and the signature was the signal and the signal was now, and Harlan pushed the throttles forward, both engines, full ahead, and he turned the wheel hard to port, and the Constance responded, the engines' combined fifteen hundred horsepower driving the hull forward and around, the bow swinging, the stern swinging, the ferry turning into the harbor entrance in the lull, in the window, in the thirty seconds of reduced violence that the wave train had conceded.

The turn was not smooth. The turn was violent — the residual waves hitting the beam, the hull rolling, the roll twelve degrees to starboard, twelve degrees that was not dangerous — the Constance was stable to forty degrees, the stability curve said, the stability curve calculated by the naval architects who had designed the hull — but twelve degrees felt dangerous, felt like the beginning of the rolling that preceded the capsizing, and the feeling was the fear again, the fear that the body produced in response to the unfamiliar motion, the fear that the six years had not inoculated him against because the six years had not included this roll, this angle, this deviation from the upright that the upright considered normal.

He held the wheel. The Constance came through the turn. The bow entered the harbor. The breakwater was to starboard, close — forty feet, fifty — and the wind pushed the ferry toward it, pushed the hull toward the granite, and Harlan countered with the engine, the starboard engine full ahead and the port engine full astern, the differential thrust swinging the stern to starboard and pushing the bow to port, away from the breakwater, away from the granite, and the pushing-away was the seamanship, was the thirty-four years that would eventually accumulate but that were only six years now, six years that were being tested, that were being examined by the storm, the storm the examiner, the channel the examination room, the question: are you sufficient, are your six years enough, and the answer was yes, the answer was barely, the answer was the forty feet between the hull and the breakwater, the forty feet that was the margin, the margin that the six years had provided, the margin that the thirty-four years would widen with each subsequent storm, each subsequent November, each subsequent crossing that added its knowledge to the body's accumulation.

The Constance docked at Dunmore. The docking was hard — the fenders hit the pilings with a force that Harlan felt in his hands, the impact transmitted through the hull to the wheel, the impact harder than any docking he had made, the hardness the storm's last assertion of its presence, the storm saying: even here, even in the harbor, even at the dock, I am present, I am a factor, I am the condition — and Tommy made fast the lines, Tommy's hands on the ropes in the wind, Tommy's body braced against the gusts, and the lines went over the cleats and the Constance was secured and the crossing was complete.

Forty-seven minutes. Twenty-five minutes longer than the canonical crossing. Twenty-five minutes that the storm had added to the crossing, the storm's tax, the storm's toll, and the toll was paid in time and in adrenaline and in the ache in Harlan's arms and in the white at his knuckles and in the fear that was still in his body, the fear not gone, the fear subsiding but present, the way the storm was subsiding but present, the wind still blowing, the waves still breaking, the channel still transformed.

He canceled the remaining crossings. He canceled because the conditions had exceeded the margin and the captain's judgment said no, and the no was the right no, the no that the storm had earned by producing conditions that the Constance could survive but that the captain would not repeat, not today, not in this wind, not with this tide, the tide still ebbing, the opposition still building, the conflict waves still growing.

The passengers disembarked. The five cars drove off. The fourteen passengers dispersed into the storm, into their destinations, into the island's interior, and the dispersal was the crossing's afterlife, the passengers carrying the crossing with them, carrying the forty-seven minutes and the ten-foot seas and the spray and the roll and the fear in their bodies, carrying the crossing's story, the story that would be told on the island and in Port Clement and at Mere's store and at the harbor and anywhere that people gathered and talked about the weather and the ferry and the channel, the story that would become the storm's record, the storm's archive, the story of the November crossing that lasted forty-seven minutes and that the captain made and that the captain survived and that the captain never forgot.

Harlan sat in the wheelhouse. He sat — he did not stand, the standing impossible, the arms and the legs and the back refusing the standing, the body insisting on the sitting, the sitting the body's demand after forty-seven minutes of bracing and holding and countering — and he sat in the chair that he did not usually sit in and he looked at the harbor and the wind and the spray and the waves that were still breaking at the harbor entrance, the waves still marching, still organized, still the evidence of the storm's sustained force.

He drank coffee from the thermos. The coffee was cold. The coffee had been cold for hours — the thermos's insulation adequate for the normal crossing's duration but not adequate for the storm's extended crossing, the cold coffee a small indignity, a trivial consequence of the extraordinary conditions, and the trivial consequence was the one he noticed, the one that registered, the cold coffee the detail that the body selected from the storm's overwhelming catalogue of details, the body choosing the small thing because the small thing was manageable, was comprehensible, was a fact that the mind could hold without shaking.

He learned from the storm. He learned not to cross when the ebb opposed a northeast gale above thirty-five knots. He learned that the equilibrium disappeared in heavy weather, that the body's navigational reference was unreliable when the conditions exceeded the body's experience, that the instruments were the navigation when the feel was overwhelmed. He learned that the harbor entrance on an ebb tide in a gale required a lull, required the timing, required the waiting. He learned that forty feet of margin between the hull and the breakwater was not enough, was the survival margin, was the distance that separated the crossing from the catastrophe.

He annotated the chart. He drew a small pencil note at the channel's center — "NE 45+ w/spring ebb: 10ft breaking, NO EQUILIBRIUM" — and the note was the storm's record on the chart, the chart's absorption of the storm's lesson, the lesson inscribed in pencil on the government paper, the lesson that would be visible to anyone who read the chart and that would be understood only by the man who had written it, the man who had held the wheel for forty-seven minutes and who had felt the fear and who had made the crossing and who had learned.

The storm of '94. The crossing of '94. The forty-seven minutes that the thirty-four years measured themselves against, the benchmark, the standard, the worst case, the case that every subsequent storm recalled and every subsequent captain's decision referenced, the decision to cross or not to cross calibrated against the memory of the morning when the channel became a thing that Harlan did not recognize and that Harlan crossed anyway, crossed because the crossing was the work and the work was the life and the life was the wheel in the hands and the hands on the wheel and the holding, the holding against the storm, the holding that was the seamanship and the seamanship was the experience and the experience was the forty-seven minutes that became the thirty-four years' foundation, the first real test, the first real proof that the captain could cross when the crossing was hard, and the proof was the crossing itself, the forty-seven minutes themselves, the minutes that said: he crossed, he held, he arrived.

He arrived. The arriving was the proof. The arriving was always the proof.