One inglorious day about seven years after Peter’s return to St. Thomas, Mama Dohm died at the age of 76. I stood next to Peter at the outdoor funeral service in Red Hook and he never said a word nor encouraged any form of communication. He had withdrawn into a private place that was impenetrable. Mama’s remains were borne out to sea in a boat full of mourners and deposited several miles from St. Thomas in the element that she had loved, that had carried her over the earth for thousands of miles, and that had provided her and her families’ livelihood ever since her birth. Unfortunately, it was also the element to which she had introduced Peter and that had finally lured him away from her.
By then, Brandy’s and my relationship with Peter had matured into a congenial threesome. We had passed many days and nights together sailing, enjoying sea stories, playing chess, listening to music, doing odd carpentry jobs, and discussing politics and the depraved state of the world—depraved, that is, everywhere except on Great St. James, Tahiti, and the Galapagos. One day I cut a clearing under some trees on a hillside overlooking the waves crashing on the rocks and the tide pools. I then began thinking about building a small guesthouse there because of the dramatic view. And when Peter offered me plywood from his supply of scrap lumber on Happy Island, and also a helping hand, I invited him to stay occasionally in our new little guesthouse. And so it was that Peter took up residence for short periods on Great St. James. With the use of a friend’s 17-foot sailboat, he was once again able to go to sea whenever he wished, and he loved the hut hidden at the edge of the woods overlooking the tide pools and the southern ocean that we had built together. There was now only one remaining obstacle in his long, checkered path toward happiness: the relentless advance of old age. Peter was now in his ‘seventies.
Peter had had a cataract operation shortly after returning to the islands and now wore heavy, thick glasses and also false teeth. His legs were thin and shaky, his footing was unsure, and his vigor was declining, which was not surprising for a man of his age. But he still had a barrel chest and was an able worker when we put together the little guesthouse, and no piker either when it came to carrying building supplies uphill. Yet I worried about his agility in managing a boat and being able to see clearly in the event that he ever had an emergency to deal with. And then one day while I was watching him sail out of the cove, he lost his tack in the dangerous passageway that was bordered by the rocks on one side and the reef on the other, which meant that he was suddenly helpless in the waves and wind that were now pushing him toward the rocks. The circumstances were the same as those that had caused Jason’s shipwreck during our wedding festivities a few earlier, and Peter lost his tack at almost exactly the same fatal spot. For it is here that the waves pile up and repudiate one’s bow when it tries to come round across a headwind and move out into the safety of the open sea. (As Peter warned us, and as I should pass on to readers who are desirous of becoming sailors, don’t ever make the common mistake of thinking that you are safer close to shore than out in the open sea, unless you are firmly moored and hunkering down behind a hill or mangroves.) Peter had set out from the calm, easternmost corner of the cove, a sheltered area where he regularly anchored and tied a stern line to shore, and which was near the new guesthouse where he was staying. Thus, his little sailboat was perfectly well aware of where she belonged, which most definitely was not perched on top of a huge rock besieged by the ocean—an important point to bear in mind.
As the vessel now careened toward the rocks, Peter lowered the sails as quickly as possible in the few moments before striking. But he had been unable to furl the jib completely, and so it caught the wind and twisted the boat around as she was lifted by the waves onto a large rock and remained there teetering like a seesaw. Realizing that it was too late to go forward and secure the jib, Peter knew that he had to abandon ship as quickly as possible. While the boat was bouncing on the rock in the crashing waves, he abandoned ship by clambering over the gunwale to a large rock on land, which was no small feat for an elderly man. I ran out along the shore toward the rocks to give him a hand, and then the two of us trudged disconsolately along the shore back to the beach.
Not only had the boat been Peter’s only means of reaching Great St. James on his own or of roaming the islands in the vicinity, but it belonged to a close friend who had implicit faith in Peter’s seamanship. Having been joined by Brandy, the three of us now stood watching the obviously doomed vessel bouncing up and down on the rock as the waves pummeled her. In fact, it appeared that with each bounce the stricken vessel was being corkscrewed by the rock because of the loose jib that was catching the wind and turning her farther and farther around with each wave . . . turning . . . turning . . . until she had turned 180 degrees and was pointing at the beach instead of out to sea. And then it happened. A large wave lifted her off the rock and dragged her back into the water, whereupon the wind that was now astern filled the flapping jib, and the boat began moving rapidly on her own back toward the beach, a distance of about half a mile. We were too stunned to speak. I can still feel the thrill when I realized that a wrecked vessel had jumped off a rock and was now moving all by itself toward . . . toward . . . “My God!” I yelled, “she’s going back to where she started!” I set off down the beach as fast as I could run to keep her bow from striking shore and arrived at Peter’s sheltered anchorage about five seconds after the boat herself had arrived. And there she was, nuzzling the beach and rocking gently in the ripples like a defiant horse that had thrown its rider and then complacently trotted home to munch the straw in its trough. It was the most miraculous event I had ever witnessed on the island. Later, when Peter examined the bottom, the only damage he could find was a few bent bolts that attached the keel to the hull, which he easily replaced. Yes, she knew where she belonged and it wasn’t on a rock.
Oddly enough, Peter, our mentor, the Old Man of the Sea himself, had not left enough leeway for a second tack as he himself had taught us to do, presumably because he had underestimated the strength of the combined forces of the late afternoon current and the wind that pushed outgoing vessels toward the rocks—and what was perhaps more important, had overestimated his physical ability to manage the vessel under challenging conditions.
In fact, this was not the first time that Peter had lost a tack when leaving the cove. On an earlier occasion he had managed without difficulty to tack away from the same rocks that would later snare him and to emerge from the cove unscathed. But while he was sailing parallel to the reef on that earlier occasion and trying to turn the bow across the wind in order to head out to sea he was unable to execute the maneuver. The boat suddenly fell off the wind and headed lickety-split straight for the reef, portending sure disaster. But as I was watching helplessly from the roof of our house I witnessed a stunt that I would not have imagined anyone on earth could have performed, much less a septuagenarian. Peter unleashed a thunderous “damn!” that must have scattered all the birds on the planet, then heeled the vessel over so far that the three-foot keel came out of the water that covered the reef to only a depth of about two inches and skimmed over the forty-foot wide reef with the boat tilted on her side, the mast almost parallel to the sea. Later when he inspected the hull there was not a scratch. The man had skimmed over an entire reef on his side without capsizing! It was a feat equivalent to a cowboy standing erect on the back of a bucking bronco while twirling a lasso over his head and roping a calf.
Several months after the episode with the rocks at the cove’s exit and the boat’s unassisted return to its anchorage Peter lost a tack once again, but this time closer to the beach in an area where monumental brain coral grew just below the surface. Because he had sailed only a short distance I was able to swim out and give him a hand. But that was Peter’s last lesson about the ravages of old age. He now realized that he was no longer able to manage a boat alone because of his impaired vision and lack of agility. And so, Peter’s stellar career on the sea came to an end. In addition to being unable to sail to Great St. James on his own, he was obliged to vacate his shanty on Happy Island because of the increasing influx of drifters. He applied to the government for a one-room apartment in a home for the elderly on St. Thomas and eventually moved in. And in no time he had made several friends among his neighbors, one of whom I was privileged to meet.