The Water Log

Jonathan Kabak woke up every hour on Tuesday night. He wasn’t exactly sure why. His subconscious might have been worried he’d be late.
He had to be at the seaport by 6:30 a.m. – high tide.
His schooner, the 125-foot Lettie G. Howard, draws 11 feet of water. Jonathan was slightly concerned that she would scrape the bottom of the harbor if they set off after the tide had started to ebb. He’d heard from the ship’s previous captain that there was a shallow section – a mud bar of sorts – and he didn’t want to take any chances.
Jonathan is not really used to uncertainty. He’s been sailing in and around South Street Seaport since he was 18, and he’s been captaining ships for ten years now, but Wednesday morning the Lettie G. Howard would travel a route Jonathan had only navigated a couple times before: for her first voyage of the season she’d shove off from a spot between the hulking Ambrose lightship and the Water Taxi dock, motor through the Kill Van Kull and the Arthur Kill and haul out at the shipyard in Tottenville, Staten Island, for her paint job and mandatory bi-yearly check-up.
If Jonathan is at all impatient as the minutes tick by on Wednesday morning and we are still waiting for two late passengers, you’d never know it. He walks around at a leisurely pace with his arms crossed, directing eager volunteers to his first mate, Denise Meagher, when they ask how they can help. Denise is running around untying lines, hauling big steel coffee thermoses and groceries, directing the lifting and lowering of the life boat that doubles as a tugboat.
“Wow, there are a lot of people watching you,” Jonathan says wryly as Denise struggles to start the lifeboat’s little outboard engine. It’s true. There are a bunch of us onboard – friends, seaport volunteers, me – who don’t really know what the hell we’re doing but feel awkward doing nothing at all when it’s very clear there is lots to be done. We’ve just helped lift the lifeboat and lower it into the water, and now a knot of us is standing there observing as Denise pulls and pulls, and chokes the engine, and pulls some more. “I’ll be one of the people who isn’t watching you,” Jonathan says and walks off.
The sun is peeking just under the Williamsburg Bridge by the time we start out on our southbound journey. Once we’re well underway, Jonathan offers the helm to anyone who wants to steer, then sings some Jimmy Buffet song and points out occasional points of interest. The third mate, David Gunn, shows a few of the non-crew aboard how to check the bilges to make sure we’re not taking on water, which, he explains, is particularly important on the first trip of the season. He shows us where the flashlights are and has us each practice checking. He says someone on the crew will ask us to do a boat check every fifteen minutes.
But then the sun comes out from behind a cloud and it turns into a glorious day, and the scenery – the smokestacks and gigantic oil steamers and tug boats and, best of all, the graveyard where old tugboats and ferries are abandoned to rot and sink – is right out of some Armageddon movie and is not to be missed. We do a grand total of zero boat checks. I think David did them all himself.
Unfortunately, we make very good time. The currents are with us most of the way, and we cover the twenty-plus miles in four hours and arrive at the boatyard almost an hour before we’re expected.
“Big Red,” the little red lifeboat, is dispatched carrying two emissaries to confer with the boatyard guys. They come back an hour later bearing what is ostensibly bad news, but it makes me happy because I’d rather be here than in the office. We can’t dock, according to the boatyard guy; the tide has begun to ebb and the water level is too low.
“What kind of crack is he smoking?” Jonathan asks, going over tide charts.
Shortly thereafter a compromise is hit upon, and we end up tying up to a tugboat on the periphery of the boatyard. Now that we’re attached to land, I feel I should get back to the office. I ignore that feeling, and settle down to a buffet of sandwich meats and cheese and soda and fruit, and bagels and lox leftover from breakfast.
On the long, hot train ride to the city, a couple people doze off. Jonathan looks ready to, but he’s got a couple legs of his journey in front of him.
He’s headed to the seaport to pick up his car, then home to Brooklyn to have dinner with his wife, then back to Tottenville to bring his ship into the boatyard at high tide the next morning – 7 a.m.