Finding the light

June 2010

By David Roper

Eight or nine miles out, in plain sight, Boon Island lifts its solitary shaft aloft like an ‘eternal exclamation mark’ to the temerity of its builders. There is no comfortable dwelling on that lonely rock, over which storms sweep unchecked. The tower is itself both house and home to the watchmen of the sea, and in great gales a prison from which there is no escape until the return of fine weather.

Samuel Adams Drake,
The Pine Tree Coast, 1891

It was dark and Bill and Sarah had been at sea for about 13 hours on an August night in 1987. They had been able to carry sail all day in their newly-acquired 30-foot ketch, sailing into a light southerly breeze from Maine toward home in Massachusetts.

Now, darkness had descended, and with it dropped the wind, so they were under power, moving at six knots with just the mainsail up. Bill had his eyes fixed on the light of infamous Boon Island, where the British ship Nottingham Galley met her fate on Dec. 11, 1710, her crew struggling to stay alive on the ice covered and lonely rock for over three weeks, finally resorting to cannibalism to survive.

Sarah was standing in the cockpit facing forward in the darkness, feeling the light summer breeze on her face when they hit Boon Island Ledge. They hit with such force that one of Sarah’s knees smashed into the bridge deck, the resulting lump growing to the size of a grapefruit.

Bill had figured his course that morning from the mouth of the Sheepscott River in Maine; he determined that if he sailed a generous distance to the seaward side of Boon Island, he’d miss both Boon and its outer Boon Island Ledge, and also get a more direct course to the Isles of Shoals, where they planned to stop and rest. But though the night was clear, Bill couldn’t seem to find the ledge’s red flashing light. As he became more and more anxious, he began altering course increasingly toward Boon Island itself, figuring from his small-scale chart (which was all he had) that he would clearly be in safer water when in closer to Boon Island than to Boon Island Ledge. He never did see the ledge’s light, even after they hit. Sarah didn’t see it either. She didn’t see it for one very good reason: Sarah is blind.

Here’s the scene from Sarah’s perspective. She’s facing the evening breeze, smelling the sea air, feeling the ketch’s undulating motion in the long swell and the vibration from the engine. Though she can’t help Bill find the light, she’s there in company and spirit. Sarah loves sailing and the work of sailing; she’s always been an adventurous person. The close quarters of a boat are much easier for her to assimilate than the broader world.

She knows every spot on board: all the distances and steps and places for lines and gear. She’s not afraid of the foredeck. And the galley is easier than cooking at home; everything is in a small space with everything in its place. Finally, at day’s end, she welcomes making harbor, where her keen senses pick up the subtle change in motion, the first smell of shore, and the joyous sound of the song sparrow.

When they hit the ledge, Sarah’s senses went on high alert. “My first and constant thought after we hit was, don’t get separated from Bill. I knew if I let go of Bill, I would be truly alone and helpless. I knew if we got separated I would drown. Actually, I was sure we were both going to drown anyway. I could hear water pouring into the main cabin.”

Bill had other things on his mind. He couldn’t radio for help, as they’d lost their VHF antennae in a blow off Seguin Island several days earlier. He told Sarah to sit tight and he shot below. On the way, he reached into the cockpit cooler to feel for bottled water, but all he found was beer. Below deck, he grabbed chart, compass, flare gun and AM/FM radio. Then he headed to the forepeak and grabbed his banjo. “When he handed me that banjo,” Sarah said, “I thought, Gee, Bill must think we’re not going to die!”

The two of them got into their seven-foot, five-inch dinghy and rowed a safe distance from the ketch as she sank down to her rails. But Bill wanted to go back, climb on the foredeck, and throw out an anchor, in hopes of a later salvage. He reasoned, rightly so, that if the ketch could be anchored on the bottom after she sank, she’d stay put and not be swept away by the undersea ocean currents; then he could come back later and perhaps raise her. But, as he tried to climb aboard, the ketch, now with too much water in her, began to roll dramatically, threatening to overwhelm and swamp their small dinghy, so Bill let go.

They rowed away. Bill took bearings, observed wind and waves, and determined that the light they could just see on the mainland was Cape Neddick. They had to choose between going to the nearby but abandoned Boon Island or to Cape Neddick. “The decision was easy,” Bill said, “I had just read the book “Boon Island” and the horrifying story of the cannibalism there after the shipwreck. So that made the decision a quick one for me. You see, the person who gets eaten is the ship’s carpenter. I’m a carpenter.”

They took shifts at rowing. They developed a system for carefully changing seats after one tired of the oars. As the wind began to pipe up, they made less progress, and they feared their tiny dinghy would soon swamp. They had rowed about five miles and still had two to go. To get their minds off their fear, they played a game. “This is what saved us psychologically,” Sarah said. “We are both musicians as well and know quite a few tunes. So the game was that, in turn, we had to come up with a song that began with each letter of the alphabet; we disallowed “Fiddlers’ Green” when we got to ‘F’. We made it all the way to ‘W’ (‘We shall overcome’).

“At 5 a.m., Bill saw a lobsterboat in the distance and shot off two flares, and we frantically waved a jacket, but the boat continued on. At 9 a.m., another boat passed and then suddenly turned around. It was a cruising sailboat from Portsmouth. They had thought we were kayakers and dismissed us, but all our waving finally changed their minds.”

After the rescue, friends organized a concert fundraiser, and Bill and Sarah used the money to hire a vessel with side-scan sonar to find their boat. But the ocean currents had done their work and the ketch, which also had been named Sarah, was gone.

***

It’s many years later, December 2009, just before Christmas, and we’re sitting in their cozy antique kitchen in Salem, Mass., as I conduct this interview. A gentle snow is falling. The kitchen fireplace adds even more warmth to the room. I find out there is another sailboat now, a 33-footer. “Sarah sails her on as steady a course as anybody can,” Bill says. “She steers to the voice of a talking compass designed by an electrical engineer friend who is also blind.” He pauses and pokes the fire. “Oh, and I should tell you we are just now building a house for ourselves in Maine. Doing it together. By hand. And you should see Sarah handle a nail gun when she puts up those shingles,” he says proudly, looking over at his wife, who’s making some soup for herself, tea for me, and occasionally patting her guide dog.

Sarah returns his compliment with an infectious, knowing and gracious smile. Then it’s quiet for a moment, save for the crackling fire. And in that moment, I think to myself: there’s more light in this world than I ever imagined.

Dave Roper sails Elsa, a Bruce King-designed Independence 31, out of Marblehead, Mass., where he lives and works.