Captain Reverend Mother

On the second night, I abandoned ship.

In my defense, we were assigned bunks on the overflow boat (the captain’s barge berthed alongside the pier) and in the middle of the night, the harbor started to roll, and the boat tossed me from my bunk. Down the jetty a party was rocking out to YMCA, a song only made interesting at zero-dark-stupid by being sung in Italian. By 5:00 AM, trucks lined up for the first ferry were idling their diesel engines twenty meters (21 yards) from my head. 

Amidst the commotion, I checked the forecast, saw wind building the rest of the week care of a storm making its way from the Adriatic across the Italian peninsula, and did some seamanship math which equaled hotel. Any sailor will tell you sleep is a safety issue. (That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.)

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This summer, my high schooler signed up as a research participant with the Ischia Dolphin Project, in part to build his college résumé, in another part for the dream underneath it, which is fishing. The program takes volunteers sixteen and older, and fifteen requires a parent aboard, so I became his required adult supervision. I went willingly. I like to sail, and the further up the ranks I have gone in the Navy is directly proportional to less time I have gotten on the water. Besides, give me a sailboat over a warship any time.

The research vessel, Jean Gab, is an oak cutter launched in Marseilles in 1930. She is magnificent, the way any wooden boat is, yet old, tired, and loved on a volunteer budget. The ship’s company included five delightful German-speaking volunteers, a US collegiate assistant, and an Italian master’s researcher, first mate, and captain. And dog, Sterna, who has logged more sea time than any admiral I know.

The research is real work. Our captain sat in the galley listening for clicks and whistles captured by the hundred-meter hydrophone trailing in the water behind the boat. We volunteers stood one-hour watches on deck, two observers at a time, scanning for blows and fins, then logged the number of dolphins, groups, and time between surfacing. All the while, sailing the boat and manning the lines.

Every phone aboard was on airplane mode because mobiles interfere with the listening. (A week where the phones stay off during the day is my idea of a vacation!) My son was bored within thirty minutes of his first watch. I understood but said nothing, as an hour of open water with nothing on it is, for me, church.

Earlier this summer, I read Boys Adrift, a book about boys not being able to find their footing, including the hours they are missing with positive male role models who do something real. Then I watched my son stand watch beside Captain Angelo, born on Ischia, who has followed its dolphins and whales his whole life and built the hydrophone rig with his own hands. Angelo also cooks, and cooks well. (Oh, his bruschetta!)

His first research boat sank in a storm in 1999 and took years of data down with it. He bought another and kept going. Thirty-five years of watches helped persuade Italy to protect these waters, a submarine canyon 850 meters deep with seven species of whale and dolphin over it, now a sanctuary called the Kingdom of Neptune.

Beside him is Luca, his first mate and friend for eons, who knows these waters and this boat the way I know the Doxology. They smoke like two men who have already survived everything else. My son got his role models the way we get everything in this life, as-is.

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Angelo is sixty-two, and, like all sea captains, he must relinquish command at some point. Thirty-five years of volunteers, though, no successor has come aboard. Or maybe she has?

Our first day of sailing, Angelo’s eight-year-old daughter stayed ashore with her mother, and later that night, when I asked her mom about their day, she said their daughter played “travel” all afternoon, rolling a little suitcase through the house and packing her dolls for the next voyage. Among them, her stuffed octopus, Polpetta, a name meaning meatball and sounding like the Italian word for octopus (polpo).

Years ago, in some stuffed animal aisle with my own children, I once saw a plush octopus and wondered who would want such a thing? (At that time, I was limited in my thinking to bears and dogs.) I finally have my answer.

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After two days of empty water, we saw them. Day three, fins galore off the bow, stern, and sides. The dolphins rode with us and the whole boat leaned toward them at once, even Sterna coming to look. Exhilarating is hardly descriptive.

My son was on watch when it happened. The same duty that had bored him senseless earlier now had dolphins in it, and he stood taller for the rest of this watch. 

That afternoon, Angelo and Luca made space at the helm for my son and sat him behind the wheel, where he sailed us home for the last two hours of the journey. At one point, I looked over and there he was, one hand on the wheel and the other holding a small cup of coffee. (Coffee! At fifteen!!)

My son was growing up right before my eyes. He started the journey already called; he ended the week with a subtle rite of passage. Two old salts turning over the conn to someone barely wet behind the ears in a ceremony presided over by a dog.

Buon vento.