The Canrights wanted to get away.
Their life had all the trappings of contentment: a cozy clapboard house in a leafy neighborhood of Palmetto, a yard as jungly as you can get at this latitude, two dogs, two cats, no kids, a successful kettle-corn business. But to Larry and Sara, married eight years, something was missing. The house seemed a little earthbound, and everything that happened in it awfully routine. The Palmetto city government had a habit of posting notices regarding the overgrown vines on the Canright fence, the traffic around home was horrendous, the neighbors too close for comfort.
So Larry and Sara bought a boat.
Not just any boat, but a barge: a 104-year-old former manure barge from the vicinity of Rotterdam, a plump green sea-monster with wooden flippers.
It was a decision that would change their lives completely.
A Barge Named Neeltje
The adventure began, as so many things do, on eBay. By June of 2004, Larry, 58, had become an insomniac boat shopper. He'd spent his youth in the Navy; in fact, he survived Vietnam intact, only to lose a leg in a car accident in the '80s. Now he had a vision of a new life on the water.
But Sara, 36, was prone to motion sickness even in a kayak. A massage therapist, she'd lived all over the country but had never traveled far by boat, let alone learned how to sail or do marine work.
But when Larry showed her the eBay page of a certain "character boat," she was smitten. "That's it!" she said, taken less, perhaps, with the idea of the boating life than with this particular boat.
The boat's name was Neeltje (Nail-tchay). It was a tjalk (challek), a Dutch barge made to transport goods through the rivers and canals near Rotterdam. For locomotion she had a mainsail and a headsail, and for stability she had two thick oaken paddles on either side, in place of a keel. The cabin and engine were later additions by the man who brought her to America, Dan Rowan of Laugh-In fame. The engine room was once the living quarters, and the present living quarters were in the former cargo hold.
After Gerard Bouman, a member of the original owner's family, contacted them, the Canrights were able to peel back several more layers of Neeltje's past. Bouman, 75, told them that his great-uncle Adrianus had named it for his wife, and he sent them pictures of the Neeltje's home harbor, of his relatives, of Rotterdam, of the woman Neeltje herself.
Larry and Sara loved the boat's sagging, stretching profile and its many-paned green windows, and immediately bought plane tickets to Baltimore to meet the seller. But when they saw the barge up close, they got a big reality check.
Neeltje's size was overwhelming: length 62 feet, weight 35 tons, with a mast the height and girth of a telephone pole. It seemed ludicrous to think that two small people — however tenacious — could govern a ship that substantial. Reluctantly, they said no.
Back in Palmetto, the vines kept expanding and the traffic got thicker.
"By July we were both so depressed," Sara says. "And we didn't have anything exciting coming up."
Larry couldn't sleep at night and monitored Neeltje jealously on eBay. "We had the fever," he nods. "We had it bad."
Then, through Internet searches, he discovered an article by a Dutch barge expert who wrote that tjalken were built to be run by teams of two. He took it as a sign — he called the seller and agreed over the phone to buy the boat for $60,000. The following spring he and Sara dropped their pets with family in Ohio and flew back to Baltimore as the proud parents of a gigantic, ancient baby.
In the Boatyard
At Tidewater Marina in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, the Canrights set about rehabilitating the boat. Sara remembers thinking that "if everything looked good, we'd have it in the water in two weeks."
On the second day, Larry scraped loose paint from the hull. He scraped and scraped and the paint never stopped falling. He scraped until he hit rust, and kept scraping until an 8-inch hole appeared in the bottom of the hull.
"We were both sick," says Sara. "We didn't know what to say to each other." So they had margaritas at a Mexican restaurant, and considered the possibility they'd been saddled with several tons of unrepairable junk. Larry had given the boat a once-over on that first visit to Baltimore. The seller had just installed a new air-conditioning system and generator: No one in his right mind would have made improvements like that to an unsound boat. But if the hull was bad, what other surprises lay in wait?
The couple had enough money either to patch the hull or pay for housing, but they could not do both. So they moved aboard the boat.
Their best bet, they felt, was to cadge an estimate from a boatyard welder, but the boatyard craftsmen turned out to be unexpectedly reserved. They were under the tireless eye of the boatyard owner, Bob Brandon, a man who arrived at 4 a.m. and left at 9 p.m. and fixed a stony stare on the entire establishment, determined that not an instant be wasted in idleness.
But Larry and Sara refused to take the silence for definitive. They acquainted themselves with a welder named Danny. At first, he was unwilling to take a look at the hull. Then, perhaps touched by their predicament, his façade dropped and he blurted out, "I'd do it for free if I could!"
"He said it like he meant it," Larry recalls.
And he did mean it, more or less. After first quoting them a price between $5,000 and $8,000, he charged the couple just a little above the cost of materials and the commission he had to pay the boatyard. Working through the week in the sultry Baltimore July, Danny put clamps on big sheets of steel, dragged them single-handedly by a chain, jacked them up against the hull, and, laying on a boat fender, lowered his visor and lit his torch. In all, he welded 90 feet of steel.
Sara and Larry weren't idle either. Larry attacked the engine, while Sara refinished the wood interior. She got to know Courtney, a 60-year-old, 6-foot-4 transsexual, divorced with children, who worked in the boatyard and gave pointers, in characteristically abrasive fashion, on how to apply varnish and sandpaper. Courtney fit herself into tiny corners, this "scary giant" of a woman, says Larry — a woman whose knees were shot, whose back had been broken once after a ladder fall, who just last year had cut off the thumb-to-forefinger portion of her right hand and could no longer really use it. "Just watching her move was painful," says Larry.
But Courtney was an invaluable consultant and a good friend to both. She'd shed her old life as a family man 10 years before at age 50, with the help of hormones and surgery and accessories, and at first some of her co-workers had refused to talk to her. But sooner or later, everyone found they needed her expertise.
Outside the boatyard, though, she was at the mercy of anyone who disapproved.
"We'd go to a bar for half-priced burger night," says Sara, "and the bartenders would act like she wasn't even there."
But Courtney endured. And maybe the reason she was so willing to help the Canrights was that she saw something of herself in their will to change, and survive. That may have been what appealed to Danny, too — he'd raised his second wife's grandkids, two teenagers and a 10-year-old as his own children, and he knew from experience how hard it can be to reach the place you want in life. For the Canrights, their Tidewater friends were the first among many kindred souls they would meet along the way. Later, when the voyage came to an end, the encounters with people like Danny and Courtney helped balance out the disasters.
At Sea
By August, Neeltje was really coming together, but Larry and Sara were losing their composure. In the rush to depart, they'd rarely allowed themselves a reprieve, spending every day in an armor of sweat and sawdust, varnish and grease.
"We were so dirty we could never get it off," says Larry. Then, finally, came the day of departure. By this time, they'd become so much a part of life in the yard that the Tidewater people stood along the pier, cheering and waving. It was Sept. 1 of last year, and the Canrights were finally underway.
A barge the Neeltje's size has the advantage of a spacious cabin, with two bedrooms, a head, a galley, and a fairly generous living area. With size, however, comes a certain sluggishness: a trip that would take 20 minutes by car can take a long, arduous day on the barge.
Sara and Larry were prepared for Neeltje's glacial pace, but her progress was slowed by an especially unlucky circumstance — namely, the busiest hurricane season in recorded history. When Hurricane Ophelia threatened to creep up the Atlantic coast, they laid in at Oxford, Md. and prepared to wait her out.
If you've spent your life on land, you haven't experienced the parallel culture that exists on and beyond the shore, a loose society of boaters who've mostly cut ties with land concerns. Joining this society is easy; the tides efface the rhythms of commercial music, the news cycle and the workweek with remarkable speed. In a day, you come to look at all your land reality through estranged eyes.
In this easygoing milieu, the Canrights soon found that wherever they anchored, Neeltje's extraordinary appearance attracted attention. After docking, they'd hear, almost immediately, the whine of approaching dinghies. The gawkers were "like the natives coming out to meet Captain Cook," says Larry. "Why does it have flippers?" they would ask, or "Is it Chinese?"
At Oxford, a man named Chip motored out to the Neeltje and introduced himself as the owner of a 90-foot tjalk in Holland. His living quarters on land were no less distinctive. "We came into this giant living room, with a giant fireplace," remembers Sara, who visited Chip's home with Larry. "Up on the top shelf was a display of human skulls. It was kind of displayed like an archaeological site."
They didn't have time to stay and find out more; Ophelia's affiliated weather systems blew over, and Sara and Larry began their slow pilgrim's progress through a series of places that would have merited a closer look had they been able to linger.
On the Patuxent River, they stopped at the ramshackle dock of Vera's White Sands, the outpost of a faded movie star who ran a Polynesian restaurant, and whose house, inspired by the Taj Mahal, rose like a grand studio set in the background. In Reedville, Va., they saw the rusting hulks of factory ships left over from the boom days of the Atlantic menhaden industry, when 15 factories processed giant schools of the fish into livestock feed, fertilizer, shortening, lubricants and lipstick. The one remaining factory sent up such a healthy stench that 15 was unthinkable.
Sailing toward Deltaville, Va., Neeltje met a boatful of Dutch sailors, who cried, "You'll love Deltaville. People come for a day and stay for a week!" But the words rang like a malicious omen when bad weather kept them pinned there for not one week but two. Neeltje didn't do well in weather; even waves from other boats would send her flat bottom rolling from side to side.
"I'm Not Going Back"
It was late October, starting to get cold, and Neeltje still had not reached the end of the Chesapeake. Larry stalked the deck, oppressed by waiting. If he'd known what lay ahead, he might have stuck to Deltaville. They were sailing toward the kind of day that warps your will, if it doesn't destroy it altogether.
The stretch from Deltaville to Norfolk was the last leg of the Chesapeake voyage.
"Norfolk was my promised land," says Sara. Mile Marker 0, the entrance to the intracoastal waterway, lies just past Norfolk.
"We were only a day away from Norfolk," says Larry, shaking his head. "Only a day away the whole time."
The turbulence of preceding weeks was subsiding, and the wind was scheduled to die down still further by 10 a.m. At last they sped from Deltaville, and for the first time, Larry unfurled the Neeltje's blood-red sails.
Sara was at the wheel. Suddenly, she felt it go loose — so loose she could spin it freely as a pinwheel. A chain had slipped a gear, they'd learn later, but right now there was nothing they could do about it — the wheel could get no traction, and Sara could not steer the boat.
Already, waves swelling from the side and rear were pushing them toward shallow water. But Larry, grasping the danger, jammed first one broomstick, then another into a bracket on the rudder, trying to control the direction of the boat before rushing to get the sail down.
"We were only three miles away from Deltaville," says Sara, "and we could have turned around and gone back."
But to Larry, Deltaville meant failure. "I said, 'I'm not going back to Deltaville. Not going back.'"
The wind picked up, instead of dying down. Neeltje began rolling in the waves and rising at the stern. Larry seized the broomsticks and directed Sara to tie the boom to one side so he could stand at the makeshift helm. Without the normal steering, Larry bore every wave's full brunt.
"I was trying to encourage him," says Sara. "'We only have 20 more miles.'"
"She's telling me, you only have four hours to go. And I'm thinking I'm not sure I can do another 10 minutes."
The situation went from unbearable to downright violent when the mainsheet snapped. Without this rope, which is attached to the boom and is used to adjust the mainsail, the boom was free to swing from side to side. Long and thick as a 20-year slash pine, it gained force and began careening wildly, threatening to bash Larry's head in. Sara grabbed the line and was flung along with the boom, flogging Larry at each pass.
"I can't steer," explains Larry, "because 100-pound Sara is landing on top of me." The mainsheet wrapped itself around every available object — the anchor, the dinghy motor, other line — constraining the boom somewhat, but making it all the more difficult to secure completely. When a length of the rope wrapped around her neck, she managed to slip loose like a dog from a collar; but the line tightened around her scarf instead, and flung her by the neck while her feet grazed the deck.
Larry could either let his wife be hung or abandon the boat to the waves. The choice was, fortunately, not a hard one; but while he untied her, Neeltje swept closer to shore. He worked hastily, and Sara, when she was free, had no choice but to tackle the boom again, clinging to it over the water on one pass, ducking below it the next. By degrees, she spun a line around it, and the less the boom could swing, the easier it was to rein in, until at last it was motionless.
But they'd only made it to the middle of Mobjack Bay. Even if nothing worse occurred, Larry was still saddled with the knowledge that he'd be forced to strain at the rudder for three more hours.
"We have no steering," recounts Sara. "We're both absolutely exhausted and traumatized. If one of us gets hurt or something happens to the engine, we're toast."
And then something worse did happen: the ship, which was riding the waves like a bucking bronco, pitched high enough for the propeller to break the surface. The risk now was something known in nautical circles as "cavitation from a following sea:" the propeller spinning so violently without the water's resistance that the boat would shake and the engine would burn up. Without the engine, the Neeltje would certainly run aground, and perhaps tip or break up.
But then, for no clear reason, the boat (and the propeller) plunged into the water and stayed there, quieting the vibrations and allowing Larry to steer to Hampton Roads without any distraction beyond his aching muscles.
There, Sara sobbed for three-quarters of an hour, unable to catch her breath, and collapsed into a long stupor.
Mile Marker 0
"The horrible day," as Sara and Larry call it, was over, and things were about to take a turn for the better. As a canal barge, Neeltje was much better suited to the sheltered waters of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway than she was to the open Chesapeake. As a result, the days of long delays and dicey crossings were mostly over. From its inception near Norfolk to the mangrove islands of the Florida Gulf coast, the Canrights would follow the intracoastal for more than 1,000 miles.
Sara and Larry stayed at Hampton Roads, Va. only long enough to fix the steering, and set out again at the first opportunity, cruising — finally— past red buoy 36, which serves as mile marker 0 of the Intracoastal.
The intracoastal forks just south of Norfolk. One branch is a canal through the Dismal Swamp, the other a much newer route called the Virginia Cut. The Canrights chose the Dismal Swamp path, an obsolete link between the Chesapeake Bay and North Carolina's Albemarle Sound. The canal opened in 1805 after 12 years of deadly work, much of it done by slaves and freedmen, and for a century or so it was a valuable trade artery through the ancient cypress swamp. But its commercial uses are long over, and the canal is slowly ceding to the swamp.
The canal ends at Elizabeth City, N.C., where those who make the trek find they've arrived at a kind of nautical paradise. The city dock is free. A beat up pick-up is kept at the marina for the use of the boaters. A widower's group, the Rose Buddies, honor their late wives with a free nightly wine-and-cheese party. For long-term sailors, events like these parties are a chance to compare crossings and reunite with old travel buddies. Hurricane Wilma, as it happened, headed north just as the Neeltje was moored there, and the Canrights had to wait it out. But she split to the right and soon the Neeltje pushed on, and Sara and Larry passed entire days in the corridors of salt marshes, watching the masts of foregoing boats meander ahead.
They reached St. Marys, Ga. in time for Thanksgiving. The town organizes an annual feast for boaters, pitches in turkeys, hams and oysters and lets the boaters account for the stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and pies. Among other things, the St. Marys feast is a tour de force of galley cooking.
Hundreds of boaters came and commingled. For the Canrights, there was another source of joy: Florida lay a half-day's journey away.
After months of navigation, they were finally in home waters. The voyage from Fernandina Beach to Stuart, then across the state to Fort Myers, and from Fort Myers to Sarasota, passed largely without incident. The last major hurdle was a tricky pre-dawn passage through the locks of Lake Okeechobee. A few days later the Canrights arrived in Sarasota Bay. They'd made it just in time for Christmas.
Home Again
A voyage clears the air; home looks different upon return. Larry and Sara had ventured out, cast routine away, sunk their savings into freedom (partly funding the expedition with the sale of their business), and for half a year lived from day to day. Once back in Palmetto, they were at loose ends, trying to figure out how to resume life on land.
As for the Neeltje, she remains an exotic at her anchorage in the Manatee River, many worlds away from the Rotterdam of 1902. She thrived on the Canrights' labors and looks better at 104 than she has in many years. Even amid the hull debacle, Sara had praise for her. "I marveled at the warm tones of the woodwork and the graceful lines of the cabin," she wrote in her diary. "The charming way the floor creaks when you walk through her ample heart. I love this boat and don't want to give her up."
Now, though, that is exactly what the Canrights are prepared to do: Neeltje's going up for sale. Rolling among the river waves and glossy with good health, the old barge will once again move on.
For every hardship she caused, Neeltje turned out to be an ambassador for the Canrights. People let down their guard for her, and, without other references, invited Sara and Larry into their lives. "The high points and the drama," says Sara, "were the people we met. Ninety-nine percent of the time they made it fun."
One of their deepest friendships formed on a remote island near Charleston, S.C. The chart guide noted an anchorage near Goat Island, a spot accessible only by boat, where decades ago a reclusive couple tended goats and kept their only child sequestered from human contact. "I bet we'll see the Goat Man, when we anchor at Goat Island," said Larry.
When they motored into the narrow creek, they found a grizzled man standing on a floating dock, tending a craft called the Goat Boat. He looked up when they arrived, as though he'd been expecting them. "If you stay in the middle you'll be fine," he bellowed. But the wind blew the Neeltje into the marsh, and the man cried out, wryly, "That's not the middle." When he'd towed them from the mud, the Goat Man (as they liked to think of him) invited them to his place, beyond a quarter-mile boardwalk over the marsh. His house stood on stilts amid a clump of trees, in total solitude, looking out over the marsh toward the mainland.
Sara and Larry saw that the view from his windows encompassed places they'd passed hours before. They saw photographs of the family he'd had before moving to Goat Island and abandoning a career as a commercial diver. On his last ascent he'd gotten the bends, and had to be resubmerged for eight hours, a day spent underwater in excruciating pain. Still, the treatment was ineffective, and Randy was suffering from dysbaric osteonecrosis, the progressive death of bone cells after the bends. Already, he'd had the bones from his clavicle to his humerus replaced on both sides with metal, and even now the necrosis continues to spread. Meanwhile, he lives in great pain.
Yet he exuded an energy so deep and calm, and had taken so readily to Larry and Sara that their goodbyes were difficult. He had gone even further than they in living out his dreams of escape — but in exchange he'd found a rare peace.
The Canrights' goodbyes to the Neeltje will no doubt be difficult as well. But they may not be permanently done with the boating life. "Even now," says Sara, "I'd go back to the water someday."