THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE GOVERNOR
I’d known Sam for a long time--about eighteen
years. Back in Sausalito he was a near-legend, a
pirate hero. His boat, the Governor, was a
Chesapeake Bay oyster schooner built in 1910. It was
gaff-rigged in traditional style with canvas sails.
Sam’s partner Peter Bailey had gone to Mystic Seaport,
Connecticut, to learn from the old-time riggers.
Everything was authentic, from the manila lines to the
hand-hewn spars and masts.
Sam himself was an anachronism. He looked and
behaved like an 18th century pirate captain. When his
wife, no longer able to tolerate his outrageous
chauvinism and self-delusion, got silicon breast
implants and left to become an exotic dancer in Japan,
a revolving crew of teenagers, mostly girls, moved
aboard and Sam was delighted. He was truly the ship’s
master now. When young James Stein was caught
stealing something from the Governor, Sam chained him
to the mainmast for two days and nights. Eventually
Sam took up with a woman named Cynthia, but the
teenagers were always nearby, basically on call for
the captain’s pleasure.
In the mid to late 70’s, when the developers
started moving in on the waterfront and the law
started clamping down, people unwilling to compromise
with the new order of things began leaving for greener
pastures, or smoother seas. The infamous Truly Rank
Motherfuckers -- Dredge, Frank “The Lizard” Stewart,
Captain Garbage, Toothless Tom, Peacock, Jesse
Crocodile -- migrated north to places like Humboldt
and Mendocino Counties, Coos Bay and Washington state.
Others went west, to Hawaii. Bill Becker had been
the advance man. By 1974 he had sailed to New Zealand
and all through Polynesia, winding up on the Big
Island of Hawaii, where he sold his boat and bought
land in the district of Puna.
Sam, ready for warmer weather and a change of
scene, sailed the Governor to Hilo, taking Cynthia,
his two nearly grown sons Adam and Josh, old friends
Andy and Fitz, and a dozen or so chickens with him.
He anchored the boat in Reed’s Bay and rented a house
in the low rent district north of the Wailuku River.
Eventually he bought land in Hawaiian Acres, where I
was living at Becker’s house. We would be neighbors
again.
I was off the heavy drugs, but my Big Island period
was a steep descent into serious alcoholism. Sam was
into some heavy boozing too, so his place became a
regular stop on my rounds, which were mostly an
ongoing quest for free drinks. I had taken up with a
girl named Colorado Sue, a space-case pothead with a
rich father and a car. With me she was learning to
drink seriously, and meeting all my cohorts. At Sy’s
place, a 24 hour-a-day bachelor party and booze parlor
right next door to Sam Anderson’s, she met Irish
Kenny, a professional ne’er-do-well with a glass eye,
dreams of becoming an international arms smuggler and
a habit of beating up his girlfriends. He was a
charmer with the gift of Blarney and got busted for
public drunkenness every Saint Patrick’s Day. When I
wasn’t looking, Sue had started to carry on with him.
I had only recently become aware of the Kenny and
Sue thing when Sam asked me to go to Oahu with him on
the Governor. The boat was leaking badly and needed a
haulout, and Sam needed a cook. Kenny was part of the
crew, too. He had developed a weirdly fanatic
loyalty to Sam and called him “My Captain” all the
time. At this point Sue was bouncing back and forth
between Kenny and me, either unable to decide or
trying to burn the candle at both ends. The Sexual
Revolution, unfortunately, wasn’t coming into play
here. Colorado Sue was practicing a double standard
worthy of any hypocritical male womanizer. Once when
she and I walked into Sy’s place and Kenny was with
another woman, Sue stomped out of the place in a
jealous rage even though she was supposed to be with
me. Things were not going well.
Still, when the Oahu trip on the Governor got under
way, I went. It may have been one of most
self-destructive things I ever did. The tension was
unbearable between Sue, Kenny and me before we even
pulled anchor.
For his part, Sam had left Cynthia and their new
baby back in Hawaiian Acres and taken along a new
teenager named Bryn -- horny fifteen year old daughter
of Mary Christmas, a musician who had recently been
stabbed to death in a Los Angeles biker bar.
By the time we were under way at two in the
afternoon, Bryn had fallen into the water and broken a
bottle of port on the deck, and everyone else was
falling down drunk or passed out.
Sam had cut down the rotting masts and installed a
diesel engine. This was his single concession to the
twentieth century. He refused to have a radio on
board.
Under motor, we were halfway up the Hamakua Coast
around midnight. After sleeping for a while I woke up
to find Kenny at the helm, seasick and puking, and
noticed immediately that the lights on the coast were
on the starboard side. Kenny was steering the boat in
the wrong direction, south instead of north. Despite
his blustery claims to the contrary, Kenny was a
nautical incompetent. Sam and I took turns steering
by compass until daybreak, when we entered the
Alenuihaha Channel where anyone could negotiate the
boat between the islands of Hawaii and Maui. At that
point Sy steered for a while, but when we pulled into
the Lahaina Roads, everyone but Sam and me was passed
out again. Our last quart of vodka had lasted the two
of us just long enough to get to Lahaina.
When we dropped anchor off Lahaina, everyone came
to life. The skiff was immediately loaded down with
thirsty beer-runners. Sue was sticking by Kenny and I
felt like crawling into a hole. Kenny’s old buddies
on Maui were some of Lahaina’s sleaziest lowlife,
hardcore dirtbaggers with a fondness for guns and a
romantic notion of fistfighting and violence as
standards of what makes a real man.
During the week at Lahaina, Sam & Bryn, Sy, Kenny &
Sue and the buddies spent the days on shore drinking.
I stayed on board, desperate for alcohol but unwilling
to share the company of guys whose main topics of
conversation were bar brawls and shootings they’d been
involved in. Sam was the only one with money, so I
had to wait until nightfall to get a drink. Even
then, the Kenny and Sue development was driving me so
nuts I couldn’t sleep. The sleep deprivation began
to get serious, and my behavior must have seemed
strange even to this crew. Through it all I managed
to cook meals for everyone.
Finally we set out for Oahu with a new crew member,
Kenny’s old friend Tony, the one most recently shot.
Kenny had told the story of Tony’s gunshot wound and
recovery at least ten times back at Sy’s. Once we
were out to sea again I felt better. The immediate
reality of the ocean was a relief. Like before,
everyone but Sam and me spent most of their time
below, sick or sleeping, which meant I got a bigger
share of vodka. This trip is where I realized I
needed huge quantities of booze, enough to poison an
ordinary person, just to stay straight. For a short
time, Sue came on deck without Kenny and acted like
there was nothing unusual going at all, as if she were
still “my” girlfriend.
It was dark when we approached Koko Head, and we
were past Waikiki when Sam admitted he didn’t really
know where Keehi Lagoon, our destination, was. About
this time (midnight), the bunk-bound crew below began
to emerge like vampires from their coffins. We bought
the boat into a big industrial harbor to wait for
daylight.
A commercial fishing boat was tied up nearby. We
needed to ask directions to Keehi Lagoon but Sam the
waterfront hero was afraid to talk to these strangers.
“I’ll get Kenny to do it,” he said, “He’s got the
Blarney.”
“Sam, Blarney just means bullshit, and I know
Kenny’s good at that but we’ve got to be real with
these guys,” I said. “Besides, Kenny’s still passed
out below.” Sue, of course, was also conspicuously
absent. I talked to the fishermen and found out where
Keehi Lagoon was, as well as the location of the
nearest bar. When I told Sam this information, Kenny
appeared like magic and joined Sam and his friend Tony
in a beeline for the saloon.
I was stuck on the boat again with no booze and
hadn’t slept for three or four nights now. To avoid
Sue, I curled up in the pilothouse and tried to sleep,
but it was a hopeless case. I was entering a
twilight-zone-hell phase. When I got up to take a
leak and saw two knees spread apart with a bare ass
bobbing up and down between them on the foredeck, I
sank deeper into befuddled insanity, wondering, was
she screwing everybody except me?
Dawn came and still no sleep. We beat it out of
the harbor before anyone saw us -- we were a harbor
patrolman’s dream. The sun was beating down hard when
we motored into Keehi Lagoon. It was obviously
Honolulu’s lowlife boat refuge, and the Governor was
right at home. The plan was to anchor here until a
haulout was arranged.
But haulout time was hard to come by, and the days
dragged by with the same pattern as Lahaina.
Everybody to shore for beer and hanging out while I
stayed on board and watched the food rot.
After a week of this, who should show up but
Bovard, another degenerate from the Big Island, in a
28 ft. Cheoy Lee sloop he’d just bought. This would a
turning point for me. Since he was tying up next to
us, I could (try and fail to) sleep on his boat and
gain a little distance from the turncoat girlfriend
and the gunfight gang. Bovard was somewhat
sympathetic to my situation, but he was also gung-ho
with his new prize and wanted to hang out with Sam,
too.
My ace in the hole was that Bovard didn’t know how
to sail, so I talked him into taking the sloop out so
I could show him the basics. He bought two gallons of
wine and some pupus and we headed out. We sailed up
and down Waikiki, drinking the wine, coming about and
jibing, running and pointing. Full of wine and with
the wind picking up just enough to add a small
sensation of danger, I felt human again. I was at the
point where external conditions had to be extreme to
cut through the mental weirdness. Strong winds and
high seas were perfect.
After this exhilirating experience, going back to
the Governor was really unbearable, but it took me two
or three more sleepless nights to reach the breaking
point. I finally told Sam, “I’ve got to get out of
here or I’ll go nuts.” What I didn’t tell him was
that I had gone nuts quite a while back. Sue was
listening, and gave me a quizzical look as if to say,
“What’s the matter, aren’t you enjoying this?” Sam
ripped an airline ticket out of his coupon book, gave
me twenty bucks and took me to shore in the skiff. I
didn’t say goodbye to anyone.
I got my friend Kimo on the phone and he came to
pick me up. After three weeks of no sleep aboard a
hot, filthy, greasy boat with my recent ex-girlfriend
and her new gun-and-violence worshipping mate, I was
taken to the home of Kimo’s mother, the lieutenant
governor of Hawaii.
After washing my clothes and taking a shower, I
cooked dinner for Kimo, his sister, and their mother.
But I had found the lieutenant governor’s liquor
cabinet and she politely suggested it would be better
if I slept elsewhere. The next day I was on a flight
to Kona.
