Chickenhawk: Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

But John was a godsend for us, and he set about teaching me the business. The business was smuggling marijuana and only marijuana. He and his friends had considered bringing in cocaine—it’s much more compact and profitable—but they decided they couldn’t handle the karma (these were sixties veterans, grown-up flower children, graduates of the Carlos Castenada School of the Universe). Marijuana, in their opinion, was harmless. John smuggled pot, but he seldom smoked it, preferring alcohol.

We drove to a marina in Jacksonville to see the Namaste, a thirty-six-foot custom-built sailboat based on a Westsail hull. She was a fiberglass double-ender based on a Norwegian lifeboat hull design. The Namaste had just been put into the water after being trucked from California.

“See how the cabin is almost flush with the deck?” John said.

“Yeah. That’s good?”

“You bet, Bob. Very good. When the waves start coming over this lady, they don’t have anything to bash against.”

“Good design.”

“Yep. They use boats like this in the North Sea, Bob. They know about storms up there.” He pointed to a Hunter sailboat which looked posh with lots of varnish and brass and teak. “Piece of junk, Bob. Total waste of money. That boat was designed to sit right there, tied up. It’s a party boat for people who don’t know how to sail.”

We hunkered down on the dock and John pointed to the Namaste’s painted waterline. “See how it’s about half a foot out of the water?” John smiled. “They did that in California before they shipped it.” He looked around. The closest person was a guy sitting on a deck chair in the Hunter, a hundred feet away. “That’s so when we load up with a couple tons of product, the water line looks just right, like we got nothing on board, eh? Empty fucking boat.”

I nodded. These guys think of everything.

The Namaste didn’t look seaworthy, however. Its mast and rigging had been removed for the truck ride to Florida. Coiled cable, crumpled tarps, paintbrushes, paint cans, and tools lay scattered on the deck. “It’s a mess, Bob. But in a couple weeks you won’t recognize her. We got lots to do. We have to step the mast and set up the rigging just to get it sailing, and that’s only the beginning. We need to put on the vane gear—”

“Vane gear?”

“Yeah. It’s this tricky gizmo from England that steers the boat automatically. Works like a charm. You’re going to love it. You like mechanical stuff, I know. No one gets stuck holding the tiller with that thing on the job.” He smiled. “Vane gear, new radios, antennas for the fucking radios, depth finder, bonding strip—”

“Bonding strip?”

“It connects everything to the ground side of the electrical system. We’ll put a copper strip all around the inside of the hull and make sure all the metal stuff and all the electrical stuff is hooked up to it. It’s good in lightning, and it’s good for the electrical stuff. That’s going to be your job, Bob.”

“This smuggling business sounds kind of like work, John.”

“That’s a fact, Bob. We’ll earn our money.”

“So, mast, sails, wind vane, and bonding strip. Then we go.”

“Nope. Need to clean out the water tanks—water smells like a damn locker-room shower stall; get a canvas dodger—that’s like a convertible top that sits over the hatchway, keeps major water out when it gets nasty.” John swigged beer. He had a can with him from dawn until he slept. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Yep. Need to buy lots of stuff. Tools, spare parts for the engine, nautical charts, food—lots of food. Basically, Bob, what we have here isn’t a yacht; it’s a yacht kit. You like kits?”

We laughed. John was referring to the struggle we had had putting together an ultralight airplane he’d bought six months before. The plane arrived as a big bundle of wires, tubes, and fabric with an instruction book. The thing was complicated, took us weeks to put together. I refused to fly it because it didn’t have what I considered to be proper controls. John flew it, and crashed every time. Disgusted, he later sold it.

“Anyway, most yachts are used like that one.’’ He pointed to the glitzy Hunter. “And they come apart in the first serious storm. I know what boats to use and how to rig ‘em so they make it.”

After John showed me the Namaste, we drove around Jacksonville in his pickup truck buying supplies that John paid for in cash. Getting the boat ready would cost twenty thousand dollars, all cash. He had wads, pounds, stacks of cash. A lot of money flashed around in this business, but I think it was the work itself that John loved the most. “This is free enterprise at its most exciting—one of the last real adventures left, Bob,” he said. “I mean, sailing the seas, avoiding the Coast Guard, pirates, making lots of money. This is exciting stuff. How much adventure is there left in the world? Sometimes I think I lived before and I was a pirate or an explorer, something on the high seas; I can feel it. I did this before.”