28 – The coast of Maine
The warming morning sun erased the overnight fog in minutes, confirming the chart image on the screen of the Global Positioning System chartplotter in the sailboat’s cabin. Maine, or at least an island off the coast of Maine, was 6.7 miles ahead, according to the device. Time to arrival was one hour eleven minutes. Bearing to waypoint was 278 degrees. Levi continued to be impressed with how simple navigation had become with these electronic magic boxes.
Monhegan Island, Maine, United States of America appeared as a blur on the horizon as the fog lifted and the boat sailed on the morning breeze. Levi and Reuben had spent hours debating where to make their landfall. There hadn’t been a whole lot to talk about on the three-week non-stop sail from Jost van Dyck to Maine. When the wind increased, the boat sailed faster. When the wind slowed down, the boat slowed down. Levi was scrupulous about not using the engine, saving what little diesel fuel the boat had onboard.
With one exception, the weather was favorable, generally soft winds, increasing during the day, lessening at night. Once in a while, the wind disappeared entirely and the boat flopped from side to side, motionless, making no forward progress at all. When that happened, they waited, as sailors have waited for the wind to return for thousands of years. And as it did for thousands of years, the wind always returned and their forward journey resumed.
Once, however, Reuben yelled to waken Levi, who was sleeping in the main cabin. A black line of cloud squatted on the horizon directly in front of the boat, barely visible at first as nothing more than a pencil line where sky and water met. The cloud rapidly raced toward the boat, flashes of lightning visible within its mass, illuminating it from within.
“Quick, get the sails down,” Levi tried to sound calm, calmer than he actually felt.
Reuben rolled the jib, the big sail in the front of the boat, around the forestay that ran from the top of the mast to the front of the boat, pulling the furling line that turned the drum at the base of the forestay and wrapped the big jib around it like a window shade rolling up. Levi released the lines holding up the mainsail and smaller mizzen sail at the back of the boat. Those sails dropped of their own weight and Levi tied them tightly with ropes, wrapping the ropes around the sails and cinching them down securely.
“That’s the best we can do for now,” he said. “Now we go inside and wait it out. I expect we are going to bounce around a bit.”
He was correct. The black clouds brought what sailors called a line squall, fierce winds that went from almost calm to near hurricane force in seconds, churning the formerly calm water into short, steep waves that washed over the boat from all sides at once. Levi and Reuben were snug in the cabin, holding on to whatever handholds were available. It was terrifying at first, but after fifteen minutes of feeling as if they were inside a washing machine on spin cycle, it became obvious they were not going to die and they both sat in silence, side by side on the bench seat, holding on and waiting for the storm to pass. Levi’s arm went around Reuben's shoulder, offering what additional protection he could.
Something on deck rattled ominously after a wave crashed on top of the cabin with more force than any previous one. Another wave and the rattling became a deep thump that hammered on the top of the cabin, sounding as if it were trying to crash through the roof under which Levi and Reuben huddled. Another wave. The thump was louder still. Reuben watched the blood drain from Levi’s face.
“I’ve got to go out and see what that is,” Levi said, putting on his foul weather gear, waterproof, bibbed overalls and a jacket with seals at the neck and wrists. The boat was stocked with top quality, name brand gear, far sturdier than anything Levi wore for sailing off the coast of Israel. He appreciated the toughness of the outfit as he opened the cabin door and stuck his head into the cockpit, only to be drenched by a wave breaking entirely over the boat. He pushed through it, thumped to a seat in the cockpit, glanced forward at the top of the cabin then poked his head down into the cabin.
“Not too bad,” he told Reuben, who was curled on the cabin floor, wondering now whether she really would survive this voyage. “The life raft is loose. Waves must have broken the bracket holding it to the deck. I’ll cut it free and carry it inside.
“Hand me that big knife, will you, and the vice-grip pliers from the tool box.”
Reuben raised herself from the floor and went to the tool locker. She knew what vice grip pliers were. Her father used them for everything from holding pipes while he sawed through them to prying broken pop tabs off beer cans. She quickly passed them and a knife with a nine-inch blade kept in a sheath next to the companionway to Levi.
Minutes later the cabin door flung open, letting in a spray of water. Levi entered, carrying a white fiberglass canister, three feet by two feet, obviously quite heavy, “AVON” in bright blue letters on the side. “Here is the raft,” he said. “I hope we will not need it. I’ll find a place to store it where it will be out of the way.”
Levi carried the heavy canister into the boat’s forward cabin, where there was a V-shaped berth Reuben usually slept in. He pushed the canister as far forward on the berth as it would fit, right up into the pointy front end of the sailboat.
“You will have to sleep with your legs bent,” he said, smiling, then added, “Or you could sleep with me in the main cabin.”
The storm blew itself out as quickly as it arrived and within the next hour the sails were back up and the boat continued its northerly course. Levi and Reuben resumed their debate about where in America they should make their landfall.
“Right into New York Harbor,” Reuben said. “Then we tie up or dock or anchor or whatever it is that boats do when they get to the land. I climb off this stinking thing and never get on another boat for as long as I live.
“I can’t say I know what I’ll do when I get to shore, but whatever, it will be better than this. I’ve had it with this fucking boat. Goodbye ocean.”
She was reaching her limit on the boat. What had looked luxurious tied up to the dock in Spain was taking on the feel of a damp pup tent. Worst of all was the constant movement. Reuben expected the rocking to continue for days after she reached shore. The storm had terrified her more than she wanted Levi to know.
“I disagree. Not New York. Not a city,” Levi responded. “Some place small. Some place where nobody is looking out for anything. Some place where the government is not on watch for terrorists sailing in with a bomb on their boat.” Levi’s knowledge of American geography was a bizarre mix of what he’d figured out from hearing stories about the home towns of American tourists in Israel, what he’d seen in American movies and what he’d studied in the few books left on board the sailboat, including “The Cruising Guide to the New England Coast.” That book, the classic Bible for Yankee sailors entering new ports, described useful details of every cove, marina, harbor and island from New York to the Canadian border.
“I want a place with no Coast Guard station, no military base, with no police department, if there is such a place in America,” he said. “I want us to sail in as if we’re stopping by for lunch, a loving, sailing couple on vacation on their beautiful sailboat. I want some place with lots of other sailboats, lots of other couples on sailboats, where we are just like everybody else, nothing special about us.
“Who goes to New York City in a sailboat any more,” Levi asked. “You grew up there. Does anybody sail into New York City harbor?”
“Well, nobody I ever knew actually sailed into the city. That was what the Long Island railroad and the Long Island Expressway were for. People kept their sailboats at yacht clubs, on the Sound, Long island Sound,” Reuben answered. “But cruise ships go there, and ferry boats. Maybe no sailboats, though.”
She paused, thinking.
“OK,” she continued. “I see your point. We’ll sail this boat where other sailboats go, and I agree it should be somewhere quiet and out of the way. We don’t want anybody snooping around this boat. Not with what we are carrying.”
The “Cruising Guide” was open in Levi’s lap. He slowly turned the pages, pages he’d read and studied over the past weeks until he knew every fascinating anecdote about every little cove in New England. He finally made his choice and looked at Reuben with a grin.
“Not New York, Sweetheart. We are sailing to Brooklin,” he announced.
Levi was shocked at Reuben’s reaction. She cracked up, literally falling out of her seat in the boat’s cockpit and rolling on the cockpit floor, laughing so hard she gasped for breath.
“Brooklyn?” she shouted at last. “Brooklyn? You don’t want to go to New York so you go to Brooklyn instead? I’ve got to get off this boat before I get as crazy as you are.
“For your information, Captain or Lieutenant or whatever you claim to be, Brooklyn is part of New York, one of the five boroughs of New York. Brooklyn is where my Bubba, my grandmother, lives right now. Great plan, oh fearless Sabra. A couple of Jews try to sneak oh so quietly into the United States, which has ringed its coast with the navy, with the air force, with the coast guard and probably with Boy Scouts in kayaks. All looking out for bad guys trying to sneak in and do bad things in America. And where does the great Jewish warrior decide we should go? To Brooklyn, New York, the same place in America where a million other Jews went from Poland and Russia and who knows where.
“Right on, Captain. Who would suspect that a couple of Jews would try to sneak into Brooklyn? Sure, Captain. OK. We’ll go right to Brooklyn. They have the best bagels there, you know. And knishes. We’ll step off the boat and ask the first cop we see where the best potato knishes are sold. Maybe I’ll ask him in Yiddish, so we’ll blend better. That’s what you want us to do, isn’t it, to blend? Right, we’ll blend in Brooklyn.
“What are you, crazy?”
“Are you finished,” Levi said slowly. He turned the book in his lap toward Reuben. He pointed at the page he had opened to.
“Not Brooklyn, New York,” Levi said.
“Brooklin, Maine. Population 841. And, I’ll bet, not a single Jew among them.
“Not a single Jew, but lots and lots of sailors there, and lots and lots of nice sailboats cruising around, just like we are going to do. Besides, it is in the middle of two Coast Guard stations, one in Rockland and one in a place called Southwest Harbor, as far as we can get from both of them.”
A week passed after the storm, a week favored by more sun as the boat sailed at a steady 6 knots, aimed directly at their landfall just off the Maine coast.
Levi raised himself from the seat in the sailboat’s cockpit and leaned his head into the companionway, leading into the boat’s cabin. He glanced at the glowing 9-inch-by-12-inch screen on the GPS showing a map of the Maine coast with a blinking dot next to an elongated island. Monhegan Island, Maine. Their destination, dead ahead. Distance down to three miles. He looked forward over the boat’s bow. The lighthouse on the island’s southern shore was clearly visible, flashing its warning.
“You know,” Reuben said, staring at the rocky island, covered in pine trees, a few scattered rooftops visible. “I think I went there on vacation with my family when I was a kid. I thought it was way out in the middle of nowhere. I never thought I’d be so happy to see it again. I am so sick of this boat and so sick of this ocean. And so sick of ...”
“Don’t say it,” Levi interrupted. “I’ll admit that I can be difficult to live with, and I’ll admit, too, that you are the first woman I’ve lived with for more than a month but ...”
“You asshole,” she shouted. “Don’t you dare call what we’ve been through ‘living together.’ You damn well better get your head clear, mister, and keep in mind what we are carrying on this boat. Our Ken and Barbie days are over for us. We’d better get real serious real quick or we are going to spend the rest of our lives looking back fondly on this little sea voyage as we make license plates or break rocks or whatever it is they do in federal prisons.”
“I know all that. But Debra,” here his voice became quieter, softer. “Before it all changes, I want to tell you how much I respect you for what you are doing. I admit that you give a first impression like a real Jewish American princess, and I’ve seen my share of that form of royalty, but you know that I know what you did ...”
Levi saw the dark cloud instantly cross Reuben’s face, although he didn’t know whether it was the precursor to anger or tears. He quickly corrected himself.
“I mean, what you had to do before you left Israel. I was just trying to tell you that deep down, you are one of the toughest Jews I’ve ever come across, and I’ve seen some pretty tough Jews in Eretz Yisrael.”
She said nothing, just nodded her head at him, perhaps in thanks.
“Time for some real navigation now,” Levi said, trying to hide any hint of nervousness from his voice.
The chartplotter on the GPS did not leave a whole lot for Levi to do. He sat in the cabin, punching buttons on the GPS to plot a course from Monhegan Island down the center of Penobscot Bay, staying away from shore as best he could, twenty-two miles to a six-mile long body of water with the indecipherable name of Eggemoggin Reach, the tiny town of Brooklin, Maine at its eastern end. The town was not too far, yet not too near, Mt. Desert Island, site of Acadia National Park, a gift to the nation from the Rockefeller family and their wealthy friends, and vacation destination for 2.5 million visitors each year.
It took no great skill as a navigator to follow the directions shown on the GPS screen, which told Levi whether the boat was pointing directly at the targets he programmed for its course or whether he had to turn a bit to the right or a bit to the left to stay on that course. The winds increased during the day until by early afternoon the sleek yawl was leaning far onto its side, sails full, sun shining, white waves kicking up at the bow as the boat sailed past pine-covered, rocky-shored islands with few houses on them. Levi and Reuben felt almost like the vacationers they were pretending to be.
The boat rounded the lighthouse at the western end of Eggemoggin Reach and Levi steered down the center of the long narrow channel, heading for the middle of the span of the Deer Isle Bridge, with the town of Brooklin a few miles beyond.
“OK,” Levi said. “We will be there in an hour. Remember, we are a lovely couple on vacation on our lovely sailboat. Use your best American when you talk to people. I’ll get us there. But once we get there, you are in charge. I assume, although you sure have not told me, that you’ve got this all planned out for after we arrive. You know what we are going to do, right? I expect that you have it all arranged for people to meet us and hide us and take care of us, right?
“So, isn’t it about time you let me know the plans?”
Levi looked at Reuben expectantly. She shook her head from side to side.
“To be perfectly honest with you, Levi, I don’t have a clue what we are going to do. I’ll be God damned happy to be home in America. Maybe I’ll call my mother and tell her I’m alive. Maybe I’ll forget about being the Warrior Queen of Israel and find some nice lawyer to marry and move to Long Island and have a couple of kids. Maybe I’ll take you to McDonalds. Maybe we’ll just, as you say, blend, maybe forever, maybe nice and quiet and blending will be what I do from now on. I’m so tired of excitement.
“All I know is that I want to get off this boat in the United States of America.”
Levi was silent, staring at the coast, at the huge summer “cottages” on the shore they sailed past, eyes on the sails, trimming them in and out as needed. After ten or so minutes of silence, while he struggled to come to terms with the realization that she had no secret plans for what they would do next, he looked Debra Reuben closely in the eyes.
“Go ahead and rest, Debra. Eat your McDonalds. But do not forget who we are. Do not forget what we left behind us. Do not forget a million dead Jews behind us.
“And, Debra, you want to blend? You want no excitement? Do not forget what is sitting inside that water tank, what you have been living with and sleeping on for the last month. We can make more excitement than this country has ever seen, Debra. We have serious decisions to make, responsibilities. Debra, your family is here. My family is. . .”
Levi paused, eyes closed.
“My family was there. You may be able to forget. I want to remember.”
She nodded, saying nothing. In all their weeks alone together, Levi never mentioned having family in Israel. Reuben felt terrible to realize that she hadn’t ever thought to ask. He was right, she knew. She had responsibilities, to herself, to a million dead Jews, to the Land of Israel, to history. It was her responsibility, she knew, because history had, for some bizarre reason, given it to her.
She also knew that she already had a place in history, a place called Damascus. That was her decision, her order. Damascus had kept her from sleeping as night after night the final scene in the bunker at Dimona played and replayed on the video recorder in her head.
She wanted a better place than that in history.
“You’re right. We have responsibilities,” she said. “And I agree. We blend, that’s our first job. Inconspicuous. Don’t stand out. OK. Lets enter America. And once we get there, we’ll figure out what happens next.”
The GPS indicated less than a mile to the harbor at Brooklin. Levi spotted a dozen sailboats swinging at moorings and at anchor ahead and to the left. He dropped the sails, rolled them neatly over the boom and started the engine to motor into the harbor.
Inconspicuous, he thought. Don’t stand out.
The modern fiberglass sailboat puttered into Brooklin Harbor and anchored in the middle of the fleet of classic white-painted wooden boats moored in front of a dock with a large sign declaring, “Brooklin, Maine, home of WoodenBoat Magazine.”