Not Without Hope (4 page)

Will kept trying to think of things. Nothing worked.

“I’m so sorry, you guys,” Marquis said after about a half hour in the water. He must have said it ten times. I think he felt it was his fault because he was the captain. He was in charge. He held the responsibility. This was his boat, and he thought he would lose it and lose us and himself, too.

“I can’t believe this,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Dude, don’t worry,” we told Marquis. “It’s not your fault. We’ll get out of it.”

Not long before we flipped, we had seen a giant cargo vessel hauling shipping containers. You could make out the colors of the containers, but the ship wasn’t close. It was in the distance and it definitely hadn’t seen us. Or if it had, it had given no indication. Besides, it could not have predicted what was about to happen.

“Where the fuck did that boat go?” we asked a bunch of times. But it was long gone.

There were nearly two hours of sunlight left when we first turned over. But the day began to exhaust itself. By now, it was about five thirty. Sunset was approaching in an hour. The water got rougher. It seemed louder now, too, random waves crashing against our backs, pushing us underwater as we tried to hold on to the boat. Will spoke up: “We’re gonna lose sunlight. We gotta start thinking about tonight.”

It was clear now we wouldn’t be rescued before dark. Will began to take charge. He asked Marquis if he had an emergency beacon that could transmit our position. The answer was no. Will kept asking questions: Did Marquis have any flares aboard? Did he have a CB radio that would work? Could we get to the drinking water? Where were the life jackets located?

“We need as many supplies as we can get,” Will said.

We had been in the water about forty-five minutes. We had wind jackets, wind pants, sweatpants, and jackets, but they were soaked through. Already, we were all shivering. I think everyone was starting to think to themselves, This is real. Oh my God. There’s a good chance we might not make it out of this.

W
ill kept asking questions, but we were all scared, cold, and in shock. It took awhile for Marquis to answer. Water flew into his mouth, and he would have to spit it out before he could speak. He told Will that the life jackets were in the storage closet at the center console, now above the steering wheel on the overturned boat. I remembered seeing something orange when I put my backpack in there; I figured they were life jackets, but I hadn’t thought much about it.

“Okay, I’ll try to get them,” Will said.

The bin sat at an angle, three or four feet wide and high. There was other stuff inside, like my book bag, a case of beer, chips and pretzels, the bumpers that Marquis used when he docked the boat. Without life jackets, there was no way we would make it through the night. Not in this water, in this cold, in these crashing waves. Will edged toward the center of the boat and went under. He came up quickly the first time.

“I can’t see anything,” he said.

He took off his green wind jacket and wind pants, thinking this would make him less buoyant so he could more easily get under
the boat. He had lost his flip-flops when we fell into the water. All he was wearing now was a tan or gray T-shirt and his swim trunks.

Marquis took off his T-shirt, wind jacket, and wind pants, stripping down to his swim trunks. He let his clothes go—they weren’t a priority at the moment. He went under for about two seconds and came back up. He didn’t say anything. He went under again. This time he came back in about three seconds. Again, he didn’t say a word. He tried a third time and resurfaced after about five seconds.

“I can’t get under,” Marquis said.

Will looked at me and asked, “Nick, will you try? Can you get under there?”

I was scared shitless. Will was one of the best swimmers I knew. Marquis was a ridiculous athlete. I had just watched them fail at trying to get under the boat. Corey was saying, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this!” It freaked me out.

Not that I couldn’t get under there. I was just scared to try. Scared for my life. I had never done that before, never opened my eyes in salt water. I was sick. We had no life jackets. I was freezing and petrified.

“No, I can’t,” I told Will, kind of stuttering. I was embarrassed. It was one of the first times I ever said no without having tried something.

Will rolled his eyes at me.

He was determined to get the life jackets. He was a take-charge guy. When he was in the sixth or seventh grade and his mother didn’t want him to play football, he filled out the forms anyway and told his parents, “You need to sign; I’m playing.” When he was fourteen or so, he and his father pushed away from their dock one day, and the boat wouldn’t start. Finally, they got the engine going, and his father asked Will what he would have done if they had remained stranded, just drifting off the dock.

“Dad, don’t worry about it,” he said. “I would have thought of something.”

Now Will was in another situation, much more dangerous, but he was firm in his insistence to retrieve the life jackets.

“I think I can get to that closet,” he said. He was getting loud and frustrated. “Okay,” he asked Marquis again, “are they in that closet?”

Will must have dived under six or seven times. He and Marquis would go back and forth. Marquis would explain where everything was. Finally, Will went under the boat and came up with two life jackets, the standard bright orange kind that slip around your neck and clasp in the front. He submerged again and found a third life jacket. Then he spotted a seat cushion that must have come from a bin beneath one of the two chairs at the stern of the boat. Marquis, Corey, and I slipped the life jackets on. Will slipped his arms through two straps on the cushion and put it on his back like a turtle’s shell. “Thanks,” we told Will. I felt bad that he and Marquis were doing all the work, but there wasn’t much that Corey and I could do.

Will had also ripped loose the twenty-gallon cooler that sat in front of the center console. It popped to the surface. Everything had come loose inside and sunk or got stuck under the boat. Only a gallon jug of water was in there. It kind of fell out and floated away. We let it go—didn’t think anything of it.

We grabbed the cooler, though. If the boat sank, we would be desperate to grab on to something that could float. Without any discussion about who would go where, we climbed into unsteady positions on the upside-down boat, all of us facing the bow.

Everything was inverted. The propeller stuck out of the water. To the right of the motor was a tiny ladder attached to a swim platform, which stuck out from the stern like a lunchroom tray. On either side of the motor at the stern, trim tabs jutted
out about a foot and a half or two feet. On an upright boat, the swim platform provided a place to sit or put on a pair of skis or launch a dip into the water. The platform and the ladder also helped swimmers board the boat. Trim tabs were controllable stainless-steel plates that helped adjust the pitch attitude of a boat—the degree to which the bow tilted up or down. The tabs helped a boat get on plane quickly, reduced pounding, and corrected listing to port or starboard. Now the ladder, swim platform, and trim tabs all had another unintended usage: life-saving equipment.

I stood to the right of the motor, out of the water from about midthigh, holding the outboard with my left hand. I had my left foot on the swim platform or just below, on a trim tab.

Will stood near me. We were in a tight space, and he kept stepping on my foot. He kind of straddled the motor in the water, his left leg perched somehow on the outboard or just dangling. Corey stood on a trim tab to the left of the motor. Marquis basically got on his hands and knees on the hull, his chest pressing on the cooler. He braced his feet against the motor, held the cooler with his left hand and reached with his right hand to grab my right ankle once I propped my foot on the hull. There was nothing else to grab on to.

“We gotta hold on to this cooler,” we kept saying.

We had to shout to hear one another. Someone would say something, and another guy would ask, “Huh? What?” It was loud from the wind and the waves crashing and slamming us into the boat—it was a constant barrage. A wave would crash into us, and someone would start coughing from taking in salt water. Every surface was slick and hard to grip. Marquis, exposed to the chilly air atop the hull, wore only a life jacket and his bathing suit. I had on my sweatshirt, orange jacket, sweatpants, skull cap, and gloves. Corey was still wearing his black wind jacket and wind pants. Will was down to his T-shirt and trunks. Corey had held on to his wind
gear while Will went under the boat, but later we lost the jacket and pants. They must have gotten swept away.

Near sunset, it went from being small swells and quick waves to waves coming in all different directions, whitecaps, choppy, the scariest thing. We couldn’t figure out the current or the rhythm of the waves. The wind sounded like a constant whistle in the air,
fffffffff,
like someone holding a compressor or a tire deflating. We were able to stay on the boat by working together. It was overcast, so we never saw a real sunset, just a gradual loss of light. The temperature felt like it was dropping dramatically. It seemed like the cold front Marquis had told us about was coming through.

Around seven o’clock, Corey said a couple times, “I ain’t going out like this.” Around that time, something seemed to occur to him. “What about the cell phones?” he wondered.

Will asked where they were.

There was still some dim light, so we could still see enough for one trip under the boat.

Marquis told Will about his and Corey’s cell phones. They were stored in a Ziploc bag, along with their keys and Marquis’s camera. The bag was stored in a bin in the boat’s inverted canopy. Will swam back under the boat and found the bag. He also brought up a couple of flares. Eventually, we stuck the flares in Marquis’s swimsuit so they wouldn’t float away. My right hand was free, and I had the most stable position on the boat, so they gave me the bag.

Corey had an iPhone, which I didn’t know how to use, so I grabbed Marquis’s phone. I think it was a BlackBerry. It was dry and turned on immediately. There was a sigh of relief. At least until I dialed 9-1-1 with my free hand. As we rocked back and forth and every which way, the phone just kept saying
calling…calling…calling
. There was no connection. Someone said there were probably no cell phone towers within range. There were
no reception bars on the phone, but I thought this wasn’t supposed to matter when you dialed an emergency number.

“I thought 9-1-1 was supposed to work anywhere,” I told the others in frustration. “Shouldn’t a satellite pick it up?”

Then I went to Marquis’s call log. I held the motor with my left hand and held the phone in my right hand, dialing with my right thumb. I called Marquis’s wife, Rebekah. No signal, it said. I tried my girlfriend Paula. Same thing. We were well out of cell phone range. They were supposed to work up to twenty or thirty miles out, but on our trip the week before, Marquis had lost phone contact before we even lost sight of land.

I tried 9-1-1 again. Nothing. Every time I tried to call someone on Marquis’s log, it instantly said
no service
. When I tried to text, I kept getting
no service…send when service available?
I kept pressing
yes
, hoping that if we drifted into range, it would send, even if the phone wasn’t on.

At first, I left Corey’s off to preserve the power so I could use it later, and tried Marquis’s phone every five or ten minutes. Nothing. Always nothing.

“Anything?” Will would ask. “Anything?”

It was more of a reflex than a hope. They knew if I got anything, I’d scream it out.

“I can’t believe this shit,” Corey said.

Will kept thinking back to his idea to tie the anchor line to the back of the boat.

“I’m so stupid,” he would say. “I can’t believe I did that.”

“It’s not your fault,” I told him. “No one had a better idea.”

W
E BEGAN TO
wonder when someone would notice that we had not returned. We had not given a precise time about coming back, only a general idea. “What time will Rebekah realize something’s wrong?” we asked Marquis. “When is she gonna call to report us overdue?”

Marquis said he usually called her when the boat was about five miles out from shore. Last weekend, he had called her at eight thirty or nine. He told her he would be home earlier this time. Still, he wasn’t sure at what point she would become alarmed.

“There’s times I told her we would be earlier and then we have good fishing and I’m later,” Marquis said while kneeling on the hull. But he added, “There’s no way she wouldn’t call the Coast Guard by two o’clock.”

We figured it would be much later than that before someone came looking for us.

I
HAVE A
fear of sharks, and around eight o’clock I asked, “Is there any chance sharks could get us right now?”

“No, don’t worry, they’re too stupid,” Will said.

Marquis also said not to worry about it. “They’d be afraid of that big white boat,” he said. “They think it’s another animal.”

Their reassurances calmed me. I didn’t really think about it again that night. There were plenty of other things to worry about.

It was dark. My teeth were constantly chattering. All of our teeth were chattering. I was still sick, a little nauseous from earlier and from the constant bucking of the boat, but I didn’t feel nearly as bad as before.

“God it’s cold,” Corey said.

The waves kept pounding us. Marquis was in a precarious position atop the hull, trying to secure the cooler, nothing really firm to hold on to except my leg. He slid one way, then the other. He would nearly go off one side, and we would grab him and pull him up.

I desperately kept trying to hold on to the Ziploc bag so I wouldn’t lose the phones, keys, and wallets. I probably should have put the bag in my coat pocket, but it didn’t occur to me. I was still in the same position, my left hand on the motor and my right hand free, like I was riding a bull. I held on to that bag as tight as I could.

“Try it again,” Corey kept saying about the phone. Every time, I got the same response:
no service
.

Marquis kept climbing back into position on the hull, but he looked fatigued. He was in tremendous shape, but he had almost no body fat to insulate him against the cold.

“You good?” we kept asking him.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he said, but he seemed tired.

The waves seemed to get rougher after sunset. And a little louder. Consistent eight-footers now. They were capping.

The storm was coming in.

A
LITTLE LATER
, I said to Marquis and Corey, “All I know is, when we get out of this, you both better hook me up with damn good seats to a game next season.”

“Oh yeah,” Marquis promised, laughing.

“Hell yeah, boy,” Corey said. “Amen to that.”

Corey had a watch on, a waterproof Nike with a dial that lit up green when he pressed a button. It helped us keep track of time. Around nine o’clock, we said the Lord’s Prayer:

I’m not very religious. I knew the prayer from football and other sports. I didn’t know all the words, but I said the ones I knew.
It was like a song where you don’t know all the lyrics: you just keep singing or humming along anyway. I think we said the Our Father twice more as a group.

Corey added small prayers, “Please God, give me strength.”

It seemed to be getting rougher and colder. The wind picked up, consistently blowing maybe fifteen to twenty miles an hour. Random gusts sounded like a loud roar, like a fan boat flying by. At times, your face felt dry, then all of a sudden you would be absolutely demolished by the water. I could feel my cheeks shaking, like when you’re on a roller coaster. My lips were blistering from the cold and the wind.