Mediterranean Summer (23 page)

When Michele arrived, he didn’t waste any time summoning us all to the salon. Everyone was a little uncomfortable sitting on the owners’ furniture. We had never done this before. After some small talk Michele acknowledged the elephant in the room.

“I heard there is a problem between the captain and the crew,” he said. There was silence. Nobody wanted to stick his neck out.

“All right, is anyone going to say anything?” Michele asked, then began, “Ian, how is everything for you on board? Do you have any problems with Patrick?”

“I’m okay,” Ian answered sheepishly, but then added, “It can be a little frustrating and maybe that’s part of the job, so I’ll just work around it.”

Michele turned next to Scott. “I’m okay as well,” Scott volunteered. “But I don’t like this hanging out at night with Patrick as if we are all buddy-buddy and during the day we’re spoken to in a different way.”

“And you, Richard?” Michele asked, turning to Rick.

“Everything is okay,” Rick responded. “I’m fine.” His mind was elsewhere.

In frustration, Michele turned to me: “David, what is going on?”

It was a tough spot to be in. There was no question where my sympathies lay, but could I trust there would be no retaliation?

“I sort of hear everything that is going on,” I said, and added candidly, “but I’m going to play Switzerland. I know there have been some problems, but Patrick has left me and the galley alone.”

Michele turned to Kevin. “So, Kevin, tell me, what’s going on?” he said very quietly.

Kevin paused, and I could sense his mind logically piecing together his argument. He turned and looked directly at Patrick, man-to-man.

“I can’t understand how you expect me to keep the boat and the rig in order and managed when you’re so inconsistent. You wait for me to finish something, and then tell me it’s not the way you want it. Why can’t you tell me before? Also, it’s very hard for me to be a filter if you’re going to the guys behind my back. It undermines me. You tell the crew to do something the way you want it, and I go to the guys and complain about the way they’re doing it, and they point their fingers back at you, saying that’s the way you told them. It’s ridiculous.”

Kevin looked around, first at Michele and then at each of us in the salon. Patrick locked into Kevin’s face, never wavering in his stare. He was clearly furious.

Michele nodded his head, looking from person to person, and then asked, “What’s the solution here? Are we going to vote the captain off the boat, or is there a better way to work this out? The owners are very proud of this crew, and they love this boat, and I’d really hate to have to tell them what’s going on and that there’s going to be some kind of a major change at this point.”

Patrick finally spoke up. “I didn’t understand that the way I am is such a problem. I know Kevin and I haven’t gotten along, and I know that we don’t meet on the same wavelength. I just didn’t realize that it had such an effect on everyone else. The last thing I want is to try to run a boat with a crew that has no respect for me.”

Michele was a pro at dispute resolution. He gave Patrick’s conciliatory words a chance to sink in. After a long pause, he asked, “Well, then, guys, is it too late? Is your respect totally gone? Or are we going to try to fix this?”

He threw the decision over to the crew. Another long silence. I looked at Kevin, wondering if he would take the opportunity to rally the crew for a no-confidence vote on Patrick.

It was Kevin who broke the silence and, in doing so, communicated something fine about himself. He was interested more in fairness than in winning. “I have no problem with Patrick staying as long as things change. We just need to get on the same page and be consistent.”

I suspect Kevin knew in his gut that the owners would not want to go looking for a captain mid-season, and that if Patrick were put out, they would look to Kevin first, giving him an opportunity to become captain. But I also suspected that he wasn’t the kind of person to promote himself at someone else’s expense. His turn would come. And it would come honorably. We ended the meeting with Kevin saying, “I guess it’s not about voting Patrick out. It’s about getting to a consensus here.”

“Then it’s settled,” Michele said. “Bon voyage.”

Nine

August Ferie

Ischia, Ponza, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast

E
arly one morning a few days later, while smoking his breakfast cigarette and dangling his legs over the rail at the bow, Rick tried to explain to me how dire our future would be. “For the next thirty days…a whole month,” he said, emphasizing each word to be sure I didn’t underestimate the length of time he was describing, “we will be working flat stick.” It was only seven-thirty in the morning and already the heat was building. Since our arrival at the southern Italian island of Ischia, it felt as though the humidity crept up on us earlier and earlier each day.

“A full boat for a month, David. Do you understand what this will mean? They”—meaning the owners and the three couples who would be their guests—“will be on board
every day.
You have no idea how trapped you will feel. It will be like a submarine—no place to go, only here on the foredeck or down below, that’s it.
C’est dingue
”—French slang for “This will be crazy.” “Our summer is over,” he pronounced, ending on a dramatic note.

“It won’t be that bad,” I assured him with my ignorance-induced confidence. Ever the practical one, I was thinking only in terms of my kitchen needs. “I’ll need to find more space to hold the stores, and I’ve decided to turn one of the fridges into a freezer, but once we get into a rhythm, it’ll be a bunt. Plus, look on the bright side. No more practice sails.”

Rick barely looked at me as he flicked his smoldering butt into Ischia’s bustling, ferry-filled harbor. “I will have to do laundry for fifteen people. I’ll be like a migrant worker.
Vraiment”
—truly—“
dingue.
”

Rick was in a funk. But it wasn’t only about the owners. The old Rick would have breezed his way through that problem. Beneath that devil-may-care exterior was a devoted father terrified of losing contact with his beloved son. The farther south we sailed, the more difficulty he was having getting his ex-wife on the phone, and she of course controlled his access to their child. He began to express the idea that his ex-wife was deliberately keeping his son from speaking to him.

With Ischia as our base, the early itinerary included calls at the volcano-crest island of Ponza and then on to beautiful Capri. We were to continue around the Sorrento Peninsula to the Amalfi coast for a stop at Positano, then we would go on to Sardinia. I hoped that once in the Amalfi area, I would have time to visit my friends at the Michelin two-star Ristorante Don Alfonso, where I had done one of my favorite
stages.
So much had happened since I walked through their doors I wanted to brag a little bit, to show everyone how far I had come.

I replayed in my mind that first bus ride from the train station to Don Alfonso as the bus climbed and swung around countless hairpin curves in a channel-like road cut out of the steep terrain behind Sorrento. Clusters of wildflowers poured over the stone walls that flanked the roadsides and looked as if they had been laid block by stone-cut block by the strong arms of determined Romans. I later learned that this was exactly how they were built.

As the bus got closer to the summit, I looked down to the shimmering ripples of the Mediterranean, the island of Capri in the distance. My first breathtaking views of the Provençal countryside were magnificent. But the sea is different. I found its open horizon liberating. My eyes were seduced by the deep blue of the water—the Bay of Naples to the north and the Gulf of Salerno to the south. On the other side of the road the blur of lush green and yellow washed across acre upon acre of trellised lemon trees. That is where I told myself I wanted to have the Mediterranean sun bronze my arms into those of an Italian chef.

Ristorante Don Alfonso rested majestically at the top of the peninsula in a town named after its place between the two gulfs, Sant’Agata sui Due Golfi, a plaster-lathed building painted rose, like the potted flowers that adorn it. After I met Alfonso and his wife, Livia, I was escorted upstairs to an apartment on the top floor—very clean, very white, and sparsely decorated but well appointed. The final reward came in the form of a spiral staircase up to a rooftop deck with its own sweeping view of the sea.

The island of Ischia is only an hour by ferry from Naples and the largest in the gulf, but it had a different feel from
Serenity
’s previous stops—a little funky and raucous, especially after the tranquillity of the Argentario coast. As we approached Porto d’Ischia, I was surprised to see so crowded a harbor, filled with small speedboats darting back and forth while dodging the ferries’ wakes. Even from a distance, I could see that the entire quay teemed with people. I later learned why. Porto d’Ischia not only is one of the most popular ports in Italy used by small-craft sailors but also served as the terminus for ferries and hydrofoils packed with holidaymakers from Naples.

Once we docked and went ashore, disco music blasted from quayside
caffés
, cars honked along the narrow streets in town, sidewalks were mobbed, and the subtle smell of diesel fuel belied the area’s reputation as a spot for skin cleansing and rejuvenation in its legendary hot-water mineral springs. The place was packed.

I should not have been surprised. After all, it was August, and like many European countries, Italy shuts down for the August
ferie,
and now it appeared to me that anyone who could afford to made his or her way to the southern Italian coast. It also explained why no crew members were Italian. What greater display of class insensitivity could there be than to deny a workingman his holiday month so that an elite family could have theirs? In relying on non-Italians, the owners had a win-win situation: they didn’t have to feel they were depriving a fellow countryman of his traditional vacation month, and by hiring someone like me, they could keep to the dictates of regional Italian cuisine as opposed to having one man’s homebred regional food bias.

The four couples boarded Serenity,
and it took the better part of the morning for everyone to get settled. I could hear
la Signora
’s onslaught of requests and directives to Rick while he ran around trying to keep everyone happy. The owners also brought their black Labrador, Alessandro, who would be joining us for the month. He was a well-behaved and perfectly groomed large dog, but an unexpected addition to the guest list. Who was going to take care of him? Of course,
la Signora
had “Alex’s” feeding schedule worked out. There was dry food, “but he likes just about everything,” she said over her shoulder when she came in the galley to say hello, a not-so-subtle hint that she expected me to rustle up “people food” on a regular basis. I also noticed she didn’t have a bowl for him. Should I use the everyday porcelain or something from the crew set? One of my mixing bowls would have to suffice.

We spent the first week cruising and anchoring along the island’s coast in the general vicinity of Porto d’Ischia because of what I assumed were practical reasons. Since we were going to be in remote locations and at anchor a lot during the ensuing weeks, this may have been a last chance for any repairs and major provisioning.

The food shopping was pretty good in town, and the menus immediately reflected the spirited cuisine of Naples—tomatoes everywhere, especially the little sun-ripened
pomodorini
packed with flavor that I used with reckless abandon, zucchini, eggplants, bell peppers, and southern Italian
peperoncini
—chile peppers. We found a great shop, maybe better described as an emporium of Neapolitan pastries and gelato, called Calise that got regular business from us. It was a very popular destination for nightlife, or so I heard after Ian and Nigel’s late-night forays into town.

As a gesture to his hosts, one of the guests got into the habit of always bringing back a large
treccia
—soft, milk white, handmade braids of fresh mozzarella from his excursions onshore. There was always more than enough for everyone. As delicious as it was—with a little coarse sea salt and extra virgin olive oil; under marinated
pomodorini;
with hot red pepper flakes, anchovies, olives; in griddled Parmesan-cheese-and-egg-coated sandwiches called
mozzarella in carrozza
—there was only so much one could take, and after a couple of days, even Kevin wasn’t shy about voicing a preference for change. Regardless, I was having fun with the food since this region’s cuisine is the one most recognized in the States as Italian American.

The guests on board began to relax as I tried to condition myself to the fact that no longer was it only two or three days of full service then a break. Service was daily, the end already feeling a millennium away. With a total of fifteen people plus a dog on board, it didn’t take long for all of us in the crew to feel cramped up forward. Our long lunch hours lounging around our collapsible deck table became a thing of the past. Rick’s “flat stick” description of August didn’t even begin to describe the pace, heat, and building fatigue. Plus, the residual tension between Patrick and Kevin continually wore on everyone.

One of the guests eventually struck Rick as a problem. “This guy will be no good,” he said to me one evening.

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He just looks like trouble.” His instincts proved right when a couple days later the guest, whom we tagged Dennis—as in the Menace—ordered an American-style breakfast. His desire for a truck-stop menu, with farm-fresh eggs, strips of crispy bacon, and golden hash browns, wreaked havoc on my schedule while Rick had to break his housekeeping routine to play waiter. Day to day, we never knew when Dennis would forgo the standard continental offering and summon us to provide his road-stop fare. Worse, it started giving Scott, Ian, and Nigel ideas about what to have for their breakfast. “Maybe I’ll get my proper breakfast now,” Scott would say in my direction—just loud enough to be heard.

More and more, the galley became the hub of all kinds of activities. Now that the crew had gone native at the table, and begun to respect my mantra that a Mediterranean diet is both ‘good and good for you,’ I had to be flexible about other things they cared about. For example, music. Seven different guys with seven different tastes kept our stereo in constant rotation. It would never fail that when I yearned for some peace and quiet, someone put a CD in the player. At least Rick’s up-tempo disco dance choices kept our energy flowing through the day.

At night, there was the issue of Scott’s snoring. Patrick and I never heard it, but according to Kevin and Ian it was a regular occurrence. Their method of silencing it was to bombard him with pillows. Nigel was on the ready for backup if needed. With Kevin, Ian, and Nigel’s bunks above Scott’s, hitting the target was easy.

We were anchored near
Castello d’Ischia, an old fortress that encompassed the better half of the island it sat on and connected to the main island by a narrow causeway. Without much to do one afternoon, Nigel went free diving and came back with a large octopus and more sea urchins than I knew what to do with. As he unloaded his haul on deck, the octopus wrapped its legs around his forearm, refusing to let go.
La Signora,
ignoring Nigel’s plight, was ecstatic, “
Guarda che belli!”
—Look how beautiful!—she said to her guests. The octopus, when finally pried loose from Nigel, provided some entertainment and was returned to the water. Part of me wanted to make
insalata di polpo
—octopus salad—but since this creature was a regular in the markets, I could easily add it to the menu at any time.

After examining the sea urchins,
la Signora
asked that they be served as soon as possible, as a first course that night. Then she explained how they should be cut open. I had never dealt with fresh sea urchins before, so I was eager to learn. “Carefully hold them in the palm of your hand, then with a scissors cut them from the valve to halfway up the shell in order to cut around them like the equator. Rinse the half shells under cold water to clean them, but be careful to leave the roe intact.” Since the sharp spines can make for a nasty sting, her method made sense. That night I would serve them on the half shell with lemon and crusty bread. Small pieces of torn crust would be used to scoop out the urchins’ briny roe.