Free Atlantic High by William F. Buckley Jr. Page B

charge of
Sealestial
during the passage, save that in any circumstance in which it could reasonably be held that the safety of the vessel was hostage, and Captain Jouning disagreed with WFB, Captain Jouning’s word would prevail. (After all, it was Dr. Papo’s boat.) A hypothetical situation would be a bad storm in which I elected to heave to, but the captain believed the wind so strong as to require running. Or a less melodramatic occasion: I might reason that I could wend my way between two shoals approaching, say, Bermuda; Jouning, if he disagreed, would have the authority to dictate the roundabout course. The contingency never in fact arose.
    I was greatly amused when, forty-eight hours before our departure, I had an agitated telephone call from Dr. Papo informing me that his insurance broker had revealed that the understanding we had arrived at could have the effect of annulling
Sealestial’s
insurance policy, which was written around the presumptive mastership of Captain Jouning. There was no time to apply for a binder transferring authority to me. Dr. Papo suggested a solution, which was altogether agreeable. We would sign a fresh contract in which I remitted authority entirely to Captain Jouning. A single copy of this document would be typed out. No one but Dr. Papo and I would be aware of its existence. It would go from the signing ceremony, sealed, straight to Dr. Papo’s bank vault. There it would die a natural death—unless the
Sealestial
, having set out to sea, was never again heard from, the vessel and all the crew disappearing from the face of the earth. In that event—to be sure, only after the requisite exhibitions of grief—Dr. Papo would put his claim in to the insurance company. If the company confronted him with the contract granting me command, Dr. Papo would triumphantly come back at the company with my subsequent reversion. It pays to think ahead.
    The only crisis was personal, though that is to overfreight what happened. As I got on with the planning, Dick had begun to reconsider. As is his mode, he ended by giving his straightforward reasons for electing to undertake only the first leg. As already noted, the 1975 crossing five years earlier Reggie had nicknamed the Big One, and we found ourselves very quickly, and ever after without self-consciousness, referring to it routinely as the “BO.” Dick felt we needed a theme for the forthcoming passage, one thatwould stress less the adventure inherent in a virginal experience, no longer possible, than the exploitation of all the passage’s possibilities. He came up with the idea of “The Ultimate Charter.” After returning from the trip, revisiting the subject, he wrote in his journal:
    The Ultimate Charter:
Let’s (I had said to Bill) make it ultimate in every way, preparations, people, amenities, equipment, music, books, first-run movies, food—whatever. And so we agreed—but never did it.
    Why not?
    Two reasons: First, we were both too busy and running around too much doing other things to really carry through on that intention. Games are games but work is work. So while theplanning, as can be read in the memos that preceded the trip, was good and careful, it was not “ultimate,” just “good.” Secondly and more important, my friend Buckley, among his lesser-known (to the outside world) qualities, is a real lover of his friends, not just his sailing friends, but his writing, painting, piano-playing, economizing, computerizing, lawyering, banking—all his real friends. Not that he’s profligate with friendship nor does he debase the coinage. He’s just intense about it.
    For that reason he picked, along with me, four of his sailing friends—in fact three of the four had been on his only other transatlantic crossing. Splendid companions all, but hardly ultimate in the sense that I had originally intended. My thought was that six of us, from completely different and accomplished walks of life on land—who also like to sail—would