Anchored — Part II

A few hours later, we found our way into a marina somewhere near Atlantic City. It was not especially large, but it could handle sailboats and larger yachts. In the middle of the docks was a small marina office, but by the time we arrived, it was already closed.

That suited us fine.

One tactic we had discovered while crossing the Erie Canal was that arriving late and leaving early often meant a free ride. No dock fees. No questions.

But now we had another problem. We needed an anchor because we had failed to secure the first one.

We pulled into a narrow slip, too small for a large boat but just right for our little sailboat. We tied off quietly, already wondering how we were going to solve the anchor problem without money.

Then Jack pointed.

"What?" I asked.

He was staring at a large Danforth anchor leaning against the marina building.

"Perfect," he said.

"Perfect? That thing is for a forty-footer. Maybe bigger."

Jack kept looking at it.

"Besides," I said, "it won't be cheap."

He didn't answer.

That was when I should have known the decision had already been made.

Jack was not anchored the way I was. I was still, in some basic way, the good altar boy — still tied to the Christian principles I had been taught, even if I had not thought much about them lately. Jack wasn't. That does not make him evil. It only meant that when temptation appeared, quietly and practically, right in front of us, we were not standing on the same ground.

It was getting dark, so I decided to sleep on it and figure out what to do in the morning. But I had an uneasy feeling that Jack was not planning to wait.

So I lectured him a little.

I told him the anchor was far too heavy for us and that the moment he tried to move it, he would wake half the marina. A Danforth anchor is not a quiet thing. It is a large piece of steel with moving parts, and even dragging it a few feet would make enough noise to announce our stupidity to everyone nearby.

"Don't do what you're thinking," I told him.

I was not looking forward to calling my father from a jail cell in New Jersey.

Jack shrugged. "Yeah, fine. I won't."

Later, lying in the bunk, I was awakened by the unmistakable clanking of steel — the sound of someone dragging a bag full of loose metal parts, or worse, a Danforth anchor.

Damn it, I thought.

Now I had a choice. Did I get up, haul it back, and almost guarantee we would be discovered? Or did I keep quiet and wait it out?

I said nothing.

Eventually, I fell back asleep and woke early. I actually had a hard time getting Jack to wake up so we could escape the inevitable arrest.

We slipped out of port with a stolen anchor and a guilty conscience, running at the maximum getaway speed of our 9 hp diesel — about six miles per hour.

A couple of hours went by. We were under sail now, moving along on a beautiful summer day, which made the whole thing feel even more absurd.

I kept bringing up Jack's heist, lecturing him as if my disapproval somehow separated me from the stolen anchor sitting aboard our boat.

Then Jack said, almost casually, "It'd be good if we hadn't lost our fishing pole. Maybe we could catch something."

"Yeah," I said.

But I wondered why he had brought that up.

A moment later, he jumped up and went below. When he came back, he was holding a very expensive fishing rig.

"What the hell, Jack?"

Jack then started describing the yacht that had been tied up beside us and all the things sitting loose on its deck, apparently available at Jack's special after-hours discount.

I was speechless.

By then, I was an accessory, and there was not much I could do about it miles from shore. For a moment, I was almost relieved. The worst had already happened, and I had not stopped it.

Our journey continued.

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