SAILING A NORTH SEA PILOT SCHOONER: MY YEARS ABOARD TABOR BOY

By James E. Geil

This narrative is about my years aboard Tabor Academy's schooner Tabor Boy and the sequence of life events that led to that career. While many sail-training captains and crew tend to be transient, I stayed with Tabor and Tabor Boy for thirty-five years. The reason for that decision came from the opportunity to work with high schoolers, to get students out of the classroom and to expose them to real-world challenges and experiences!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781636926735

Book preview

Sailing a North Sea Pilot Schooner

My Years Aboard Tabor Boy

JAMES E. GEIL

Copyright © 2022 James E. Geil

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2022

Cover photo courtesy Tabor Academy

ISBN 978-1-63692-672-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63692-673-5 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

To my XOs, student officers and Tabor Boy crew members as well as my many adult friends who volunteered their time and sailed offshore with me

We had some amazing adventures together

Make life happen!

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

Dutch North Sea Pilot Schooner

Early Beginnings

The Indian River Lagoon

Misadventures with the Old Dorothy

The Acquisition

Fort Walton Beach to St. Marks

Keeping an Old Boat Afloat

St. Marks to Florida East Coast

Dorothy’s Final Days

A Few Years With no Clear Direction

William Washburn Nutting’s Typhoon

Blue Crabbing from an Old Restored Dory

King Fishing

Patsy K

Sebastian Inlet

Success at Last

Things Begin Falling into Place

Education and Pursuit of Goals

Crewing on a Three-Masted Schooner

An Introduction to Tragedy

Moving on after Five Summers on the Maine Coast

A Bareboat Delivery to the Virgin Islands

Marmion

Tabor Boy

The Dutch Pilot Schooners

Winter Cruises in the Bahamas

A Close Call at Night in the Gulf Stream

First Passage up the US East Coast

I Become Tabor Faculty

Bermuda!

Diving for Treasure on the Bermuda Reefs

Aground on a Coral Reef!

Halley’s Comet

Riding out a Gale off a Lee Shore

Nassau and the Bight of Eleuthera

Summers on Tabor Boy

Cruising the Maine Coast

Sailing in Southern New England

Elizabeth Taber

The Weight of Responsibility

Transition and Change of Command

1988 Norfolk Harborfest

Docking at the Waterside

Crew Competitions

A Moonlight Sail up the Chesapeake

Tabor Dogs!

Delaware Bay and Return to New England

First winter in the Virgin Islands

Tabor’s Headmaster Sails Offshore!

Tabor Boy runs Amok

Hurricane Bob

Panama!

Beginning of a Great Adventure

Outbound to the Turks and Caicos Islands

Providenciales to Grand Cayman

The Gaillard Family Joins Tabor Boy

Tabor Boy Transits the Panama Canal

A Brief Cruise in the Pacific Ocean

We Meet Lazarus

The Floating Tree

A Waterfall in the Jungle

Whale Sharks at Dusk

Isla Taboga

Barro Colorado Island

Return to Grand Cayman

Cozumel

Yucatan Channel and Straits of Florida

Florida to New England

My Name is Erik. My Dad is Home.

Years on Tabor Boy

The Rig Change

Some Fun Memories

Tabor Academy’s Launches

PT Boat!

One Evening in Buzzards Bay

A Pelican in Sippican Harbor

Colors One Evening in Maine

Summers on the Maine Coast

Morning Dip

The Great Schooner Race

Schooner Heritage’s Victory Laps

A Windy Windjammer Day

A Squall off North Haven

Port Visits

Tabor Boy’s Stay at the Coast Guard Academy

Moored at South Street Seaport

A Stop at the Merchant Marine Academy

Docked with USS Constitution

Rafting up to Submarine Lionfish

Memorable Conversations

A Phone Chat with Irving Johnson

A Call from Christopher Sheldon

A Halloween Cruise to Nantucket

Parents and Alumni Cruises in the Virgin Islands

REEF Program

Offshore Adventures

Northern Lights off Hispaniola

Port Rail Underwater!

A Rush to get Students on Flights

Tabor Boy Puts in at San Juan

Samana Cay

Whales on the Silver Bank

A Storm Off Eleuthera

Tabor Boy is Accosted by the US Navy!

Big Seas Off Cape Lookout

A 260-Nautical Mile Day

The Port Boat Runs Amok!

Twelve Hours under Bare Poles

Thanksgiving Day

Summary

Calms on the Deep Ocean

Two Hundred Miles with no Engine

Tabor Boy’s Centennial Voyage to the Caribbean

Heavy Weather out to Bermuda

Hamilton

The Flower

A Fast Trade Wind Passage

Up the Potomac to Alexandria

Later Years

Typhoon!

Tragedies

Lost at Sea in a Hurricane

Tucker Francis

Kids Overboard!

Marion Bermuda Race!

A Reception at the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club

A Brief Tour of St. George and St. David’s

Preparations

Man-Overboard Procedures and Drills

Spirit of Bermuda Arrives!

The Race

Tabor Students Race to Bermuda!

Tabor Boy at the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club

Return to Marion

North Rock

Ribcraft Falls into the Ocean!

The Final Two Days

Tabor Boy is Narrowly Missed by Tornadoes

Yet Another Loss

New Bedford Whaling Museum Sailors’ Series

Retirement

Change of Command

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

John Jacob Geil Jr. and Beverly Wenzel Geil

Acknowledgments

I want to express my sincere appreciation to Tabor Academy, which generously contributed photos and articles to support this narrative. Thank you, as well, to Tabor alumni, students and others who dug out old photos and refreshed my memory regarding many of these adventures. And to Mark Howland (Tabor Academy faculty emeritus), who sailed offshore with me, helped me edit and revise the manuscript and wrote the foreword for this book.

Special gratitude goes to my parents, John and Beverly Geil, who patiently supported my dreams and ambitions and encouraged me to make them happen.

Foreword

While meeting over a beer at a local tavern, James Geil discussed the latest iteration of his book with me. Knowing Jim, I thought that was a perfect characterization of his writing process, one involving repeated tacks back and forth through the text.

I met Jim in the fall of 1990 when my family and I arrived at Tabor Academy. Both my daughter and son sailed on orientation cruises with Jim, and my daughter subsequently joined the Tabor Boy crew. When my mind was still supple, I audited Jim’s celestial navigation course.

By the time I retired in 2019, I had sailed with Jim aboard Tabor Boy from the coast of Maine to the islands of the Caribbean. A sailor myself, I marvel at the knowledge and skill Jim possesses, and I find the responsibility he assumes while handling a ninety-two-foot vessel and a twenty-four-member student crew sobering.

Although he has spent the better part of his life on the water, Captain James E. Geil is a teacher first and foremost. In that role he has taught his charges everything from how to coil a line to how to handle a sextant. However, I would wager that those same charges remember best the lessons he taught them about shaking hands and remembering names and dressing properly and keeping promises. Jim knows that good teaching begins with forming relationships with students based on trust and respect. Under his command, the deck of Tabor Boy became a classroom as much for leadership training as for sail training.

A natural storyteller, Jim possesses a voice that is unadorned and humorous and respectful; and, in the true sense of iteration, the writing of this book has represented a journey for its author. While it charts a physical voyage, Jim’s narrative also chronicles an emotional journey replete with horizons and homecomings but also with the occasional, psychic shoal. Consequently, the reading of Jim’s story will, I believe, have a similar cathartic effect on those who have sailed with him and perhaps on those who haven’t as well.

Mark Howland

Introduction

The following account is made up mostly of anecdotes. Some I had intended to include when I began this manuscript, but many more came to mind as memories resurfaced. Some longer sections recount particularly significant adventures. I had to consult the vessel’s deck logs for specifics and dates but otherwise relied on memory. The events are in chronological order, or at least mostly so.

Note: According to ancient tradition (and out of habit), I use the feminine pronouns she and her when referring to vessels, regardless of the gender of the vessels’ names.

Writing these pages has been like reliving years on Tabor Boy. There are parts that are dramatic and exciting—some quite scary. There are also some humorous memories and a few that are anything but.

This is the story of my years sailing a North Sea pilot schooner…

James E. Geil

August 2021

"If it’s not yours, don’t take it!

If it’s not true, don’t say it!

And if it’s not right, don’t do it!"

Actor James Drury

The Virginian

Dutch North Sea Pilot Schooner

Vessel Particulars

Early Beginnings

The Indian River Lagoon

Of all the interests young boys have, those for me turned out very early on to be mechanical devices, cars, engines and…boats. My father and grandfather exposed me to these at an early age.

My immediate family lived in Ohio, but in the late 1950s we began visiting my grandparents at their small retirement home on Florida’s east coast Indian River Lagoon. That lagoon and the nearby Atlantic Ocean fascinated me. I had never seen an ocean, and the sight of it filled me with awe and a longing for adventure.

I loved watching the four-cylinder inboard gasoline engines in my grandfather’s boats and the propeller shafts that passed through the hulls. I have memories of the various engines—Gray Marine, Chris Craft, Brennan, Palmer. I was to learn how those engines worked and to spend many hours helping my grandfather maintain and repair them. My grandfather loved being with his grandson and introduced me to his friends by saying,

This is my grandson, Jimmy!

One day, Gramps took me crabbing with him on the Indian River Lagoon and had me steer the crab boat from one trap buoy to the next. He worked over two hundred traps in north to south lines, so I got plenty of practice. I was little and could barely see over the bow. That, along with my novice status in steering, resulted in many either missed or run-over pot buoys. My grandfather yelled at me with colorful language (good-naturedly, of course) and we circled around for another pass. Once I was a bit older, it became my job to jump over the side to clear a pot warp from the propeller.

I was to spend many long mornings crabbing with my grandfather. He called his old, home-built wooden crab boat the Pogy, or sometimes just "the Pogy boat." A twenty-horsepower, four-cylinder Palmer inboard engine drove the boat along at a leisurely speed. The lever-operated, direct-drive gearbox had forward, neutral and reverse positions, but Gramps rarely used them. He just left the engine in gear, starting it when he was ready to go and shutting it off again when he wanted the boat to coast to a stop.

The Pogy boat had been locally built with no caulking. Rather, the builders simply used a method of fastening dry wooden planks to the boat’s frames, spaced a dime’s thickness apart. The planks swelled up once the boat was launched.

The boat leaked, of course.

In the photo is a simple downspout hand bilge pump mounted close to the helm and within easy reach. Between lines of crab traps, Gramps regularly but unhurriedly worked the plunger up and down with his right hand while steering with his left, his right foot propped up on the boat’s gunnel and a cigarette hanging from his lips.

Calm mornings in the hot Florida sunshine quickly built up a thirst. My grandmother sent chilled tap water with us in a half-gallon Tropicana orange juice jug wrapped in damp newspaper to help keep it cool. The water was from their deep artesian well. It had a significant sulfur content and both smelled and tasted bad. When Gramps and I were hot and thirsty enough, though, that did not matter. We drank right out of the bottle, passing it back and forth. Gramps told me stories about his dairy farming days in Ohio as the old Pogy boat motored slowly from one trap to the next.

Steering the old Pogy boat for my grandfather

(Probably around 1960)

My (fraternal) twin brother Dan and I spent two long summers at our grandparents’ home on the Indian River Lagoon. We went barefoot every day. When our parents finally picked us up in August, we could no longer get our growing feet into our sneakers. Our parents had to go out and buy us new shoes to wear during the trip home!

One day, my grandfather had headed several miles south in the Indian River Lagoon to work his crab line. He hauled up the first trap and reached for his tongs (visible on the engine box along with his cotton work gloves) to clear out the trash.

The tongs were not there… My brother and I had taken them to do something or other. Our grandfather had to turn around and come all the way back to the house to get them!

He was good and mad. Dan and I heard him coming up the river…

Where are my Goddamn tongs?

Boy, could he yell.

We ran and hid! Later that afternoon, though, Gramps laughed about his mischievous young grandsons.

But we were careful not to take his tongs again!

At the beginning of that first summer, our parents had asked my grandfather to teach my brother and me to swim.

Okay…

Gramps’s instruction (and motivation) amounted to little more than simply picking us up and tossing us off the pier into the water. He followed us in, of course.

Now swim!

We learned quickly.

Gramps, my brother and I often just swam naked off the end of the pier. Afterwards, Dan and I ran through the kitchen while my grandmother laughed at her two bare-assed grandsons!

Honest John’s Fish Camp

Occasionally, our grandfather piled my brother and me into a small wooden skiff called the Cathy. It had a ten-horsepower Johnson outboard. I learned tiller steering with that little engine. As I repeatedly veered off course, my grandfather patiently explained to me,

Jimmy, you just push the handle one way, and the boat will turn the other way.

Hmmm…

We would take Cathy to Mullet Creek on the eastern shore of the Indian River Lagoon. Mullet Creek is not a creek at all (just as the Indian River is not a river). Rather, it is a maze of water passages through wooded areas bordered by dense mangroves. The depth is good in most places, although there are some shallow spots to avoid. Wildlife is abundant. Ospreys, egrets, pelicans and other waterfowl roost in the tall casuarina trees and among the mangroves. Manatees seek the calm and protected water with its sea grass and abundant marine life.

Mullet Creek was (and still is) a popular fishing spot. The only development back then was remote Honest John’s Fish Camp. My grandfather would dock Cathy at the fish camp to visit with Honest John Smith himself. Sitting in the shade of a palm tree, the two shared beers and fishing lies for hours (it seemed to my brother and me). It was fun, though, and remains one of my fond memories of those carefree years.

Honest John and my grandfather are long gone, of course, but Honest John’s Fish Camp lives on, much as it did back then.

My grandfather had constructed a homemade boat lift on the shorter of his two piers so that he could haul his workboats out of the water for bottom cleaning and painting. He stood chest-deep in water under a boat while slopping on cheap copper antifouling paint that he bought from Ronald Senne Lumber across the street.

Gramps used an ancient, limp four-inch paintbrush (probably from the farm). Because he had to work overhead, the smelly paint continuously ran down his arm, forming a sheen on the water and creating a red waterline on his chest!

One day while doing this, he said,

Jimmy—light a cigarette for me…

Sure!

I was maybe eight years old.

I shook a Tareyton out of a pack and stuck it in my mouth like a grownup. I flipped open the lighter the way I had seen my grandfather do many times. Just as I was about to flick the wheel with my thumb (one-handed, of course), my grandmother showed up…

"You will not!" She snatched the cigarette dangling from my lips.

Shit!

(I had already learned that word from my grandfather…)

Grandma then lit the cigarette and took a long pull before handing it off to Gramps. (My grandmother was never a smoker but had probably done this for him many times on the farm…)

One other day while painting the bottom of his crab boat, my grandfather attempted this maneuver on his own.

Dan and I sat cross-legged on the pier and watched.

Standing chest deep in water while precariously balancing a large tray of bottom paint with one arm, Gramps reached for his cigarettes and lighter with the other.

Just as Gramps was about to flick his favorite lighter, the whole tray spilled. The entire pack of Tareytons went in the water along with the lighter. Nearly a gallon of red antifouling paint spread out, coating everything but the boat.

Dan and I sat there open-mouthed while the language that followed included words we had not yet heard!

We shared laughs about that day well into adulthood.

One of my favorite memories from those summers was, following dinner, watching the old black and white TV in the darkened living room with my grandparents and brother. Reception was poor, and it often looked like everything was happening in a snowstorm.

On the roof was a rotating TV antenna. An electric remote controller next to the TV could point it in various directions to find the best reception for each of the three channels: Two, Six and Nine. Nine was the clearest, Six was fair, and Two usually looked more like a blizzard. When changing channels, Gramps would go to the clumsy controller to try a new direction. It made a clunking sound as a motor on the roof slowly rotated the antenna.

The small house did not have air-conditioning and never would. It was to be years before there was even a telephone. We watched TV to the drone of a vibrating, old electric fan that had seen too many years of service on the farm. The annoying whine of mosquitoes that had found their way through the screens bothered us almost every night. Grandma lit odorous, smoldering repellent coils to help keep them away.

Most of the evening programs back then were westerns—Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Cheyenne… To this day, hearing those theme songs on the old reruns brings back happy childhood images and memories.

I soon discovered a love for sailing. My first experience with that was motoring upwind in one of my grandfather’s outboard skiffs and then shutting off the engine to sail (drift) downwind back to the dock. The idle outboard engine acted as my rudder, so I could steer the boat. One day I did that time after time and could not get enough of it.

The sailing bug had bitten me.

My first real sailboat was a homemade eight-foot pram that my father and his friend had, years earlier, found drifting down a river in Ohio. They rescued it and subsequently clamped an absurdly large outboard motor to its transom. Soon thereafter, the overpowered boat became mostly oar powered. Eventually my dad and I decided to put a sailing rig on it. We installed a daggerboard and trunk, a kick-up rudder and a gaff sail that my mother made on her sewing machine out of household linen.

I learned to sail on that boat. I was twelve, rather old for a beginning sailor.

I never had a sailing lesson. To me, it was all intuitive. I just cast off in the pram one day and quickly learned that, one, sailboats cannot go straight upwind and, two, all you must do is sheet in the sail until it fills and the boat begins moving.

Schooners are no different…

A drawback of the old pram was that I had to consistently sail it close-hauled—in both directions—to get back to where I started! That impressed upon me the importance for a sailboat to have at least some degree of windward ability.

I got my next boat at age fourteen. My grandfather bought a used sixteen-foot Gibbs dory that we were told had been built near Jacksonville in the late 1930s.

With my Gibbs dory

Grant, Florida

Summer 1970

The dory was constructed of white cedar on oak and had a small, one-cylinder Lawson inboard engine. My dad and I planned to convert the dory to a sloop-rigged sailboat, so we set about laminating up a long, shallow keel and building a mast and boom. Our family had recently moved from Ohio to Rocky Point Road in Malabar, Florida, only four miles north of my grandparents’ place on the Indian River Lagoon.

Early morning on the Indian River Lagoon

Malabar, Florida

Our immediate neighbor to the south, Bill Quinlivan, was a bit of an eccentric. He owned waterfront property on the Indian River Lagoon, living there with his wife and seven kids. Mr. Quinlivan loved sailboats and had grown up sailing his family’s small catboat (which he still had as an adult). Its name was Watermelon.

John Quinlivan and Jon Radencic aboard Watermelon

(Photo courtesy Steven Quinlivan)

I did not have a sail for my dory and explained to Mr. Quinlivan that my mom would probably have to make one. Mr. Quinlivan told me that it would be difficult for her to sew a decent sail and suggested, instead, that I buy a used, hundred-square-foot nylon Comet Class sail that he had in his garage. I told him I could not afford a real sail, but he said he would sell it to me for only $9.98.

I ran next door to my parents and managed to come back with a ten-dollar bill. I gave it to Mr. Quinlivan, who reached into his pocket for change. I told him change would not be necessary, but he shook his head and said,

Nope, the agreed upon price was $9.98. He pressed two pennies into my hand.

I still have that sail.

Mr. Quinlivan continued to help me fit out the dory for sailing. He instructed me how to sew with sail twine, sail needles, beeswax and sail palm. I learned a lot. One day, though, Mr. Quinlivan turned serious and said to me,

Jim, there is just one thing I want you to keep in mind…

He paused and looked at me.

I waited.

When it comes to choosing between a good boat and a good woman, always remember…

"Good boats are hard to find!"

Bill Quinlivan

(Photo courtesy of Steven Quinlivan)

As it turned out (and as was certainly to be expected), the Comet sail along with a small homemade jib and the twenty-two-foot mast we built proved to be a bit much for the narrow-bottomed dory. Even at its mooring, just sitting on the rail (or a good gust of wind) caused the boat to capsize.

Furthermore, with no flotation and the weight of the inboard engine, the boat sank. Fortunately, the Indian River Lagoon is only a few feet deep in most places. This happened several times, and each time the engine had to be taken apart to be rinsed and dried. I eventually just left the engine ashore in the garage.

I learned a lot about tender sailboats and capsizing.

At about this time, I joined the local Sea Scout troop in Melbourne. It had a twenty-two-foot wooden keel cruising sloop that I just loved. The boat was everything that my dory was not—stable and able to carry a press of sail, decent windward ability and a cozy little cabin with an oil lamp swinging gently from the overhead.

After two sails to Port Canaveral to beach the boat for bottom painting, we sea scouts took it on a weekend cruise by ourselves down the Indian River Lagoon to Sebastian Inlet. I was fourteen years old, and the other boys were fifteen and sixteen. At the inlet park, they decided to head ashore to the beach to swim or surf. I stayed back, though, and got the sloop underway. The next few hours were among the best of my boyhood as I happily single-handed the boat up and down the Intracoastal Waterway while waving to passing boaters.

I now wanted my own cruising sailboat more than anything else.

Misadventures with the Old Dorothy

The Acquisition

Only a year later, my family moved to Tallahassee where my father had accepted employment with the Florida State Board of Education. I was still obsessed with getting a cruising sailboat—it was all I could think about. My dad understood that and hoped to find a decent boat.

One weekend, our family took a road trip west along the Florida Panhandle. We spotted a marina in Ft. Walton Beach and stopped to look around. There we found a thirty-two-foot Crosby yawl (most likely originally a catboat) for sale by the marina owner, W. A. Dixon, for $1800.

The boat’s name was Dorothy, and it had been built in 1900 by H. Manley Crosby at his yard in Brooklyn, New York. The fact that the boat had a continuously running bilge pump failed to dampen our enthusiasm and appeal to our sense of better judgment.

Mr. Dixon was a gruff man. He growled that if he could not sell that boat for $1,800, he would take it out and sink it.

That would have been as simple as turning off the bilge pump.

Nonetheless, we returned home the proud new owners of a sixty-eight-year-old, lightly built leaking sailboat that should have ended up on the mudflats years before.

Dorothy at Ft. Walton Beach Marina, Fall 1968

Fort Walton Beach to St. Marks

A weekend or so later, we went to pick up Dorothy and move her from Ft. Walton Beach to the small town of St. Marks off Apalachee Bay south of Tallahassee. My dad, brother and I got the boat underway, and my mom drove the car to meet up with us in various remote locations in the canals and inland waterway. Once, in the middle of the night, Mom had to wake up a bridge tender to get him to crank open the hand-operated span and let us through!

The four-cylinder Gray Marine engine developed a rod knock only a few hours into the trip, and we had to run at a slow speed for fear it would throw a rod or seize up altogether. At a bend in one of the canals, we encountered a tug and barge going in the opposite direction. The tug sounded two whistles. We turned to each other, asking,

"What does Toot Toot mean?" and wrongly concluded it must be to get out of the way to our right. We crowded Dorothy up against the starboard bank of the canal to give the barge plenty of room. What the tug operator had wanted, though, was for us to hug the opposite bank so that he could pass more easily to the outside. We managed to keep clear, but the tug captain was probably cursing the stupid novices out on the waterway with no clue as to what they were doing!

A day or so later at the town of Carrabelle, Mom joined us for the final run across Apalachee Bay to the St. Marks River. With only an uncompensated, cheap boat compass for navigation, we set off with no means of determining our position. Toward late afternoon in light fog and reduced visibility, we ran aground in mud and sand. Dorothy was a center-boarder and drew less than four feet, but we were stuck fast.

The tide had been nearly high when we ran aground. During the night while we were all trying to get some sleep, Dorothy settled onto her port bilge. Fortunately, the weather was calm. My brother and I were in the starboard bunks and rolled out onto the cabin sole. My parents’ consternation was offset by our laughter, and we all spent the rest of the night in our slanted quarters. The