Down to the Tropical Sun
By
Jeffrey Gowing
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Jeffrey Gowing
Cover design by Laura Shinn
Formatted by Laura Shinn
ISBN: 978-1-4659-3677-6
License Notes
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient at Smashwords.com. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Synopsis
Have you ever dreamt of cashing in your chips and escaping to a tropical paradise? Faced with an imminent divorce, this non-fiction novel chronicles how Jimmy Lassiter does just that, taking the reader through liquidating the marital assets, purchasing a yacht, and sailing ‘Down to the Tropical Sun’. Along the way he will experience two hurricanes, fall in love again, and embark on a new career delivering yachts.
Author’s website
http://www.jeff-gowing-books.com
Chapter One
It was a sticky hot summer morning in July on Boston’s North Shore when my wife’s attorney served me with documents announcing her intentions to seek a divorce. I was sitting behind the counter in the reception area of the boarding and grooming kennel we’d purchased together almost a dozen years previously after we’d both quit our jobs working for a wealthy family, caring for a stable of hunt horses and fifty couple of foxhounds. We’d come to realize that particular form of employment was nothing but a ‘cradle to the grave’ dead end, and a bequest from Libby’s grandmother afforded us an opportunity to start anew in a new venture. After months of looking, we’d purchased this property for the proverbial song from an owner whose husband had suffered a heart attack in the very chair where I now sat. We’d ended up with over eighteen acres of land, a five thousand square foot ranch perched atop a hill, and a boarding/grooming kennel with the capacity to board one hundred dogs and twenty cats. The business was thriving, but my indiscretions of the last few months were about to collapse that house of cards.
The crunch of gravel under tires presaged the arrival of our first client of the day. I glanced up to see a gleaming black Mercedes parking in the lot outside. The fellow who got out with briefcase in hand was not anyone I recognized as one of our regular customers, but I stood up to greet him as he entered the office.
He said, “Good morning. Are you Jimmy Lassiter?”
I replied, “Yes. That’s me. What can I do for you?”
He undid the clasps on his briefcase and extracted a sheaf of papers. He handed them to me, saying, “I’m representing your wife in this matter. Consider yourself served.”
I can’t say that this development came as a big surprise to me, but it was a stunner all the same. I scanned through the pages of legal verbiage on the pages on my lap until I arrived at the section that cited ‘irreconcilable differences’ as Libby’s putative justification for seeking to end our marriage. Those few lines of text afforded me a sigh of relief. Had she chosen a different path, it might have been a lot worse.
Months ago, while Libby was away on the dog show circuit with three of our Irish setters for two weeks, I’d been introduced to a young lady from Los Angeles by a mutual friend. Suzy was visiting the North Shore on vacation, and after an hour in each other’s company we were finishing each other’s sentences. To call me smitten would have been a ludicrous understatement. She and I began a torrid affair easily facilitated by my wife’s absence. To my everlasting shame, when it was time for Suzy to return to LA, I’d bought an old Toyota station wagon and took off on a road trip to California in the wee hours of a summer morning with my lover. All this was done with complete disregard for the consequences that would surely follow. I’d had a great time in LA, but eventually the bloom was off the rose, and here I was back in Massachusetts. It was time to pay the piper!
By eleven-thirty I was pretty sure that Libby was not planning to come to work at the kennel. I left Alicia, our part-time groomer, brushing out the matted coat of a Golden retriever and trudged up the rise through the pines to our home on the hill.
I found Libby seated at the long mahogany trestle table in the kitchen nursing a cup of coffee. I said, “Hi Libs. I had a visit from your lawyer this morning. I wish you’d told me about this beforehand.”
She replied, “Yeah, well I wish you’d had the courtesy to tell me you were leaving me when you took off with that bitch from LA.”
“Hey, Suzy was not a bitch. I don’t know what more I can say, other than to keep saying I’m sorry. In her defense, she was really uncomfortable with my driving her back to Los Angeles.”
“That’s not a big frigging comfort to me, Jimmy. I really do not care anymore. Can I assume that you won’t contest this divorce? I want to sell this place, and find another kennel in Vermont or New Hampshire. My attorney tells me that lots on the North Shore are averaging over one hundred and twenty thousand an acre right now. We agreed long ago that if we ever split up, we’d split any profit after I got back what I invested from my inheritance. If you’ll agree to help make that happen, I think I can still trust you that far. What are you planning to do, move to California and set up housekeeping with your bimbo?”
“I suppose I deserve that, Libby. No, I’m not going back to LA. That’s over. Sailing has always been more of a passion for me than horses or dogs. I’ll call my friend Billy. He’s got years of experience developing property, and will be glad to help us out. It may take a while, but I think that will benefit both of us in the long run. If we can realize a nice profit from the sale, I’ll buy a big sailboat and head south.”
Libby looked me in the eyes sadly and said, “Ok, Jimmy. You can continue to live here while we get through all this, but you’re not sleeping with me anymore. You can move into the guest bedroom today.”
Chapter Two
It felt very strange sleeping in the guest bedroom in my own house, but I really had no standing to feel displaced. In fact, Libby was being far more generous than I might have been had our situations been reversed.
I was out of the house by eight in the morning, leaving a note for Libby that I’d gone to the diner to catch Billy where he had breakfast every day before he opened his real estate office located on route 1A in Beverly. I found him in his usual booth, nursing his second cup of coffee and looking over an offer to buy an old Colonial in Ipswich.
I slid into the booth opposite him, saying, “Good morning, Bill. Can I take a few minutes of your time?”
He replied, “Sure, Jimmy. What’s up?”
“Libby and I are getting divorced. She wants to relocate and buy property up North to start another business. We’ve both got a financial interest in the current real estate so we need to sell it and split the proceeds. I’m guessing that the best way to maximize profits will be to tear down the kennel and carve the land up into as many one acre lots as we can. It’s just a hair over eighteen acres at present according to our deed. The neighbors ought to love the idea. All of them think the kennel is a nuisance, but our license is protected by a covenant as long as we renew the permit every year.”
“Gee, Jimmy, I’m sorry to hear that. What happened with you two? How long will you have to get the property sold?”
The underlying reason behind our breakup was not really something I wanted to advertise so I simply said, “We just grew apart. As far as a time frame, I can be available 24/7 until we get it sold. You tell me. If you’re willing, we’d like to work with you though the entire process.”
I could tell by the gleam in Bill’s eyes that I had him well and truly hooked. He said, “Jimmy, I’m flattered you thought of me. We can get started right away. Why don’t you come to the office with me and I’ll call a surveyor I use on big projects like this. We’ll have to commission him to do a plan for the town to approve, and we’ll need to schedule a date and time to do percolation tests for as many lots as we think we can fit in. From what I remember of your property, we may have to put in an access road to get the maximum number of buildable lots. It won’t be easy. It never is when dealing with small town planning boards, but I’m sure you and Libby can walk away from this with a good chunk of change. I’ll treat you fairly, but my commissions will come in handy too. My oldest is in his second year at Boston University and his sister is applying to Babson for admission. The tuition fees are killing me. If you don’t mind my asking, what are your plans?”
“Billy, I’ve always been a sailor. My mom’s earliest photo of me is a snapshot of me at age two holding the tiller of the family catboat. I’m thirty years old, and I’m going to buy the biggest sailboat I can swing and point her South. I sort of just fell into the horse and hounds gig by happenstance, met Libby, and got married. I enjoyed working with the horses and hounds, but the grooming and show dogs were Libby’s passion, not mine.”
I spent the better part of the morning hashing details out with Billy and the surveyor. When I left them around noontime, I’d agreed to Billy’s commission and the surveyor, whose name was Walt, was going to get started on a plot plan and schedule perc tests after he’d looked the property over. All this was subject to Libby’s approval, but I assured Bill that I’d call him to confirm before the end of the day.
I found myself daydreaming as I was making the short twenty minute drive back home. A few years ago, Libby and I had chartered a yacht in the British Virgin islands together with another couple. Matt was my longtime sailing buddy, and his girlfriend was a banker in Boston. The two ladies seemed to have a good time, but were constantly complaining about having to cut short their daily showers and the lack of electricity to run their hair dryers. Matt and I had been sailing together for years, cruising the Northeast waters from Canada to Long Island. My only experience with true offshore sailing was several trips to Bermuda and the Bahamas on a one hundred foot sail training schooner owned by the prep school I’d attended on Cape Cod. Those voyages, and my experiences in the Virgins, only served to whet my appetite for more. Now, it was looking like my impending divorce was going to give me the chance to do just that. My failed marriage was soon going to morph into a bittersweet memory.
Back home, I went over my discussions with Billy and Walter, getting Libby’s agreement to confirm the arrangements. That phone call set in motion a crash course in the pitfalls of real estate development for which I was wholly unprepared.
Chapter Three
I was awakened the next morning by the sound of our front doorbell chimes at seven-thirty. I slipped on my Dansko clogs. and walked down the hall to find Walt. Billy’s surveyor, at the door.
He greeted me cheerfully. “Good morning, Jimmy. I pulled a copy of your plot plan at the registry of deeds yesterday and spent last evening roughing out a preliminary sketch of how we might carve up the property into lots that will maximize your return. Now I need to walk the land to estimate where we can get good percolation tests. You’ve got a deep well that is being used for both the house and the kennel. The kennel has a septic system in place, so assuming we plan to raze the kennel for someone to build a home there, it will make sense to cut the well feed to the ranch house, and connect it to the town water system. That will give you a ready-made site to sell where the kennel was and the house can be listed anytime you want. Also, based on the frontage on the street, you can also sell a one acre lot to the right of the house without needing planning board approval as soon as we can get a perc test done. Now, let’s walk the rest of your property and see where we can fit in more building sites. I need to decide where the best locations are to get additional percolation tests done.
The ‘back forty’ of our land was heavily forested with mature pine trees and various hardwoods. The property border on that side was a small brook that was home to numbers of native brook trout. Any fishing aficionado building a home there would think he’d died and gone to heaven. The stream was deep enough and fast moving enough that mosquito hatches were not a problem.
As we walked down the hill I turned to Walt and asked, “Forgive my ignorance, but just what does a perc test entail?” He seemed lost in thought, so I waited a moment and asked again.
Walt replied, “Sorry, I was just thinking to myself. The only way to make this work is going to be extending the kennel driveway and building a circular access road so buyers will be able to get to their building sites. You’ve got a lot of prime timber back here. Done right, logging this property would pay for most of the costs of building that road.”
He continued, “Simply put, a percolation test involves digging a hole where you want to install a septic system, filling it with water, and timing how long it takes for that water to be absorbed into the ground. It has to be approved and certified by a civil engineer, I have all I need now to get started on drawing up a plan to submit to the town.
“Sounds simple enough.”. I replied. “Just let me know when you need me to do anything, and I’ll get started finding a logger that can get the job done quickly.”
I walked with Walt to his truck parked at the foot of my driveway and bade him good morning. Our tour of the property had left it just shy of nine o’clock, so I walked down the hill and summarized the morning’s discussions for Libby, after which I climbed the stairs to the tiny office space we’d created on the skimpy second floor of the kennel building. There were only two small rooms up there, one being the office to the left, and on the right a room stacked floor to ceiling with cages for twenty cats being boarded while their owners were on vacation. That small room brought in more revenue per square foot than any other space in the whole facility.
I got on the phone and called a local sawmill in the neighboring town of Haverhill. The fellow who answered the phone gave me the names and numbers of three contract loggers.
The second one I phoned picked up right away, telling me he’d just finished up a job in Newburyport and agreed to meet with me the next morning. With that task at least begun, I picked up the phone once more and dialed my old classmate, Larry, down near Cape Cod in the tiny village where we’d both grown up. He was now a successful yacht broker, and the first person that had come to mind when Libby had served me with divorce papers.
I got Larry’s office manager when I called. She told me that he was out meeting with a client, and would call me back in an hour or so. I didn’t want Libby to hear that conversation, so I gave the woman my cell number, asking that he try me around noon if possible.
By lunchtime I was sitting at the bar in Georgetown at the Old Towne Tavern, nursing a Dos Equis and waiting for my fried clam plate. My cell phone rang promptly a twelve. I checked the caller ID and hit ‘send’ to answer the call. “Hey Larry, thanks for getting back to me.”
“Hey yourself, Jimmy. What can I do ya for?”
I replied, “Larry, Libby and I are getting divorced. As soon as I can get our property here on the North Shore sold, I want to buy a boat and head down to the Caribbean. I’m looking for something I can sail solo if I have to on occasion, but big enough to use for day charters. I really don’t want to do term charters and have to deal with babysitting clients for a week at a time. Taking customers out for a day sail around the islands, letting them snorkel the reefs, and getting them happy with lots of rum punch sounds a lot easier than dealing with constant demands for service. I really don’t want to have to deal with the personality conflicts that are bound to come up when you get two couples together on a forty to fifty foot sailboat for days at a time. Chartering for the day means that I can drop customers back at their hotel in the afternoon, say ‘thank you’, and have the vessel to myself again.”
“Well, Jimmy, most of the day charter boats tend to be big Morgans or trimarans carrying about ten to twelve or more guests, but if you can live with only space enough for six passengers, I might have just the boat you want. I just got the listing this morning. In fact, that’s where I was when you called earlier today. I was just writing up an ad for it to place in the next issue of Offshore magazine. She’s a C&C forty that’s sitting on a mooring right here in Sippican Harbor. She’s owned by an old pal of mine who’s looking for a quick sale. It’s a tall rig with a deep keel, and was fitted out with all the extras you could ever think of. Just to buy the stuff this fellow has added to the vessel would cost you close to the asking price. If you want to come down this weekend to check her out, I’ll hold off on placing any ads.”
This was moving far more quickly than I’d contemplated before placing that initial call to Larry, but I hadn’t visited my parents lately so I said, “Sounds like a plan to me!” and arranged to hook up with him at the local yacht club dock on Saturday morning at ten AM.
Chapter Four
The next morning the wall mounted phone in the kitchen was ringing even before I’d had a chance to sip on my first cup of coffee. It was Bill calling. He said, “Jimmy, we’ve already got some interest on your property. I’ve got a client I’ve been working with for a while. He and his wife currently live in a two story home in Hamilton, but she has MS, and they need a single story home because her mobility is starting to go. I’ve been on the phone with Walt and he assures me that there’s frontage to do a one acre lot to the right of your ranch that won’t require approval from the town. The client wants me to convey an offer of one hundred and fifteen thousand, and he’s willing to assume responsibility for getting the perc test done at his own risk. He sells pre-fabricated homes. He’s ready to erect one on that lot and can close quickly.
I replied, “If you’ll hang on just a moment, I’ll check with Libby. Don’t hang up. I’ll be right back.” I walked down the hallway and knocked on Libby’s bedroom door. As I anticipated, she had little interest in the mechanics and details of winding up our lives together, only in how long it would take to get it done. Returning to the kitchen, I picked up the phone and said, “Ok, Billy. Tell your customer he’s got a deal if he can close before the end of August. I can stop by your office to sign paperwork later today, but I’ve got to take a quick trip to Marion this weekend.”
Bill rang off after assuring me that he’d have an offer and deposit in hand for me by mid-afternoon. That formality was executed in Billy’s office at three, following which I headed home to break the news that I was planning to go visit my folks in the morning. Not surprisingly, Libby had no objections to this. Given the tension in our household recently, I guessed that she was glad to get rid of me for the weekend.
By eight-thirty on Saturday morning I was on the Southeast expressway in light weekend traffic heading towards the Cape. At a quarter to nine, I was exiting off of route 195 in Marion onto Front Street. I drove slowly past Tabor Academy through the center of town and took a left turn onto the tree shaded lane leading down to the yacht club and the harbor. Larry was sitting in the stern of the club launch waiting for me.
“Hey, Jimmy.” He greeted me. “How are you? I’m sorry to hear you and Libby are splitting up.”
“Good morning. I wish I could say otherwise, but the whole mess is my fault. Now I’ve gotta move on and put it behind me. Let’s go see this boat!”
“She’s right over there,” he said, pointing to a tall-masted sailboat lying on a mooring about a hundred yards distant, amid the hundred or so yachts in the harbor. Larry waved to the launch driver, who hopped aboard, cast off the dock lines, and headed out into the harbor. As we drew alongside the C&C, I began to pick out details that said this was a fast and well equipped offshore yacht. The mast towered a full sixty-five feet above the deck, supported by stainless steel rod rigging, and triple spreaders. On deck, I could see a rectangular canister lashed down on the coach roof forward, that could only be a six man Givens life raft. At the stern, I spied a whip antenna for a single sideband radio and the tip of a man overboard pole poking out of a hole in the transom. She also sported heavy weather lee cloths woven to the lifelines to port and starboard.
The launch driver held us steady while Larry unfastened the pelican hooks on the lifelines to allow us access to the cockpit. Saying, “After you. Let’s check her out and go for a sail.”
I hopped up on deck and waited while Larry unlocked the companionway hatch. Looking around the cockpit, I saw full Brookes and Gatehouse repeaters set into the bulkhead, an oversized stainless wheel wrapped in rawhide, and controls for an autopilot. The interior below was all oiled teak, with a mahogany and holly cabin sole. The nav station was to port with a big bunk aft under the cockpit. Forward of the chart area was a table on gimbals with a settee, followed by a head with a shower. The port side offered a functional galley with a double bunk opposite the door to the WC. Up in the bow, there were port and starboard V berths, buried at present under a pile of sail bags and life preservers. While I was inspecting all the stuff in the nav station, like the SSB, the weather fax, and the satellite navigation system, Larry called down from the cockpit, “Hey, Let’s go sailing. Jimmy, the one quirk this boat’s owner has is that he does not trust roller furling. The main and storm staysail have boltropes, and the genoa and working jib use hanks. I can’t say I agree with him, but you do get a full set of nine sails in excellent condition.”
I found a bag stenciled with ‘Genoa 125’ among the bags stuffed in the forepeak, wrestled it up through the hatch, and hanked it on to the forestay. Larry motored us out of the harbor while I raised the sails. I didn’t mind doing the grunt work. If I bought this vessel, I’d have to be able to handle her solo if need be. What followed was one of those rare perfect days on the water you never forget.
Back at the dock, Larry said, “Well, what do you think?”
I replied, “Here’s the deal. I’ve got one lot under contract, with lots more stuff to get sold. Give me twenty-four hours to see if I can swing this. I want this boat.”
I said goodbye to my old friend and mused to myself while driving to my parent’s home in Mattapoisett. Perhaps I could negotiate a bridge loan from Matt’s girlfriend, Elise, using the contract on that first lot as collateral.
Chapter Five
Mom and Dad were happy to see me as always. There was no way to sugarcoat it, so I just plunged in and told them that Libby and I were calling it quits. I did, however, omit the sordid details about my infidelity. They were sure to find out eventually, but I’d deal with that later, preferably by telephone from the Virgin Islands many miles away from Mattapoisett. We had a pleasant dinner on the porch at the Mattapoisett Inn and I was tucked away in my childhood bedroom by ten pm.
Come Monday morning, I detoured off the expressway in the center of Boston and found one of the few remaining street level parking lots in town on Congress near the bank where Elise worked as the primary loan officer. The lot’s owner had so far resisted selling to developers, but had conceded that property value called for drastic measures. He’d installed hydraulic lifts allowing him to stack day long vehicles three high. I left my Saab with the attendant, assuring him that I’d be back in under an hour.
Elise spotted me entering the bank from behind her desk in a glass enclosed office and beckoned me in. She greeted me with, “Hey Jimmy. What’s got you coming into the downtown madness during the day?”
“Long story, sweetie, but the short version is that Libby and I are getting divorced. We’re selling our property on the North Shore. She wants to move to Vermont or New Hampshire and start a new business. I’m buying a yacht and going sailing. I’ve got an offer to purchase for one building lot for 115K, and should have lots more agreements in place over the next month or so. I need a bridge loan so I can buy this boat I’ve found down in Marion. I’ll only need a term of thirty days, or a maximum of sixty to repay it. The yacht’s asking price is 75K. Can you help me out?”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Jimmy. I always liked Libby. If you’ll have the realtor you’re using fax me a copy of the offer to purchase, I can authorize a short term loan to cover the seventy-five thousand for you in a day or so.
Looking back on it now, it should have been obvious to me that this whole process was going far too smoothly to last. The first of many obstacles we’d have to deal with before getting our assets liquidated in Massachusetts came in the form of a phone call from Billy later that day. He began with the usual pleasantries, and then dropped a bombshell.
“Jimmy, it appears that the town is going to be difficult about scheduling perc tests on your property. They’ve informed me that the engineer employed by the town is fully booked doing tests at another development and will be unable to perform any tests on your lots until next year.”
My heart sank at this news. Waiting that long and having to stay living with Libby was just not going to work. Fortunately for me, Billy wasn’t finished.
“I’ve looked at the relevant statute in the general laws of the state, and there is a clause in there saying that if the engineer employed by the town is unable to do perc testing, any landowner shall have the option to employ a licensed civil engineer to perform those tests at his own expense. That’s the law. However, it looks like it will take a lawsuit to get the town to comply with that option. Going down that road is not going to win you any popularity contests with the locals.”
I replied, “Bill, I really don’t give a damn about local opinion. I’ll call my lawyer right now and get him to file suit at the Essex County Court tomorrow morning.“ That took all of five minutes on the phone with the lawyer Libby and I had used on occasion. He called me back the next day to tell me that the judge had scheduled a hearing for Friday morning at the courthouse in Salem.
The days and weeks that followed that troubling phone call only brought more misery. Walt produced a plan showing eighteen projected building lots to present to the town planning board which they summarily rejected each time for picky little errors at three successive weekly meetings. I had no doubt that these rejections were prompted by anger over the suit I’d filed to allow us to conduct our own perc testing. When our plan was rejected for the third time, I was getting really pissed off. I stood and addressed the board members, saying, “I’ve now sat here three weeks in a row, only to be told we need further revisions to this plan we’ve given you this evening. I would like stated for the record that if we make the further changes you’ve asked for tonight, you will approve this plan at your meeting next Thursday night.” It seemed that I’d backed the board into a corner. After a few minutes in whispered consultation, the board members grudgingly agreed that the few final revisions they’d demanded would suffice.