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The first boat Thomas Tangvald ever owned was just 22 feet long. She was an odd craft, a narrow plywood scow with a flat bottom, leeboards on either side, and square ends—little more than a daysailer with a rotting deck and tiny cabinhouse tacked on. Thomas paid just $200 for her. He proudly named her Spartan and immediately moved aboard. He was but 14 years old at the time, a skinny lad with a tousled mop of blond hair, an earnest smile, and a sharp mind.
Thomas’s home prior to this had been his father’s much larger 50-foot cutter, L’Artemis de Pytheas, a primitive, home-built teak vessel. Thomas was born on this boat, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and had lived on it his entire life as his father roamed the planet under sail. In moving aboard Spartan, he was for the first time asserting some measure of independence, physically separating himself from his father, Peter Tangvald, and his 7-year-old sister, Carmen.
Peter Tangvald was a renowned, somewhat notorious bluewater cruiser. He had been married several times, having famously lost one wife in a pirate attack and another one overboard. Some wondered if he had murdered these women. Now he was a single dad in his mid-60s, with two kids to look after. Recently he had suffered two heart attacks and was palpably weaker than before.
In July 1991, nine months after Thomas moved aboard Spartan, Peter decreed his family should sail from the Puerto Rican island of Culebra south to Bonaire to stay clear of hurricanes. He also decided he would tow Spartan behind L’Artemis some 400 miles across the breadth of the Caribbean to get there.
It was a pretty crazy plan. For one engineless sailboat to tow another all that distance was in itself challenging. But Peter also decided to split up his crew. Spartan had a large open cockpit, and to keep her from being swamped en route to Bonaire, he decided Thomas should stay aboard to repeatedly bail her out. That left Peter and his weak heart to mind both L’Artemis and young Carmen on his own.
No one knows exactly what went wrong, but on the fourth night of their voyage, both L’Artemis and Spartan were wrecked on the windward shore of Bonaire. Thomas had just gotten up to bail out his boat and witnessed the tragedy in full. In the dark night he sensed first they were much too close to shore, but saw no sign of his father on deck aboard L’Artemis. Then Thomas saw a white line of breakers ahead. He saw L’Artemis lurch up into a shelf of mercilessly sharp coral. Then he saw the towline to his boat go slack. Half naked with no pants on, he grabbed his surfboard and jumped overboard in the nick of time.
Thomas spent six hours paddling around before he finally struggled ashore the next morning. His father’s boat, he found, had been ground into “millions of little bits of teak.” Thomas’ body was covered with friction burns, and by the end of that day he was lying in a bed in the local hospital. Over the next two days he was taken back to the wreck site to identify bodies. His sister was found afloat near shore. His father was found on shore with his face smashed in.
Not long afterward, Thomas had two dreams. In the first, his father came to him looking very different than before, but Thomas still recognized him.
“Yes, it’s amazing, isn’t it?” said his father. “I’m all better now.”
In the second dream, Thomas was studying a huge map, trying to decide where to search for his father. But then he remembered he didn’t have to look for him, because he was already dead.
The second boat Thomas owned was as small as the first, just 22 feet on deck. But she was also much more seaworthy. This was a traditional Itchen Ferry cutter named Melody. Where Spartan had been little more than a flat, hard-cornered box, Melody had a deep hull, a long keel, and sinuous curves that yielded to passing waves rather than resisting them…
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