Brief Encounters on the Inland Waterway

"Brief Encounters on the Inland Waterway" is an article first published in Venture: The Traveler's World in the October/November 1966 edition and reprinted in Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons in 1974.

Summary

Joseph P. Kennedy (center), surrounded by members of the Kennedy family at his 75th birthday

Frank Wirtanen—captain of the Marlin, a fifty-one foot motor yacht owned by Kennedy family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy—invites Vonnegut on a 14-day trip to reposition the boat from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to the Kennedy's winter home in West Palm Beach, Florida down the Inland Waterway. Despite its illustrious ownership, the 35 year old Marlin's main cabin looks like a "set from a Clifford Odets play about the Great Depression". The Inland Waterway passes through bays, lakes, rivers, and creeks, sometimes through people's backyards, although when weather permits, travel is faster taking the outside route. They make several stops, such as being spotted as a Kennedy boat in Manasquan, New Jersey; an Army Corp of Engineers patrol lieutenant not seeming to recognize who Joseph Kennedy of Hyannis Port is; and stopping for gas, finding that the boat is making a "splendid" rate of more than one mile per gallon. By the time they reach West Palm, Vonnegut calculates that they've burned through 1,522 gallons.

In the Chesapeake and Delaware canal, they encounter dozens more millionaires' yachts being taken south for the winter. The captains, cooks, and crew meet up at Shaefer's, a seafood restaurant. A friend of Wirtanen's named Bert from Nova Scotia has them aboard the sixty foot yawl Charity Anne Browning along with Gunther, the Swedish captain of the gigantic Golden Hind VI, who almost never sees the boat's owner and wonders why he keeps his seemingly pointless job. The Charity Anne Browning is immaculately kept to the point that Vonnegut, whom Bert ignores since he's not a captain, can't even use an ashtray and the crew use the marina's toilets rather than the boat's, even in the middle of the night.

During the day, many of the luxury craft lazily follow each other but Wirtanen warns against this since many boats are captained by irresponsible young relatives of the owners. Crossing into the southern United States means the industrialized coast turns to swampland, along with occasional hostility when the Kennedy boat is recognized. Along the way they interact with a rare woman captain, a Goldwater supporter who is single-handedly taking a boat larger than theirs from Ithaca, New York to Key West. They also meet a black man in Jacksonville who calls seeing and touching the Kennedy boat "the best thing that ever happened". Arriving in West Palm, the businesses are still shuttered, awaiting the wealthy, many of whom will likely not even use the boats the captains have all piloted down from the north.

See Also

• "The Hyannis Port Story", featuring the Kennedy family in a prominent role