The Dream Didn’t Sink With the Boat

“What’s that heated metal smell?”

I was aboard Mearr, working remotely with a client, when it hit me. It was that sharp electrical smell where you immediately know something isn’t good.

I paused the session and told my client what was happening. My attention had already shifted toward every possible place aboard my boat where something might be overheating. I checked the main electrical panel, the solar controllers, the batteries, and anything nearby that could realistically create that smell. I even turned off the little fan beside me.

For a moment, I convinced myself it might be the fan. It wasn’t.

An electrical fire is every cruiser’s nightmare. It can begin somewhere you can’t see, build frighteningly fast, and become nearly impossible to stop. Boats are made from fiberglass and wood. They’re filled with wiring and fuel, along with everything required to turn a small floating space into a home. Once something catches, there’s plenty nearby willing to join it.

We only had a few minutes left in the session. I kept talking while continuing to search with my eyes and nose. I briefly wondered whether someone nearby might be welding. That explanation would’ve been convenient, and I was very ready to believe it.

When the session ended, I poked my head outside to figure out whether the smell was coming from Mearr or somewhere else. I could definitely smell it outside.

Relief!

The relief lasted about two seconds.

I turned toward the south end of the marina and saw a plume of thick black smoke rising into the sky. This wasn’t someone welding or a smoking shore-power cord someone had caught in time. Something was seriously on fire.

At almost the same moment, a message came through from a friend.

“Do you know whose catamaran is burning on Dock 0?”

I looked at the attached photo. A white catamaran was engulfed in flames, though there was already so much fire and smoke that I couldn’t tell whose boat I was looking at.

Dock 0 is the southernmost dock in the marina, and the smoke appeared to be coming from somewhere near the middle. My first thought arrived before I could stop it.

Please tell me it’s not Andy.

I wasn’t wishing it on anyone else. It was simply where my mind went first. Andy’s catamaran was around the middle of that dock, exactly where the smoke seemed to be rising.

I ran up my dock, grabbed my electric scooter, and headed south. A huge fire hose had already been stretched across the marina. I rode alongside it while water spurted from connections that had clearly been joined in a hurry. Fire trucks filled the road ahead with their lights flashing, and a small crowd had gathered near the entrance to Dock 1.

I stopped long enough to ask one question.

“Who is it?”

“Andy.”

I don’t think I replied. My mind was screaming no. It was one of those moments when you desperately don’t want to be right.

I hurried toward the top of the dock. Andy was leaning against the railing with his head down. Behind him, centered in the water between two docks, his boat was burning. Firefighters were directing streams of water into flames and dense black smoke that seemed to swallow everything around it.

I went straight to him and held him. Neither of us said anything at first. Then he looked at me, and there are moments when words only get in the way. The look on his face told me everything I still hadn’t fully allowed myself to understand.

His home was on fire behind him, and there was nothing left for him to do except watch. By then, this wasn’t really about putting the fire out anymore. It was about keeping it from taking anything else.

Andy told me later that he’d heard a strange pop, then noticed a little gray smoke. He called the marina office, which was directly across from his boat, and asked for help. Staff came over with extra fire extinguishers, though the fire built so quickly they couldn’t keep up with it. The smoke became too dense, and staying aboard was no longer an option.

They had to get out.

Andy grabbed his phone through the smoke, knowing exactly where it was. Everything else he owned there stayed behind. His wallet and car keys were still aboard. So were his shoes and all the ordinary things you don’t think about until they’re suddenly inside a boat you can no longer enter.

Someone made the call to untie the catamaran and push it away from the neighboring boats. That decision helped prevent the fire from spreading through the marina.

The mast eventually came down. Somehow, it missed the docks and every nearby boat. Once it fell into the water, it also helped keep the burning catamaran from drifting toward the other side.

A lucky anchor.

People acted quickly and without hesitation. Mother Nature cooperated too. The wind and current didn’t turn one burning boat into something much larger; no neighboring vessel suffered major damage, the marina relatively unscathed, and no one was seriously hurt. 

Captain Dave once told me that insurance can replace a boat, but it can’t replace a life. Andy was standing in front of me. That mattered more than anything burning behind him.

I had another client session starting soon, which felt absurd. Andy’s boat was still burning, firefighters were still throwing water at it, and I was looking at the time because I was supposed to be back aboard Mearr in front of my laptop.

I told Andy I had to go and that I’d come back.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what was happening inside me. I knew I was shaken. Seeing him standing there while everything he owned burned had hit me hard. While the flames were still visible, someone ran toward the dock in tears, asking whether it was her boat. That stayed with me too.

I tend to feel a lot of what other people are feeling, for better or worse, and the weight of what Andy and everyone around me were carrying felt impossibly heavy.

Still, I went back to Mearr and sat down in front of my laptop. Two minutes before the session started, I broke down completely.

I tried to pull myself together enough to begin. As soon as I started speaking, my voice cracked and the tears returned. There was no pretending I was fine, so I told my client what had happened and that I wasn’t okay right then. It was obvious anyway.

I recommended that we reschedule. They agreed immediately. I thanked them for understanding, closed the laptop, and went back to Andy.

The rest of the afternoon blurred into the aftermath. The marina owners were there, the Coast Guard was involved, and firefighters continued working the scene. There were questions, statements, phone calls, and decisions that couldn’t wait for anyone to process what had just happened.

Andy needed time to deal with all of it. He also needed nearly everything.

That was when the marina community began doing what marina communities often do best. People brought clothes and toiletries. Shoes appeared. Offers of lodging were made, and donations started coming together. Some residents had already played hands-on roles during the fire. Others stepped in afterward and found whatever part of the problem they could carry.

There wasn’t a formal plan. People just helped.

I offered beer and dinner. It was the only thing I could think of that might create a little space between the fire and whatever came next.

Andy spent the next few hours dealing with phone calls, donated items, and the endless practical decisions that arrive before anyone has had time to understand what just happened.

I took about an hour to myself, and my mind immediately started building lists. What would Andy and Nicole do now? Where would they stay? What needed to happen next?

Then the questions turned toward Mearr. What wiring hadn’t I checked recently? Which connections were hidden behind panels? What could overheat without me noticing?

In a perfect world, I’d rip out every wire aboard and start over simply so I could know exactly what was there. I’m seriously considering it.

One thing I want to make clear is that the batteries didn’t cause the fire. The word lithium carries enough fear that people often jump to that conclusion, even though different lithium battery chemistries don’t all behave the same way. Whatever started this fire, the battery bank wasn’t the source. The fire started in a completely different area of the boat.

Still, the experience changed the way I looked at my own electrical system. There are things I plan to add for extra safety, and I’ve started rechecking what’s already aboard.

It also changed how I felt about leaving Mearr. My being aboard probably wouldn’t make much difference if a fire grew as quickly as Andy’s had, yet that logic did nothing to quiet the image forming in my mind: the hatches closed, a fire starting somewhere inside, and Setzer trapped aboard while I was away.

I’d have trouble living with myself if that happened.

Some of the checking I’ve done since then is useful. Some of it is fear trying to convince me that enough checking can make the risk disappear entirely. It can’t. All I can do is understand Mearr’s systems as well as possible, fix what needs fixing, and accept that preparation isn’t the same as control.

I wrote down what I wanted to inspect so I could stop carrying all of it in my head for the evening.

My only goal when I met up with Andy later was to follow his lead. We’d talk about the fire if he wanted to. If he wanted to talk about anything else, that was fine too. Sometimes you just need to talk about something else for a while.

Andy and Nicole had just sold their house. They weren’t fully moved aboard yet, and Nicole was still in Cincinnati when the fire happened. By that evening, she was already halfway to Brunswick.

They’d lost the boat that was supposed to become their home. Neither of them sounded ready to let go of the dream they’d been building toward. In Nicole’s words, “One little fire will not stop us.”

That evening, Andy and I went to Silver Bluff, a local brewery. The guy working the counter had recently owned a boat in the marina and used to be on my dock. He asked what had happened with all the fire trucks.

Andy told him it was his boat, and the first round was immediately covered.

Community support comes in many forms.

From there, we walked across the street for a quick dinner. We talked about the fire and what came next, then let the conversation wander elsewhere. The evening wasn’t about forcing Andy to relive every second or trying to find a lesson while the smoke was still clearing. It was a chance to slow down, eat something, and let the night be whatever he needed it to be.

I think I needed that too.

For many of us at the marina, a boat isn’t separate from the rest of our lives. It’s where we sleep and work. It holds the things we kept when limited space forced us to decide what mattered.

The woman running toward the dock in tears, asking whether it was her boat, had shown me how far the fear had travelled. The fire happened directly to Andy and Nicole, but its impact moved through the marina.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but the experience was traumatic for me. It wasn’t my boat, yet watching someone I cared about lose his home was a lot to carry. My mind kept wandering toward what it would be like if it happened to me.

Hopefully, I’ll never answer that question.

Most of the changes I’ve written about began with a choice. I chose to leave my old life and move aboard. Even when I had no idea where any of it would lead, I was still the one making the decision.

This was different.

It arrived without permission and altered the future Andy and Nicole had been building in a matter of minutes. They didn’t get to choose the timing or decide what they were ready to leave behind. They went from preparing to move aboard to figuring out what came next without the boat they’d built that future around.

The physical evidence disappeared quickly. The catamaran sank, and Brunswick Landing Marina brought in a crane barge that same day, ready to pull it out the next morning. Soon the remaining debris and traces of diesel were gone too.

The marina handled the aftermath promptly and with compassion. Andy and Nicole were supported, the wreck was removed, and before long another vessel occupied the empty slip.

The show must go on.

Life doesn’t stop because something terrible happened in one small part of it. From a distance, the marina looked normal again long before the experience felt normal to everyone who had witnessed it. The space where the boat had been was filled while Andy and Nicole were still dealing with everything the fire had left behind.

They’re back in Cincinnati now, plotting their return. Nicole had called it “one little fire,” which tells you just about everything you need to know.

The boat sank.

The dream didn’t.