Thirty-eight years ago on the beach in front of the Coastwise Packet Co., located next to The Black Dog Tavern, a man asked me a question that completely changed the direction of my life.

That man was Captain Bob Douglas and the words of the query were: “So, can you cook?”

The words came after a brief interview, if it can be called that, wherein I told the Captain of my brief time working on draggers out of P-town and of the various restaurant jobs I had up to that point. Captain Bob’s cook wanted to go back to college early, a fact I had discovered a few nights before at a campsite where I had been staying.

My visit to the Island was supposed to be brief, or so I had thought. I had been traveling around New England busking for spare change trying to ‘prove’ my music and was contacted by John Cruz who invited me to come and play at a benefit concert given for an Island kid who had been injured in a car accident and didn’t have insurance.

Knowing that the present cook wanted to go I answered the Captain: “I had better be able to, I got the job don’t I?”

He looked at me with a gleam in his eyes: “Well, we’ll find out soon enough.”

That’s how I became a Vineyard sailor. One moment you’re an aspiring musician, the next you’re in the galley of The Shenandoah, the pride of the fleet, wrestling with the coal fired stove, pumping water by hand, feeding 35 hungry passengers and crew. You’ve given up sleeping by the highway for a berth on deck in ‘The Dog house’ a small sleeping compartment, and frankly I felt I was the luckiest kid on earth.

Captain Douglas’s passing, after a long passage of 93 years on the earth, hit family, friends, the sailing community and the Island community at large, as well as mariners all over the world, pretty hard. He is beloved by so many.

It has been said that he influenced many, not only to become sailors, but to live a life of honest character. I count myself among those. In my case, without regret I went from being an aspiring folk singer to a sea cook in the blink of an eye. I spent five seasons toiling away in the steaming galley of the Shenandoah. At one point I was being given the title ”steaming, screaming, mean Joe Keenan” for my propensity of guarding the stores and my proprietary sense of the space in the small galley — not to mention the expletive’s I hurled when on occasion the Captain buried the rail and all the crockery went flying about.

Little did I know that time aboard the ‘Shenny’ was just the beginning of my sea cooking career. I went on to cook on the Erenestina to Newfoundland and back, The Arabella in The Marshall islands in the central Pacific, and, last but not least, on the Picton castle on its fourth round-the-world voyage, 13 months from Lunenberg to Lunenberg. On each one of these vessels I prided myself as being a sailor from the Vineyard, a small part of a long tradition. This was the gift that Bob Douglas gave me.

When I was in Capetown, South Africa preparing for the final leg of the Picton castle’s circumnavigation I decided I wanted to come home to the Vineyard so I called Captain Bob to see if he again needed a cook. He said he did, this time without asking me if I could cook, and I got the job.

When I finally arrived back on the Island I remembered stories I had read about how Vineyard sailors returning from whaling voyages would walk from Vineyard Haven to their family dwellings up-Island. I decided I wanted to pay them homage so I started walking. When I got to Upper Lambert’s Cove Road I decided to walk back down-Island and visit a friend who had a business on Lambert’s Cove Road. When I arrived we shared a hug and she exclaimed: “Oh my God! You smell like a boat!” Frankly, I was proud of that.

We never know what twists and turns life will give us, what will happen when we take a leap into the unknown. In my case, meeting Captain Bob that sunny August morning provided me with a career in which I would sail around the globe, but most importantly it gave me a new family and a place in the community that I would never trade, even if it means at times I would smell like a boat.

Fair winds my Captain, fair winds and calm seas, and thank you!

Joe Keenan lives in West Tisbury.