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Meet Your Neighbor
Likes best about Nantucket Its remoteness, the relatively slow pace of life, the sea air and running into people you know every day. Likes least about Nantucket Having to make the psychological adjustment to the insensitivity of people who come for the summer. Favorite TV show "The Simpsons." He also favors WGBH and films on Turner Classic Movies. Chances are you do not know many people who survived a sinking boat, wrote a book about it and saw their story made into a major motion picture. Meet Chuck Gieg, one of 13 people spared a watery grave when an undetected blast of wind essentially parted the sea beneath his vessel and claimed the lives of six other crew members. Gieg was born in Bryn Mawr, Pa., but grew up in towns across the country because of his father's work in Washington, D.C., during World War II, then with Bethlehem Steel in Pittsburgh, Pa., and with Shell Oil, which resulted in transfers every year or two. He was in high school in Wilton, Conn. when in 1960 he flew to Bermuda to join the crew of the Brigantine Albatross as part of his studies of celestial navigation and marine science. During its 12,000- mile sail, the Albatross spent two months in the Galapagos Islands then traveled through the Caribbean and up the coast of Central America. On that arm of the voyage the crew awoke one morning surrounded by American war ships and found out they were en route to Cuba for the Bay of Pigs invasion. The boat continued along to the Yucatan, but about half way back to Bermuda it was struck by an invisible "downburst," a column of warm air that rises, then cools and drops at a high speed to the surface. The impact of that white squall, named as such because it cannot be detected, sank the boat and took the lives of five crew trapped below deck and another man who died while cutting the lifeboats free. "That pretty much saved our lives," Gieg said of having the lifeboats. "We were surrounded by sharks a couple hours after the thing went down." Gieg spent his senior year in Wilton writing a book about the adventure entitled "The Last Voyage of the Albatross." In 1996 the story was released as a movie called "White Squall." After high school graduation in 1962, Gieg studied literature at Stetson College in Deland, Fla., but at the close of his third semester he left to hitch rides around the country. He went back to school to study history at Foothill College in Los Altos, Calif., then transferred to Columbia University in New York City to continue that study. When he graduated from Columbia he worked for IBM for about a year before spending three years in the Marine Corps. Gieg was in Vietnam a month, then was transferred to Okinawa. Again after his discharge, he was able to finance it through the G.I. Bill and studied geology at the graduate level at Portland State University. Gieg's next life experience was to travel east and purchase a sloop in Anapolis, Md. with a goal to sail through the Panama Canal to the State of Washington. However, he ran out of money in Key West, Fla. and sailed the boat back to Anapolis to sell the vessel. While he was visiting friends in California in 1976, Gieg's brother called to say it was his turn to care for their mother, Middy Gieg, who was living on Nantucket. "I came out to spend a couple weeks with her and never left," he said. Gieg bought some tools and began doing small carpentry jobs, staying with that line of work for several years. He moved on to surveying for about five years. He later purchased a taxi. It was the first mini-van of the island's fleet as well as the first cab to have a car radio-telephone. "All the cab drivers said that will never work. Most of the dispatchers then were wives tied to the telephone at all hours. Within a couple of years everybody had [a car radio-phone]," he said. He kept the cab going from 1984 to 1987. In 1985, Gieg was the original coanchor of the former, local Channel 3 TV comedy program, "Not Necessarily the Nantucket News," but had to step down because rehearsal and taping schedules conflicted with his cab business. In 1987, he sold the taxi and opened his own accounting office he runs to this day. In 1991, he took time out to serve as a consultant to the screen writer of "White Squall," using the phone and e-mail to communicate, then Gieg was a consultant on the film's 1995 location shoots in St. Vincent, Charleston, S.C., Malta and on the island of Dominica working with actor Jeff Bridges and director Ridley Scott. When the movie was released in 1996, Gieg was sent to Europe to promote it through press interviews and was written up in People magazine. It was a bit of fame that came with the price of personal upheaval, and he is thankful for the calm and predictable existence he now has on Nantucket. In his spare time, Gieg enjoys reading, maintaining his studies of celestial navigation and teaching occasional courses in that, cooking and eating what he creates in the kitchen. He said he pretty much lived the dreams of his life in his youth, yet there is one unfinished goal he would still like to complete. "I do want to do one more blue water sail, maybe to Europe," he said. "I'm talking to my brother about that. He has a boat." I |
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