Like a freshman pledge, enduring the obnoxious initiation
rituals of some fraternity, the North Atlantic wanted to see what I was truly made of…would I be tough enough for her sea?
As I look back
over the video logs of each day, I laugh at the crap I was complaining about at
the beginning of the voyage, like the pains of preparing breakfast in 5 foot
seas. What a pleasure it was to be able
to make breakfast. By the end of the
trip, I was lucky to manage trail mix and beef jerky.
The beginning of the trip was promising. Stephen caught two Dorado (mahi-mahi) a few
hours apart and was excited to try out his new filet station. We sailed with a pod of dolphins
one night. You could only see their
shadows beneath the water in the moonlight, but inside the cabin you could hear
their shrill squeaking calls outside the hull.
When waters were still calm at night, plankton lit up the surface like
little glow worms, and flying fish landed on deck. The moon would rise as a giant red sphere
until it got high enough in the sky to illuminate the water, making night
watches more tranquil and less ominous.
Once past Cape
Hatteras Gulf Stream and life was
good. The auto helm steered us under
motor and the wind vane steered us under sail.
We would hang out in the cockpit or even on deck, just reading a
magazine or watching the vast ocean go by – excited by the occasional sighting
of a vessel –Thursday afternoon, the last time we would see another boat until Bermuda .
First thing to go
was the auto helm. All of a sudden the
boat was going wildly off course and Stephen retrieved the parts that rattled
inside – loose gears. Not a huge
concern. We’re a sailboat and hoping to
sail most of the way there. Surely, if we
need the motor again, we can manage to hand steer for a few hours….
I remember the afternoon that Stephen caught his last
Dorado. I saw a dark wall behind us and
questioned whether we should take time to filet and BBQ yet another meal of
fish and instant potatoes or put up the storm jib to prepare for “building
winds and seas” as forecasted. The wall
I had spotted was just the beginning.
Winds increasing to 22 knots soon subsided and it seemed as though a
squall was just passing through. I innocently
or stupidly questioned whether the 30 knot winds would ever come.
Around midnight
(now Friday am), while Stephen was on watch, the winds came back and with
unpredictable brut force. The wind vane
(self-steering vane) had become disengaged and was dragging behind the boat. I
cursed “Yves” that smug little French engineer who designed it, and flashed us
his little penis in his homemade film that demonstrated how reliable it proved
to be on his own circumnavigation. “See
how great my wind vane is…it will steer the boat while I bathe nude in the
ocean.” The wind vane was built to
become easily disengaged should it hit something underwater. The problem being, it was becoming disengaged
at the mere pressure of the water. Great
design, Yves! We haven’t even made it
across the Atlantic yet. I can’t trust it to keep our boat on course,
forget about skinny dipping. I clipped
myself to the jack line and hung off the transom to retrieve the oar before we
lost it entirely – a few hundred dollars easily.
The FRONT (which
Stephen refers to as “The Full Frontal”) was definitely upon us now, as Stephen
hand steered – a laborious, physically demanding task requiring upper body
strength and quick hands to resist the forces of wind and waves that attempted
to pull the boat off course. The winds
were all over the place. 25 knots, 35
knots, 40 knots – not building steadily but gusting at all speeds. As night became early morning, the wind speed
was 45 – 48 steady, with 50 knot gusts.
Before setting out of the bay, the forecast was calling for 30 knot
winds with gusts up to 40 – uncomfortable but manageable. Lesson 1) always add 10 knots to the
forecast. The winds were light for so
long, that we never rigged the storm sails and doing so now was too risky. Only sailing with a super reefed (shortened)
headsail, the boat was still overpowered.
As the sun rose,
we could now see the monstrosity that we were dealing with. I sat up against the cabin top in the
cockpit, watching in amazement as the waves actually grew steeper. First, we estimated 20 – 25 feet. We rode to the top of their crests then
watched them fan out behind us as we coasted down to the trough, then up
again. We discussed what to do. Stephen had been hand steering for over 6
hours. How much longer could he keep
this up? The winds had been building
since midnight; surely this had to be over soon. Around 8 am, we decided to keep at it for
another hour or so before considering “hove-to” (letting the headsail back fill
with wind, thereby serving as an emergency brake for the boat).
Within the hour,
the waves grew steeper. I was both in
awe and shock as I estimated these new wave heights to be at about 30 – 35
feet. I now regretted not believing our
friend Len, when he claimed seas of 40 ft. on his last passage to the Azores . At the top
of these waves, I noticed patches of “ice blue,” the lightest shade of blue
water I had ever seen. And I thought to
myself, that’s really beautiful and that’s not fair. You’re not allowed to be pretty when you are
scaring the crap out of me.
Suddenly the
waves were so big they started breaking too close for comfort, dousing both of
us with water. The boat was now surfing,
or careening down the waves sideways at 12 knots, double our average hull
speed, as Stephen fought with all his might to keep the boat headed down
weather. Then the mother of all waves
entered our world. I had been the wave
watchdog, warning Stephen when he was about to get sprayed. I had refocused my attention on bracing
myself in the cockpit when I met Stephen’s eyes and he said, “Hold on.” Just then, I saw it barreling towards me,
nothing but white foamy spray.
Everything went white and extremely quiet for about 10 seconds as I felt
a rush of unusually warm water overtake me.
When it was clear again, I felt like someone had just taken the electric
paddles to my heart, my adrenaline pumping.
Stephen was still standing behind the wheel. “That was scary,” I said breathless. Stephen confirmed.
In the next
moment, we noticed the wave had filled our cockpit with over 2 feet of water –
not bad considering a ton of water had just hit us – and things were beginning
to float away. I reacted just in time to
grab everything except the red winch handle which was already on its way out to
sea. Now we had to start bailing. I opened the main locker in the cockpit to
pull out some buckets and water poured in.
The buckets were stuck together and it seemed like an eternity before we
could pry them loose. My greatest fear
during these moments was that another wave would hit us before we could drain
the cockpit.
Finally in the
clear, we decided we could no longer manage the boat in these conditions and it
was time to “hove-to.” Having never done
this in the middle of the ocean or in such conditions, we didn’t know how the
boat would handle it, but we didn’t have much choice. Stephen steered the boat through the wind
until the sail was backed and locked the helm in place. Then he finally sat down, joining me in the
cockpit to finally see what I was seeing, take in the whole picture of what we
had been sailing through. “I’ve never
seen seas this big,” he acknowledged they must have been at least 30 ft. or
bigger. Having made several passages
across the Atlantic Ocean on deliveries, he
had sailed through many storms, including a Nor’easter and still had nothing to
compare it to.
At this point,
terror began to take over as I realized we no longer had control of the
boat. “Are we going to make it through
this?” I asked, studying his face for the real answer. “Yes, Taryn, we’re going to make it through,”
he replied confidently, but I thought I noticed a tinge of uncertainty. What did I expect, for him to say “No, I’m
sorry, I’m afraid this is it? Well babe,
it’s been a good run.”
“I love you,” I
started to cry and grabbed his hand. How
many times had I taken those three words for granted. I felt more vulnerable with him than I had
ever felt before.
We stayed out in
the cockpit for about 20 minutes, becoming more terrified with each wave that
broke against the hull of our boat and sent us coasting down each trough
sideways until water gushed against the lee side like it was going to come
pouring in, but never did. Now my body
started to tremble uncontrollably.
Trying to find humor in the situation, I told Stephen, “Well, I’ve done
enough therapy with victims of trauma and now I finally get to
experience it first hand.”
“I’m so sorry,
Taryn.” Stephen, so excited for me to
have a positive first passage experience, was beyond disheartened. “It wasn’t supposed to go this way.” He suggested we go down below…to which I was
reluctant at first. As if going inside
was giving up somehow. I was holding on
to hope that it would let up soon.
Inside the cabin
was a disaster zone. Almost paralyzed
from fear, I could barely move. The
state of it was overwhelming. Water had
seeped in through the anchor locker and was flowing out the bottom of the
V-berth, sloshing about the cabin in the state room (or as Stephen says “State
of Disaster Room”) and the head.
Everything was wet. Where to
begin? Should we engage the sea anchor, get a weather report or start scooping
up water?
We decided to rig
the sea anchor but not engage it unless the boat came out of hove-to or something worse happened. The sea anchor is basically a huge parachute
you throw off the bow to hold the boat steady, pointed into the waves and
weather. The only problem we could see
with engaging it is that it would not be easy to retrieve or disengage should
we not get it right the first time. When
Stephen opened the instruction manual, I got a true sense of how dire things
were as SURVIVAL! in big bold
letters emerged from page one. Holy
shit. We’re screwed.
Sea anchor ready,
and pushed to the point of exhaustion, we crawled around the cabin floor (it
was impossible to stand without getting tossed from one side of the boat to the
other) scooping water into buckets for bailing.
Stephen finally sat down at the laptop, pulling the latest weather grib
files to see how much longer we had to endure this. I had never seen him so tired as he laid his
head down, almost falling asleep waiting for the files to download.
I tried to find
some dry clothes and blankets to make us a bed on the sofa. Not much dry, I settled for slightly damp
sleeping bags. The grib files were
startling. The page was filled with
lines representing the wind direction.
Each line had short, perpendicular bars to indicate the wind speed, the
more bars, the stronger the winds.
Plotting our course, it was apparent that our boat was positioned right
on the boundary of hell, amidst lines with more bars than I wanted to count. This image was much scarier than the one we
had previewed three days ago. We
certainly wouldn’t have signed up for this.
And even worse, we had 12 more hours to go!
Stephen and I
settled in to the sofa bed trying to figure out how we ended up here. Stephen, overly apologetic for the
experience, assured me he would have never intended for this to happen,
especially on my first passage. “This
was supposed to be enjoyable for you. After
all of this is over, I will completely understand if you want to go back to life
on land, go back to being a social worker, or never make another passage
again.” Feeling it was not the best time
to make decisions about the future, I did not answer…but I was definitely
weighing my options, should I be fortunate to still have options 24 hours from
now.
Stephen passed
out, almost mid-sentence. I was amazed
at how he could sleep through all this, but then again how did he maintain his
stamina for so long? I was wide awake
next to him. Every single bang and thud
of water against the hull, every lift and dip we took with each wave, every time
the wind kicked back up, howling through and shaking the rigging, I felt my
heart skip a beat. I felt like Dorothy
in the Wizard of Oz, her house barreling through the center of the tornado. But unlike her seemingly short trip to OZ,
this one was never ending. How in the
hell was I going to sleep? Besides, if
one of us is passed out, shouldn’t the other be on guard?
Gretchen, the biggest trooper, deserves “Cat of the Year”
award for putting up with this shit. She
amazed me with her resilience and patience.
She stayed in her kitty carrier – in the shape of a miniature kitty
house until we made it down below. Then
she wedged herself in between us, underneath the sleeping bags.
I remembered the
box of charms that Angela had given me before the trip. Her guardian angel charm and medals from
Assunta (Stephen’s late grandmother). I
fingered through the box for the most comforting charms, taking turns with
each. I rubbed Grandma Assunta’s Blessed
Mary medal which brought me some comfort.
I tried praying at first, but every prayer I knew scared me even more. Especially the line that goes “pray for us
sinners now and at the hour of our death...”
As the hours
passed, I watched the sky through the portals change from dark gray to bright
blue, then sadly to gray again. The
winds were gradually letting up, but not without a fight and I was becoming
more accustomed to the noises and movements.
I started coaxing myself to get up periodically to go to the bathroom
and pour a drink of water. I finally
started dozing off, first for 20 minutes at a time, and then eventually for an
hour at a time. I slept the best with
Stephen’s arm around me. Every now and
then, a crashing sound slightly louder than the others would startle me out of
my sleep. I attributed this to acute
stress.
We awoke at
midnight, 24 hours into the front to dying winds, but unsettled seas. We decided to wait until dawn. Stephen convinced me to eat, something easily
forgotten. We dipped saltines into a
container of left over chicken salad and stuffed our face with cookies sent by
Brigitte. Finally, at 5 am Saturday
morning, we awoke from the longest stretch of sleep we had to settled seas and
winds of 15 knots. I praised God for
allowing me to see this day, and was eager to get underway and get the hell out
Dodge.
Happy to be
alive, we tried to maintain perspective on the aftermath that was
unfolding. Not only were we without any
type of self-steering device, but the inverter and refrigerator had stopped
working. We ate the second Dorado Steve
caught before the front, grilled with Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce. Life was good again and I was happy to hand
steer the rest of the way to Bermuda . After all, the worst of it had to be behind
us.
Stephen went into troubleshooting mode. He managed to get the inverter back up and
running, but the refrigerator wasn’t so easy.
After managing to reconnect a broken circuit by wedging a screw in the
middle of the circuit to complete it, the electronic control unit began smoking
once running again. The last thing we
needed was an electrical fire at sea.
The problem was bigger than expected – the wave we took on must have
shorted it. We would keep the
refrigerator closed for as long as possible, hoping to find the solution.
Stephen quickly
refocused his energies on the wind vane.
Determined to make it better, he hammered and filed away at it, deepening
the grooves, while I steered us on an average course heading of 120 degrees –
the heading we would maintain most of the way to Bermuda . Periodically, he would hang off the back of
the transom, retesting it, only to re-emerge stating, “Just a little bit
more.” This went on for a couple of
hours until finally he was satisfied.
Thank God for his handy work, the wind vane never came disengaged again
and kept us on a steady course the rest of the way into Bermuda ,
through more heavy seas and winds that would have been exhausting to muscle
through at the helm.
By Sunday, the winds and seas were building again,
manageable but arduous as we were beating to windward at 18 – 22 knots of wind
steady. The winds were blowing directly
from the East, exactly where we wanted to be, and our spirits were down as it
looked like we wouldn’t be making it there by Monday. The waves were 10 – 12 feet and seeping
through the anchor locker and filling up the cabin again. We were on a starboard tack, heeled
significantly at 20 + degrees, and the water collected on the right side
instead of emptying into the bilges. I
thought the worst of it was behind us, but I was beginning to wonder. “This f*@ing sucks,” said Stephen. “Affirmative.”
Conditions like
these weren’t conducive for fixing the refrigerator, so we resorted to Plan
B. Use our ice maker to pack the coolers
with to keep all of our food cold. All
of the food we spent hours stocking before the trip including 4 lbs of chicken
from Costco, tons of cream cheese &
organic milk (the kind that doesn’t go bad for a long time), tons of
salad dressings, fresh pesto and salsa, eggs, juices, cheeses...
Half an hour into
the ice making process, we had about 15 ice cubes and realized 1) we were going
to lose our food and 2) this ice maker was not a worthwhile investment. Plan C: Stephen was determined to eat as much
chicken as possible, and the shame of it was I didn’t feeling like eating. I watched as he scarfed down a huge chicken
breast with cheese on an everything bagel as I managed to force down a yogurt
cup and half a lunch sized applesauce.
We were further
dismayed by progress made according to the chart plotter. The last tack took us farther south of the
island than we wanted to be. We seemed
to be getting nowhere and decided to start the engine to head straight for Bermuda , nose into the waves with no auto helm. Behind
the helm, I felt like a surfer, bending at the knees over every crest as if my
body was navigating the boat over the waves more gently. I swear each time I stopped doing this –
stood at the helm with locked knees and arms, she crashed down the waves
instead. This was no picnic, but I was
feeling better about the progress we were making. If we just kept motoring, we could make it
there by early am Tuesday. Stephen came
out to the cockpit for a nap before his shift, and had just laid his head down
when the engine alarm started beeping.
“What the f*@k! I can’t get any rest,” Stephen reluctantly went
into action mode once again. I started
to believe that my silent worry that the engine would somehow fail us had
jinxed us, had made it real. Of course,
it had nothing to do with the huge wave we took on that seemingly fouled up
everything of importance – anything with an electronic component. It didn’t make sense. The engine seemed to be running fine, the
pressure and temperature were okay.
After much troubleshooting and dissecting the manual, Stephen’s final
diagnosis: it could be a short, or it could be a problem with the oil pressure
switch. The former could be ignored by
muffling the alarm, the latter not easily fixable. It was not worth taking a chance and damaging
the engine. We were back to sailing,
long endless tacks to Bermuda .
Monday and
Tuesday was one endless blur. As Tuesday
approached, it was clear we weren’t going to make it to Bermuda
until at least very early Wednesday morning.
The winds were still blowing strong at 20 – 25 knots. The weather reports showed it continuing to
blow steadily from the East and Northeast and we were approaching from the
West, around the Southern tip of the island.
The cabin became
more disastrous as water continued to pour in the anchor locker and we would
take turns going down below to bail water, only to discover another pocket of
the boat that had been drenched. We
hove-to once more, this time so that Stephen could go to the bow and try to fix
the gaps where the water was getting in, using epoxy. While he hung on at the bow, I was bailing
out bucket after bucket of water – I counted almost 20. Each time we turned the boat through the wind
on another tack was an opportunity to drain the water into the bilge.
Going to the
bathroom became a chore I dreaded. It
was almost impossible to do so without getting banged up inside the head. It was tiring as I had to brace myself in
some corner and fight against the forces just to get all my layers of pants
down and back up again. By the end of
the trip, I started to pee in a bucket in the cockpit and then toss it
overboard. By the last day, I was
squatting right over the cockpit drains – whichever one was on the lee side of
the tack we were on. Even this wasn’t
easy.
Stephen’s fix
helped tremendously, although most of the boat had already been penetrated and things
were beginning to smell rank and grow a layer of gray, white or greenish fuzz. Lesson 2) Store clothing in waterproof bags. I had temporarily forgotten about how happy I
was to be alive and was wondering again how much more I could take. How much longer could this go on?
Shortly after
Stephen fixed the leaks, the winds started gusting again to 28 – 30 at
times. Sailing downwind at these speeds
is a completely different story than beating into it. Everything sounds worse, feels worse. The boat was taking an absolute thrashing and
holding up gracefully. We noticed the
battens (inserts that help the sail keep its shape) were starting to slide out
from all the pounding. With winds
increasing, we decided it was time to rig the storm trysail, so we hove-to once
again (we’ve got this technique down).
Trysail rigged, the process of tacking was about to get more
complicated, as we would have to sheet in both trysail and headsail each time,
and almost simultaneously.
Each time we
tacked, the wind vane had to be reset, which meant hand steering through the
wind and long enough to keep us on a good course heading to re-engage the wind vane. In winds and waves as powerful as these, this
meant that Stephen had his hands full behind the helm and I would have to do
the majority of the pulling and grinding.
This could probably be turned into a trendy new workout at Bally’s or
Gold’s Gym. Saturday’s roster: Body Pump, Hip-Hop Abs and Tack and
Grind.
I was all over the cockpit, from cabin top to primary
winches. I acquired both muscles and
bruises, banging knees and elbows bracing myself as I fell from one side to the
other, hugging winches with one arm while grinding with the other. Earlier, I had enough endurance to muscle the
helm on a steady course while Stephen set the wind vane. Now, I had to opted to set the vane instead,
climbing up the stern rail and hugging the pole, I would turn the turret with
one hand while forcing the vane into the wind with the other. Then I would have to jump down and quickly
pull the lines as taut as I could before she blew off course. Stephen helped me out with all of these tasks
as best he could, always with one hand on the steering wheel.
This whole process was physically
exhausting. A few times, we would tack
and the boat would lose speed, meaning we would have to start over again. Each
time, we prayed we’d get it right, then we could clip our tethers back into the
front and settle in, as each tack would last a few hours. The winds were beginning to blow more
steadily at 28 – 30 knots, gusts up to 35 and my body started to tremble
again. They were forecasting more
serious weather for Thursday and I started to fear that it had come early. It was late Tuesday night, with 55 miles left
to go, and I was starting to wonder if we were ever going to make it to Bermuda .
I was exhausted
and needed sleep but had no place to rest.
I dreaded the thought of going into the disaster zone to sleep. For as loud and scary as things can be
outside, they always sound worse down below.
That, coupled with the fact that you can’t see what is going on outside
is unnerving. But sitting out here in
the cockpit was equally unnerving. We
were heeled so much, it took all of my energy to stay braced in, let alone
sleep. Stephen tried to make me more
comfortable, pulling me close to him and telling me to rest my head against
him, but this didn’t help. I finally resigned
to going down below.
The bunk we had
set up with the lee cloth to keep us from rolling across the cabin was
absolutely drenched. The blankets were
either wet or smelly from our own funk since neither of us had a shower in
days. I rolled up a semi-damp blanket
for a pillow and prayed for sleep as butterflies filled my belly each time the
boat raised and dipped about 3 – 4 feet.
Sleep finally overtook me and then it was broken by the voice of some
strange man named “Bermuda Radio.”
In the most
polite British accent he said, “Good morning, sailing vessel Synchronicity, do
you have an EPIRB on board?” An EPIRB,
why was he asking about our emergency beacon for the coast guard? Then Stephen’s voice replied, “Yes, Bermuda
Radio, registration number…. (a bunch of letters and numbers).” Then Bermuda Radio asked, “Synchronicity, do
you have a life raft on board?” “Yes,
Bermuda Radio, it is a Revere ,
6 passenger life raft.” Life raft! Holy Shit!
This was finally it. Less than 12
hours to go, and the Bermuda Coast Guard was going to have to save us. “Stephen, are they giving us a tow in?” I asked desperately. He waved his hand at me to communicate
silence. I wondered to myself, what had
happened? Did something in the rigging
come undone? I held my breath for his
reply. “No!
I’m just calling ahead as required.”
Jesus Christ! At 2 am! At first came relief, then the realization that
we were on our own again. That was the
end of sleeping down below for me. I
couldn’t take the suspense.
From 2 am to 6
am, after tacking the boat, Stephen decided to hand steer the duration of this
tack, approximately 12 miles as he was able to keep the boat moving at a faster
speed on this tack than the wind vane.
Amazingly, our Sirius satellite radio held up through the duration of
the trip, and “Phish” came on at just the right time with live renditions of
“Wilson,” and “Chalk dust Torture,” to keep Stephen pumped for this
mission. Then just before daybreak, we
went through the process of tacking one last time. This one took the last of the energy we had
remaining.
As the sun rose, so did the winds as the sky became ominous
again. Winds actually started blowing
more steadily at 35 knots, and waves grew to almost 20 feet with less than 20
miles into Bermuda . “We can’t catch a fucking break,” said
Stephen. “It figures,” I said. We sat opposite each other in the cockpit,
shooting reassuring glances and managing as much smile for one another as we
could. Even close to shore, we didn’t
see any other vessels, although we heard them communicating over the
radio. A commercial fisherman commented
to a pilot boat about the seas being “a bit lumpy.” I was beginning to see what
the travel guide meant about Bermuda being a
“proper place big on manners.” A bit
lumpy? How about miserable?
It felt like we
were getting down to the wire. Would the
winds and seas grow worse, or hold off long enough for us to make it into safe
harbor? We switched the satellite station
to reggae to provide some calm and sat in quiet, marveling at how well the wind
vane maneuvered us through these seas.
“A better job than I could have done,” said Stephen. I praised the wind vane, now our guardian
angel and Stephen for fixing her and making her right. I wouldn’t even let myself entertain for an
instant, any worry about her becoming disengaged for fear of jinxing us
again.
Then finally,
around 8 am, Stephen told me to look to port to see the houses on land. As I sat up, I was amazed at how close we
were to the island. I had given up
trying to sight land. White and light
pastel colored houses with Spanish tile roofs emerged with palm trees and I saw
the stark contrast between a cobalt blue and turquoise sea. I started crying tears of joy and relief, as
now there was an end in sight.
Not completely in
the clear yet, Stephen tried several times to start the engine before we
accepted that we would have to clear the channel and drop anchor under
sail. We informed Bermuda Radio of our
situation and they gave us instructions on where to anchor. Fortunately, we were running downwind
entering the harbor, much safer for passing through the infamous pass into St. George’s Harbor
I imagined us
dropping anchor and collapsing into each other in one long embrace, followed by
opening a much deserved bottle of wine.
We continued to sail downwind into the harbor but had to turn upwind to
anchor. We had to pick a spot quick –
one that placed us in front of a multi-million dollar mega yacht named
“Freedom.” Now that we were into the
wind, we had little ability to sail away from this point, and ran the risk of
dragging backwards into “Freedom,” which towered above us.
The next 15
minutes were panic stricken as we dropped anchor, and then quickly rushed below
to stop from dragging. Stephen called
out to me to feed more anchor rode through the hatch, while he tried
desperately to get the engine running.
Down below looked worse than I had ever seen it. I became lost in a maze of anchor rode,
fumbling to figure out which end was which.
We had plotted a fix on the chart plotting software that confirmed we
weren’t dragging. Stephen remembered he
had rigged the fuel pump associated with the polishing system so that it could
be easily diverted to the engine. The
engine started again, and our confidence was restored. “It’s time to open that bottle of wine,” he
said. The best discovery of all – 3
cases of wine made it to Bermuda
unharmed. And I didn’t feel like
drinking.
The first 2 weeks in
Bermuda following our arrival has been spent
putting our lives back together. When we
set out from the Chesapeake ,
something told me to take pictures of our boat, newly upholstered, so organized
and cozy. Now we were picking up
clothing and other gear, separating it into garbage bags I labeled, “Damp,” and
“Wet & Soiled” for laundering.
Everything had to
be aired out. Each day we lugged our
tempurpedic mattress and cushions out on deck to get a little bit dryer – Bermuda is still humid.
The first night, we turned on our TV, deciding to watch an episode of
“Worst Week” (only fitting), and watched as our TV slowly deteriorated from
salt water that had managed to find its way in.
The next morning, we turned on our Sirius Satellite radio, which held up
so faithfully until the very end, only to discover that it had also retired. Lesson 3:
stow all electronics in waterproof cases.
And then there
was the task of cleaning out the refrigerator.
We shuddered to imagine the stench that waited for us below. Stephen got a whiff of what was to come a
couple of days ago, when he accidentally started pumping water out of the
fridge instead of the ice box, that we had turned into dry food storage.
On Thursday, we
lugged about 4 huge duffel bags full of blankets, towels and clothing onto
shore to “The Finish Line” laundromat.
Zeena, who ran the place, must have noticed the overwhelmed look on our
faces, lost among stacks of laundry as we tried to interpret the “wash card”
machine that took “Bermuda dollars only.” She swooped in and rescued us, helping to
sort and load the clothes, telling us which dryers were hotter, which machines
were broken. Inquiring about the size of
our loads, we told her our story. I
started to say, “the conditions couldn’t have been worse,” but quickly caught
myself. “They could have been much
worse,” we both said simultaneously.
“You’re still here,” she said.
She and the other local ladies began joking with me and Stephen, calling
him a bad boy for throwing away his sweater which was beyond salvaging in our
books. I started to feel at home in Bermuda as one lady told us that “God is good,” and
“Everything has a cause.”
Over the phone, a
concerned Poppa (Stephen’s grandpa) who no doubt missed us, asked if we were
going to spend a few weeks in Bermuda and then
sail back home. “There’s no fucking way
I’m going back across that ocean.” I said to Stephen. I’m probably not tough enough for the ocean,
but I think I changed a little bit for the better after this passage. Stephen and I had many heart-to-hearts about
ways in which we were each perfectionists and sometimes controlling in own ways
in our former life. Dealing with the
forces of nature brings to my awareness what little control we really have over
life’s events. The best you can really
do is prepare and cope with whatever is dealt to you the best that you
can.
There are things
that used to stress me out that aren’t worth my time to think about
anymore. Like time. Having enough time, being on time, racing
against time. Now I’m lucky if I know
what day it is, abandoning expectations for any given day. And organization. Where the hell did that go? Lots of things…anal retentive and too miniscule
for me to recant managed to occupy too large a space inside my mind, within my
life.
There’s plenty I’m
still afraid of, including the ocean. Getting
back to those options I’m still fortunate enough to have….to go back to land or
continue sailing the ocean? To say “to
hell with passage making, I’m not a fish and don’t belong in the sea,” or give
it another go? I’m very aware of my
limits, and have endured too much to discover them to throw in the towel. Despite my fear of getting clobbered again, I
can’t imagine stepping off of this boat to let someone else sail it with
Stephen down to St. Maarten. There may
be nights on watch in the near future where I curse this decision, but I
battled the Atlantic , and now that she’s
behind me, I’m not looking back but looking ahead to discovering more beautiful
places and people. This was only the
beginning of the next chapter in our lives.
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