After breakfast, inspired by the impressive mileage, Curt put away his navigation materials and went out to row. According to a small handheld anemometer given to us by Davis Instruments, which had also supplied the sextant, the wind out of the northeast was blowing a brisk Force 4 knots, giving us choppy seas. The sky was clear, and the sun reflected brightly off the breaking whitecaps. The deep red of the boat cabin tops glistened from the blowing spray.
The next set of strokes were hard ones. Curt was into doing the power pyramids we used to do when we trained for races on the Seekonk River: ten, twenty, thirty hard strokes and an equal number of easy strokes in between. He tried to get me to do them when I went to join him later in the morning, but I wasn’t in the mood. Our rowing session culminated in our oars clashing and becoming entangled, so I gave up, tied my oars across the deck, and went back into the cabin.
At lunch, Curt commented on the granola with raisins we were having: sort of a reversal of breakfast and lunch meals. I knew he was trying to be funny, but there wasn’t anything amusing about our meals, I thought.
“Well, when we get up in the morning, sometimes it’s cool and I want something warm to eat, but in the middle of day, it’s hot and a cold lunch tastes good, don’t you agree?” Curt only shook his head. Maybe he thought I was still mad at him for banging into my oars when we rowed together earlier.
The seas continued to calm down, and it was a good time to give the autopilot a rest. Switching it off and tying off the tiller, Curt started to row by pulling hard on one side and then on the other. This worked fine for fifteen minutes until a big wave slid under Excalibur and the boat was pushed off course. He tried to compensate by rowing harder on port but we kept going farther off course. He felt himself get angry at the sea that was pushing us broadside to the waves. Taking the port oar in both hands like a sweep rower, and letting the starboard oar trail in the water, he put in several hard strokes. Still it didn’t do any good. Then he saw a fin slicing smoothly through the water. It was a fifteen-foot shark only a few feet away, with another shark appearing behind him. They started circling the boat; maybe they had come to see what all the splashing was about.
I was reading My Ántonia by Willa Cather in the cabin, enjoying having all the space to myself, when I heard, “Hey, Kathleen! We have visitors!”
I put the book aside and stuck my head out of the cabin, expecting to see a ship.
“There’re sharks out here! Should I throw something to them to eat and see if they come closer?”
I looked at him as if he were crazy. “No! Are you kidding? We’ll never get rid of them if we do that!” In fact, two years later on our Pacific Row, we did have problems with sharks along the Peruvian/Ecuadoran coast. Apparently, every potato peel and onion skin we threw out was eaten by either the sharks or other fish and earned us a steady following as we rowed north to the Galápagos Islands.
By early evening, it was blowing Force 2, with gusts of five knots. It was turning out to be a beautiful, calm night of floating gently along in the seas. But later on, the wind came up again, and the boat resumed its incessant rocking, back-and-forth motion, making it hard to sleep. A big wave breaking into the deck area forced cold water into the opening for the antenna by my side, waking me up abruptly as the water poured in over my head. I crammed the last dry towel in the open slot. With our fresh air supply cut off, the cabin was stifling.
In the early morning, I wondered if we would ever catch up on our rest. “Actually, I think we’ve adjusted to the conditions very well,” Curt said. “The cabin isn’t any bigger, but there seems to be more room than when we were in Casablanca.”
Sometimes Curt irritated me with his brand of “Isn’t this fun, this tough-ass expedition stuff we’re doing?” Rubbish. I responded with what I imagined was a definitive putdown: “No, it isn’t! The cabin is as cramped as ever. We still have to pile our feet on top of each other when we sleep, and it’s impossible to find a comfortable position because we’re bouncing and rolling around so much, all—the—time!”
Curt didn’t really have an answer to that, but he knew when to lay low.
We took a break from rowing for the noon sighting. I went into the forward cabin and handed out the Davis sextant. One after another, I recorded the measurements as Curt called them out. We tuned in for the Rhode Island radio schedule and spoke with Peter Wilhelm’s father Kurt in Rhode Island and sent him our noon position: 24 degrees 16 minutes north and 22 degrees 54 minutes west.
With the waves rolling out of the northeast, we found the afternoon’s rowing more pleasurable. The waves were regular and helped the boat build speed that let us glide on the backside of the breaking waves. The equal distance between each wave meant we could easily time our power pyramids to peak at the top of the waves and then enjoy sliding down them as they pushed us along. Curt said he thought the boat was actually reaching seven knots during the surges. It was an exhilarating feeling.
As we tied the oars for the evening, we stopped to watch the sun dip below the horizon. Deep reds and pinks bathed the cumulus clouds, and colors of the sky reflected on the surface of the sea.
The next day’s navigation fixes showed Excalibur to be only forty-four miles farther along our course. The course change that Curt had made seemed hardly to make a difference. He was afraid we were headed too far south and a storm could blow us south to the Cape Verde islands.
“Could we be farther south already than your navigation shows us?”
“I hope not.”
“Could those white birds we’re seeing have come from the Cape Verdes?” I thought they might be jaegers.
“I don’t think so. I doubt we’re so far south.”
“But we see them every day. They must come from somewhere.”
“How do I know where they come from?” With that he dumped the navigation books into the hatch and went out on deck to row. He was concerned about his navigation but unwilling to bring it out in the open. How dependable was any sight with a sextant taken from a rowboat at sea? We’d counted on contacting ships with the handheld VHF that Jangada’s owner had given us to verify our positions, but we hadn’t seen any ships. And now these damn birds.
It was obvious we would have to row harder and longer to make better mileage. The longer it took us to get across, the greater the chance of being hit by a hurricane before we made landfall. Fritz on Jangada had said that the boat looked very strong, but he doubted the crew of Excalibur would survive a hurricane.
I came out to row, and together we put in two hours at the oars. I kept trying to think of other places and people to take my mind off what we were doing. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Curt saw a reddish purple thing that looked like a plastic container. He had seen one earlier, but this one was much closer than the other had been. It was about six inches long and was actually tacking back and forth like a sailboat in the wind. It was some kind of sea creature, and Curt wanted to catch it.
The thing was astern of us now. With the autopilot detached, we backed the oars as hard as possible to gain on it. I reached over and grabbed the dip net at the edge of the deck, but the creature tacked to the south. Then Curt jumped up and shouted at me to row while he reached out to net it. I rowed as hard as I could, but it was getting away from us.
Finally, I said, “Curt, you’ll never catch it!” That did it. He was already in a testy mood from the afternoon’s navigation session.
“What do you mean, I can’t catch it?” he yelled. I screamed back and stomped off as best I could on the cramped deck, heading to the forward cabin and slamming the hatch after myself. He tried to open the door, but I’d locked it. We were starting to drift broadside to the waves, but Curt was mad. He reached down to the edge of the hatch and ripped it open, not caring if he tore it off the hinges or not.
“Don’t ever tell me I can’t do something when I’m trying to do it,” he yelled in the door.
At that moment, I felt such disgust because he had lost control of himsel
f, something I had been brought up never to do. All I could say was, “You broke it, damn you!” and slammed the door shut again.
CHAPTER 16
A Gift from the Sea
Curt’s log: April 29
The wet deck slipped from under my feet and I went down, landing hard on the rowing tracks. I winced from pain and rolled over to stare up at the sky. “Damn it,” I thought. I was mad at Kathleen, mad at the boat, and mad at the sea. Pulling myself up by the safety line, I stood at the edge of the deck and thought I would just jump overboard. The dark blue waves were rolling the boat around aimlessly. Then it occurred to me that if I jumped, most likely I wouldn’t be able to get back to the boat. The waves were moving too quickly. I rubbed my hand over my face and tried to get hold of myself.
With the autopilot reattached, I sat down and started rowing. The familiar, repetitive motions calmed me down. I thought of the rowing coach at the Narragansett Boat Club and our conversations on the banks on the Seekonk. He was right. In a small, confining boat, far out to sea, two people could be at each other’s throats. Depending on how we handled the situation, we could be a danger to each other.
That evening we didn’t have much to say. We ate our ham and potato flakes in silence and went to bed early.
There was an east wind blowing the next morning with rain showers. Curt had gone out early to row and left me to stretch out alone in the cabin. I thought about the fight we’d had the day before. Though I was not about to blame myself, I could understand Curt’s frustrations. It was difficult navigating on Excalibur. Sitting hunched over in the small forward cabin of a rolling rowboat, reading small lines of numbers, and plotting them on a folded-up chart was definitely not easy. Our positions had to be approximations, given the height of the rowboat above the sea. The baseline calculations from the navigation tables started at about sixteen feet above sea level and had to be adjusted for dip error that was caused by the height of the eye relative to the horizontal plane, which made the observed angle between the horizon and the star or planet too large. We were less than sixteen feet, no matter where we stood on the deck. With the sextant in hand, Curt had to “grab” those sights, as he called out the instant he put the sun, planets, or stars on the horizon with the sextant. If he was off, the calculations were off. To compensate, he would take several sights of the same object and plot them on the chart.
It was obvious that the success of the voyage would rely on the navigation and our ability to get along and work together.
By the time it was breakfast, the rain clouds had moved off to the west. The sun was shining, and my mood lifted. It was amazing how the weather and seascapes affected us. When Curt came in for breakfast, the air between us had cleared measurably, but as usual we didn’t talk about our disagreement once we spent some time apart cooling down. I still thought he had been an idiot for losing his temper over actions that were beyond our control. And I never understood where his anger from being told not to do something came from. Since we got along well most of the time, it seemed moments of disagreement like this one wouldn’t impact the safety of our lives or the success of the row.
“I think we must have crossed the Tropic of Cancer last night,” Curt remarked, sipping his coffee.
I looked out the port window. “I hope we see more marine life out here.”
“Did I tell you I saw a flying fish this morning?” Sure enough, as he was rowing, off the port stern cabin a streak of silver flashed by in the far distance. It looked like a silver arrow flying through the air.
I reminded Curt of the fishermen on Hierro Island who had told us that where there were flying fish, there would be bigger fish following in pursuit.
I resolved to catch a fish today after my morning row. The day had turned out beautiful—the wind was down to Force 3, and the waves were only a few feet high. As I pulled at the oars, the seas were long and following.
The sun climbed higher in the morning sky; its warmth felt good on my shoulders as I rowed wearing a loose T-shirt and bikini bottoms. I was getting a good tan. I was lucky that way, because Curt tended to burn in the sun, but he was adapting well to the exposure.
The time had come for a little fishing. I had found that I liked sitting on the starboard side of the deck, facing aft, where the waterproof bag containing the spare butane gas canisters for the backup stove made a rather comfortable seat. With a flasher attached to the hand line and the other end tied to a thick piece of oak, I let the line out about forty feet. It trailed slowly behind as the boat inched along in the waves.
I didn’t catch any fish, but it didn’t matter. The afternoon on the deck, in the sunshine of a perfect day, gave me time to think and look out at the sea. I always lost myself in these extended sessions of reflection. Maybe I was meditating; the waves were certainly mesmerizing enough.
Later in the afternoon, Curt came out to row with me. I rowed in the stern, facing the aft cabin, and he was in the bow. I was always curious to know how far we’d come, so I asked him about the noon sights.
Without missing a stroke, he told me we were most likely not below the Tropic of Cancer yet. We seemed to be making more progress west, because the boat was responding well to the westerly course that he had put us on since yesterday.
I glanced at my watch and saw that it was almost 1800 hours GMT. It was time for the maritime net in the United Kingdom. Though we weren’t planning to check in, we could at least listen.
As I tuned into the frequency, John, a ham radio operator in the United States, was calling to Net Control in the United Kingdom. “Have you heard anything today from the rowers?”
Net Control responded with a “Negative, John, we haven’t heard a thing lately. Just a minute, and I’ll put it up and see if anyone has heard from them.”
“Splendid, Fritz is on frequency. Go ahead, Fritz,” Net Control continued.
“I heard from them today, and they say they’re doing fine. The weather must be cloudy, because they gave yesterday’s position again. I estimate they are now at 24 degrees north and 23 degrees 35 minutes west. You copy?”
John wanted to know how many hours we were rowing a day.
“Five hours together,” Fritz said.
“About five hours, I think.” Steve at Net Control relayed the information to John. However, in the transmitting, the info was jumbled, and John asked again, “Does that mean they are each rowing five hours or five hours together?”
Fritz was clearly losing patience with the exchange. “Curt is rowing five hours and Kathleen is rowing eight hours!”
That time the message got through and there was silence on all ends. Then Steve said, “I guess that’s women’s liberation.”
John’s only comment was, “No, I don’t think that’s women’s liberation at all.”
I was still asleep when Curt got up the next morning. But as he started moving around, pulling on his shorts, I woke up. “Are you going out to row? How did you sleep last night?”
“Much better. I think I’m adapting to the motion of the boat.” I had to agree. Once you found a comfortable position to sleep in, the boat’s rocking wasn’t too bad. I usually slept on my right side with one leg drawn almost completely up to my chest. My other position was wedged against the side of the boat, the little angle between deck and wall holding me in place. My stuff-sack pillow rested on top of the emergency bilge pump. Curt didn’t have a water pump to put his stuff sack on, but six inches above his head, on the port side, was the electricity box where the wires from the solar panels on the cabin roof connected. More than once I had tangled my hair in the protruding wires when we moved around the cabin. I much preferred my bilge pump to his wires.
Curt opened the hatch door and started out. “Hey, Kathleen! Look! Guess what we have on board!” He went out, and I followed. There in the bow foot well was a flying fish. How exciting! I reached for the frying pan in the cooking bag we always left secured to the deck.
It was a lovely silver-blue fish worth documenting
on film as well. I handed out the camera and light meter that Curt requested and posed with the fish, spreading out its wings above the sea and then above the frying pan.
Curt’s log: May 1
It was May 1st and we agreed to have a special May Day breakfast with the fish, potatoes, and coffee. Kathleen sent me to the back cabin to get onions and potatoes. Oh boy, I said to myself, as I opened the hatch and reached in to get them where they hung suspended from the ceiling. This would be the first fish dinner at sea since leaving Casablanca 45 days ago.
It was a memorable feast. Kathleen fried up the fish in Moroccan olive oil with thinly sliced onions. This was followed by potatoes and onions fried with rosemary, salt, and pepper. To drink, we had hot chocolate, coffee, and fresh lemonade.
Later, as we sat at our rowing stations, renewed and refreshed, Kathleen remarked on how something different could happen out here to change our perception of the sea. It was like arriving in a new place, a tropical sea, where the landscape was completely different. Then, as if the environment around us agreed, a fish jumped 50 feet astern of the boat. We watched the fishing line that was trolling behind the boat, but the fish didn’t grab a hold of it.
We rowed a little longer when Kathleen remembered the little purple and silver fish she had seen while washing the dishes after breakfast. It had come up and grabbed a food morsel that was drifting away. He was only four inches long. And then there was another one up by the bow and he was bigger, about six inches. “Have you seen them before?” She asked me.
I hadn’t but I knew they were pilot fish from my readings of marine life at sea. It seems boats and large sea creatures acquire whole colonies of these fish that eat barnacles or any refuse generated by their hosts. It was nice to think we had our own school of pilot fish accompanying us as we traveled. It was good not to be so alone out here.
Rowing for My Life Page 9