The Galápagos are a possession of Ecuador, and special permission is required to go there in a private boat. Though we had sent repeated inquiries to Ecuador’s embassy in Washington, DC, nothing in the way of a permit had come. But happily, Captain Naranjo gave us a letter from his office with the all-important stamps stating we had applied for the permit. In the end, the letter served the same function as the permit, which never did arrive.
Peruvian Bureaucracy
We were lucky. In a few days, the small feeder ship Strider Fearless en route to Callao, Peru, arrived in port to take on cargo from Santa Paula. The British captain agreed to take our boat and us to Callao. Once there, however, we faced a customs strike and possibly the worst bureaucracy in the world. Everyone was afraid to allow anything to leave the port. Noticeable anti-American sentiments and a Soviet presence didn’t help. We spent twelve days doing nothing but paperwork, unable to gain access to our boat, which remained locked in its shipping container. It was fortunate that we had packed Excalibur Pacific with almost everything we needed, including the navigation and radio supplies, a couple of 35 mm cameras and a VHS camcorder housed in a special Airex protective fiberglass box that Curt had fashioned, a fishing kit, clothing, reading and writing materials, tools kits and extra supplies for radio, the Autohelm, a kitchen stove, water pump, material for rowing equipment repairs, and the bulk of our dried and canned food store. There was even a small handgun stuffed under deck in the bow that we had bought for security in port like the many yachts we had read about that sailed in international waters. While aboard Strider Fearless, we had also loaded sixty gallons of fresh water into her hull below deck. All we needed was a little fresh produce from the local market. In addition, Santiago Woll, a Peruvian-based shipping agent whose company handled Strider Fearless and our newest patron, convinced us to take a live chicken on board for the eggs she would lay and the meal she would eventually provide.
The one problem we could do nothing about was the boat’s batteries. After weeks in a shipping container where no light could reach the solar panels to recharge them, they were nearly flat. We could only hope that, after a few days at sea, the sunshine would recharge them enough so we could contact the ham radio operators who would be listening for us.
CHAPTER 27
To the Galápagos
July 7, 1984
ROCK PINNACLES TOWERED BLACK AND menacing along the Peruvian coast in the dimness of the moonlight. Excalibur Pacific bounced around in the crazy agitated waves, and though we had been rowing hard on and off for hours since leaving Callao, there was no question of putting down the oars. We were drifting into the maelstrom of the treacherous Grupos de Hormigas and possibly the Huaras within our first week at sea. Unless we kept going, Excalibur Pacific would join the legions of boats and ships that had crashed and broken up on Peru’s perilous rocky coastline.
Pinpoints of green bioluminescence lit up our oar blades with each stroke we took. Curt called out, and I squinted my eyes in the darkness. Sliding under the boat was the startling sight of an enormous snake-like greenish-white luminescence. I stopped and stared as the glow slid smoothly under the starboard to the port side of the boat, not unlike the bioluminescent sea creature we’d encountered on the North African coast in 1981.
In the near distance, what looked like the spotlight from a ship flashed brightly, but as we rowed closer, I saw the shining whiteness was really a warning light positioned atop a large, shadowy rock tower. Curt grabbed the navigation chart and in the yellow glow of a flashlight, he searched for an hormiga with a blinking light. If he located it, we would know where we were on this treacherous coastline north of Callao.
Several days before this, our first night at sea was strange and surreal because our departure had been so abrupt. At four in the afternoon on July 4, the Peruvian port authorities finally gave us grudging permission to depart. Perhaps the $200 had changed their minds.
Gray rain clouds, a harbinger of the Peruvian winter, hung heavy over the port as I stored fresh food supplies below deck and Curt hooked up the radio antenna. I craned my neck upward to look at the cement quay where new friends, port officials, and a police corporal grimly looked down at us. The policeman had been assigned to accompany us on the Excalibur Pacific to Peru’s two-hundred-mile limit in order to prevent us from selling the boat before we left the territorial waters, but no one had ever told us or the obviously frightened policeman how he would get back to land once we reached mile two hundred. For a week, we had haggled with Peruvian police, customs officials, and port authorities over their insane demand. When we made an official protest to the US embassy, the Peruvians backed off. Now we just craved the peace and quiet of our rowboat.
A flock of brown pelicans lining the edges of the quay watched solemnly as I turned away and put our oars and rowing seats in place. Curt tied the squawking wild Indian chicken, a gift from Santiago, to the water pump in the stern. With a nod to the quay, we sat down to begin rowing out of port. Our lugubrious departure party waved a cheerless goodbye while the corporal smiled broadly.
The row west toward the entrance of Callao port was slow, as the boat wallowed in its weight of months of supplies. There was a sizable number of oddly rigged Soviet-flagged fishing trawlers with revolving radar antennas throughout the anchorage. Peruvian fishing boats putted by, their aft decks outfitted with simple winches and woven nets. In the watery light of the setting sun, the high-security prison island of El Frontón sat as a dark smudge against the western horizon. A friend had told us that a tunnel ran from the mainland to the prison island’s cell blocks. As I rowed in the gathering dusk of the port, I imagined prisoners splashing their way toward us as they attempted to break free.
While I kept up the stroke, Curt took a break to make a stew of fresh vegetables and dried llama meat we had bought from the local market. Within an hour of eating it, he developed a terrible headache and felt sick to his stomach. In the middle of the night, unbeknownst to me, he woke up and didn’t know where he was when he crawled out on deck without a safety harness, shouting and lunging for the gunwale. Just as he started going overboard, the sight of the black ocean water brought him to his senses and he remembered he was out at sea on Excalibur Pacific.
Curt’s log: July 6, 1984
One of the reasons we want to row across the South Pacific is to spend a long time in a very wild place, to experience the planet in its rawest, most primitive state. In a slow-moving rowboat, close to the water, we can meet the sea on its own terms and for a time be in control of our own destinies. We think it will take about six months to row across the SP.
The second day out from Callao, we rowed into a huge area of floating debris. Everything from plastic bottles to plastic bags, bits of wood, slime, and lumps of tar or sewage covered the surface of the sea. Clearly we would have to row farther to find those ocean regions beyond the influence of man. We collected samples of the plastic floating in the sea and put them into bottles with formalin as part of an informal ocean study of the influence of pollution on the marine environment that we are contributing to gratis for Harvard University.
The masses of floating debris seemed to be caught between two currents, because within a few hours we entered a region of clear sea water and rolling three-foot waves that would foam when they broke against the side of the boat. I told Kathleen that we must have left the Peru Coastal Currents behind and the water temperature might start to feel colder.
The Humboldt Current that flows north along the South American coast is a cold-water current that is rich in marine life. It is distinguished from the Peru Coastal Current, which extends irregularly out from shore and is more influenced by tides and the effects of the continental land mass. Getting into the Humboldt Current as soon as possible would be good because we’ll be free from the immediate dangers of the coastline and can expect a more constant northward drift. I felt no difference in the surface sea temperature though when I put my hand in the water by the port gunwale earlier today.<
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The hazy, overcast conditions, though typical of this region, are frustrating. We can’t see the coast for compass bearings, and the sun, moon, and stars are impossible to see for sights with the sextant. We’re concerned about the Hormigas de Afuera, a group of dangerous, rocky islets about 35 miles west of Callao. Captain Hitchen of Strider Fearless told us, “If you row due west, I’m quite sure the current will carry you far enough north to miss the Hormigas and Huaras.” Still we’re uneasy.
July 7: Surviving the Grupos de Hormigas and Huaras
“Can you tell where we are?” I yelled to Curt over the crashing sound of breakers too close for comfort.
“Yeah, I think it’s number four, Hormiga Quatro. We’re only about thirty miles north of Callao”—the wind swallowing the last of his words.
“Shit, this is a nightmare. We’ve got to go west before we get sucked in any further.” I began pulling hard on the starboard oar to swing the bow around. “Come on, let’s row together.” Curt tossed the chart into the bow cabin.
Green bioluminescence flashed in a synchronized dance of light as I changed course and pointed the bow westward, away from the Hormigas rock towers. All around the boat, the sea had taken on a luminous iridescent green color. Thousands of pinpoints of light flickered. We were in a sea alive with bioluminescence, billions of microscopic organisms giving off their own light as the waves carrying them rushed toward the rocks.
“My God!” I shouted as the realization suddenly dawned. “We’re in the middle of the rocks already!”
Curt hastily sat down at his rowing station, and together we started rowing at an angle away from the lighthouse, our eyes becoming more adjusted to the darkness. Every time a wave broke by the boat, it sent a shower of green fire across the surface of the sea that glowed for a second and faded to blackness. Each time our oars dipped into the sea, it was as though they were scooping the green fire. Even the contours of the sea floor a few feet below the boat were apparent.
Though at any moment we could hit a rock, tear a hole in the boat, and be swamped or become food for sharks, there was a fantastic beauty about the glowing reef that night.
We talked briefly of anchoring and waiting for daylight to find our way safely through, but the tide, Curt reasoned, could force the boat further onto the reef. The sound of breaking waves came with greater intensity off the bow.
Curt stopped rowing and stood up to look around. The waves were breaking with a green froth of bioluminescence across our bow. But the green fire was appearing in the same places, while other areas remained dark and free of the breakers.
“Hit it on the port, Kathleen,” he shouted. If we could stay in the dark areas, we might avoid the rocks. Just then we saw a thick mass of diffuse green light coming toward us in a circuitous course from the side. Another enormous fish was disturbing the bioluminescent organisms and leaving a glowing trail in the water. As it passed beneath the boat, we could see it was leaving a trail that was longer and wider than the boat!
The light given off by the sea was so bright we were able to cross the line of breakers and row into an area of darker, deeper water. Still, we were cautious and kept rowing into the dawn until, in the distance, the rock pinnacles stood dimly in the mist, several miles off the stern. That was the only land visible and was our last sight of South America.
Curt crawled into the cabin and brought out the compass to take a bearing off the rocks and then shot the morning sun with the sextant when it emerged briefly from the clouds. From this information, it was apparent that we had left behind the Hormigas and only just missed the Huaras. There was still a ways to go before entering the north-flowing Humboldt Current.
Later in the morning, I made a big breakfast of fried potatoes, Colombian coffee, and eggs. We ate on deck, enjoying the sunshine and chatting about the near miss of the evening before. Even Callao, as we had named our little Peruvian chicken, was feeling better. She had taken to perching on the handles of the spare oars at the edge of the deck to sun herself and dry the dampness of the night from her ragged feathers. She survived on a diet of bulgur grain from a half bag that was given to us by the dockworkers in the Peruvian port. On the front of the mesh bag was stamped in red and blue letters: GIFT OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I silently thanked my fellow Americans.
As the horrors of the Hormigas and Huaras faded into the southeast horizon, the wind picked up. With a brisk wind behind us after breakfast, we rowed west-northwest farther out to sea. By mid-afternoon, we pulled in the oars for a break.
Whoosh! I looked around and saw the shiny black back of a whale sinking into the sea off the starboard beam. We were surrounded by a pod of humpback whales. After Labrador, where we had seen small minke whales, we hoped to see more whales in their natural habitat, but when the humpbacks swam right up to the boat, we were scared. The whales weren’t aggressive, though, and seemed only to be curious about the boat.
To Curt, this was an invitation to go for a swim and get a better view from underwater. “You’re crazy to go in the water, you don’t know what they might do!” I said to him as he pulled out his mask, snorkel, and fins from the compartment below the bow rowing station.
“If I don’t swim with them, I’ll regret it later.” he retorted and slipped overboard, the Nikonos 35 mm underwater camera in hand.
Curt’s log: July 8
On the South American coast. From under the water, the whales seemed bigger and more awesome. The sight of a 65-foot humpback whale appearing out of the pale blue distance, its gray mass growing bigger and bigger as it swam toward me, was unforgettable. Just when I was about five feet away, it changed course and swam under me, so close I could have touched it. I saw a great smiling mouth, four feet across, and a big eye staring up at me.
I could see its skin was rough and covered with scars and a few remoras. There were also barnacles and a whole school of fish swimming alongside it. I wondered if some of the humpback’s pilot fish would become our pilot fish. I hoped so.
I had my own story to tell Curt as well. While I was standing on the forward deck, looking down into the sea as he snorkeled below, I heard another whooshing sound off the bow. I looked over and saw a whale had stuck its head out of the water again, less than half the boat’s length away, and fixed its eye on me before it slid back into the sea. The sight riveted me. I didn’t know where to look for the next one: under the boat or the spot where the whale had surfaced.
While Curt was in the water, he had seen that Excalibur Pacific had its own entourage of followers—three small purple-and-black-striped pilot fish swimming under the hull, along with a few barnacles growing by the dagger board slots. In the late afternoon, while we rowed, Curt saw a newcomer—a shark whose fin cut sharply through the water a short distance off the stern.
The Humboldt Current
By July 8, four days after leaving Callao, we had entered a region of the Humboldt Current rich in marine life. One sunny morning after Curt had done the morning star sights, a splashing beside the boat startled us. A bewhiskered sea lion came to the surface beside the gunwale to breathe. Then it dove and splashed playfully around the boat and stayed with us all day. Often the sea lion came right up to the edge of the boat, cocking its head at us as if to say hello.
A few days later, a large green sea turtle that was four feet across with a pointed head the size of a coconut replaced the sea lion. It swam behind the boat as we rowed, occasionally splashing the water with its finlike feet. Its presence made me think of Darwin and other sailors who had overfished the hard-shell chelonians, using them for food on their long voyages.
Every day we were visited by birds, some of them circling the boat and looking for small fish that might be following us. They would swoop down, dive in the water, and shoot upward with fish in their beaks. Daily, we photographed red- and blue-footed boobies, frigate birds, jaegers, and petrels.
Occasionally, a booby or gull would land on the stern of the boat, only a few feet away from Ca
llao, the hen. She seemed unaware of these visitors and more concerned with her reflection in the Lexan port of the aft cabin hatch. When it was sunny, she could see her reflection so well that she thought another chicken was on board. For hours, Callao would peck at her reflection, ruffled feathers waving madly in the wind.
Life on the rowboat, we had always found, was very different from life on land. Our navigation and living routines established on the Atlantic Ocean started up again on the South Pacific, as though there had been no gap in time. Surrounding the boat, as on the Atlantic, was a wilderness of ocean, sky, and creatures few people had experienced in such intimate detail. In the Humboldt Current, we saw only two ships, and they were too far away to see us.
It was a lonely world, made lonelier by our lack of radio contact with others. The skies were overcast so much of the time that the solar panels on the roof of the bow cabin couldn’t charge the batteries enough for successful radio contacts. We could listen to the TR-7 transceiver radio for time signals to set the watches by for navigation, but our inability to contact the outside world concerned us. If we had an emergency, such as sickness or damage to the rowboat, we were totally on our own. Also, we knew our families and friends would become worried when our amateur radio and boat-building friend, Peter Wilhelm, continued to report: “No contact today.”
The worst thing about the lack of radio contact was not having another person to converse with. It was a psychological thing. We had each other, but it wasn’t enough after so long away from the sea.
Kathleen’s log: July 12, 1985
The sun came out early today but it’s disappeared now. Clouds over the whole sky as usual. Barometer 1023 millibars. We are rowing a 290-degree course with easterly winds. Last night was calmer and I found it a little easier to sleep. It’s rocky one night and calm the next. We had the fishing line out, but caught nothing. During the rowing session in the middle of the day, it’s still quite cool. The cold current, I suspect. I wear the red sweatshirt to row in that I got from Strider Fearless. I wish I were on that boat now instead of this one!
Rowing for My Life Page 18