My new seasickness pills are working. It’s better than the Atlantic when I had nothing. Should be able to go off of them in a day or so.
Getting used to one another on the rowboat again was something that took time and patience. Though we had spent enormous amounts of time together since getting married six years before, we always managed to find our own space to be alone. Excalibur Pacific obviously had limited space, but we knew from the Atlantic row where each of us liked to sit on the boat and be alone. My favorite spot was on the port side of the deck and later on the bench that Curt built with an Ecuadoran carpenter in the Galápagos. Curt’s place of solitude was the bow cabin where he worked on the navigation and read his books, away from the sun. It was a matter of reestablishing those boundaries again. It was also a matter of accepting responsibility for once again setting ourselves adrift at sea, which sounded crazy and heroic at the same time. But this part of the expedition was in some ways the most difficult. Curt got into the business of survival right away. It was a role he couldn’t wait to take on. I, on the other hand, though always intrigued with the idea of playing the intrepid explorer, tended to adopt a look-and-see approach in the beginning. It took a while for me to warm up to the idea of expedition living.
For the most part, on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, we rowed a mixture of separately and together, each putting in at least six hours a day at the oars. The best time for Curt to row was first thing in the morning. He would shoot the stars at dawn if it was clear enough and then row a couple of hours. I would take over after breakfast when he would work out the star sights. We’d get together to talk over lunch and do the noon sun sights, weather permitting. I would then put in another couple of hours in the middle of the day, and Curt would do his two hours in the late afternoon. Usually, we’d put in one more rowing session in the early evening together before dark.
Rowing separately gave each of us a chance to stretch out in the little bow cabin. Because living on the rowboat could be confining, it was vital to have this time to relax alone. Writing in logbooks, working out navigation sights, cooking meals, reading, or listening to my Moody Blues or Curt’s classical music tapes played on a small cassette recorder were things we looked forward to doing.
It was on a rowing-together session that I talked about my new feelings about the voyage. “I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s about the length of the trip, or the loneliness of the environment, but I’m finding I really want to be off this boat. Maybe I’ll fly home when we get to the Galápagos.”
This revelation came as a shock to Curt. “But look, we worked hard to put this expedition together. You wanted to see South America, the Pacific, the South Pacific islands. You wanted a significant ocean-rowing first,” he pointed out.
I thought a moment and said, “Well, no one else has rowed the Humboldt Current from Peru to the Galápagos. That’s a significant ocean-rowing first. Besides, I miss our friends and life on land, and I’m tired of living in a cramped boat day after day.”
“You know what people would say, don’t you?” he countered. “They’d say we failed. We said we would row across the Pacific; we got all that equipment and support from our parents; so we just have to keep at it. You’ll feel better after a few days in the Galápagos.”
We rowed for a while, and then I said, “Well, you could go on with the row, and I could go back. I could line up some hams with really good antennas to contact you. I could keep the sponsors informed about your progress.”
“No way I’m doing this row alone. I’d have to find another crew member, maybe advertise, ‘Wanted: oarsman or oarswoman to continue Pacific row.’”
“No way you’re taking this boat out with another woman!” I yelled.
And that was the end of the discussion for a while. Still, Curt knew I wasn’t happy with how the voyage was going. Progress was slow. The Humboldt Current was proving to be weaker than usual, perhaps because of the lingering effects of El Niño.
Then, too, we were different people in some respects. Curt tended to want to bash ahead and finish something regardless of adversity. I was more practical, I thought. If the ocean currents were messed up and conditions were not as our research indicated, I had nothing against playing it safe and getting out.
Late on the night of July 18, long after we had taken in the oars and squeezed into the bow cabin to sleep, we had a strange visitor. An odd rasping noise on the hull woke us. Curt went out and saw, with the aid of the hand-held spotlight, that a nine-foot shark was rubbing against the hull. There was a remora on his back; perhaps he was trying to get it off. The shark, which we thought was a blue, continued to follow us for three days.
At night, we would stay awake talking or listening to music as long as possible to keep the shark away. But without fail, when the boat was quiet and we were asleep, the shark would return.
On the second night, the shark’s behavior was more aggressive as it banged into the boat and pushed at the hull with its snout. It was hard to sleep with less than two inches separating us from this predator, for the thickness of the boat hull was made up only of thin Airex foam and fiberglass on either side.
By now we had noticed that whenever we heard the clicks from a pair of thirty-foot whales, the shark would pay us a visit. For some reason, the shark and the whales traveled together. Or perhaps the rowboat was attracting a larger community of marine life besides the three purple pilot fish.
Curt’s log: July 20
I suited up this afternoon and went overboard to check the hull for damage. We hadn’t seen the shark all morning, so around noon when visibility under water was best, I decided to go in. I wore my three-quarter wet suit for protection from the cold current and carried a knife in case. Kathleen kept a lookout for a shark fin.
The hull was in horrible condition, not from anything the shark had done but from the barnacles. A forest of marine growth and many hard shells an inch or two long covered the bottom of the boat. No wonder progress has been so slow! The resistance to the water of these barnacles must have cut our speed in half. All afternoon, I scraped off the shells with the knife. The job on the hull made the boat row much more easily, even though it had been impossible to remove all the growth.
That night we heard the whales outside the boat. Then the shark made the most violent attack yet. It banged into both dagger boards. Each dagger board runs through the hull in a slot on the deck. I was afraid the repeated blows from the shark could damage the hull. The rudder was next. It runs through a similar slot in the back and we had no spare. The shark banged against it and it felt like the rudder had been bent.
I finally had to kill the shark with the small semi-automatic that fired .22 long rifle shells. The bullets left a luminescent trail in the water that led to the middle of the shark’s body. The first shot did nothing more than incense the shark. It banged the boat even more violently, nearly throwing me off balance. As it surfaced next to the boat, I leaned over and shot it in the head at point-blank range. Blood and saltwater splashed and the shark went limp and sank slowly under the boat. It didn’t bother us again.
Rowing in the Humboldt Current to the Galápagos Islands
Day after day, I watched Callao, the wild Indian chicken tied to the deck in front of me, while I rowed. I visualized her legs in a frying pan with Peruvian olive oil and fresh rosemary sprigs, her breasts, back, and wings in a pot of chicken stew with dumplings. And then I would think what a horrible fantasy I had conjured up because Callao was such a nice bird.
Every day I watched as she sat on the aft dagger board, drying out her bedraggled feathers. When she closed her eyes and fell asleep, her eyelids rolled upward and she would weave back and forth like a drunken sailor in the boat’s motion. At night, she helped Curt to dispose of the potato and carrot peelings. She ate most anything, even barnacles from a piece of wood found floating in the sea days before.
According to Curt’s latest sights, which he had managed to snatch from small openings in the night
and dawn skies when they cleared long enough, our position was 5 degrees south, 87 degrees west with only 290 miles to San Cristóbal Island in the Galápagos. Each X Curt marked on the navigation chart showing our northward progress meant Callao’s demise was close, because we couldn’t take foreign livestock into the Galápagos Islands.
On July 29, it was time to have Callao for dinner.
“I can’t watch you do it,” I told Curt. “I’m staying in the cabin. Let me know when you’re done,” I said, handing out the frying pan. I shut the hatch and pushed the “on” button to the tape deck. I grabbed a paperback and tried to read as the Moody Blues sang about white nights in the background.
With a quick snap of Curt’s wrist, Callao was no more, but in his nervousness Curt twisted too hard and her head came off in his hand in a disgusting mess. A few minutes later, the hatch opened and the frying pan was handed in with the skinny featherless legs and breasts of Callao. I looked down at our former pet, gulped, and turned away to start the Optimus stove. We were so starved for the fresh vitamins that Callao would give, helping us to row through the maze of intersecting currents of the Galápagos archipelago.
The early dawn sky was clear on July 31 when Curt measured the morning stars with the plastic Davis sextant. We worked as a team: Curt calling out the star’s name and the word “Mark” when he brought it down to the horizon. My job was to record the time and altitude measurement as he read it from the sextant. It was important to know our position exactly as the islands drew closer, because the Galápagos currents tended to diverge, one branch flowing north and east of the islands and the other flowing west and becoming part of the South Equatorial Current system. We had to be right in the middle to catch San Cristóbal Island. On the morning of the 31st, after we shot four stars, as Curt turned to hand me the sextant to put away, he saw land off the bow of the boat.
“Kathleen! Come look! It’s land!” I stuck my head out of the cabin with the camera and saw it was Española Island, the southernmost island in the Galápagos.
“Wow! I can’t believe we’re so close! We’ll practically drift into port.”
He nodded. “I don’t think I need to work out the sights. Let’s eat breakfast and then start rowing.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said, happy the islands were so close after nearly four weeks at sea.
It turned out that the sights should have been worked out because we were already in the South Equatorial Current and slipping westward much faster than we knew. We should have neglected the extra cups of coffee and leisurely conversation about our imminent successful arrival, which Curt was ready to film with the camcorder, and jumped right on the oars. It was while we sat on deck chatting that I noticed the angle of Española Island to the rowboat had changed.
“Hey! There’s something wrong here. Look at Española!” Curt looked over my shoulder and jumped to his feet.
“Shit, I think we’re moving past it! The current is carrying us too far west!”
In a controlled panic, adrenaline flowing hard, we tossed the dregs of our coffees overboard and shoved the oars out.
“Hard on the port!” he called, and we pulled hard on the right side of boat with more power than the left. The boat needed to point east of Española so we could counteract the effect of the current.
In the noonday heat, a huge black-and-white frigate bird swooped out of the sky and nearly dug its talons into Curt’s scalp, but he managed to duck in time. Española was only twelve miles away now, yet after rowing the rest of the day and into the evening, we had gained only four and half miles and were slipping west all the time.
Overnight, as we lay exhausted from the rowing, Excalibur was left to drift on a sea anchor. At dawn we began rowing, but by midmorning it was obvious that we couldn’t reach San Cristóbal, only a few miles north of Española. The current was just too strong. On August 1, with the boat on a northwest course, we decided to try for Santa Cruz Island as we slipped between Española and Floreana Islands. The chances were good that with constant pressure on the oars, we could reach Academy Bay at Santa Cruz in a couple of days.
On the night of August 4, in the complete darkness of a marathon rowing session, there was an ominous tinkling sound like glass breaking under the boat. Our curiosity piqued, we both let go of the oars at the same time to listen more closely. Then there was a loud thundering boom as an enormous wave crashed into the sea off the port side of the boat. Stunned into action, we picked up the oars and began rowing in a fast-synchronized stroke when we realized at the same moment that Excalibur Pacific was floating on a reef and the next wave would smash directly over us. We kept up the stroke, our adrenaline driving the boat beyond the reef’s edge and into calmer waters.
Near midnight, the Southern Cross transited the sky and then dropped gracefully over the horizon while a huge fragmented meteor briefly lit the sky over Santa Cruz Island. A quarter moon reflected on the waves, and the glow of green bioluminescence outlined the shape of our oars, reminiscent of the memorable night among the Hormigas rocks off the Peruvian coast. This time, however, the seas were gentle and the approach to Santa Cruz was straightforward until the navigation lights leading into Academy Bay went black at midnight. Anchored at its entrance, however, was the Ecuadoran supply ship Iguana, whose single faint light guided us into port. I rowed up to Iguana’s aft deck while Curt stood up and hooted for the crewmen.
“Hey, caballeros!” he called out in his best Peace Corps Bolivian Spanish. “Where can we anchor?” Silence, and then heads appeared over the gunwales.
“Que quieres? Donde estás?” The night was silent
“Estamos aqui!” The crew of Iguana looked down at our rowboat, the spotlight in Curt’s hand. “Where can we anchor?” he repeated.
The crewmen on deck looked at each other, unsure about this odd-looking boat arriving in the middle of the night.
“You’re in the Islas Galápagos, Santa Cruz island.” They thought we were lost, and I couldn’t blame them, because the orange rowboat resembled an oversized lifeboat. A crewman climbed down a hastily unfurled rope ladder, saying he would show us a spot to anchor. He landed on our deck with a thud, startling us out of our solitary world. I rowed to where he pointed, and before we could figure out how he was going to get back to his ship, Iguana’s dinghy pulled up to the gunwales and he climbed in.
“Muchas gracias, caballero. Adios,” Curt called after him.
Twenty-nine days after leaving Callao, Peru, we had arrived in the Galápagos at 2:30 a.m. on August 3. The anchor went down, and we collapsed on the deck, exhausted but too keyed up to sleep. Curt got out the rum and maple syrup while I scrounged around for the remaining Peruvian limes. We toasted our success at reaching the first island of the rowing expedition by clinking our plastic coffee cups.
A strange silence now surrounded the boat. Gone were the never-ending sounds of the blowing wind and breaking waves. For the first time in nearly a month, the boat was still and the air was sweet smelling with the herbal scent of land.
CHAPTER 28
Puerto Arroyo, Academy Bay, Santa Cruz Island
Curt’s log: August 4, 1984
At seven the next morning, we were awakened by a squad of curious motorboats that came to see the human-powered craft that had arrived during the night. Academy Bay was much larger than it appeared in the dark. The waters were a startling mix of emerald green and light blue at the edges. Candelabra cactus and black mangrove trees rimmed the shoreline. Everything about the island appeared exotic. Rough outcrops of volcanic lava rocks jutted into the bay while every boat at anchor seemed to have a brown smooth-skinned seal sunning itself on deck.
A white motor launch putted up to Excalibur Pacific and on board was Santa Cruz’s port captain, dressed in a pristine Ecuadoran military uniform. We were fortunate to have the permit required of all private boats visiting the Galápagos Islands, as Ecuador is very strict about visitors to the islands. They want to protect the natural habitat for the many endemic speci
es found there. We were given forty-eight hours to stay on the island and resupply the expedition. Then we would have to leave.
Kathleen was very disappointed that we would not be staying longer. She said she’d just been thinking that she would not be flying back to the US because it had been too hard rowing into these islands to quit. But what’s the point, she asked, if we had to leave right away?
I showed the port captain, again, the official document from Captain Naranjo’s office that we had obtained in Guayaquil. I told him how a shark had damaged our rudder, and that we would have to build a new one before continuing on the voyage.
Happily, he relented and gave us permission to stay two weeks.
There are several sailing yachts anchored throughout the harbor. Close to Excalibur Pacific is Andiamo III, a forty-two-foot Hans Christian owned by Susan and Andy Kerr, who are sailing around the world. Susan and Andy helped us get settled for our first nights in the Hotel Galápagos, the best hotel in town. Soon we were taking freshwater showers and eating all the fresh foods we could find to get our strength back. We slept at the Hotel Galápagos for two nights, after bringing the rowboat into the mangroves beside the hotel dock where we’re going to sleep aboard for the rest of our stay. Forest Nelson, the owner of the hotel, is an American who arrived by boat twenty-four years before and decided to stay. In the workshop at the hotel, Forest introduced us to Efrien, an Ecuadoran Indian who is a talented carpenter. He’s going to help me build a spare lightweight rudder, an extra dagger board, and a bench for sitting on deck when no one is rowing.
It was early morning in the harbor, where there was always a light wind. It was almost perfectly silent: some small waves lapping at the edges of the boat while a blue-footed booby calmly flapped past, making a deep-throated noise. It was the third day of our stop at Santa Cruz Island in the Galápagos, and I was on deck while Curt slept quietly in the bow. The fishing boats in Puerto Arroyo had gone out of the harbor, and the splash of seals filled the air. Susan and Andy paddled their dinghy past our rowboat after visiting the bakery on shore. I waved to them and they waved back.
Rowing for My Life Page 19