When I turned around in my rowing seat to see where we had landed, I saw a broad sandy beach that stretched for miles to the north and south with no sign of development. No one was waiting for us under the eucalyptus trees that fringed the beach or “bringing us kangaroo steaks” as Curt later joked.
With the video camera still running and the tide steadily going out, Curt whooped it up waving around the Explorers Club and Australian flags, while I pulled in my oars quietly and stood up to survey our choice of landing spot. For the first time since pulling Excalibur Pacific out of the water at Ua Pou island months earlier, we were aground.
We had completed the rowing voyage of ten thousand miles across the South Pacific in 392 days, or 189 days of just rowing, by landing on a remote and uninhabited beach in northern Queensland. The “official” ending to the voyage would come, 12:20 p.m., the next day, July 31, after we had pushed off at high tide, 9:00 p.m., from what is now known as the Wooroonooran National Park and rowed through the night north around Cape Grafton and west to the port of Cairns.
When we rowed up to the dock at Cairns after calling on the VHF to the port officials, the Australians who stood fishing at the quay stared down at us in disbelief. The immigration officials, dressed nattily in their khaki bush shorts and neatly pressed shirts, politely took our passports and waited with us on our boat while their main office confirmed that we had indeed rowed from Port Vila on July 4 and had in fact, rowed in and out of a series of island ports across the South Pacific: Puerto Arroyo, Santa Cruz island, Ecuador; Hakahau, Ua Pou island, French Polynesia; Pago Pago, Tutuila island, American Samoa; and Port Vila, Efate island, Vanuatu, before arriving in their Queensland port of Cairns over a year later.
One Aussie looked at us doubtfully and shook his head, saying he figured because we were Americans completing a rowing voyage across the broadest ocean in the world that there would have been masses of publicity, swooping helicopters, and honking boat horns broadcasting our arrival. After all, Americans never did anything modestly, he reckoned. But we surprised them; we impressed one older man so much he pulled out a five-dollar Australian bill from his wallet for us to spend on our first (second, really) night in the Land Down Under.
Within a week, we had been invited to appear on television with a well-known Australian celebrity talk show host. What had ended so abruptly on the Atlantic row in Antigua when family and friends had greeted us in English Harbour was more under our control in Cairns and later Sydney. Friendly Queenslanders who had heard about our row from the newspapers and news programs invited us to stay in their homes as we worked out the details of transporting ourselves and boat back to the United States. Thanks to our appearance on the Mike Wilersy Show in Sydney and a flattering article that called us “the quiet Americans” as though we were a breed of Yank far from the usual, the ACTA/PACE shipping company offered to ship the boat home for free.
Amid the busy days that followed our arrival, we were able to find moments of privacy to appreciate what we had accomplished. In a pub one night, the friendly barmaid offered her family’s empty home in Avalon to stay in for a few days until we worked out the details of shipping Excalibur Pacific from Cairns by roadway to the port of Sydney. In the quiet of Avalon, a Sydney suburb that rang with the occasional crazy song of the kookaburra, we talked between ourselves about the row and my pregnancy, which we decided to keep to ourselves while in Australia. By now, I was nearly five months pregnant but not showing at all. As nice as the Aussies had been to us, people always made cracks about the supposed difficulties of living with a spouse in such close living quarters. Before the Atlantic row and at boat shows afterward, more than one person said they couldn’t imagine paddling across a river never mind an ocean with their spouse. If we shared the pregnancy news, I could just guess what sort of questions and jokes that would provoke.
By completing the South Pacific row, we had become the first couple to row across the South Pacific Ocean, and I became the first woman to row across two oceans. It wasn’t until 1988 that the Guinness Book of World Records officially acknowledged our long distance rowing record in a print copy of their book and later listed me on their online site for my two ocean rows. The GBWR is a British publication, and we couldn’t help but notice that they tended to post the long-distance rowing accomplishments of their fellow Brits first, before other nationalities.
Despite the new records we had achieved, more important to me was what I had learned over the past year, combined with the lessons of the Atlantic row. This was something of far greater profundity than the physical aspect or the setting of extreme adventure records. With each successful leg of each row, when I touched land again after what had felt like an extra-planetary experience, I affirmed that I was capable of doing more than I ever thought possible. In the exquisite moments of danger, wonder, and beauty in isolation, I understood it was all about making choices and taking responsibility for decisions. It wasn’t just a matter of sticking it out with Curt on the boat the whole way, I had to acknowledge in being honest with myself. There was something in me that always wanted to see what was around the next corner. Now, having finished the South Pacific row and expecting a baby in four months’ time, I was ready to continue exploring our Thoreauvian “private sea” and discover where we might go from here.
When I completed my second ocean row, I was only twenty-nine but I knew then that I would always be “on the road,” not as a sort of female Jack Kerouac but in my own never-ending journey as outsider and explorer, as Other who would travel to foreign lands and cultures, in and out of familiar space and time, leaving only when I was ready to return.
CHAPTER 39
Sydney, Australia
August 1985
THE AUSSIE TOOK A SIP of his white wine and said, “You don’t look like … uh … someone who could row a boat across an ocean.”
I studied the shipping executive, dapper in his single-breasted blue suit, an expression of perplexity on his smooth-shaven face, and then I smiled. It was two weeks after finishing the South Pacific row and Curt and I were in Sydney at a reception given for us by the board of directors of ACTA/PACE, an Australian shipping company with interests all over the world. The executive’s board was considering shipping our rowboat back to America gratis after our successful row.
“Yeah,” I answered. I could hear my American drawl as it clashed with his Aussie twang. “Well, I’ve been rowing for years, you know. I started in college and, uh, I’ve been rowing ever since.” I smiled broadly, and he nodded to the waiter to bring another glass of wine.
I went on to entertain the executive and his colleagues with a story about rowing through their country’s Great Barrier Reef to complete the voyage, only to find we had chosen to make landfall at a remote aboriginal reserve with not a single person in sight. They laughed heartily at the image I drew of myself nearly getting sucked into a quicksand pit as we scoured the area looking for people and roads. I still felt the horror of the moment, as the ground beneath my feet slowly sank and how in desperation I flailed around for a bush, something to grab, and pulled myself out.
Curt came over and joined in the storytelling, describing the fright of the thunderous breaking waves on the coral reefs surrounding our boat that we’d felt only two weeks earlier, when our lives were all about rowing a small boat across an ocean and not corporate schmoozing. From their body language, as they leaned in close to Curt, I could tell the middle-aged men were thinking, “Crikey, that guy’s got balls! He’s unbelievable!” They nodded their heads vigorously, their eyes wide as he talked of the fright of the boat rolling over in the Coral Sea and the thrill of fighting sharks along the South American coast and during the row from French Polynesia to Samoa.
I sipped at my tonic water and listened. I wanted them to fund the $5,000 shipping fee and be impressed with my own accomplishments too. As the reception wore on, though, I found myself standing back from the crowd surrounding Curt and downplaying my role in the expedition’s success so t
hat these men would not be uncomfortable with me, a woman who had not only rowed across the South Pacific Ocean but had rowed across another ocean four years earlier.
In the weeks since finishing the South Pacific row, we were still processing what it had been all about. We had lived together, loved together, and fought together in a space and situation that few people in the world could ever imagine. Our lives on the ocean rowboat had been the result of a choice, not of the chance outcome of some unanticipated circumstance, like a shipwreck, for example. Between us, though, there was a difference in how each related to what we’d gleaned within the privacy of our little world on board twenty-five-foot Excalibur Pacific. She had been the best of learning environments, as far as I was concerned, and I was not sure that I was ready to share what I had learned on her deck with the rest of the world so soon.
While I recognized that part of accepting sponsorship was about sharing exciting stories of how we survived the expedition’s challenges, I found it difficult to reduce what I felt to be the profoundness of my experiences to sensational life-threatening anecdotes. It was hard to talk about how difficult it was to keep going, island stop after island stop, to remain motivated and finish the voyage, with people who didn’t know what it was like to be alternately scared to death, physically weary and mentally worn out by the drudgery of toiling on the oars day after day, and spellbound by the utter and absolute uniqueness of living on the ocean’s surface alone and for so long. We hadn’t been rowing just for our immediate survival but for a future that we were constantly trying to guarantee for ourselves and, soon, for our child.
For Curt, who lived in the present, that future time was now, in that boardroom with the ACTA/PACE executives, for they wanted to be entertained for their money and he reveled in recreating the adventure in the light of their admiration. As armchair adventurers, they were vicariously buying an adventure through us.
Curt and I had been perfectly matched on our rows in this respect, because he was an explorer who loved to push the limits of what was possible and then celebrate the achievement in ways that bestowed public recognition, while I was the explorer who, though I loved to go to that same edge, would be the cautious one who always knew when to pull back.
After our meeting, ACTA/PACE did give us free shipping for Excalibur Pacific from Sydney to the port of Newark, New Jersey, while Curt and I flew Air Zealand back to the East Coast of America. From our bulkhead seats across the aisle from a woman with her newborn baby, we watched as she gently put the baby in the fold-down bassinet, fascinated and knowing that we too would be parents in late December or early January 1986.
PART IV
NEW IDENTITIES AND NEW LIVES
CHAPTER 40
The Boat Shows and Life on Land
WE ARRIVED BACK IN THE United States in late summer 1985 and took the train into Manhattan to meet with people from the National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA), which had contacted us while we were in Australia to participate in boat shows. In 1981 and 1982, we had exhibited Excalibur at the Norwalk, Connecticut and Philadelphia boat shows with the NMMA. Now they wanted us for the prestigious New York, Philadelphia, and Miami boat shows, which were going to bring in a nice bit of change for us. To make the most of our profits, we negotiated for full fees for the three shows, saying we would find our own lodgings and be responsible for getting the boat to each venue.
In Manhattan, we met with Frank Scalpone, the managing director at NMMA, and his assistants to talk about the shows that would begin in January 1986. They wanted us in New York for the first show at the old New York Coliseum right after Christmas. This was going to be a challenge for me, because the baby was due about that time. We did not share the baby news with Scalpone, because we thought he would cancel us out of our three-show contract. All through our meeting I held a coat in front of my stomach because by then I was about six months pregnant and beginning to show. They didn’t notice a thing.
Return to Vermont
With Excalibur Pacific in tow, we returned to Morgan, Vermont, to housesit a family friend’s house as we had done the previous winters. I pulled out my old Smith-Corona typewriter and wrote letters to a number of private schools and clubs I had researched at the local library. The response was good, and we scheduled a series of lectures in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states. We charged $350 for each lecture at the suggestion of Beth Ruze, whom we had met in Pago Pago, American Samoa, in April 1985. Beth had completed her contract with the Tutuila public school system and was back in the United States.
We spent the fall of 1985 driving to schools with our trays of color slides and giving joint presentations on the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, Mississippi River, and Labrador coast expeditions. Initially, we had prepped by looking through all our Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides and putting together a narrative that we could share back and forth. We worked well as presentation partners, easily picking up the thread of narration from each other. Our lectures mirrored our partnership on the boat: I talked about radio communication and boat supplies, while Curt spoke about the navigation. We both shared what it had been like to build the boat and overcome the doubts of people who told us it was impossible to row an ocean.
Throughout the fall, we continued the lecture tour, staying closer to Morgan as I advanced in my pregnancy. On or about January 1, my doctor said the baby was nearly due and could be induced. This was good news, because the boat shows were drawing closer, and within a couple of weeks we would have to be in Manhattan for the opening of the New York Boat Show.
On January 3, I went into the hospital and began the induced labor. At about 8:30 p.m. on January 4, our beautiful baby boy, Christopher Morgan Saville, was born safe and sound.
Within the day, Curt had to leave alone for New York with Excalibur Pacific in tow. He drove south to New York City and delivered the boat to the loading docks of the Coliseum, where Frank Scalpone and the other NMMA people were finally apprised of my pregnancy. Frank was not pleased—in fact, he was furious I wasn’t available for the pre-boat show publicity they had arranged. Curt knew Frank was going to be mad, so he came prepared with a box of cigars to celebrate the birth of Christopher.
The day before Christopher’s birth, we had arrived at the hospital with no insurance or other means of paying for my stay. Fortunately, I was informed that the hospital would cover most of the cost through their private donors’ fund. I was embarrassed to be given such charity, though we had no other way to pay the bill. After all the glory and accolades about our successful South Pacific row, the humiliating talk with the hospital billing office brought me down hard to earth.
Our good friends Ruby and Ken Jenness took me and the baby back to their home from the hospital. The next day Ken drove us to Massachusetts, where I was picked up by Explorers Club friend Bobbie Cochran from Westchester, New York. Within three days, I was gingerly making my way up the West End highway with Christopher in arms to the Coliseum. The stitches from giving birth were still sensitive, and I had to walk very carefully for the next week and a half while appearing at the boat show every day.
After the New York show ended, we headed to Philadelphia, where Excalibur Pacific was exhibited and we stayed with a friend from Curt’s Peace Corps days. From Philly, we drove south to Miami, stopping to visit Curt’s parents in Durham, North Carolina. When the Miami Boat Show opened in March, the baby was two months old and was a regular road warrior. When we weren’t staying with family or friends, we camped in the boat, and the shelf that had once held the TR-7 transceiver radio on the South Pacific became the baby’s bed, which he took to readily. It was as though he instinctively knew the boat had been his first home.
When the boat shows finally ended in March, we drove back north on I-95, towing Excalibur Pacific behind the new used Datsun 810 sedan that friends had helped us acquire to replace the once trusty Pinto wagon. Rust had so consumed the body and framework of the Pinto that when Curt drove it to a car dump outside of Philadelphia, his foot we
nt through the floor when he pressed on the brakes. He and the Pinto barely made it to the dump in one piece.
In April 1986, with the proceeds of the boat shows, we bought twenty-four acres of open and wooded land in northern Vermont. We began building “Casa Grande,” our tongue-in-cheek name for a tiny two-story house that was only twenty feet by twenty-two feet square. One warm late spring weekend, my family came up from Rhode Island and we poured a cement foundation for the house along the edges of the original 1880s cellar hole. While my brother and father mixed bags of cement and my mother, sister, and I tamped down endless wheelbarrows of freshly made cement mix, Curt acted as the general foreman, measuring and determining where the house frames would go once the cement dried. The baby spent his days in the canvas tent we set up by the house site or slept soundly in his stroller under the apple tree, fitted out with a white mosquito net to protect him from the newly hatched black flies.
By early June, with the help of friends, we had the house framed and plywood sheets tacked on the walls. There was no insulation yet, but it wasn’t a problem with the warming summer weather. Since there was no electricity on our end of the town road, we took some of the solar panels off the ocean rowboat and electrified the house with solar panels and car batteries. Until a well was drilled on the property later in the fall, we regularly filled two- and five-gallon water bottles left over from the rowing expeditions from the nearby Morgan town spring.
Christopher and I spent our first summer in the house while Curt returned to the Arctic with friends from the Explorers Club. The upstairs of the front of the house did not have windows yet, so when it rained, I covered things with a plastic tarp. At night the baby and I sat by flickering candlelight, playing and listening to the cicadas and the occasional owl hooting in the woods below the house.
Rowing for My Life Page 28