The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey

by Diane Stuemer

  “I’d like a flush toilet,” our captain muttered darkly.

  When Michael traded shifts with me on our ninth morning at sea. I was greeted with a thrilling sight. Mahé Island jutted proudly out of the ocean surrounded by several smaller islands of the Seychelles, its soaring green mountaintops wreathed in a halo of mist. Unlike the flat coral atolls of the Maldives and Chagos, this was a tall granite island, with sheer black and brown cliffs exposed on its flanks. Looking at this majestic panorama, I was seized with a frisson of excitement. Land ho!

  We arrived at an unexpectedly prosperous place that reminded us of some posh French island in the Caribbean. Shining white houses with bright red roofs gleamed on the hillsides. Fountains and statues and a wonderfully ornate silver clock tower dominated the bustling town core. People hurried around with cell phones and drove nice cars. At the supermarket, we stocked up on baguettes, garlic sausage, and cheese. Our soggy, sea-weakened legs already needing a rest, we sat ourselves down on a park bench for a feast, surrounded by the cacophony of the busy open market. The triumphant feeling of having finally arrived was as magnificent as it had ever been – only Herbert’s restraining look prevented me from kissing the blessed ground beneath our feet.

  The Seychelles were formerly a colony of both England and France, and remain today a colourful polyglot mixture of African, Asian, and European cultures. There was an unmistakably French quality in the fashions, with svelte young women showing off in high heels and tight, revealing outfits, alongside hefty African women in broad-brimmed straw hats and flowery colonial-style dresses. A rasta beat pulsed in the air, and many of the street vendors, offering shells, carvings made out of coconuts, or new and unfamiliar fruits, wore their bulky masses of dreadlocks stuffed inside large colourful knitted tams. The language on the streets was Creole, a fascinating mixture of African languages and French, but Seychelles is a truly trilingual society where just about every person we met could converse easily in French and English as well. Every day, the kids and I spent at least half the day visiting museums and markets in Victoria and doing our daily schoolwork at the beautiful new library.

  Herbert was not as lucky; to him, as always, fell the task of keeping Northern Magic afloat. It seemed as if the long passage had tried the boat’s mechanical and electronic systems just as it had our bodies. Our poor captain ripped out his hair dealing with a seemingly endless series of minor problems: a propane leak, several small leaks in our freshwater supply, a faulty water pump switch, a malfunctioning freezer, two failed computer CD-ROM drives, and two failed hard drives. Poor Herbert worked for the better part of a week getting everything working again, alternating frantically between flaky computers and leaky fittings.

  When both the computer joystick and the mouse packed it in as well, the kids knew enough not to mention it to their wild-eyed dad and instead whispered the news quietly in my ear.

  After all these problems, we felt jittery and nervous about heading back to sea, as if the other shoe was about to drop. But the passage had to be accomplished, whether we felt ready for it or not, and so we set out.

  The first day was lovely, with moderate winds and seas, and my body accustomed itself to the motion quickly. I didn’t experience the terrible lethargy that I usually felt at the beginning of an ocean passage.

  “If the whole trip is like this,” I remarked brightly the next morning, “then we had no reason to dread it at all. This is just fine!”

  Near the end of the second day, however, the wind began to pick up. At our shift change, Herbert and I debated what to do about it. To my surprise, Herbert took in two reefs on the mainsail. I thought this might be overly conservative, but in the next hours, he was proven right.

  The wind began howling. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty knots and even more, until we found ourselves battling a gale. Now, instead of trying to speed Northern Magic up, our job was to stop her from running too fast. Inside, she sounded like a charging freight train.

  As the wind rose, so did the waves. And they were ugly, malicious, mean-looking waves. It took my breath away to watch them sweeping down on us, their white tops shining brightly in the feeble light of a waxing moon. They were steep and close together, coming at us broad-side and forcing us to lurch over abruptly at a sharp angle as they passed. Every minute or so, two waves would come together from different angles. Together, they would form an especially tall wave that would break as it slammed into the boat, making a tremendous bang and pounding a deluge of water onto our decks.

  We stayed inside, because water was regularly sweeping our decks and even cabin tops. Every few minutes, we had to open up a hatch and check the horizon for ships and the sky for any indication of change in the weather. It became a grim game to try to anticipate when one of these pyramidal waves would explode over the boat, and when we miscalculated, which was often, we would be drenched and the cabin below invaded with gallons of water.

  Northern Magic was, as usual, handling the tough conditions with no difficulty, holding her course and bouncing back gamely from each onslaught. We had reduced our jib to a tiny size and were able to keep our speed around six knots, not daring to go any faster despite Northern Magic’s urging.

  Inside, however, the motion had produced chaos. The cabin floor was covered with wet clothing, piles of steamy sheets, and a jumble of books, toys, and videotapes. In Jon’s room, a large locker door had burst open, and its entire contents had spilled on the floor. But that violent sideways lurching prevented any of us from doing anything but hanging on to where we sat or lay.

  Even Christopher, who had the toughest stomach of any of us, and who could jump around or play computer in the roughest of conditions, was affected. The poor little fellow threw up for the first time in years, soaking his beloved stuffed gibbon, Denny, named after his furry friend at Highland Farm. On a particularly hard lurch to starboard, bilge water would leak out of the edge of the galley floor, and toilet water would slop out of the toilet on the opposite site of the boat and slither under the door and across the floor to join it.

  Eating was impossible, though none of us could stand the thought of it anyway. For me, sleep was impossible as well, and when Herbert relieved me at 1:00 a.m., I lay in my bunk, clenched stiff, eyes open in the darkness, my mind tense and anxious, and my body biliously rebelling against the motion, which was becoming increasingly uncomfortable as the wind and the waves shifted slowly forward.

  Christopher had found it impossible to sleep in his bed, which was right at the bow of the boat, where the motion was the greatest. He had snuggled in beside me. In our entire trip, this was the first time he had ever found it necessary to do this. All night long, I cuddled my little one, who slept in my arms oblivious to the maelstrom around him. When morning came, sleep had still eluded me.

  I was struggling, and Herbert was, too, with great misgivings about what we were doing. We had been in much worse conditions and we weren’t in any imminent danger, but the awful fierceness of these waves and the howling of the wind spoke to our deepest insecurities and resonated with all our fears and anxieties about this passage. We had always felt we were not taking an undue risk by bringing our children on this adventure, but now, in the middle of the black night, with those screaming waves rushing down upon us as if intent on doing us evil, we wondered whether we might have been wrong.

  We endured the Indian Ocean gale for about twenty-four hours before the wind started to ease. Gradually, we began eating again and catching up on lost sleep. Herbert and I moved around like zombies. Because of the rough conditions, we exempted the kids from their watches. Cheerful and resilient as usual, they made hardly a word of complaint.

  Not long after celebrating our midway point, our alternator failed. This was a brand-new one we had bought in Thailand. The alternator was what charged our batteries, so it was one of the most important pieces of equipment on the boat. We had spared no expense in purchasing a good one – twice, now.

  Herbert had worked on the old alternator and go
tten it working again to serve as a spare, although he didn’t have much faith in it. Now would be its test, and Herbert’s as well. Working upside down in the smelly engine room when the boat is bouncing was a sure recipe for nausea – even for a stomach as tough as our captain’s. Herbert lay down on Michael’s bunk a while, steeling himself.

  The kids retreated to the front of the boat to let Dad work uninterrupted. I stationed myself between the tool locker, to hand him tools, and the rear hatch, to keep watch as he worked. As he emerged, asking for various wrenches, Herbert’s face grew greyer and greyer and assumed an unhealthy sheen. I ran for a bowl, but he managed to continue his work, even with the boat lurching and spilling his tools from time to time into the dark abyss of the engine room.

  It took an hour before everything was reassembled. When the motor came on, the kids emerged from their hiding places and watched keenly. They were vitally interested in the health of our charging system, because it affected whether they could play on the computer. We all watched as the green charging indicator lights lit up, and the kids and I joyfully burst into applause, recognition of our captain’s efforts. Herbert just stood there, looking green and unsteady, supporting himself on handholds overhead as he, too, watched the line of lights come to life.

  “Hail to the conquering hero!” sang Michael triumphantly.

  But our accolades had barely died down when there was a disturbing sound from inside the engine room. Those cheerful little green lights flickered and went out. After only ten minutes of operation, the spare alternator had failed. It had all been for nothing. Herbert’s face was the picture of despair. The kids slunk away. My head slumped. This was just too unfair.

  We had one last spare alternator, but although Herbert made some motion to dig it out, I invoked my rights as ship’s medical officer and sent him instead to bed. It was getting dark, he was now past the end of his six-hour shift, and he was sick and tired. It made more sense for him to get some sleep before facing that engine room again.

  The kids washed and brushed up quickly and were also dispatched to their beds – no reading lights or fans allowed, to save electricity. After they were asleep, I snuck out my last hoarded bag of Hershey’s Kisses from Thailand, spearing the pointy head of each Kiss into a marshmallow and savouring it in the darkness. I was entitled.

  It was with a heavy heart that I woke Herbert at 2:00 a.m., knowing the ordeal that awaited him. I held the flashlight, handed over tools, and kept watch while Herbert installed our third and last alternator. But the minute he attached it, there was a spark. All power in the boat went out. An instant later, it felt as if the storm had returned, for the boat began bouncing wildly, followed by the sound of flogging sails. Without power going to the autopilot, Northern Magic was drifting, nose into the wind.

  I leaped into the cockpit to take over steering. Down below, it was totally black, and I wondered how on earth Herbert was going to figure out what had gone wrong now. The compass light was, of course, out, so all I had to steer by was the position of the moon and the direction of the wind, which whipped past me, cold and biting on my bare arms and legs. I was angry, very angry, on Herbert’s behalf. He didn’t deserve this. I began to shiver. I hadn’t thought to grab my jacket.

  In about ten minutes the power came back on, and I gratefully returned inside, cold and wet. How Herbert had managed to re-establish power in pitch darkness, in a heaving boat, with only a half-dead flashlight for light, I have no idea. The short in the alternator had blown the main fuse, a big fuse Herbert had wisely installed himself as an extra precaution.

  Grimly, he took out the alternator once again and opened it up, carefully checking all its connections one by one. I waited silently, not daring to speak, crouched beside him on the step. I prayed he could solve the problem before we ran out of power. I’d had enough of a taste of hand steering during those brief ten minutes to know I didn’t want to spend the rest of the passage that way.

  He worked and tested, and an hour crept by. Finally, he was ready to try again. We had our hearts in our mouths. To re-establish power, Herbert had been forced to bypass the blown fuse, so if there was still a short, we might really see fireworks. As he prepared to attach the wires, I stood by the switch to the battery bank, ready to turn it off at the first sign of trouble. My foul weather jacket was waiting this time at the cockpit entrance just in case.

  This time, there was no short, and when he turned on the motor, the alternator actually worked! It was a small alternator, producing only a trickle of power, but it was better than nothing. Herbert wearily closed the engine-room hatch, and we watched the line of battery charging lights again grow brighter. I risked a smile. We’d once again need a new alternator, but at least this was enough to get us to Zanzibar, still a few days away.

  But I smiled too soon. Within five minutes, charging had stopped. I’m not a good enough writer to describe exactly how this made us feel.

  Summoning resolve from somewhere deep inside, Herbert threw open the engine-room hatch yet again, stuck his head down into that swaying black hole once more, and focused his attentions not on the alternator, but on the regulator. He had an idea that this last failure wasn’t the alternator at all. Soon, he had hotwired the alternator directly to the batteries, and to our inexpressible relief, the charging lights flickered on again – and this time stayed on.

  It was five in the morning. This time there was no chorus of admiring children to sing their father’s praises, but the lack of applause made his feat no less heroic.

  The rest of the passage was swift and uneventful. Eight days after setting out from the Seychelles, a dim, low outline materialized on the horizon. It was Zanzibar.

  19

  Africa Awakening

  Ever since the day Herbert and I had noticed the island of Zanzibar on our world atlas, not far off our planned course for Kenya, we had looked at each other and said, “You can’t be that close and not go to a place with a name like Zanzibar.” And so, without knowing anything much about the place except the exotic appeal of its name, it had been decided that to Zanzibar we must go.

  Now before us was Zanzibar Town. It made a beautiful picture in the late morning sun: large colonial-style buildings with ornate balconies, a clock tower, and the remains of an old Portuguese fort. It looked misplaced in the twenty-first century, and its harbour, although containing a few modern ships, was mainly filled with sailing dhows plying to and fro. We anchored off a beach a mile or two away from the main town.

  The next morning, all five of us set off eagerly in a taxi to Stonetown, the oldest and most interesting part of Zanzibar Town, a small city of 100,000. We stepped out of the taxi into a world full of magic, mystery, and a hint of danger. Tall, whitewashed stone buildings in varying states of decline lined a warren of twisting alleyways, so close that people in the second and third storeys on opposite sides of the street could practically touch hands. Most of the roads were much too narrow for cars, but well suited to pedestrians, bicycles, and the occasional donkey cart.

  Some of the buildings were decrepit but still beautiful in the way of an elegant old woman who has lived long and well. Some were truly splendid, with ornate balustrades and the most fabulous entryways, ornately carved double doors lavishly decorated with stamped brass and studded with wickedly pointed brass knobs designed to prevent charging war elephants from knocking them down. Most of the doors also sported half a dozen heavy brass padlocks.

  The people of Zanzibar are a mixture of African and Arab; for centuries, Zanzibar was under the influence of Oman, a country in the Persian Gulf. Today’s Zanzibaris remain devoutly Muslim. The men wore beautifully embroidered skullcaps, and some wore long white shirt-dresses.

  But it was the women of Zanzibar who made the greatest impression on us. Winding their silent way through these forbidding passageways in long black robes, called bui buis, that covered them from head to toe, they presented a picture straight out of 1001 Nights. Even the fashionable platform sandals that peeked
out from underneath their hems were not unlike those that might have been worn by Scheherezade herself. The effect – the enticing and faintly menacing labyrinth of decaying buildings, the smell of exotic spices, the unfamiliar sound of the Swahili language, the mysterious robed women, the feeling that at any moment you might come around a corner and be confronted by Ali Baba, or a slave trader, or a sultan, or a genie – was intoxicating. Zanzibar was one of those rare and elemental places, first glimpsed long ago in some fantastic, half-forgotten dream. But it was for real, and now we had found it.

  At the end of our first day, a man stood waiting for us on shore near where Northern Magic lay at anchor. His clothes were slightly tattered and his white Zanzibari hat more battered than most, but his face broke into a broad smile as soon as he saw us. This was Mr. Suleiman, our askari. He would spend the next eight nights in our cockpit, protecting us from night-borne thieves. Mr. Suleiman didn’t speak a word of English, and so we had had to use an interpreter to communicate with him and describe the terms of work. We agreed to pay him three thousand Tanzanian shillings a day, or about six dollars.

  When everything had been explained, Mr. Suleiman smiled, nodded, and answered with two words “hakuna matata,” which means “no problem” in Swahili. Over the next week, we were to hear these words often, always spoken with a smile.

  Mr. Suleiman, who looked to be in his fifties, was gracious and good-natured. He thanked me extravagantly for the smallest consideration, such as a glass of water or a raincoat when the weather turned bad. Every day, he tried to teach me a few words of Swahili, and I learned that he was married and had five children. I went to sleep at night reassured by his presence.

  Herbert, on the other hand, felt uncomfortable about the whole arrangement. He felt we were paying him too little, even though we were, in fact, paying him extremely well by Tanzanian standards. But it happened to be quite cold and rainy during the week, and the idea of this nice fellow having to sit all alone in the drizzling dark, right outside where we were comfortably sleeping, bothered Herbert a great deal.