Rowboat in a Hurricane

by Julie Angus

  “A few months, maybe more.”

  “Hmmm, we’ve been out at sea for almost three months now. It has been a while since we’ve had any fresh fruits or veggies.”

  “Do you know if we have any foods with vitamin C?” Colin asked.

  I thought for a moment. Citrus fruit would have been ideal, but our bag of lemons had transformed into mouldy balls in the first week.

  “The canned vegetables will have some vitamin C, but not as much as fresh ones would. The heat from the cooking and canning process can destroy the vitamin by denaturing it,” I said.

  “Denature?” Colin asked, looking at me quizzically.

  “It just means that the heat breaks down the vitamin C molecule, or changes its form so that it’s no longer active.”

  I pulled back the mattress and opened the hatch that contained our weekly food supply. Crackers, peanut butter, sardines, potatoes, rice, milk—it didn’t look promising. Suddenly a little sachet of drink crystals caught my attention. I scanned the nutrition information panel.

  “Cplus, fortified with vitamin C,” I announced proudly.

  “But we have enough for only twenty litres.”

  But Colin wasn’t listening to me; he was staring at something in the water. “What about plankton?”

  “That’s a great idea. Phytoplankton is supposed to be a miracle food—full of vitamin C, fatty acids, minerals, and a bunch of other good stuff.”

  In Lisbon, a German sailor named Ollie had told us to “get your greens from the sea” as he handed us two pairs of pantyhose. “All you have to do is pull these behind your boat. The fine weave acts like a sieve, and it will strain the plankton right out of the water.”

  I found the pantyhose in a little-used locker, tied three cords to the waistband, and threw it overboard attached to a thin rope. After a few adjustments, the stockings ballooned open like parachutes. Now all we had to do was row and wait for them to fill with nutritional goodness.

  Phytoplankton live in all oceans; they are the building blocks for marine life and create 50 per cent of our oxygen. You can’t see these single-celled organisms, but they drift across the oceans (phyton is Greek for “plant,” and planktos means “drifter”). They live in the top layer of the ocean, where sunlight penetrates. Occasionally their density becomes so great that the ocean is discoloured. These algal blooms can even be seen from space, and they’re not necessarily a positive phenomenon. In fact, the only algal blooms I have seen were in British Columbia, when “red tide” spread a rusty hue across the water, and phytoplankton released a toxin that made shellfish poisonous. Even though these blooms can be harmful, the survival of most ocean life depends on phytoplankton. They provide food for the smallest fish, which, in turn, sustain the hierarchy of predators above them—all the way up to the largest mammal, the great baleen whale. I just hoped the plankton we brought in would be a healthy addition to our diet.

  “This is exciting,” Colin said as he rowed with extra vigour. “I’ve never gone salad-fishing before.”

  “Hopefully we’ll catch a big one.”

  An hour later I pulled in the stockings.

  “Nothing!” I scoffed. “The pantyhose parachute is slowing our speed, and we’re not catching anything.”

  I wasn’t sure if the density of plankton was too low, or if the sieve in our stockings wasn’t fine enough. Either way, it wasn’t working. We decided to give up planning plankton plates, and instead opted to ration our juice crystals for the rest of the voyage. I then remembered the big bottle of multivitamins I’d tossed into the super-sized shopping cart in Lisbon. After an hour of searching, I found it tucked under the spare flares. I ran my finger down the list of supplements. Vitamin C—60 mg. To double-check we phoned Dean’s girlfriend, Sarah Evans, who was studying to be a doctor, and she assured us we would not be getting scurvy.

  We still weren’t sure why Colin’s wrist hurt, but it was probably a result of rowing. Rowing is an extremely repetitive sport, especially when you’re pulling on the oars for eight or more hours a day. We had already adjusted our rowing technique to minimize this strain, but that probably wasn’t enough. The usual rowing technique is to feather the oars—turn the oar blades as the oars leave the water to reduce wind resistance and prevent them from catching water—but we found that repeating that slight twist of the wrist thousands of times a day gave us both tendonitis. Although we had stopped feathering, we suspected it had already done some damage.

  WE WERE MAKING better progress now, but the trade winds still hadn’t fully recovered from the instability left in Epsilon’s wake. They continued to push our boat southward, despite our efforts to regain latitude and to position ourselves for Miami. After several fruitless weeks of struggle, we reassessed our final destination.

  “Our efforts to climb northward against these winds are really sapping our westward progress,” I said. “Maybe we should consider arriving somewhere south of Miami.”

  Colin was out on the oars, and our speed was only 0.5 knots. If we angled the boat forty-five degrees to the southwest, our progress would quadruple. I unrolled our chart of the Atlantic Ocean, and we pondered the possibilities. Just south of Miami, the Caribbean Sea presented a labyrinth of reefs and islands that would be dangerous to navigate.

  The low power of our rowing would leave us at the mercy of the weather, and we didn’t want to end the voyage by being blown onto a reef. Much further south, however, the Caribbean Sea was open, with easily navigable waters. If we changed our destination to Costa Rica—2,500 kilometres south of Miami—the elements would be much more in our favour, and the route looked manageable.

  In between shifts we looked at the charts together, weighing the pros and cons.

  “Let’s do it,” Colin finally said. “I’m sick and tired of trying to struggle back up to Miami. The most important thing is that we make it across this godforsaken ocean, and undoubtedly our chances of success will be higher if we use the elements to our advantage.”

  So that was it. On my shift I altered our direction to WSW, towards Limón, Costa Rica, and the boat began moving at 2.5 knots. It would lengthen the distance of our ocean crossing by hundreds of kilometres (as the crow flies, Limón was 1,300 kilometres farther from Lisbon than Miami), and when we reached Costa Rica, we would need to cycle thousands of kilometres farther to get back to Vancouver, but for now, that wasn’t important. We just wanted to get across the ocean safely.

  A FEW DAYS later, the white sail of a distant boat flickered on the horizon—so small, I could barely see it. Probably a pleasure sailboat heading to the Caribbean islands, I thought. They would not be enjoying these windless conditions. The sea was like a giant lake; not even a ripple marred its glassy surface. The slow swell made the ocean’s surface rise and lower like an animal breathing in deep sleep. Although we would have preferred winds in our favour, calm waters were the next best thing, and we were making fine speed.

  We were in a celebratory mood, for we had reached the halfway point. We were exactly five thousand kilometres away from Costa Rica. Colin was busy frying pancakes (our party breakfast), and I salivated at the oars as I smelled the golden brown morsels cooking over the alcohol stove. After three months on the ocean, the boat fare was getting quite monotonous, and these pancakes with caramelized sugar would be the treat of the week.

  “There’s a sailboat in the distance. Would you pass me the VHF radio?” I asked Colin.

  The boat was coming in our direction, and I was excited at the prospect of seeing other humans. Since leaving Lisbon, the only people we had talked to face to face were the Spanish fishermen who’d briefly circled our boat. Colin passed me the radio.

  I pushed the talk button. “This is rowboat Ondine calling unidentified sailboat. Do you copy?”

  A male voice answered immediately in clear English. “Yes, we do. We can’t see you, though. Where are you?”

  “We are at an approximate bearing of 260 degrees from your vessel, perhaps one kilometre away,” I repl
ied.

  I turned off the VHF radio and squealed in delight. “We’re having company!”

  I frantically tidied up the boat and put on some clothes. Colin turned off the stove and put breakfast on hold. We watched as the tiny sail in the distance came closer. It was heading too far south, so I radioed to correct their bearing.

  “He sounds British, doesn’t he?” said Colin.

  “Yes,” I said, dreamily imagining them handing a big bag of British sweets over the side of the boat.

  It took a surprisingly long time for the boat to reach us, and soon I realized why. The boat was much bigger than I had first guessed; it had actually been two or three kilometres away when I’d first spotted it. The thirty-metre luxury sailing yacht finally saw us from about five hundred metres, and it made a final course correction to come alongside. It was powered by a rumbling diesel engine; the mainsail hung listlessly. Its name, Ripple, was emblazoned on the hull. The entire crew was on deck as the gleaming white vessel chugged alongside. We felt like a mouse next to an elephant.

  “Hello,” the captain said in a lilting English accent. A few more hellos and waves followed from the five others on deck, and the captain introduced himself as Alex. “Where are you going?”

  “Costa Rica,” Colin said.

  “How about you?” I asked.

  “Antigua. We left the Canary Islands six days ago, and before that we were in the Mediterranean.”

  I eyed their boat enviously; we had passed through the Canary Islands almost two months before. “When do you think you’ll reach Antigua?” I asked.

  “It’ll be about four or five days. The calm conditions are expected to stay, and we’ve motored the whole way,” Alex said. “We’ll give you the recent weather fax. Also, if you want any treats, we’ve got a galley packed with food.”

  “Anything you can spare would be great,” I said, trying not to scream like a teenager who’d just won a new car on a pop radio station.

  “Fran, our chef, will grab a few odds and ends for you.”

  We chatted animatedly while Fran went inside to collect presents for us. Ripple was run by six paid crew members, and the owner, a wealthy businessman, would meet them in the Caribbean. The crew were from a range of countries; most were in their mid-twenties to early thirties. As we stared up from our primitive boat, clad in mildewed clothing and surrounded by chunks of drying dorado meat hanging on strings, I suddenly longed for the decadence and comfort that would come with being on such a luxury boat. Visions of a soft bed, gourmet food, a washing machine, and quick passages filled my mind. And they got paid for it! Suddenly it seemed more ludicrous than ever that we were paying more than fifty thousand dollars to cross the Atlantic in such wretched conditions.

  Just then, Fran emerged from the companionway with two bulging shopping bags.

  Because of the rolling swell, we kept a distance of about a metre and a half between the boats to prevent them from slamming one another. Colin manoeuvred the Ondine’s stern as close to the other boat as he could. Alex used a long boat pole to suspend the bags over the water, and I reached out to retrieve them.

  We thanked our new friends profusely, and shortly afterwards they departed with a blast of their horn. In a week they would be swinging in hammocks in Antigua and we—well, we’d still be here.

  Excitedly, we emptied the bags.

  “Wow—look at this—icy cold beers and pops,” Colin exclaimed. “I’ve been dreaming about cold drinks. I thought it would be another quarter of a year before I’d soothe my chapped lips with a cold one.”

  “Quick, stick them under the blanket so they hold the cold,” I said. “And give me a Heineken while you’re at it. Check this bag out—it’s full of books and magazines.”

  Colin suddenly paused.

  “Do you remember what your biggest fantasy is—what you’ve been talking about for the last two months?”

  Yes, of course—chocolate. My heart skipped a beat.

  “Well, we’ve got a big box of the finest chocolates in existence,” Colin said, as he brought out a large carton of assorted chocolates.

  This was definitely the most exciting batch of gifts I had received in my life. We had been out at sea for almost three months. Our food was bland and monotonous, composed of about 40 per cent fish. My thoughts for the past month had revolved non-stop around foods we couldn’t have. Suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, we had cold beer, pop, chocolate, candy, cereal, UHT milk, exciting new instant dinners, and a vast array of reading entertainment. Back in the civilized world, this wouldn’t have seemed like much, but to me it was a treat like no other.

  “What a way to celebrate the halfway point,” I said, swigging alternately from a can of Coke and a bottle of Heineken. We each had another pop, half a can of Pringles, a bag of Doritos, and a few chocolates. The day was hot, and we sat almost immobile as we gorged on these unexpected riches. By day’s end we’d drunk six cans of pop each and almost as many beers.

  The next day I paid the price for my gluttony. I felt hung over; my head throbbed and a cloud of seediness enveloped me. Colin said it was from all the endorphins released during the previous day’s excitement; he felt that way whenever he returned to land after being on sea for a long time.

  AS WE CONTINUED sailing towards Costa Rica, the number of dorado swimming under our boat expanded and shrank, depending on the number of dolphins in the region. It seemed that once a dorado joined our boat, it stayed with us until it was eaten by us or, more often, by a dolphin. The school would gradually grow in number as stray fish joined. Often we had more than two dozen dorado swimming with the boat. Invariably, when the school became too big, a pod of dolphins would decimate it in the night, leaving no more than a handful. Each time this happened, we worried that our fish supply might be lost, but then new fish would join the ranks.

  Two weeks before, a pair of gigantic dorado had enrolled in our school. They outsized their peers by at least twenty kilograms. They appeared to be male and female (the male has a more bulbous head and is slightly larger). We named the male Legend because “his size is the stuff of legends,” as Colin said. We did not want to eat Legend. It seemed a shame to destroy a fish that had survived for so long to reach such magnificent proportions. Plus it would take far too long to process and dry so much meat, and if the weather was wet or rough, it might not dry properly. Instead, we tried to catch Legend’s smaller comrades, but avoiding him wasn’t easy. The giant fish had reached his grand size by hunting skilfully and by intimidating smaller peers, which also meant he was first to strike at the lure.

  We tried to fish only when Legend was off hunting elsewhere; our school of dorado separated into smaller groups to hunt throughout the day. Schools of flying fish broke the surface hundreds of metres in the distance, and our fish streaked just beneath, keeping pace with their airborne prey. After satiating their hunger they came back to our vessel, slowly cruising in the depths below.

  Two days before Christmas, we stopped the boat to catch a fish. Legend was off hunting with a few other dorado, and Colin untied the fishing rod. He released about two metres of line and began skipping the flying-fish plug across the water’s surface by wagging the tip of the rod back and forth. Without warning, an enormous fish streaked out from under the boat. Before Colin could remove the lure from the water, Legend struck. The rod doubled over and the reel screamed.

  “You’ve caught Legend,” I yelled, distraught and full of accusation.

  The reel continued to shriek. Legend swam away from us at full speed, but he didn’t slow when the line ran out, and it didn’t stop him. Instead, the line snapped, and Legend kept on going—free, except with a new piercing adorning his mouth.

  “We’ve lost the lure,” Colin said solemnly. “We won’t be eating dorado anymore.”

  I didn’t say anything; it was just too sad. Without fish, we were back to stew and rice, canned tuna, and dried bread.

  Legend leapt into the air, madly shaking his body in an attempt to
rid himself of the lure we so desperately wanted.

  “We could try to catch Legend with the old hoochie,” Colin suggested.

  I thought about it for a moment. The old lure had a rusty hook that was on the verge of breaking, and the plastic squid that concealed the hook had been chewed to almost nothing. I couldn’t imagine even the most desperate fish going for it, let alone one enraged at having a hook in its mouth. And if, miraculously, Legend did bite, we could take bets on what would snap first—the hook or the line.

  “That’s a great idea,” I said, with more than a hint of sarcasm. “Let’s try catching the huge fish that broke our line with the last remnants of fishing gear we have.”

  Colin either missed my sarcasm, or refused to acknowledge it. He tied the hoochie onto the line and started fishing. But Legend didn’t approach the boat. He stayed at least fifty metres away, repeatedly jumping, the plastic and metal lure clinking as he shook frantically. Although Legend ignored us, I was wrong about the lure having no appeal. Seconds after the lure touched the water, a dorado was hooked.

  “We can try again and use this fish for bait to catch Legend,” Colin said.

  Miraculously, the hook held, and Colin played the fish in. He cut it open, and we were shocked at the small metal object that fell out.

  “Is that the weight?” I asked in awe.

  Colin picked it up and laughed. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “When the line broke, the lead weight slipped off it, and this fish ate it. What are the chances?”

  The odds of that happening did indeed seem minuscule, but that we would then catch the lead-munching fish out of the dozen that surrounded our boat was even more improbable. Maybe this was a lucky sign. Maybe Legend would bite our hook next, and then we’d have both our weight and lure.

  But Legend didn’t bite. We used a long, thin strip of fish as bait, and the dorado chased it—all except for Legend. It was a struggle not to catch the other fish, a sort of game in which we lifted the lure into the air when they came too close. Legend was still close by and sporadically leapt into the air trying to shake his piercing, but he had no interest in us. After almost an hour, we gave up. Colin put the fishing rod away, and I started rowing.