Green Ghost, Blue Ocean

by Jennifer M. Smith

  One afternoon I was on watch in the cockpit. Our crewman had gotten up and was preparing a cup of tea before he relieved me of my duty. Holding the kettle, he turned to me with a bewildered look and said, “Jenn, I don’t know if I’ve boiled the kettle or not.” For a moment, I couldn’t understand what he was asking.

  “Touch it,” I said. “If it’s hot, you’ve boiled the water already and if it’s not you’ll need to put it on the stove.” This interaction alarmed me. Was he still quite sleepy? Or was something else at play?

  In the still boisterous conditions I saw our crewman apply another scopolamine patch. It was his fourth consecutive dosage since leaving Mexico. I was concerned. As well as its intended effects as an anti-nauseant, scopolamine can cause a number of side effects, including mental changes.

  “You know, I think you might be experiencing adverse side effects to the patch,” I said, voicing my concerns. “On our packets, it says that a single patch can be applied behind one ear and left on for three days, followed by a second patch applied behind the other ear and left on for three days, then it says, ’After six days DISCONTINUE USE.’ It says that in three places in capital letters.”

  He was taken aback by my implication that he could be overdosing and countered that he had never heard of a recommended dosage. His was a different brand. Defiantly he read some of the fine print aloud in an effort to prove me wrong.

  “I’m concerned, that’s all,” I said. “Nobody should be taking a potential overdose of any drug out here, particularly a drug that can cause hallucinations and confusion. I hope you’d be concerned for me if you thought I was overdosing. I figure, not only would it be your right, but it would be your duty to question me.”

  No doubt my interrogation left our crewman feeling policed and picked on. My interference resolved nothing. His response had not assuaged my concerns and my questions did not dissuade him from continuing to apply a new scopolamine patch every three days for the duration of the crossing.

  As the trade winds wavered slightly in direction, we sailed some days gaining more westing and others gaining more southing. When conditions settled, our spirits picked up. When things got boisterous, we were less jovial. Our hands were tired from constant gripping, forever hanging on. We walked around like Sumo wrestlers – feet placed widely apart, knees bent, compensating for the motion with every step. I’d planned to journal my thoughts each day, but I was in a fog. It was one long passage of time; one three-hour period on, followed by a six-hour period off. It didn’t matter what day it was or what hour it was, all that mattered was “Am I on?” or “Am I off?” I wrote nothing in my journal.

  We were putting up with squall activity. The tropical rains rinsed the salt from the boat and from our bodies but they were a nuisance. If we didn’t get the cockpit cushions stowed in time they got drenched. Hatches and portholes not closed in a hurry made for damp beds and, once sealed up against the monsoon rains, the boat became a sweltering sweatbox in the tropical heat. Often a downpour would coincide with the very moment I had the oven on to bake bread, creating a sauna-like atmosphere below decks.

  Nik started monologue-ing. His topic was stable platforms. He announced that suburbia wasn’t such a bad place after all. He avowed that he was not ever going to cross the Indian Ocean. He dreamed of electric bread makers, air conditioners, Jacuzzi tubs, big-screen TVs, and freighters carting Green Ghost back to Vancouver. After listening to his dissertation on how wonderful it would be to be cool and dry, sitting in a car in Vancouver traffic while he sipped his Starbucks coffee, I decided he was slowly going mad.

  I was being beaten down in a different way. After years of dreaming and saving and months of preparation, I’d expected to come to a point where we got to do it, to go sailing and enjoy. The getting ready had exhausted us both, that was to be expected. I’d believed that eventually we would emerge from the hectic “get ready” years into the idyllic “go” years. But there had never been a graduation from “get ready” to “go.” There was always maintenance to be done or breakages to attend to; there were always system improvements that could be made. It was a tiring state to be in, to be always getting ready.

  Since the incident with the screwdriver, the genoa roller furling was broken, but we could still use it. Unfurling was relatively easy, but furling the foresail was a difficult task. With the line guard broken, the furling line slipped off the drum and wrapped itself around the base of the forestay. To prevent this, when we wanted to furl the sail, someone had to go forward to manually guide the furling line onto the drum. We were going to have to replace the entire furling system in Tahiti. At a cost of several thousand dollars, it would be a significant hit to the cruising kitty.

  It would’ve been manageable if it was the only thing that broke, but it wasn’t. Our telescoping downwind pole had also broken. A rivet had snapped, corroded through by the salty environment. We could no longer use it to pole out the genoa, making the sail less efficient. Without the downwind pole, the foresail repeatedly filled and collapsed as Green Ghost tossed in the swell. Our nerves jangled every time we heard the sail crack loudly when the wind filled it or thud against the rig in collapse.

  We’d broken the top batten on the mainsail. We’d damaged a dorade box. We lost one fishing hand line overboard. We had three Malmac dishes fly out of a cupboard and shatter on the galley floor. The screen on our binnacle-mounted Garmin GPS took one too many downpours, water got in to it, and it was finished. At one point, I peered over the port side and I was astonished to find that the paint job, commissioned by the boat’s second owner, was failing. The beautiful dark green paint was peeling up from the waterline in sheets, exposing grey blotches of undercoat. I was trying hard not to think about it all. I told myself that most of it was superficial, none of it was catastrophic, but taken together there was a significant amount of maintenance and repair to be done. It was going to be expensive.

  While the conditions were beating Nik down, and the breakages were wearing on me, our crewman was also suffering. About ten days off the coast of Mexico, second thoughts were creeping in.

  “We have a broken roller furling, a broken downwind pole, and the depth sounder isn’t working. Are you thinking of turning back?” he asked one morning.

  “What?”

  “No!”

  Our replies overlapped. His question was unfathomable to us. We closed ranks.

  “The foresail is annoying but we’re making it work. And even if we couldn’t use it, we still have a mainsail, a staysail, and a spinnaker. We’ll get to French Polynesia, just not as quickly as we’d hoped. As for the downwind pole, it’s a bummer that it’s broken, but it’s not a necessity – some boats don’t even have one. And the depth sounder? There’s nothing wrong with the depth sounder,” Nik countered.

  We weren’t ten days into the passage, we were ten years in. How could he think that two gear failures would be all it took for us to give up? We were in it for the long haul, he was in it for a month. Who was he to call it quits? We invalidated his concerns and quashed the one-man rebellion in seconds. It wasn’t even a discussion. We were not turning back.

  The conversation disquieted us, each in our own state of unease. Our flagging fellowship demoralized us and our state of agitation grew in the ever-increasing heat.

  Nearing the equator, it was too hot for clothes. We stripped down to the bare essentials: the captain was in surf trunks, the crewman in his jockeys, and I wore a T-shirt and underwear. Bra? Forget about it. Too hot. My shirts were all stained with the slop from mugs of tea filled too high. My hair was a frightening mass of tangled waviness in the moist tropical air. My makeup was 30+ SPF sunscreen piled on the layer that had been plastered on the day before.

  Our salt was the consistency of packing snow. Our refrigerator had grown an inch of ice on the plate despite being frost-free on departure. The upholstery was damp, our sheets were soggy, our faces were an oily sweaty slick. We were constantly hungry, constantly scrounging for somethin
g to eat and often headachy for lack of food. We were all losing weight. The only contented life forms on board were the cockroaches that were by then plentiful.

  In the heat of the lowest latitudes we had a bad night. Nik was woken by the crewman noisily digging around for a snack at three a.m. Later we both jumped from our bunks to batten down hatches when rain came pouring in. It was all hands on deck for a short period when a violent squall overtook the Ghost. Caught off guard by the intense wind and heavy rain, we were all shaken and sleepless with adrenaline.

  It was not surprising that tempers flared the following day. In no uncertain terms, Nik made it clear that disturbing the off-watch to rummage for snacks was unacceptable. Our crewman responded that he felt unappreciated. At that moment, I was up to my elbows in dirty dishes (again). I’d continued to stew over my unmatched hours in the galley and the word “unappreciated” was like putting out my fire with gasoline.

  “Excuse me?” I said sarcastically. “You feel unappreciated?” I ranted about all the dishes that had been left in the sink, all the cooking and baking I’d done during my off-watch hours. “You’re telling me that you feel unappreciated?” I said again. “Give me a break!”

  “I never wanted any of that stuff anyway,” he threw back.

  “Fine then,” I retorted, throwing down the gauntlet. “From here on in you can feed yourself.”

  It was a shameful display on my part. Out of patience, I lost my temper. We were supposed to be a team – the three of us. We were supposed to have mutual respect for one another. Perhaps we’d all failed to communicate our expectations. Maybe our expectations were out of line to begin with. I didn’t know. All I knew was that things had gone terribly wrong between us and I didn’t know how to fix it.

  “Land, ho!” Nik yelled at midday on our twenty-sixth day at sea.

  I remained so dejected I didn’t even rush outside to see it. When I finally did go on deck, the island of Hiva Oa looked so small it surprised me we’d found it at all. At the same time, it felt like destiny, as though it had been waiting there forever just for us to come upon it on that day.

  Atuona Bay was an impressive sight with steeply sloped volcanic terrain, great pinnacles of pyroclastic rock, lush tropical vegetation, and misty peaks enclosing a snug anchorage.

  Friends from the sailing vessel Layla greeted us. They zipped over in their dinghy and helped us set our stern anchor in the crowded bay. It was thrilling to have made landfall and intoxicating to be talking to other people again. I was so excited that I stood and chatted for some time, bending low over the lifelines to accept congratulations before realizing with some embarrassment that I was still in my offshore uniform, bra-less in a scoop-necked T-shirt and underwear.

  Our friends suggested that we join them at a local French restaurant for dinner. We jumped at the chance but our crewman declined the invitation. He felt our crossing had not been a success. Although we implored him to join us, he didn’t want to celebrate.

  The following morning, we all went ashore. Amid mutterings of “Never again,” our crewman literally hugged a tree as he whispered a private prayer to the wind. We suggested he stay with us for a week or two to enjoy the island for a while, but he wasn’t interested. He couldn’t wait to get away. He unabashedly kissed the release form he received from the Gendarme, the paperwork that officially removed him from our crew list and landed him in French Polynesia. In town, he found a hotel room and bought an airline ticket home. Our long-time friend and wise mentor couldn’t stand another minute with us, not even in paradise.

  We have not heard from him since.

  CHAPTER 9

  Two Percent Sheer Terror

  (April – June 2001)

  We needed a few things upon our arrival in Hiva Oa. You may be thinking a marriage counsellor, a boat broker, and a couple of airline tickets. But no, it wasn’t that bad. We needed some time off the boat, some undisturbed sleep, and the company of others.

  There was a celebratory buzz amidst the sailors in Atuona Bay. The longest leg of a circumnavigation was behind us and for novice west coast North Americans it was the completion of our first open ocean crossing. Arrival made us members of an unofficial club. There was a special camaraderie among us; we shared a strong sense of accomplishment, a deep satisfaction, and a great sense of relief.

  “I’ll never feel the same way about flying to an island paradise,” Nik mused. “This!” he said as his gaze swept across the anchorage to the palm fringed shore. “We have earned this.”

  Passage stories were on the tips of every tongue. What port did you leave from? How long did it take? How was your crossing? Our twenty-six-day trip had been a long one. Most others had made their passage in three weeks or less. When we told of our three-man crew others envied us the extra rest but when we confessed our team’s dysfunction, they knew it hadn’t been worth it. No one wants to sacrifice a decade-long friendship for a little extra sleep. We wondered if we hadn’t sailed aggressively enough, if our boat was a poor performer, or if we were. Our depressed spirits subdued the exhilaration of arrival and we continued to feel low while our divided hearts mended.

  The twenty-five cruising boats in Atuona Bay was the convergence of two fleets: those boats that had departed from the west coast of the United States or Mexico and those that had come through the Panama Canal. In Mexico, the cruising community had been mostly Americans. This group was different. The fleet of boats that had crossed from Panama was an international crowd comprised of east coast North Americans, sailors from the United Kingdom, Europeans, South Africans, and world-weary antipodean circumnavigators sailing their last long leg home. The crowd was different for another reason also. Compared to the demographic of cruisers in Mexico, the offshore cruisers were, on average, younger by ten to fifteen years.

  We quickly fell in with a clique of thirty- to forty-something cruisers. Our social schedule was crammed with potluck dinners, days at the beach, games nights, and festive welcome parties for others who arrived in Hiva Oa shortly after us.

  We sailed to the nearby island of Tahuata and anchored in Hana Moe Noe Bay, noted in some cruising books as one of the most beautiful anchorages in Polynesia. We spent hours in the water. In the lee of the trade winds we lay floating near shore, lifted up and let down gently in the swell, never having to worry about being caught in a breaker. We went on group snorkelling expeditions, played Frisbee in the surf, and got together for meals in the evening. We enjoyed many happy hours, sipping cocktails in the cockpit watching the sun set over the Pacific, waiting wide-eyed for the green flash.

  Nik’s goal on Tahuata was to find a tattoo artist. This too he felt he had earned. Fati on Tahuata was reputed to the best tattooist in the Marquesas. He had all the modern tattooing equipment complete with autoclave-sterilized needles. He explained to us in simple French and elaborate hand gestures that tattooing was in his family, in his blood. Two hours and C$60 later, Nik was sporting a circular symbol on his right shoulder that incorporated the Marquesan cross, two warriors, and an artistic representation of sunbeams and flower petals. It wasn’t just a tattoo, it was a work of art.

  Back at the waterfront, we were shocked to see a commotion aboard Green Ghost. While we were away, our staysail had unfurled itself and was flapping wildly in the brisk afternoon wind. By the time we got back on board, the sail had beaten itself up so badly that the aluminum block sewn into the clew of the sail had ripped out. The block lay on the deck still attached to the sheet while the sail flapped furiously in the breeze.

  My attempt at repair was unsuccessful. I got a few stitches in but the fabric at the clew of the sail was so thick an industrial machine was needed to complete the task. We left the block partially attached and wrapped the sail around the foil, securing it with a bungee cord. We’d have to see a professional sailmaker in Tahiti.

  From Tahuata we sailed windward to the famous Baie des Vierges on the island of Fatu Hiva. The anchorage is one of the most spectacular anywhere in the world. Beyond
the head of the deep bay, brown castellated outcrops of pyroclastic rocks rise skyward and verdant, weathered-out dykes form daring razorback ridges. Nestled in this volcanic crown is the tiny village of Hanavave.

  Beyond its sheer beauty, Fatu Hiva is known as the wettest, lushest, and most remote island in the Marquesas. With no airport on the island, the only tourists arrived by boat. The Hanavaveans were not shy. They demanded goods, things, stuff of any kind. They would trade fruit for almost anything we had. The little children wanted candy. The women wanted lipsticks, nail polish, jewelry, and perfume. The men wanted CDs, fishing gear, and rum. Some things are the same the world over.

  Everywhere in the Marquesas we found the people warm and smiling, helpful and charming. If they saw us walking, they stopped to give us a lift. They were proud and self-sufficient, appreciating our attempts at French and often trying out a little English on us.

  We’d planned for a month of island hopping in the Marquesas but after lingering on the islands of Ua Pou and Nuku Hiva, five weeks slipped by. It was time to make the next jump, a four-day sail south and west toward the Tuamotu Archipelago. We weren’t sure which one of the seventy-eight islands we would head for. We would wait and see where the wind blew us.

  It is said that offshore sailing is 98 percent boredom and 2 percent sheer terror. We had well-developed trade winds with fifteen to twenty-five knots blowing us steadily toward our next landfall. It was exhilarating sailing. The usual tropical squalls made for a little drama now and then, but for the first thirty-six hours of our trip we enjoyed the 98 percent, all was under control.

  On the second night at sea Nik transferred the watch to me just before midnight. A couple of brief rain showers had occurred during his watch, but otherwise he’d had no drama. Too wet to sit in the cockpit, I took up my watch at the navigation table below. There I could monitor the radar screen and sit comfortably dry while I read my book. Every eight minutes I poked my head up to scan the horizon for ships.