Green Ghost, Blue Ocean

by Jennifer M. Smith

  But the northeasterly didn’t last. Within a day we were back in light air. The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), that writhing movable band of calm, toyed with us. Our daily mileage dropped off and I began fretting over our schedule.

  I used small Post-it Notes for planning. Knowing we aimed to be in Trinidad by mid-June, I worked back from there, calculating mileages and counting days based on average speeds. I worked out what time was left over and allocated time in each port. I was always moving my sticky notes around. An extra day in Fernando moved everything back a bit, a few days of fast sailing bought back some time. Nik, on the other hand, rarely looked at my scheduling. He didn’t like the constraints of a calendar. He believed we could swing by the coast of Brazil, we could spend a week at Dégrad des Cannes near Cayenne, we could visit the European Space Centre at Kourou and still see Devil’s Island and Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. He was the idea-man. He lived in a world of endless potential, where time was ever-expanding and all things were possible. But I was the girl with the calendar and I drove the itinerary in real time. Or so I liked to think.

  In reality, I wasn’t driving anything. The weather was driving the itinerary and the windless conditions were driving us both nuts. At times, we had a boat speed of less than one knot. Thankfully, the three-knot current allowed us to eke out hundred-mile days, but the slow pace played on our minds. When our patience waxed we would sit back and enjoy the calm conditions, peacefully reading books and celebrating the free ride in the current. When our patience waned, we would curse our predicament, throw down our books, flip on the engine, and burn more diesel.

  Despite our frustrations, we both realized that transiting the global weather-defining zones gave us a connection to something bigger than ourselves. Crossing the doldrums was something every sailor on a transequatorial passage had to do. It didn’t matter what century you were in. It didn’t matter what fancy technological advances you had on board. Getting through the doldrums on a sailboat was an exercise in patience and belief. I fell back on my usual mantra: This won’t last, this won’t last, this won’t last. We will emerge. And we did.

  “What’s the drill this time?” Nik asked me.

  “What drill?”

  “We’re about to cross the equator. I bet you’ve got something up your sleeve.

  I didn’t. Was I becoming indifferent? We were already shellbacks after all. Did we really need a big celebration?

  “Remember our first crossing in the Pacific? I died my hair blonde,” he recalled. “Then, when we crossed back, there was the little beach party on that muddy mangrove shoreline in Indonesia. You dressed as a mermaid and I dressed as a pirate.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said, smiling. “We were the only two people in costume!”

  “What did we do when we crossed south again, off Sumatra, wasn’t it?”

  “You slowed the boat down for me and I swam across,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah,” he smiled. “So what is it this time then?”

  I looked at Nik. He was wearing next to nothing in the heat. I looked down at myself and suggested, “I suppose we could just run around naked.”

  Nik smiled, the way he always did when he heard the word naked. Dropping his Fijian sarong, he took off for the bow.

  “Counter-clockwise!” I shouted. “For the storms of the north!” I dropped my own sarong and took off after him.

  A pod of pilot whales passed at a distance as we crossed the equator into the northern hemisphere. It felt good to be home.

  As we neared the coast of South America we sailed into Sargasso Sea. The greenish-brown seaweed formed large rafts, some of them much larger than the boat. There was a thickness to the masses, a little bit of elevation, and from a distance, you could fool yourself into thinking they were sandbanks glistening in the sun. The seaweed made a swishing sound as it brushed by our hull and wreaked havoc with our fishing line, which had to be reeled in.

  Finally, the ITCZ passed. Goodbye, gentlest passage ever. Hello, shrieking winds, creaking floorboards, and the dull thud of waves walloping our starboard bow. Salt spray everywhere, dead flying fish stinking up the deck, horizon-obliterating swells – it never ceased to amaze me how strong winds transformed a calm body of water.

  In the lumpy conditions, I chose basmati rice and prefab chicken tikka in a foil pouch for dinner, thinking it would be simple to make: boil one, heat the other. But it wasn’t an easy meal. It was meticulous work picking bugs from the rice with a teaspoon. We hadn’t been in a large grocery store since leaving South Africa nearly three months earlier. As always, toward the end of an ocean crossing, our supplies were getting low.

  We crossed onto the continental shelf in the night and our depth sounder found bottom. After eleven days at sea, we arrived at Devil’s Island and anchored off the old French penal colony, a place made famous by author Henri Charrière. Although happy for a rest from the boisterous conditions, it was slightly unsatisfying stepping ashore. Devil’s Island was just off Kourou, French Guiana. We could see the mainland of the South American continent only 7 NM away. It wouldn’t feel like we’d crossed the Atlantic until we set foot on that shore.

  After two nights of rest, we departed mid-day on an overnight to the mouth of the Maroni River, the boundary between French Guiana and Suriname. In the morning, on the flood tide, we carefully picked our way 20 NM up the broad shallow basin to the town of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni. In on-again/off-again rain showers, we anchored in behind the wreck of an old ship, the Edith Cavell, with one other cruising sailboat.

  Distracted by the tasks at hand – launching the dinghy, lowering the outboard, loading up the garbage, and finding the check-in paperwork – we dashed ashore between rain squalls all business as usual. In our hurry, we forgot our usual ritual. It wasn’t until later, over baguette sandwiches in a local café, that we realized we’d forgotten to celebrate with our usual jump to shore. We’d officially crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to South America. The Caribbean was only a short hop away.

  Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni was the centre of the French penal colony system and the landing point for convicts from France. For nearly one hundred years (1852 to 1946), criminals sentenced to prison and hard labour were off-loaded at The Transportation Camp and later distributed to various other prison locations in the country, Devil’s Island being one of them. We toured the quartier disciplinaire and peered into the cell marked #47, with its miserable moldy plaster walls, its plank bed and rusted leg shackles. It was the cell everyone came to see, to lay eyes upon the famous name scratched into the cement floor: Papillon.

  I’d hoped for toucan and scarlet ibis sightings as we flew upstream in a twelve-metre dugout canoe. A huge outboard roared on the transom. The river tour guide explained to me that it was not the right season for the former and not the right location for the latter. Instead our tour group stopped on the Suriname side of the river and toured Maroon villages and Amerindian settlements where big black ladies in wide skirts and undersized bras cooked large rounds of manioc flour atop circular iron grills over a fire. Young men constructed dugout longboats from impossibly big logs, and little children ran around in their undies or in nothing at all.

  On the water, kingfishers poised on branches, hunting at the river’s edge, and birds of prey soared overhead. The green jungle was dotted with bright flowers, some like giant calla lilies, while others looked like fireworks bursting in flight. Up one narrow tributary we saw butterflies so magnificently blue they made peacocks look underdressed.

  Above the small town of Apatou, our tour ended with a drive through the rapids, something that can only be done when the river is bloated by the wet season rains. It was frightening flying at high speed through such turbulent waters in a boat that hardly seemed made for the task. In the moment we shot the rapids, we had the most violent torrential downpour we’d had all day – under ball caps and huge blue ponchos topped with bright orange life jackets we stayed remarkably dry as the water flew over, under, and all arou
nd us.

  At the fixed-menu lunch stop, we tried some stewed meat in a tomato-based sauce.

  “What do you think this is?” Nik said as we tucked into the hot lunch.

  “Looks like chicken,” I said.

  “It’s not chicken,” he said. “See?” He separated a tiny bone from his meal and pushed it to the side of his plate. “That’s no chicken bone.”

  “Well, it tastes like chicken,” I insisted, having taken a bite.

  “I heard the guide use the word ’Pak.’ I think it’s one of those guinea pig-like critters that we’ve seen running around on the grass.”

  “Tastes like chicken to me,” I insisted again, as I removed a short hair from my helping.

  After a week of rest, we picked up our anchor as the tide turned to ebb. We made good time with the currents, both fluvial and tidal, and we were quickly whisked out to sea. We were soon back to being uncomfortable, scooting along on a beam reach in more than twenty knots of wind. We didn’t hesitate to take seasickness medication. Our sea legs were long gone after resting up in the oh-so-still Maroni River. Soon, the salt spray was flying and we were hanging on for the ride. Green Ghost sped along, racing for Trinidad.

  I got up for my morning watch to find a small puddle of long-life milk pooled up against the fishing tackle locker. Flakes of once-moist cereal had dried hard on the counter, the floor, and the companionway stairs.

  “Cereal killer,” I playfully accused Nik in the cockpit.

  “Yeah, and we’re short one bowl,” he replied in a monotone. He was not in the mood for my humour.

  In the boisterous conditions, he’d lost control of his breakfast as he turned from the galley to climb the companionway stairs. He’d made it to the cockpit, where he was flung against a winch, chipping the bowl in the fall. In utter frustration, he’d flung the lot into the sea.

  I understood his short temper. A beam reach in twenty-plus knots was a ridiculous way to live. Big waves soaked our starboard deck, swooshing up against the galley porthole and rushing astern, soaking the cockpit cushions before sliding back into the sea. I’d been reciting my mantra again. It seemed I’d been reciting it an awful lot lately.

  Days before, in the doldrums, when we’d been idling away our time, Nik had been scheming and dreaming all kinds of future long-distance voyages. He was full of thoughts beyond Trinidad, making plans for Newfoundland, Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, maybe Europe, and the Med. His musings got me thinking, Was I really up for more sailing?

  Physically I’d begun to find it more difficult. I used to be stronger. My grip strength had deteriorated. Any kind of intense manual work left my hands aching for days. My stomach wasn’t up to it either. With our four-hour schedule, I ate when on watch, and slept when I was off. There’d been too much lying down after eating and I’d developed uncomfortable acid reflux symptoms. Popping Nexium, Zantax, or any other antacid remedy had become part of my routine anytime we were at sea. Menopause had a negative impact too. My body thermostat was wildly out of whack and my episodes of total nuclear meltdown that some called hot flashes were terribly uncomfortable in the tropical heat.

  I was feeling tired. I was looking forward to a change. But I wondered – was the fatigue I felt real? Were we looking for a finish line because we were truly tired? Or was it the finish line itself that was causing my tolerance to dissolve?

  Between the coastal current and the strong trades, we flew at eight and nine knots, knocking off the 605 NM journey to Trinidad in just over four days, and setting a new record for our second fastest day ever – 193 NM on our last full day at sea.

  In the late afternoon of June 7, 2014, after 5,600 NM, and 101 Atlantic nights, we sighted the northeast tip of Trinidad, a shadowy silhouette of land barely discernible through the humid haze. As I stared ahead at our final destination, I reflected on our crossing. There’d been a lot of keeping the chin up on the Atlantic. With that in mind, I went below.

  “What are you doing?” Nik said, seeing me bum-up and head-down in the bilge.

  I triumphantly held up my find.

  “Looks like cheap bubbly,” he said.

  I put the green bottle in the fridge and smiled.

  “Tastes like champagne to me.”

  Figure 5. Caribbean Route Map

  Figure 6. East Coast North America Route Map

  CHAPTER 30

  From the Caribbean, Home

  (June 2014 – September 2017)

  “Ahoy, Green Ghost!” Jimi called out across the Chaguaramas boatyard.

  It was mid-June, 2014. We hadn’t seen Jimi and Char since South Africa.

  “Hey! Tara! Congratulations!” we said, addressing them collectively by their boat name as sailors always do.

  By arriving in Trinidad, they had completed their circumnavigation and we were thrilled for them and their accomplishment. It was a place of celebration for many globe-girdlers. Anyone who had departed from the North American east coast, or who had originally set out from Europe, would most likely cross their outbound line somewhere in the Caribbean, tying the knot on an around-the-world voyage.

  “What’s the plan now?” Jimi said.

  “Good question,” Nik answered.

  “Yeah. It’s easy when you’re circumnavigating, you always know what you’re doing. You’re going west. It’s when you stop that things get complicated.”

  He was right. It’s easy to be on a treadmill, and even a circumnavigation is a treadmill of sorts. It’s when you stop, lift your head up, and look around that you find yourself confronted by the future, particularly if you want to set a new course.

  At a cruiser’s social night, we caught up with Moonfleet and Haven.

  “Are you going through?” Bruce asked, referring to the Panama Canal.

  “No,” I said, “it doesn’t make sense for us.”

  “Captain Hard-ass has relented,” Nik chimed in.

  In Asia, I’d harboured the dream to complete a circumnavigation – it was that goal-oriented nature of mine, that determination to do things thoroughly, to bring things to a perfect close. At that time, the Indian Ocean lay ahead of us, and having convinced Nik to sail across it rather than ship the boat to the Med, I believed a full circle was a possibility. After all, after Africa, there was only the Atlantic left.

  “I’d still love to be able to say we did it – a circumnavigation is such a remarkable achievement. It’s just that it doesn’t make sense for us now. If we go through, we’d need to get up to Zihuatanejo, Mexico, to cross our outbound line. Either that, or we’d have to sail to the Marquesas again, then maybe up through Hawaii, north then east back to Vancouver. Either way, Green Ghost would end up on the west coast, a long distance from where we want to be.

  “Nik’s thinking he’d like to go back to work,” I went on with my monologue, “and we want to be around for our moms a bit more, so it makes sense for us to be closer to Ontario. We don’t want to leave Green Ghost the way we did in Australia, it’s too hard on the boat. Either we live near the boat and we use it, or we sell Green Ghost.”

  I flinched a little when I said it. Aside from those few hours on the hellish trip across the Gulf of Carpentaria, selling Green Ghost had never seriously crossed my mind. But things were changing now, I could feel it. We were entering a different phase of life.

  Although still a long way from Canada, arriving in the Caribbean felt pretty close to home. A direct flight from Trinidad to Toronto took less than six hours. Hurricane-free from December 1 until May 30, the Caribbean offered the perfect winter destination for frozen North Americans seeking a tropical thaw. Better still, Trinidad sat just below the hurricane zone, providing year-round safe storage for vessels.

  Arriving in Trinidad was an end-point for us. We’d been living and travelling full-time on Green Ghost since we’d moved back on board in Queensland, Australia, four years earlier. For us, it was about as long as we enjoyed living at no fixed address. We wanted a break from the adventure, some time off the roller coaster
and a place to call home.

  Five weeks after arriving in Trini, Green Ghost was high and dry on the hardstand, the mast was pulled, the rig work done, the boat was covered with a shrink-wrap canopy, and we were on a flight to Toronto. In three more weeks’ time, we’d emptied our storage locker and we were unpacking boxes in our one-bedroom apartment in Burlington where both our mothers lived. We were cashing in our full-time world cruising life to become part-time sailors.

  We relished the ease of the Burlington life – having a car to swing by one of six fully stocked grocery stores within ten minutes of our front door, a mailbox, a couch, a TV, the Internet. We thrilled at the simple things: water from the tap, an endless supply, so refreshing and cold or so soothing and hot, whatever we wanted. Electricity was included in our rent, as were laundry facilities, a weight room, and a pool. Recycling made us feel good and garbage runs were easy – when the bin was full we put a bag down the chute in the hall. Life’s basics were effortless in land life, but the split life made boating more complex.

  After a lengthy repatriation in Canada, we returned to Trinidad to complete maintenance work before setting out to explore the busy Caribbean as seasonal cruisers. We expected some pretty plain sailing. After all, the next country was a day sail, at most a single overnighter away.

  We weren’t too surprised at the number of sailors – we’d expected the Caribbean to be crowded – but we were surprised by the sailing. We found it was quite difficult to sail north from Trinidad at Christmastime. Though we were often within eyesight of our next destination, it was never a cakewalk to get there. The intensity of the trade-wind conditions between the islands was challenging. Finding ourselves beating into the weather all too often, we came to understand that The Windward Islands are so-named for a reason.