Charting the Unknown

by Kim Petersen

  “Yeah. It would be amazing to cross, wouldn't it? Start in Florida. Go through Bermuda,” Mike said tracing his finger along the page, “and the Azores. End up in Gibraltar. Spend some time in the Mediterranean. What would that be like?”

  The Atlantic Ocean is the world's second largest ocean with a total area of about 41.1 million square miles and covering 22% of the earth's surface. In order to accomplish the crossing Mike had described, we would have to travel roughly 4300 miles. There would be a fair amount to consider in such an undertaking, not the least of which was the risk involved. Five hundred miles from land was a lonely place. In the event of an emergency in the form of weather or injury, it would do little good to call 911.

  Looking across the wide expanse of blue, I wasn't so sure I would be up for an ocean crossing of that caliber. In my mind, it was life as out of control as it got. I couldn't decide if I was terrified or intrigued.

  13

  A farmer's field is a strange place to find a power catamaran. Mike and I drove about an hour through the lush New Zealand countryside in a rented car looking for a side street with a name like Kookaburra. Although late fall in Canada, the spring was just beginning in New Zealand, and as we drove out of Auckland, I had been relishing the sight of fresh growth.

  In recent months, we had decided several things. We liked the idea of a catamaran and had looked at several options both in power and sail. We were hoping to find something between 50 and 55 feet. Anything smaller, we thought, would be less than conducive to the four of us living aboard. We had opted to look for a power vessel and since there weren't many power catamarans available in North America, we had broadened our search to Australia and New Zealand where they were more common. About a month before, I had found an ad for an unfinished power catamaran hull in New Zealand. At sixty five feet, it was larger than anything we had looked at, but because of its unfinished condition, it was still within our budget. With Lauren and Stefan at their grandparents, Mike and I had flown over to investigate.

  Several miles outside of Auckland, we found the street, pulled off onto a gravel road, glanced up, and gawked. Sure enough, just like the picture in the advertisement, a white behemoth sat on stilts with trees and bushes growing around it, like it was part of the natural habitat. We got out of the car slowly, as if we had come upon an elephant in the wild and didn't want to spook it. As in the ad, she was new construction. Sixty-five feet of completed cored fiberglass husk with an empty interior, its current owner having run out of funds to complete her.

  We climbed a ladder and stepped into the cockpit. There was white powdery dust everywhere. It immediately clung to our clothes and skin and made us itch. We went through a rectangular doorway into the empty galley. When I told Mike “she's big,” my voice echoed, and for some reason we talked quietly after that, as if not wanting to awaken something. We went our separate ways for a time. Mike climbed down into the empty engine rooms while I made my way into the bedrooms. Staterooms, I reminded myself silently.

  Without woodworking the inside seemed stark and uninviting. My imagination, so often a bane, kicked into boon mode and I imagined warm cherry wood cupboards and a settee in the pilothouse. I briefly pictured Mike at the place where the helm would be. I walked tentatively out onto the bow and leaned over the edge, imagining turquoise water below me. I could almost feel the boat rising and falling with the waves. There was a little seat in between the hulls where I sat and looked out onto a green, bushy field and attempted to picture a horizon full of water. Into my mind came a vision of a storm.

  “I am not afraid,” I whispered out loud.

  Without skipping a beat, I heard Yoda's shaky voice in my head, saw his little cane pointing in my direction. “Oh you will be…You WILL BE.”

  A little disturbed, I went to join Mike in the empty galley.

  “Well, it's a huge project,” he said running his hand along the fiberglass doorway then flicking his fingers to get rid of the dust. “We would have to completely build the inside ourselves.”

  “What about putting in the engines? The electrical and plumbing? You think we could handle all that plus the woodwork?” I asked.

  Mike and I had been down the construction road before. When the kids were very small we had decided that building homes on spec would be a great way to make a living. Mike had worked a couple of summers on a housing construction team while in university, and with a working knowledge of the basics, we thought, “How hard could it be?” He went to the library and checked out books like Framing a Home for Dummies and Basic Plumbing. Went to the hardware store and bought a few tools. We bought three lots, built three homes, and sold them. It turned out to be a lucrative, but physically and emotionally demanding endeavor. When a desk job opened up at a money management firm, he had taken it, initially welcoming the conventional lifestyle.

  Remembering our past building experience, Mike said with a grin, “Nothing that a few trips to the library wouldn't solve. If we decided to go ahead, we should probably move her to somewhere in the States or Canada, maybe, Florida. We could move down in the spring and begin construction.”

  Then he sighed heavily, turned, and looked at me.

  “Are you up for this? Are we up for this? Giving up a good job? Moving the kids? The building alone would be hard work, but there is the matter of living on a boat of this size with no boating experience. It's a heck of a learning curve. I would have to be sure we were in this together.”

  It felt like the moment of truth, but it wasn't. I had already pushed all my poker chips into the center of the table. Life sat to my right, bluffing as usual. Death sat stoically to my left, patiently waiting my next move.

  “I'm all in,” I said to Mike.

  14

  Several weeks later, it occurred to the four of us that we would need to name the power catamaran shell we had purchased that was now sitting in a boatyard in Florida. Its stern, where the name was to be inscribed, was still blank.

  We were excited about the prospect of naming our boat. Stefan, a Lord of the Rings junkie at the time, hung onto “Frodo” and then “Gandalf” for as long as he could. Lauren was studying birds of prey in school and liked “Falcon” or “Peregrine.” Mike liked a play on words and suggested, since it was a catamaran, “Peregrine” would be apt especially if underneath we wrote “Pair-O-Grins.” Or how about “Paradise” and under that “Pair-O-Dice”? Life was a gamble, after all.

  We laughed over this and I said if we wanted to be tacky, then how about adding a pair of fuzzy dice to the dashboard? Maybe glue on some Mike, Kim, Lauren, and Stefan bobbleheads? We could attach two plastic waving hands to the stern and put a bumper sticker just below that saying, “If this boats a- rockin, don't come a-knockin.”

  Aside from the bumper sticker (that's gross), the kids loved these ideas. Mike mentioned “Training Wheels.” I tended to favor voyageur names like, “Scout” and “Pilgrim.”

  “What about Epiphany?” I said after a time. Mike liked it. I thought we were on to something.

  “No, it's too high falootin,” Lauren said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Too snooty. Too fancy.” Eventually the three of them sided with her and I was overruled.

  Then came a list of names beginning or having to do with “Cat:”

  Catatonic

  Catastrophe (Quickly shelved. No need to tempt fate.)

  Cat Call

  Cat Nip

  Catapult

  Nine Lives

  Cat Scan

  Cathartic

  They were fun words but with no deep resonance for us. Dinner was over and, with nothing solved, we decided to let our imaginations simmer for the next few days.

  Growing up, I found murdering certain members of the insect world to be socially acceptable. There was a free-standing open season on flies, mosquitoes, and for very brave heroic types, wasps. Stalking them in cold blood was encouraged even if the end result was their guts violently spattered in equal meas
ure on the kitchen counter and the back of my fly swatter. During the long, hot, restless days of summer, the malcontent gang of kids that roamed my neighborhood would rustle up a squirming earthworm (not an insect, I later learned in high school biology). Someone would be sent home to scrounge up a magnifying glass. We would form a circle and watch as the concentrated rays from the magnifying glass would begin to burn a hole in wriggling worm flesh. Sometimes there would be a small plume of smoke. The girls would turn away and say “Eeewww,” the boys, “cool.” Eventually, we would hear the ice cream truck in the distance and scramble off to scrounge for quarters, leaving the writhing worm to figure things out for himself.

  You didn't mess with butterflies, though. There was something holy about them. You could catch them in a net, gently…gently (being careful not to touch their wings) and set them up in a posh Mason jar apartment, remembering to poke holes in the cap for air. This was the nearest you would come to playing God. I placed a stick in the jar for my new resident to cling to, some grass for her to play in, and a slice of apple for food. My Eden complete, I would sit mesmerized for about a half hour consumed with my Monarch's well being. Every once in awhile, she would go stir crazy and flutter wildly around her world, conking her head on the top of the jar a bunch of times before finally accepting her lot in life and settling back onto the stick, to slowly open and close her wings again. I had better things to do all day then just sit and watch her, but I was a responsible supreme being and checked up on her from time to time. Eventually, as is apt to happen to supreme beings, empathetic thoughts of freedom would get the better of me, and I would release her.

  In an attempt to pass along my reverence of butterflies, Mike and I loaded the kids up into the minivan one Saturday morning and we went to a Butterfly Conservatory. It was early spring and the morning was cold, but we walked through the double sliding doors into a tranquil, tropical jungle. Butterflies and fuzzy moths flitted through the air or gathered at bird baths piled with fruit. One vibrant Blue Morpho landed on top of Stefan's head and decided he liked it there. It took a fair bit of combatant persuading on Stefan's part to convince the settler to seek digs elsewhere.

  The air was equal parts humidity and electricity. We continued along a narrow sidewalk, deeper into a garden and found a small stream and further, a rock waterfall. Along the way, we passed a large wooden box containing several crawling caterpillars of differing color variety and a short distance away, we investigated a small display of cocoons. They were hanging, looking lifeless and drab, at different stages of development, on vertical screens framed with wood. On the last frame there were several cocoons that were intermittently shaking, reminding me of the trembling Mexican Jelly beans I used to collect when I was a kid.

  Moving along, we came to a wood-shingled hut with a large picture window above which hung a sign inscribed: “Nursery.” There was a woman in a khaki uniform inside and she beckoned to us saying through the glass, “You're lucky! Looks like there is a butterfly ready to emerge! Soon, she'll no longer be a chrysalis. You can hang around here as long as you want and watch.”

  “What's a Chrysalis?” Stefan asked.

  “It's the name of the stage of life when a caterpillar is changing inside the cocoon. Oh look! See, she has started to come out now!”

  After several minutes, the butterfly, a monarch, hobbled, fragile looking, onto the offered branch and flexed her wet trembling wings. The four of us stood with our noses pressed up against the glass.

  “This is the first time this little one has experienced life with wings,” she told us smiling.

  After awhile, we continued down the path, and arrived at an enclave with bench seats facing a large screen. On the wall was a large red disc and underneath it the directions read: “To play, push this button.”

  “Just like Alice in Wonderland,” Lauren said bemusedly.

  Mike pushed the large, red, button and the lights dimmed. We sat down as the screen came to life.

  A James Earl Jones type voice began speaking to corresponding pictures and video: A butterfly must pass through 3 stages: embryo, larvae, and pupa or Chrysalis, before it emerges from its cocoon as imago-a fully developed adult. A larva, or caterpillar, lives an earthbound life. She may climb grass, bushes, or even trees, but her scope is limited. Instinctively, she senses something big is about to happen. She has no idea how long it will take or what the outcome will be, but something is expected of her. Finding a comfortable, secure piece of real estate, she creates a tough outer covering of silk, sometimes incorporating small twigs or dried grass and cloaks herself with it. Then, she settles in. She enters the Chrysalis or pupa stage. If she happens to be a Monarch caterpillar, it will take about two weeks to undergo metamorphosis-complete change. For other butterflies and moths this change can take months, sometimes a whole season. In solitude and silence, a butterfly waits for change.

  There were several pictures of different types of cocoons which passed in silence. Then the voice continued, “Outwardly there may seem to be nothing going on inside a cocoon. To an untrained eye it appears dead. But scientists know that while the pupa waits quietly, a huge change is occurring. A pupa must be still for this change to take place otherwise it will never become what it is meant to be. It must give itself over to this change inside the Chrysalis and eventually it will emerge as the same entity, yet completely different. Once she has emerged, she can fly. She can view the world from a completely different perspective.”

  Stefan pulled on my sleeve, leaned over to my bended ear and said without taking his eyes off the screen, “Do you think it hurts when the caterpillar is changing inside the cocoon?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “I don't think anyone knows.”

  “Maybe it does hurt,” he whispered back.

  “Maybe,” I said, nodding.

  On our way out to the car, someone (I'm pretty sure it was me) mentioned “Chrysalis” would be a great boat name. We all froze in the middle of the parking lot.

  “That's it,” one of us said.

  “It's perfect,” said someone else.

  There was no more debate. We shook hands in agreement.

  Weeks later, I was explaining to a friend who had come over for lunch how we came up with the name and took the credit myself.

  Mike called from the kitchen, “What are you talking about? I was the one who came up with Chrysalis!”

  Overhearing from the sunroom, Lauren shouted, “No you weren't, I was the one!”

  “You guys are all wrong, I'm the one who thought of it!” Stefan said.

  At least, I thought, there was some agreement over the fact that it was a name whose conception was worthy to be claimed by each of us.

  15

  About a month later, I woke up early and the first thing I did was go to the bedroom window, pry open the wooden slats of the blinds and peer up into the sky. With some relief, I could see a milky blue atmosphere with a smattering of wispy, white, clouds. I was grateful for the good weather. Weeks ago I told a friend I was having a garage sale and she told me to make sure I put “Estate Sale” in the newspaper ad and not “garage sale.”

  “How come?” I asked.

  “It sounds more appealing,” she said. “Also you should mention you have antiques. You have antiques right? That always brings in the dealers. If you have a friend who needs to sell some stuff you could put, ‘Multi-family Estate Sale.’ That would really bring them in. Come to think of it, I have a bunch of stuff to sell, would you be up for company?”

  I certainly was and not only that, but both Mike and I were up for hours the night before the sale putting small white price tags on the remaining items I had foolishly thought were much smaller in number. It seemed as soon as I moved one box aside there was another reminding me of the plate of green beans I was told to eat by my parents when I was a kid. In the wee hours of the morning, we flopped into bed, and before falling asleep, Mike peeled a tag off my arm that read “$5.75.”

  “Would you be willin
g to take $5.50?” he muttered, smiling sleepily.

  By 8 a.m. the following morning, cars full of bargain hunters began to line up down the street. From my garage, I could see them through their car windows, cups of coffee steaming up the glass. They watched us drag furniture and boxes out onto the driveway and front lawn. Even from a distance their cutthroat anticipation was palpable. My sister-in-law showed up with coffee and donuts and about the same time, my friend showed up with her van load of items to sell. I stood in the middle of the garage eating a sour cream glazed and wondered if I would regret selling off what had taken the last 15 years to accumulate. I withstood a sudden urge to herd a few boxes back into the house. Laid out all around me were the vestiges of our private lives now on display. China, armoires, chesterfields, the kids’ bedroom sets, books, everything out in the open.

  At 8:30 some internal bell went off, folks emerged from their cars, and the race began. It was all very festive, this selling off a chapter in my life. Family and friends came in hoards. Some bought a tablecloth or a set of dishes, then set up lawn chairs, sat down, and spent the rest of the day as if watching a sporting event.

  In the middle of the frenzy of doing the mental math to make change, hardly my forte, I glanced up and noticed an older woman, frail and slightly stooped, wandering around. She was smartly dressed in a grey skirt, pink blouse, and black pumps. A little overdressed for a Saturday morning garage sale, I thought, but she looked rather regal with her grey hair pulled up in a bun. She was eyeing the pine chest that had sat in my sunroom. I concluded the current transaction and went over to ask if I could help her. She wanted the chest and didn't bother to bargain.

  After handing me cash, she looked around and asked, more to herself than to me, “I wonder, did someone pass away?”

  “No,” I said. “We have decided to sell everything and live on a boat.”

  She turned, then, and for the first time, briefly made eye contact with me.