by Kim Petersen
After about an hour, I began to get used to the feeling. Sitting in the helm chair drinking my coffee, I thought that our decision to head up the eastern seaboard had been a good one. In the Bahamas, Mike and I discussed the second part of number six on our old dream list, the larger dream of crossing the Atlantic. I agreed with Mike that it would be beneficial to gain some additional offshore experience before attempting the task. We could refine our weather watching abilities and develop a more concrete routine of caring for our systems. Plus, I had told Mike, heading north for a few months would allow us to get some work done on Chrysalis. The office and staterooms still had no wall covering. Shelves needed to be built and installed in several cupboards, and many of our storage cubbies needed to be reorganized so that things didn't fly around underway. Our swim platform hatches were leaking. We had found replacement hatches online. We would need to cut out the existing 2×3 foot hatches and epoxy in the new ones. The air conditioners and venting system had yet to be installed. I was planning to sew some blinds for the pilothouse.
Crossing the Atlantic to spend a year in the Mediterranean involved an emotional and relational commitment as well. As the kids pushed further into the teenage years, we wondered if they would be able to survive such an extended journey, just the four of us on Chrysalis. While it was true that we had adapted to life on board, meshing our lives together, there were some days it was still a struggle for Lauren. She held on to the idea that she was missing out on a life lived in a more conventional manner. And even though Mike had no problem hurtling himself over a cliff, it was another thing entirely to take your family across an ocean to a completely different part of the world. At the time, the only one who seemed up for anything was Stefan, who still loved fishing, video games, and skateboarding. As he was nearing thirteen, I wondered how long this easy going attitude would continue. Mike and I had decided to revisit the Atlantic crossing decision when we were in Boston.
The crew was asleep and, except for the hum of the motors, it was quiet. Every hour, I logged down our longitude, latitude, oil and temperature of the engines, and fuel left in the day tanks. I went down into the engine rooms to sniff and listen for anything unusual. I walked around the inside of the boat and looked out over the stern encountering the same inky blackness. I got myself a second cup of coffee and made some microwave popcorn.
Two hours later, the moon finally appeared on the horizon, a great red orange ball that lit up my world like a giant light bulb. With its help, I could distinguish the horizon and the bows. I could see what lay ahead. Up until that point, I hadn't given the moon much thought outside of its beauty. I was glad, then, for its utilitarian purpose.
Tied up at a berth in St. Augustine, we watched the weather along the Eastern Seaboard. We were charting a course for Norfolk, self-proclaimed city for lovers. There was a push to get north for hurricane season, officially beginning in June, as our boat insurance did not cover us south of Norfolk during this time. We considered the crossing carefully as it would be our first extended offshore journey, two nights and three days. I was getting used to the routine of preparing to go offshore. During the encounter with rough seas in the Gulf Stream, drawers opened and spilled all over the floor and a treasured bowl from Africa was hurtled through the air and smashed. I learned my lesson. I made my way through Chrysalis and took books, magazines, playing cards, dishes, and the paraphernalia of life that sprouts up on counters and tabletops and I stowed them or tied them down. I locked all of our drawers and cupboards. When a weather window opened up, we were ready. It wasn't a perfect window, but we decided to take it anyway. On a lovely sunny but disconcertingly breezy afternoon, we made our way through the cut and were immediately greeted by six-to-eight foot waves, coming in short succession, hitting us on the beam.
Although catamarans are a fairly new concept in the leisure yachting world, at least in the west, they are hardly a recent discovery. There is evidence of their use as early as the 5th Century AD in Tamil Nadu, India. Utilizing their speed and agility, the Tamil Chola Dynasty was able to invade Burma, Indonesia, and Malaysia, likely bringing the design further to Polynesia. British sailor and buccaneer William Dampier was the first Westerner to mention them in his English journals back in the 1690's as he traveled through India. On the coast of Coromandel he wrote in 1697, “They call them Catamarans. These are but one Log, or two, sometimes of a sort of light wood … so small, that they carry but one Man, whose legs and breech are always in the Water.” Some historians now believe that the Polynesians made use of the catamaran's stable design, traveling all the way to South America almost 100 years before the Europeans.
Chrysalis has a curved, shaped underplatform. The double curves are designed to alleviate some of the pounding catamarans can experience in larger seas. So far, we had experienced very little pounding and assumed our curved underplatform to be part of the reason. The living space aboard is low on the water as opposed to monohulls of similar size whose decks are stacked vertically making for uncomfortable conditions in relatively small beam seas, or so we have been told. Ships of this nature, although they can be larger than ours, are typically called coastal cruisers. They may have the fuel capacity, but they are not meant for longer offshore passagemaking.
We may not experience the sideways rolling motion many monohulls experience, but we were not immune to the elements. Six to eight foot seas on the beam results in a sort of jerky up-and-down motion. Side to side. Not long into the crossing to Norfolk, we found secure places to sit and held on in stoic silence. After a couple hours, I saw both Lauren and Stefan hanging over the rails. It was not long before I followed.
When I think of the famous naturalist Charles Darwin, I automatically place him in the Galapagos cataloguing species, and forget that there was a great journey involved in simply getting to the islands 600 miles west off the coast of Ecuador. From 1831 to 1836, Darwin lived aboard HMS Beagle, a ten gun brig-sloop, whose crew was to chart the coast of South America and explore the Galapagos Islands. Darwin did not find living aboard much to his liking. He suffered a great deal from seasickness during his voyage, and upon returning to land wrote, “If a person suffers much from sea sickness, let him weigh it heavily in the balance, I speak from experience; it is no trifling evil…”
The second night into the crossing, I discovered that I agreed with Darwin. There is not much in life worse than seasickness. It is no trifling evil. It is similar in violence to the 24 hour stomach flu, but at least with the flu you are likely to be in a comfortable land-based bed that is not eternally moving up and down. Your husband or partner can take the kids to a movie and you can call your mom or your best friend who will drop off homemade chicken soup and place a cool washcloth on your forehead. With both kids down and Mike driving solo, it was everyone for themselves. I reminded the kids to drink water.
“Dehydration,” I called out to them from my prone position on the pilothouse settee, “is your worst enemy!”
They grumbled something incoherent, and made no attempts to comply. Staggering, I brought them each some bottled water and gave them and myself an herbal seasickness remedy, an oil applied behind the ears, which did nothing but make us smell like a combination of lavender and Echinacea. We finally resorted to Dramamine, which promptly knocked us out.
Around 4 a.m., I was blessedly asleep in my berth when Mike gently shook me awake. Miraculously, he had been unaffected by our seafaring malaise. To allow us time to rest, he had been on watch since 6 p.m. the night before and needed a break. Was I okay to watch for a couple hours? I was not, but I stumbled shakily up the stairs and lay down on the watch berth in the pilothouse. Mike brought me a large, stainless mixing bowl and, without another word, went to bed.
I watched the radar through weary eyes. I was keeping track of a couple of tankers in close proximity, about 2 miles away, and I dozed off a couple of times as we were approaching Cape Henry. Into my mind came the numerous voices of fellow cruisers telling me that tankers were notorious for no
t having someone on watch. They put the ship on autopilot and played poker. What did it matter to them if they ran over anything?
I was concerned about this. Afraid I might fall into a deep sleep and a tanker would mow us down. I set up an alarm clock to go off every fifteen minutes so I could make sure that if I drifted off it wouldn't be for very long. In between the buzzes and dozing, I threw up again and again. I decided I didn't care if a tanker ran into us. Bring it on. Blowing up or drowning would be preferable to the incessant rocking. In moments of lucidity, my lack of care startled me. I forced open my eyes with my fingers, slapped my cheeks, and attempted to sip ginger ale through a straw.
Mercifully, the wind died down around 6 a.m. Almost immediately, the waves began to settle and I felt relief. I determined that once we got to Norfolk, I would look into a more potent, non-drowsy, seasickness remedy. I eventually settled on the Transderm Scop, a patch worn behind the ear, and both myself and the kids rarely wrestled with seasickness after that.
32
While docked in downtown Norfolk, Mike and I renewed our vows for about the hundredth time. There had been too many bowls of rocky road ice cream and barbeque chips, and not enough cardiovascular effort on our parts. We both agreed that we weren't getting any younger and that if we weren't careful, our organs would end up on display during a segment of Oprah, with some charismatic physician leaning over them with a probe saying, “And this is a particularly fatty heart…”
“Okay, so we will begin tomorrow morning,” I said reaching out to seal the deal with a handshake.
Mike shook my hand, saying, “Tomorrow it is…in the meantime, could you pass me that donut?”
In the early morning hours, I would feel Mike leave our bed, hear him quietly pull on shorts and a t-shirt, and a few minutes later, hear the muffled sounds of him climbing out of the cockpit and onto the dock to jog. I would stare guiltily at the red digits on my alarm clock and think, “Crap.” After listening to him patter away for a few mornings, I followed him groggily out the door. A few minutes of sunshine and fresh air caused me to wonder, yet again, why it was that doing what I know is best for me is often the hardest thing.
Norfolk is a navy town, home to the world's largest naval base. During the first few days we were there, several large battleships passed by less than a few hundred feet off our stern. We stood, gawking, in the cockpit. Later we would look up the ship's name and number on the Internet to find out what kind of ship it was and where it had been. Stefan would often wave up at one of the armed military men lining the gunnels, but didn't arouse much notice. Lauren, sunbathing in her bikini on the flybridge, got a far different response with considerably less effort.
Mike and I settled on a routine jogging trek that took us along the downtown Norfolk seawall, past the numerous active naval ships docked on the opposite side of James River in Portsmouth, past Nauticus, the Maritime Museum, and all the way around the corner where the Iowa -class Battleship USS Wisconsin, now part of the Museum, impressively took up the view for almost a whole city block as I panted beside it.
We spent longer than we anticipated in Norfolk, almost two months. Part of the reason for this was that we were bombarded with more than the usual amount of bad weather. This led to a greater conviviality among the numerous live-aboards and transients in the marina who gathered in small groups on the docks to discuss the wind. There is nothing that boaters like more than talking about the weather, past, present, or future. In importance, it ranks up there with elections and taxes. This is because weather plays such a large role in a nomadic water-based lifestyle. It determines whether you stay or go and what kind of journey you have while at sea. It can mess with your plans for weeks on end or play right into them. The weather cares little for your sleep patterns. On land, I used to savor the sound of a storm at night. On the water, even tied up at a marina, a storm in the middle of the night generally means that you will be required to leave your cozy berth and go out in the rain and wind to readjust a line or a fender in order stop your boat from ramming into the dock. While doing so, you will likely see the dark form of your neighbor doing the same thing, and you can share an early morning casual salute before heading back to bed.
Live-aboards are a unique slice of the culture. They are often anti-establishment, expats living in their own country. Most are deep-thinking folks who have considered long and hard their choices in life, which is to say that over half are retired and have the wisdom and financial means to be choosy. The smaller segment consists of mid-life past professionals who have done the 9 to 5 thing and decided that it isn't for them. Most of these vacillate between jobs and living aboard depending on the state of their wallet. They proudly wear t-shirts that say things like, “A bad day at sea is better than a great day at the office,” which, in my opinion, is debatable. The younger boating crowd, the ones running around in logo button-down shirts carrying groceries bags, work as crew on larger yachts, the kind that have placards that read, “Private. No boarding.” Although they haven't done the 9 to 5 desk job yet, they've seen it in action and prefer the gypsy nautical life. They are all saving up for their own sailboat. Once in a great while, we ran into a live aboard family with kids younger than ours, homeschooling as we were, but these were a rarity.
At impromptu pot-lucks on the dock, meaningless chit chat among live-aboards is nominal. Because time to connect with others is brief, live-aboards are an open bunch and often deep friendships are made on the fly. They are most interested in your story. How did you come to be living an alternate lifestyle? What led you to be here, living on a boat, in the middle of the eastern seaboard? Was it an actual or metaphorical birth or a death? A divorce? Loss of a job? Did you smack your head with a 2 × 4? Did you look too long at a sunset? Where have you been and where are you going? What kind of fish did you catch, and if you weren't so lucky, then there is a great little place I know of, corner of Main and something or other, that serves the very best Cajun catfish you'll ever taste. Ask for Joe and tell him Mel sent you.
Jogging along the dock one day in Norfolk, Mike and I struck up a conversation with a salty old sailing captain from Maine who, when he heard we were thinking about crossing the Atlantic, told us in no uncertain terms that he would never attempt a crossing again.
“About ten years ago, I was delivering a lovely 70 foot sailboat from St. Pierre and Miquelon, just off the coast of Newfoundland Canada, to England, and suffered through the worst seas of my life. Mind you, I have been sailing my whole life, so this was no small storm. Seas were well over 25 feet and the wind didn't stop wailing for five days! Five days I tell you! I thought we were goners. It was the most miserable, terrifying five days of my life! I swore right then and there that I would never make another extended offshore crossing again, and I never have. Never will.”
“Thanks so much for that,” Mike said quietly, rather sarcastically I thought, and before I could ask any further questions, he grabbed my elbow and propelled me along the dock and away from any more tales of woe and despair. Back on board Chrysalis, I had just been saying, “See! There is a seasoned captain who won't ever cross an ocean again…” when we heard a knock on the hull. We emerged to find a dark-haired, very tan guy around fifty in a red polo shirt, tan shorts, and brown top-siders, who introduced himself in a slight French accent as Jean from Montreal. He had seen our Canadian flag and had been meaning to come and chat with us. He was sailing solo at the moment, heading south to Florida to deliver the forty-foot sailboat he was on to a friend there. He was embarrassed to say that he had overhead our conversation with the captain from Maine, and he wondered if we might like to come over for drinks to talk about the Mediterranean. He had sailed there for many years. He might have a few charts we would be interested in. Since it was already nearing happy hour, I grabbed a bottle of wine, and we went over directly.
Right away I like Jean. He was full of nautical knowledge and experience without being egotistical or grandiose. Like the captain from Maine, he had lived on bo
ats his whole life. While setting out a plate of cheese, crackers, and green olives, he mentioned casually that he had crossed the Atlantic five times. He looked directly at me as he said this, continuing, “I couldn't help but notice the concern in your eyes, Kim, when you were listening to that captain tell the story of his, shall we say, bad time crossing the Atlantic. I wanted to talk with you. To tell you that not everyone has this kind of bad experience. In crossing five times, I only experienced rough seas once, nothing life threatening, only annoying. If you are smart and plan carefully the ocean is a wonderful teacher.”
He went on to ask what our plans were once we got to the Mediterranean, and since neither Mike or I had really thought that far ahead, he went on to describe with some passion his travels as the captain of a large sailing yacht there. Were we going to Spain? We must stay in Spain for the tapas, the flamenco, and the paella. Go to Barcelona and you will never want to leave, he told us. The whole city is a work of art. And France? Well, France was obviously his favorite. It oozed wine and cheese and history. If we docked in Marseilles we could take the train into Paris. Who didn't want to go to Paris? And once we got to Italy, he said, we should visit the mainland, Rome, Naples, of course, but even more than that, we should go to Sicily and Sardinia. They will blow you away with their beauty! Everyone is so friendly. They will fill you up with gnocchi and cannoli. In Sicily, you can walk Roman and Greek ruins and no other tourists will be around. Did we think we would get further than that? Maybe to Greece? We didn't know. The food isn't the greatest is Greece, Jean said, but it was a spiritual place. Rugged and full of history, of course. The wind always blows there, so set your anchor carefully. This, I told Jean with a sideways glance at Mike, we could do.