by Kim Petersen
When it was my turn, I said, “I don't know exactly who you are, God, or how you work, or what my life holds, but I am thankful for this day, for my life, for the lives of these three here with me. I can't imagine three people I'd rather be with. And I think that whoever you are, you must get a sense of joy watching us take on this challenge. Exploring both the world you made, and our own limits and abilities. Tell Bethany, wherever she is, that we wish she could be here with us. Maybe she already is, who knows. I do know one thing. That somewhere along the way I have come to trust, to believe that whatever happens, all manner of things are well, and will most assuredly be well.”
We said Amen and hugged and then Lauren said, “Let's get on with it already!”
In the morning sunshine, we released the lines, waved to several friends who had gathered on the docks to see us off, and headed for the Ft. Worth Inlet and open water.
~Part Five~
Cast off: To loose, unfasten; to undo all mooring lines in preparation for departure.
36
Evidently fear was no longer a factor for me. At least it wasn't for the moment. I stood at the bow and watched a pod of bottlenose dolphin and scanned my soul. No fear. No heart palpitations or gripping anxiety. Days before, when we had run Chrysalis up and down the Intracoastal to test her out, we had come across a particularly shallow area, and instead of panicking, the picture of the brave me entered my brain without conscious effort on my part for the very first time. I had held my ground at the helm with Mike, and we had calmly discussed an alternate course together. I didn't even recognize the fact that I hadn't freaked out until Mike mentioned it afterwards.
Entering the Atlantic, there was the feeling that I was heading out into the unknown. It wasn't the final frontier and it wasn't even close to going where no one had ever gone before. Thousands had come before me. But it was the unknown for me. I felt a combination of excitement mixed with curiosity. It would have been intoxicating except for the fact that the unknown and I have had a rather rocky relationship. While I had wanted to know the future so I could manhandle it to my advantage, life, at least so far, preferred to keep me guessing. Looking out over the ocean, feeling the wind and the sunshine, I wrote in my journal:
“It is strange that I am unafraid. I keep thinking that if I can do this, cross the Atlantic Ocean, I can do anything. What could be worse, (or better?), for my control freaky self than sitting in the middle of nowhere, no land, no help, anywhere for days? I am at the mercy of the elements. The mercy of God. In a tangible sense, crossing the Atlantic is my way of saying to God: It is okay that I don't understand you; nor can I control you. Both You and life are untamable. I might lose Mike or the kids. I might fall overboard and drown. I have released my fear of the outcome of such events. Whatever happens, all will most assuredly be well. I cannot help but think this is good for me.”
When we were well into the Gulf Stream, Mike called us into the pilothouse to confirm our overnight watch schedule. Mike would be on from 6 p.m. - 9 p.m., Stefan took over from 9 p.m. - 11 p.m., Lauren from 11-2 a.m., and I opted for the early morning shift from 2-5 a.m., after which Mike could resume having had a decent 6-7 hour sleep. I was protective of Mike's sleeping routine. If something went wrong, he would be the one called on, day or night, to fix it. I liked the early morning hour watch. If I pushed myself, I could let Mike get a few more hours of sleep, and I could enjoy the sunrise.
We timed the crossing to take advantage of a nice, fat, high pressure system that had developed in between two low pressure systems. Out in front of us, the remains of Tropical Storm Barry made its way east across the Atlantic. We waited until things settled down significantly enough to make things comfortable before untying the lines and taking on fuel. Chrysalis carries 1500 gallons of fuel. At 9 knots, she has a 3,000 nautical mile range. At 6.5 knots, the range increases to 4,500 nm. For our crossing, we planned on traveling at 8.5 knots. At such a rate, we had plenty of room for unforeseen incidents, such as burst fuel lines, dirty fuel, and emergency course corrections.
All day long we traveled at 1400 rpm and had been making 9.8 - 10.2 knots with the Gulf Stream giving us a boost in speed. While this was great, we were pulling closer than anticipated to the residual effects of Tropical Storm Barry. With the distance made overnight, we would be about thirty miles closer than we had speculated. Seas could potentially get a little choppy. This we had to balance with our desire to reach safe harbor in Bermuda ahead of schedule.
Around eight o'clock on the evening of the first day, we called our weather forecaster, Bill, on the satellite phone. He suggested heading north in the Gulf Stream for several hours. In this way we could both take advantage of the current and possibly avoid the remnants of Barry. After talking with him, Mike and I discussed it. Heading north in the Stream would give us an extra few knots, but it would also add distance and time on the water. We were concerned about the low approaching Bermuda from the west. Since the leftover seas from Barry were only forecast to be four-to-six feet, we chose the lesser distance over the risk of running into the low creeping up behind us.
Having built Chrysalis ourselves, we were intimately familiar with how and where our systems were set up. The importance of this had been revealed to me by leaky plumbing and fuel lines, loose gaskets, gummed up filters, burned out solenoids, and many other problems that were guaranteed to break down in pairs when we were miles away from the nearest West Marine and very close to a reef.
Before our live aboard days, I had a rough understanding of mechanical and electrical systems. I knew the difference between alternating current and direct current. I knew that if I put my finger in a socket, or touched the prong of something that was in a socket, a connection would be made via the tip of my finger, the result of which would be quite unpleasant. I attempted to pass along my personal electrical heritage to my children.
“Remember that story I told you about the time I was seven and visiting my cousins on the farm in Iowa? And how they had me run through wet grass and then touch the electric fence that penned in the cows? Never ever do that.”
In light of our extended offshore voyage, it was essential that I knew what to do should something happen to Mike while underway. When we first moved aboard, that knowledge was fresh in my mind, but since Mike tended to manage these systems, I had become a little forgetful. Before we left, we reviewed transferring fuel and basic engine and generator repair. What to do if we ran out of power and where he kept the oil in case any one of the former needed a top up. Once again, I had confidence enough in my abilities to know that I could keep things running and get us safely into port without Mike's help. I wouldn't like it, but I could do it.
It is important, when you are cruising hundreds of miles offshore, to have power. Other mid-life men might have mustangs or mistresses, but Mike had our DC generator, Big Bertha. Lucky him. I didn't begrudge him the late nights spent with her. The gifts of oil. A shiny new solenoid. The homage paid to her in the form of blessing and cursing, ranting and pleading. Even I saw the value of wooing her when we were miles away from anything. In terms of comfort, she was the gatekeeper to our happiness afloat. When running well she supplied our electricity for items like television, refrigerator, microwave, and running water. More importantly, we could keep our charts loaded on the computer and transfer fuel between our storage and day tanks. All was dependent on her generosity. I had a great affection or dislike for her, depending on the day.
“It doesn't help,” I told Mike, having become frustrated with her performance several months previous, “that she is a temperamental old thing. Who can understand why one minute she is working happily and the next she grumbles to a complete halt for no reason whatsoever. She is complicated and quirky and drives me crazy! What?”
I had noticed Mike was smiling.
“What?” I asked again.
“Nothing really. It's just that Big Bertha sort of reminds me of someone else I know.”
“Oh you're just a laugh a minute a
ren't you, funny man?”
“Let's just say this is as good a reason as any to keep polygamy illegal.”
When Mike started up Big Bertha for the first time since leaving Florida, everything was working fine. About an hour later he looked at the gauge and it appeared that the generator was not charging the batteries. He checked around. Nothing seemed out of order. The charge controller seemed to be working properly and there was 28+ volts coming off the generator, but the battery bank was only at 23.5. He was finally able to trace down the problem to the On-Off switch that connected the two. He pulled off the switch and the back was completely melted. It didn't take long to replace it. If there was going to be a problem, it was nice that it was a simple one, easily solved.
As the sun went down, we put out the fishing rods. Stefan and I sat in the cockpit, and it wasn't long until both lines started whirring and we both struggled to reel in two hefty thirty pound Mahi Mahi's. Mike and Stefan filleted them and we let the lines out again. A couple hours later, Stefan and I fell asleep in the reclining lounge chairs in the cockpit. I awoke much later to a curious sound of flapping, much like a bird in rapid flight. I turned on the cockpit lights to find several flying fish thrashing around on the floor. Evidently, we were making our way through a school of them. As I looked over the edge, one flew up and over the cockpit rail, right in front of me, hitting the still sleeping Stefan in the head before falling into his lap, where it wriggled violently. Stefan never budged. Flying fish, although a bit bony, can be delicious, but since we had more than enough fish in our freezer, I grabbed the fish by the tail and tossed him overboard. Stefan, none the wiser of his interaction between himself and the deep, slept on.
We were cruising along the northern boundary of the Bermuda Triangle whose coordinates vary depending on what source you consult. Typically, the Triangle encompasses the southeastern coastline of Florida, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and then back to southern Florida. My dad, lover of historical mysteries, asked before we left if I was worried about cruising through such fabled waters.
“After all,” he said, his voice building with excitement, “there are accounts of ships disappearing, alien abductions, and the suspension of the normal laws of time and physics!”
“Dad,” I had told him, “I don't need anything else to be worried about on this trip okay? But you know me, I am pretty skeptical of all that stuff. I get more nervous thinking about what would happen if we ran into a whale or a floating container that has fallen off some tanker.”
“Oh,” he said, disappointed. Obviously we differed in our opinions as to which were more exciting, containers and whales, or aliens and time travel. “Look,” he continued, seeking to reassure me, “you're about as likely to run into a container or a whale as you would be to encounter aliens. Still, it is the Bermuda Triangle.”
That's just great, I thought.
I am not a big fan of slice-and-dice horror movies, but once in awhile, I do enjoy a well thought out suspense movie with a conclusion that ends in a twist. While watching one with the rest of the family, I am inclined to believe that the main character can hear me speaking to them. With a scrunched up pillow in my grasp, I wonder aloud why they are opening the door to investigate that strange noise. Why look under the bed? Or enter that walk-in freezer? Why oh why go down that dark downtown alley in search of the shadowy figure? I say with disgust, my eyes closed tightly, that only an idiot would go looking for trouble. They are such idiots, I whisper it again and again until someone pokes me and reminds me that no one on the screen can hear me, only those in the room, and they aren't happy about it at all.
Mike told me once, “The main characters aren't idiots, they are curious. It is human nature to want to know what you are up against. Look at your own life. In the past you have been scared of living on a boat, of crossing an ocean, but here you are looking that danger full in the face. Doing just what you always tell the main characters not to. Are you saying you're an idiot?!”
Touché.
I hoped that by entering the Bermuda Triangle I hadn't gone looking for trouble. With regard to it, I was not interested in the numerous and similar tales of Joe Blow who, while cruising alone through the Bermuda Triangle, happened to see several flying saucers after recently imbibing half a bottle of Jack Daniels. I was more interested in the facts. In the last thirty years, about a hundred ships and planes and a thousand sailors and pilots have disappeared without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle. Many attempts have been made to explain this, including alien abduction and chasms in the space-time continuum. The area is one of two places in the world where a compass points to true north rather than magnetic north, suggesting a magnetic anomaly that may confuse pilots and captains. The conjecture is that this magnetism could very well interrupt their navigational and communication equipment, causing captains to become disoriented, lost. Floating in circles, they could run out of fuel, drift for days, before being lost in a storm. Even stranger was the fact that in 1968 the U.S. Navy and NASA undertook a deep-sea exploration project of the area and found no sea life between 300 and 2,200 feet. The significance of this I could not confirm, but it didn't sound good. If fish knew enough to stay away from the area, what was I doing running right through it?
I took solace in the fact that Lloyds of London, the great marine insurance company, reported that accidents in the Bermuda Triangle were no more dangerous or prevalent than in the rest of the world and did not require additional insurance when passing through its waters. Of all people, I figured, they should know.
The first night I was on watch, we were well into the Triangle. Alone, under the light of a full moon, Chrysalis went through patches of thick fog. For a few minutes, the dark water and a darker sky, would be clearly visible. Then we would enter the fog. The world would turn into an Edgar Allan Poe poem or a murky version of a Claude Monet painting, awash in foreboding shadows. To pass the hours, I kept myself amused by imagining that we were about to run into some prehistoric uncharted island populated with dinosaurs. I thought I could just make out a rocky shoreline. Several times, through parted fog, I thought for sure I had caught a glimpse of the ghostly, black form of the Flying Dutchman, her sails in tatters, passing about a hundred yards off our starboard bow. Just as I raised the binoculars, it would vanish into the fog. This, I thought, was the effect the Bermuda Triangle was having on me. It was a world where anything was possible. Rules and regulations meant little. We were well over a hundred miles from the nearest red tape. My mind subconsciously sensed the freedom and took full advantage of it while it could.
We continued to make 9 knots overnight and by the time I roused Mike for his turn on watch, the seas had built. As anticipated, bumpy six footers tossed us around. I had put on a transderm patch behind my ear the night before we left Florida, so I felt no seasickness. The effects of the Scop patch last about three days, after which you can put on a subsequent patch, but no more until waiting for several days. Later in the morning, when I awoke, the waves had calmed down. I was just starting to settle into my routine of reading, eating, reading, when Mike came into the pilothouse and announced that Big Bertha wouldn't start.
Mike gets very quiet and collected under pressure, which is probably one of the reasons our marriage has lasted through building three houses and a boat. He calmly told us to turn off everything that didn't need to be on, lights, television, computers, and then he disappeared into the generator compartment. He worked on Big Bertha for several hours while the kids and I took turns on watch and running small errands for him, getting tools, and keeping an eye on the electrical panel.
Around lunchtime, Mike emerged to tell me that the melted battery switch from the day before was only the tip of the iceberg. The generator controller had shorted out at some point and blown the switch. Mike and I had about five back-up plans to keep us supplied with power, so neither of us panicked. We decided to try plan B, the backup alternator on the generator, but when that failed to start, Lauren and Stefan helped him haul out our small,
portable, AC generator. This initially worked fine, but stalled about an hour later.
At that point, we began to get a little nervous. Since I am queen of the worst case scenario, we had already discussed in detail what would happen should all our backup plans fail and we ran out of power. The engines could run by themselves, as they generated their own power. We could manually supply them with fuel. The engine batteries could supply us with some power. We had two handheld, battery operated GPS units, and two handheld VHF units (and about a year's supply of reserve batteries). We could mark our coordinates down on paper charts and navigate the rest of the way “by hand.” The lack of running water would be an inconvenience in regards to flushing the heads. This we could do with the ample supply of bottled water we carried. Our 6' × 3' × 4' freezer was jammed full, but even without power, it would likely remain cold until we arrived in Bermuda.
“We may not be as comfortable and a little more stressed,” Mike told me, “but we should make it to Bermuda.”
While taking a break at one point, he tried to talk it through with me. When a resolution proved elusive, he asked if I had any ideas. Since the generator would start and then sputter, I said it sounded like a fuel problem to me. Earlier on in the day, he had checked the fuel line, but he had been working on it for several hours, running more diesel through the lines. I told him to recheck the line and the filter. Maybe we had picked up some bad diesel. He went back to Bertha's den to revisit the issue.