by Kim Petersen
“Stef,” I said, “I've got nothing for you to do. Why don't you come up here and sit with me awhile?” I patted the seat next to mine.
He stared hard at me for a few seconds, as if checking for indications of faltering sanity, before taking a deep breath in and expelling it slowly. You would have thought I had just asked if I could pull out his toenails one by one with needlenose pliers.
“Oh all right, fine,” he said as if extending me a huge portion of grace.
A few seconds later, he walked up the stairs and sat down beside me on the white vinyl settee. The first few moments of quiet between us was kind of awkward. I scanned my brain for topics of conversation, but we had already exhausted the weather, books, movies, and what was for lunch and then dinner. There seemed nothing more to say in my opinion, so I decided not to say anything and Stefan obviously felt the same because the two of us sat silently for about an hour.
During that time, the awkwardness gradually gave way to a comfortable familiarity. We settled in. In the quiet, I focused on him. I thought about what he was like as a toddler, tenderhearted, kind, and recalled the various mother-son battles we'd had over the years and eventually made peace with. At one point, about twenty minutes after he came up, I remembered an endearing moment from the year he was six, and I spontaneously reached over and without saying a word, smiled, and hugged him. When I released him, he looked at me and grinned, but neither of us said anything. Then we sat for another twenty-five minutes or so in silence and all the while I felt the acute awareness of his presence and our relationship to each other and how Chrysalis was carrying us both over the swells, and how good the wind felt, and how soothing it was just to exist there together without being compelled to say anything. I felt completely at ease and sensed he did to. The claustrophobia I felt earlier disappeared and a peace settled over me. From time to time I glanced over to look at Stefan and watched him study the sea. The crease in his brow had disappeared. I wondered what he was thinking. The dearness of him, his value to me and the world, came to my mind and I focused on that. I thanked God for his existence. After about an hour, he patted my knee, and without saying a word, went back down into the pilothouse. I did not feel the loss of his presence. It seemed a natural parting.
When I think about it now, I consider that hour to be one of the finest conversations I've ever had.
Good news came on day four. It was the day before Half-Way Day. Everyone's spirits were bolstered with the knowledge. There was a lot to do. I held a meeting at the galley table to discuss plans. A celebratory menu was decided upon for the following day: fresh caught fish, macaroni and cheese, salad for dinner, chocolate cake for dessert and champagne for toasts. The fresh fish was going to be a challenge. Our fishing rods had been out since we had left Bermuda but so far the sea had withheld her bounty. I was banking on Mike's love of a good challenge, but didn't tell him I had Italian sausages to grill in case our bad luck continued. We also discussed plans to jump into the water. I told the crew there was no way I was jumping into the middle of the Atlantic. If they wanted to that was fine, but crossing an ocean was enough for me. Still, they kept trying to convince me. It was a rite of passage, just like a baptism, Stefan said. Forget it, I told them. Besides, there were more important matters at hand to discuss like the “Throwing of the Message in a Bottle Ceremony” and the firecracker celebration put together by Stefan.
The Half-Way Day is important on many levels. Emotionally, we knew we were heading over the mid-point with the hardest part, at least in terms of waiting, behind us. After half-way day, day five, the excitement of fulfilling this part of the journey, would multiply as we mentally checked off the remaining days. Physically it was an important day as well. Up to that point, should we have had an accident, a broken arm, appendicitis, or a mechanical problem, we would have had to make our way back to Bermuda. But from that day forward, it would be closer to head to the Azores. Sobering, though, was the fact that at this very junction we were at our most vulnerable part of the journey. Should we require help it would be awhile, maybe days, in coming from any mainland. We were truly on our own in the middle of nowhere.
To put it into perspective: on Half-Way Day the depth of the water beneath Chrysalis was over three miles, about 15,840 feet. The nearest land was 900 miles away.
In the morning, floating on top of three foot, glassy, rolling waves I made a chocolate bundt cake, frosted it, and wrote “Happy Half Way” in blue decorator icing. While I was doing that, Mike caught a long, slender Wahoo, so dinner was taken care of. Later on, we each wrote out a message on a piece of paper to put into our bottle. When I asked what everyone had written, Stefan adamantly said that our personal notes were like a wish and couldn't be revealed without seriously affecting the progress and safety of the bottle. Everyone else agreed. That is why, even though I am tempted, it is best I not reveal what I wrote, as we have yet to learn the bottle's whereabouts. Lauren rolled up each note and put them into an empty wine bottle that had previously held a nice cabernet from Australia. We stood in the cockpit, blessed the bottle and its travels and the person who might find it, and Stefan threw it in. Then we all stood around for awhile watching it drift farther and farther behind us until finally it disappeared altogether.
The day before, Mike and the kids had decided to form a new club: The Mid Atlantic Swim Team. Membership, they said, could only be obtained by those who swam in the Atlantic Ocean midway between Bermuda and the Azores. Lauren immediately set about designing T-shirts.
On the afternoon of Half-Way Day, we put the engines in neutral and got on our swimming suits. I had initially intended not to jump in the water until I realized I wouldn't be allowed on the Mid Atlantic Swim Team, which meant I wouldn't get a t-shirt, and that was too much to bear. The whole morning, I had been wondering what was up with this LIFE and the way it was always stretching me. Demanding things from me. Tapping me on the shoulder. Couldn't it just leave me alone in peace for once? Wasn't it enough to just be crossing the Atlantic? Must I now be required to jump into the middle of it?
But something Stefan had said about baptism made me rethink the issue. When I was sixteen, I was baptized by full dunking, wearing white, in a Protestant Church. The pastor at the time told me that it wasn't admittance into the Church or even into Christendom itself, it was public declaration of a transformed heart and life, a sign of renewed birth and faith, and an announcement of life beginning as a new creation. It included a commitment to following through within a community that would both encourage me and keep me accountable. With this in mind, and in light of all the changes in my life, I told the kids I would jump in, although I wasn't too happy about it. I was, in every way, the reluctant convert.
We threw the life ring, attached to a white line, overboard. Mike jumped in first and we all cheered. He thrashed around and yelled out “Whoo hooo Mid Atlantic Swim Team Rules!” before climbing back on board. Then Stefan jumped in, followed closely by Lauren. I was amazed at how quickly the current pulled Chrysalis away from them, even with the engines in neutral. As they were good swimmers, it took little effort for them to catch up to the ring. I could tell by the way they quickly swam for the life ring that they were a little nervous. We hauled them back on board.
Then, they said it was my turn. They cheered and encouraged me. I paced nervously in the cockpit, wringing my hands. I made my way slowly to the swim platform, and looked out into bluish-grey, churning water. Fear, sensing an opportunity, sprang to life and reminded me of the remains of the tuna we had caught in the Bahamas, the one whose body had been ripped off by a shark. “What was I thinking standing on the edge ready to jump in, let alone allowing my kids to?” Fear asked. I chose to ignore her. Once again, I was resigned. I was going in and there was nothing for it.
I sucked in a breath, looked back at my congregation, closed my eyes, took a small step, and over I went.
The Unknown gulped me down. In the end, the Unknown, with all its mystery, would have its way with me. I
surrendered myself to its coolness. The wetness revived me, alerting all my senses to the tingly feeling of being alive. My body swayed with influence of the current. I existed there, completely immersed for a few seconds, before rising up through the surface to take a breath. I saw Mike and the kids, smiling, calling to me, and leaning over the port swim platform with their arms outstretched. An unexpected feeling of joy came over me. As I swam for the life ring, I could feel tears mingling with the salt water drops on my face. Surprised, I thought, this is who I am after all; the kind of person who jumps off a homemade boat into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps this baptism wasn't announcing I was a new creation as much as it was acknowledging who I was in the first place.
As Mike pulled me in, Stefan yelled, “All right Mom! Now you get a Mid Atlantic Swim Team t-shirt!”
Tongue in cheek, I replied, smiling and panting from the exertion, “Just what I always wanted.” But when I thought about this later, I considered it closer to the truth then I had initially realized.
40
On day six, I walked up to the bow and found a small gray squid about the size of my hand. Wondering how it had come to be there, I instinctively checked for wings, thinking, I suppose, that I had found a species in flux. Then I realized that a gull had likely dropped it, and recently, because it was still wet. I went inside and got a paper towel, carefully scooped him up, and threw him back into the water. Later that morning I found another one. I could not account for this other than to think that the same gull was concerned about our wellbeing.
But maybe it was the sea itself that was sending its manna onto our decks because every day I found three or four flying fish near the bow. These were small, usually between eight to ten inches long, and by the time I had found them, they were nearly dehydrated and hardly worth the effort to fillet. After studying their filigree wings, I threw them back into the water, hoping some other creature could make use of nature's bounty.
That day I washed the dishes. They had been piling up in the sink. After that, I popped in a load of laundry. Although we had a washer dryer combination, it took too much power to dry laundry on a crossing, so I planned to hang it outside to dry later in the day. I took a tour of Chrysalis, picking up dishes and wrappers and generally tidying the place up. I reminded Stefan to pick up his socks, and asked Lauren if she would mind making sandwiches for lunch. After eating a tuna fish sandwich, I took a short nap. Got up and read a bit of Small Wonder, by Barbara Kingsolver, which inspired me to write until suppertime. I pulled some lasagna out of the freezer, chopped up a salad and ate dinner while trying to help Mike download our latest weather, which turned out to be a wonderfully boring rendition of the last few days.
What an odd thing, I thought, to be doing simple daily chores eight hundred miles from anywhere.
We each dealt with the wide expanse of time and space in our own way. Lauren couldn't sit still. It was the story of her life. Because she had experience in managing her own day, she planned ahead. She had purchased a “Teach yourself Portuguese” class on DVD. She went through it at night while on watch.
When I came up at 2 a.m. to relieve her, she said, “Obrigado, Mama. Boa noite!”
About two days into the crossing, she was reorganizing a compartment and found one of our old knot tying guides. She spent a couple afternoons practicing with lines on the cleat in the cockpit. She then proceeded to go through the manual from the Power Squadron class we took a few years previous. She wrote the tests and reviewed the charts.
Stefan had earned the nickname Rip Van Winkle. Rip for short. The sound of the engines, the motion of Chrysalis, and the fact that he had started growing, combined to make a sleeping elixir he found difficult to resist. As soon as we started the engines, he fell asleep. He would wake up, have breakfast, play a game or two, and then sleep again. One night he came out of his stateroom around 6:30 in the evening. I told him to grab some supper. He thought I was joking as he was sure he had slept through the night and it was the next morning. The debate continued, as only a debate can with a teenager, until I finally took him outside and pointed to the setting sun and a compass.
The mood changed on day seven. We began to get excited. All our systems continued to work well, and every afternoon we received a weather forecast that was gloriously benign right up until our arrival in Horta, only two days away. Seas were negligible. Rarely had we seen such calm conditions. The sky was the palest blue with a few scattered cirrus clouds.
As if to heighten our anticipation, we began to see more birds. I saw what appeared to be a Herring Gull with its characteristic yellow eyes and legs. Several flew across our path throughout the course of the day. I pointed out a Little Shearwater to Stefan as we sat in the cockpit reading. Smaller than other shearwaters, I watched as he circled Chrysalis, following us, as if curious. At one point he came close to the flybridge, and I thought he might land, but he took off again to follow behind us. I couldn't be sure, but it seemed like the same gull followed us for the remainder of our journey.
It can be lonely at sea. The loneliness is not from a lack of human companionship, but a sense that you are a very small being on a globe whose circumference you can barely comprehend, and all this is spinning in a universe whose borders have yet to be determined. As indicated, what little there is on board to distract you from this plight quickly loses its appeal, and you begin to miss the hustle and bustle offered by the cultured world you alternately love and despise. There is no Facebook, no Twitter, no up-to-the-minute breaking news. Nations could declare war, a chunk of mountain fall into the sea, the paparazzi could snap a thousand photos, and you would keep existing, none the wiser and fully functioning, in a watery world, forever floating up and down, up and down.
Under such circumstances, boredom gives way to silence and solitude, and you begin to hear yourself think. God only knows where that will lead you. Experts in silence and solitude will tell you this is the point: to meet yourself, with all your pain, shame, and glory. To stare yourself full in the face without distraction and mourn and ask forgiveness, and to accept the good, yes, the incredible thought that we are unique in a vast universe, seemingly loved and drawn to wholeness by a Being who we may never fully comprehend, in a world that both shocks and inspires. And to accept that life may very well serve us several heaping portions of suffering, and it is what we do with those portions that often determines the kind of person we become in the end. This is what we work out in silence and solitude.
And this, I decided, was one of the reasons why I decided to live on a boat and cross an ocean: because midway through my journey I didn't know who I was and wanted to find out. I was very concerned about what I might find there, inside of me, and rightly so. I encountered agony, doubt, failure, and fear, but I discovered, like so many, that when pushed into facing those things, there is something in the human spirit that rises up. I can only imagine it comes from God's own spark of cells within us, the Imago Dei, always expanding and drawing outward, then back in again, like the movement of the ocean. Which is all to say, that by turning outward into an unknown world, I was drawn inward, where I not only discovered a little more of who I was, but who God is as well. And in terms of God, the more information I gathered along the way, and the more I sought to relate to this Being, the more I found I didn't know, which was disconcerting at first, but in the end, I learned to accept, along with my own inability to manhandle my own future to the degree that I wished. And this releasing my addiction to control brought a great deal of peace as I sat on the flybridge settee in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
While careening through space and inching our way across 4,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean, seeing the gulls swooping off our stern was a reminder that we were not alone. The gulls brought us a message: not only are you not alone, but land is somewhere close by.
The Azores was two hours ahead of Bermuda, but we decided not to change our clocks until arriving in Horta because it would mess up our watch schedule. This meant that at 4a.
m. Bermuda time, I began to see light on the horizon. I turned on Andrea Bocelli, softly, so as not to wake the sleeping crew. Then I resumed my post, sitting in the doorway of the pilothouse sipping coffee, eating peanut butter toast, and watching the sunrise. In the realm of good things, there hasn't been much to top those early morning hours I sat quietly in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, listening to Bocelli, the sun rising to fill the pilothouse with light.
Around noon on day eight I smelled something. It smelled sweet, flowery, like perfume. I thought Lauren had sprayed perfume all over the boat and went down to investigate.
When I found her, she said, “Hey, just so you know, you put on too much perfume. And why did you put perfume on in the middle of the Atlantic anyway?”
“What? I thought you put on perfume!” I said.
“If you didn't put any on and I didn't put any on, then what is that smell?” Lauren asked, putting her book down to look at me.
Mike, who had been listening in from the galley, called up, exuberant, “It's land!”
The island of Faial is small, roughly 13 miles by 8 miles, with a population of about 20,000. Its primary town, Horta, was our destination. The island itself had been referred to as the Ilha Azul, or Blue Island, by poet Raul Brandao because of the masses of blue hydrangeas that bloomed in spring and early summer. I wondered if we could be smelling the flowers that far offshore.