by Tania Aebi
The trade winds finally returned erratically from astern, waning and waxing with no respect for my feelings. The skies remained gloomy and we plodded along while I changed sails until my raw hands could no longer take the pain. Squalls attacked us from every which way, unleashing rainstorms, and the trades were often stacked up behind them, bringing huge gusts that raged momentarily and then dwindled to nothing as soon as the sails were reefed down. My ear infection was bad enough without this obnoxious weather pecking away at my spirits. I was just waiting for the cats to pee on my bed, which they did, whereupon I screamed bloody murder, “I hope you guys get reincarnated as bathroom attendants at the Grand Central Station men’s room!”
On the morning of the seventeenth, the steady trades returned from dead astern, beginning slowly and increasing as I poled out the jib and tied the mainsail boom out with the preventer cord. Setting the self-steering, I stood at Varuna’s stern, feeling the rushing wind and watching the course, making little tweaks to the left and right until I was satisfied.
In terms of progress, the first four days of this trip were more or less shot, thanks to the storm. The next four days, every mile had been wet and hard won. Now Varuna began careening downwind at a fast clip. The taffrail log was broken, and although I didn’t know the exact figures on how fast we were going, we were hauling. I screamed to Dinghy and Mimine, “Hey, you guys, come and see how fast we’re going! At this rate, we’ll be in Pago Pago in seven more days!” Dinghy took a peep out of the companionway just as a wave scuttled playfully into the cockpit, landing a couple of drops on his nose. “Nope, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all,” he seemed to say and spun 180 degrees back to bed.
“Great!” I shouted. “My luck has changed!” As I followed Dinghy below, Varuna took a jerk, I lost my balance and came thudding down on the cockpit seat on top of my bent wrist. A stab of excruciating pain rushed up my arm and I froze. “No! It can’t be.” I cried fearfully. “I couldn’t have gone and broken a bone out here, could I?”
By evening, the wrist had swollen and turned a delicate shade of blue and I couldn’t even hold a toothbrush. To round things off, the earache returned, giving me double reason to raid my aspirin supply. I had a heating balm called Mineral Ice, and an Ace bandage. Gently massaging in the cool gel until the soothing heat penetrated, I made a splint out of a magazine and wrapped the whole thing up.
Fortunately, the wind remained constant for five days until May 22, whereupon it slowly dwindled to a flat calm. The course never had to be readjusted, the wind had remained constant and true, and the original shock to my wrist had time to wear off. I stupidly decided that the Friday thing was just a bunch of malarkey because, thanks to the aspirin, my ear thobbed only slightly and, with the string of fine days, things seemed to be looking up. That was when, while brushing my hair, I saw a brown bug fall onto my lap and several more followed. I had lice.
Between the earache, the nauseousness of having lice living in my hair and the sprained wrist, I’m surprised that I found enough energy to go outside with the sextant to take a sight. My wrist made it twice as difficult because it was impossible to hold myself from falling over on the rolling deck. Rather, I had to rely on leg muscles and a series of orangutan contortions, wedging myself between the spray hood and stanchion, and keeping an eye on the waves to retain balance. Navigation became my sole comfort, I still loved to do all the calculations and plottings.
A friend in Tahiti had shown me an easy way to identify and use the stars for navigation, so I practiced with them on calmer evenings, but they were hard to see and align with the horizon through the sextant. The best time to use the stars is at twilight, just as they appear in the sky and before the sun’s light completely abandons your side of the world. But, more often than not, clouds shaded my objectives at just this crucial moment.
On May 24, after a forty-eight-hour flat calm, I doodled in my logbook, an elaborate drawing around a centerpiece of the word, “Shit” and wrote, “Yesterday, I heated up some salt, put it in a sock and nestled its warmth against my ear. It was a sort of temporary relief and maybe I’ll try it again tonight. The ocean is totally flat. There are only teasing gusts of wind, clouds and my books. The spinnaker track slide is stuck halfway up the mast track and I’ll have to use the semi-useless old slide because I can’t climb the mast steps in my present condition to fetch it down. I think I’m developing a chocolate milk addiction. My ear is still pulsing, my head itches and there are still 300 miles to go. That could mean two more days if we get some robust wind. The barometer has been slowly dropping so, maybe . . . Anything is better than this . . .”
That evening, at about nine-thirty, the wind of a monstrous squall grabbed the sails that were reefed in preparation, and we took off flying. Thousands of gallons of rain pelted down on deck, and I hung on below as the pots and pans in the lockers clattered their discontent. I tried to have everything battened down and secured in place at sea, but there was always something that went unnoticed and became a lethal weapon. A plastic pitcher was the forgotten object this day and it took a flying leap across the cabin, splattering water everywhere. The cats freaked out and, as I struggled to begin mopping up, out of the corner of my eye I spied Dinghy taking a leak on my fresh pillow.
“This is a nightmare!” I thought, and started to cry. My spirit broken, there was nothing to do other than hold on to keep from being thrown around down below.
Five hours later, the squall finally passed, the wind leveled out and I was able to go outside to set the course without getting drenched. When everything was finally back to normal, I crawled down below at around three-thirty in the morning and went to sleep on the acid-smelling bunk.
My navigation had predicted an ETA within twenty-four hours and, waking up at first light on the twenty-sixth, I half expected to see the dark smudge on the misty horizon ahead. The easternmost islands of the American Samoa group, as soon as they were visible, would lead the way to Tutuila Island and Pago Pago. The wind picked up again rambunctiously and I doused the jib, leaving up only the double-reefed mainsail. The day was sunny, we were still barreling downwind and, no matter how uncomfortable things may have been, it was exhilarating to be aboard Varuna as she tore along like a wild thing, well above hull speed, ticking off the miles toward her destination.
Sure enough, up popped the island group and 60 miles beyond them my haven. Singing and forgetting my itchy head, aches and pains, I set a course to pass south of the group. Going up forward to take a bucket bath, I tied a rope around my waist for security, while taking in the vision of the lumpy brown silhouettes of Tau, Olosega and Ofu islands as they emerged clearer and closer with every passing mile.
That evening, I heaved to about 15 miles offshore and slept in twenty-minute intervals, planning my first steps on land and thanking the Almighty that this god-forsaken leg was finally behind me. Just before the dawn approached, a rotten egg in the food hammock above my bunk cracked open and the slime dribbled down onto the bed.
• • •
The first order of business upon arrival was to gather up every last bit of stinking linen and clothing, pack them into sailbags and catch a bus to a laundromat. Next, I hailed another bus going in the opposite direction and headed for a hospital. People crowded into the small buses like sardines and it took a while to realize that the standard way of getting them to stop was by banging on the roof, which made riding the bus a particularly noisy affair. Unable to bring myself to that level of aggression so quickly, I feebly called out “Stop, please . . .” to no avail, and a sympathetic onlooker pounded away against the ceiling on my behalf.
Things don’t change in hospitals, even on the other side of the world. After I signed in, it was about a two-hour wait until a doctor had time to see me. My wrist was sprained, not broken, he said as he wrapped it up properly with a stretch bandage. He prescribed a new batch of eardrops and confirmed the grim fact that the bugs in my hair were definitely lice.
“You have been
careless,” the doctor said. “Lice are common here, and you can pick them up virtually anywhere somebody else touched his head. Now take this shampoo, wash every day and comb out the nits.”
The sailors’ shower was a little stall on the quay near where the dinghies were tied. I was incredibly embarrassed about the lice problem and convinced myself that everyone waiting his turn for the shower would be able to smell the medicinal shampoo and then shrink away every time I passed. I scrubbed and disinfected every inch of Varuna, and diligently washed and combed my hair every day. But every time I scrutinized it in the mirror, I could still see those miserable little white eggs clinging to the hair.
Pago Pago Harbor is a long inlet that nearly divides in half the island of Tutuila. Because it is surrounded by a cradle of tall mountains, Pago Pago gathers all the passing squalls. I put my blue tarpaulin over the boom for protection and tied it down like a tent to the lifelines. It had started life in Tahiti as a sun awning, but here it could do double duty and protect the companionway and kitty litter from the frequent rainfalls.
At one point, I called home from the direct-dial pushbutton phone next to the shower stall and found out that my best friend, Rebecca, who had surprised me with a pregnancy on my return to New York, had just delivered a baby girl and that I was a godmother. Had it really been five months already? Jeri told me that my father was off sailing alone somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with his new boat on the way to Newport for the start of the BOC.
“So, he’s really doing it, huh?” I said. Jeri and I joked that we hoped he had one hell of a trip alone across the Atlantic so that in the future he might think twice before urging me to ignore the storm seasons. Tony and Jade were fine, she said, and seemed to be coping all right with the freedom. Nina was doing well in school. Jeri, now that the tax season was over and most of her clients’ ledgers were reconciled, was beginning to think about her roof garden and all the flowers and vegetables she could plant. Life was moving along just fine without me. The news about Rebecca’s baby gave me pause for thought. It was a benchmark in time such as I had never really experienced before, and hanging up the phone, I felt farther away from home than ever.
The dilapidated colonial town of Pago Pago, with its greasy-spoon restaurants and honky-tonk bars, was a depressing surprise. I had looked forward to a little taste of home out here in the middle of the Pacific, but the incongruousness of the place left me cold. Sodas, hamburgers, fast food, Rambo video posters, pop music, “Dallas” and “Dynasty” on every tube. In contrast to Tahiti’s colorful gaiety, the place looked worn around the edges.
A Norwegian boat, Renica, arrived in Pago Pago soon after Varuna, and I was happy to see Reidar and Magrete and their sons, Bent and Carl-Frederic, again after being anchored near them in Arué for a couple of months in Tahiti. Together with Claude and Margot, we had all shared nice times and again I was welcomed aboard their boat like a daughter. Before journeying on to Vanuatu, 830 miles to the west, as I had planned, they urged me to stop at the neighboring island of Western Samoa for a few days. Having already been once around the Pacific, Magrete and Reidar said it would be crazy to leave the Samoas with only Pago Pago for a memory.
I filled up Varuna’s lockers with cookies, muesli, dried fruits, nuts, long-life milk and tofu, and another ton of condiments and food that can only be found in American-stocked supermarkets. Provisioning the boat was always a game of square pegs in round holes, as ten bags of cans, gear, fruits, vegetables, toilet paper and so on had to be squeezed into the lockers under the bunks and the tiny forward cabin that were already stuffed with extra gear and clothes. Always after the boat was provisioned, her white waterline stripe submerged an inch or so with the extra weight.
Next, I traded and photocopied charts from other sailors and revised the South Pacific itinerary. I had wanted to visit New Caledonia to try and revive again the sympathetic French ambiance to which I had become attached in Tahiti. But now, looking at the charts, I saw that there were far too many reefs strewn in the path of that destination and so the plan was dropped in favor of those a little less obstacle-ridden.
At the customs dock, just before I left, one of my new friends, Colleen, came over and said she had left the boat on which she was working as crew and was also going to Apia to search out another position. This was a happy stroke of luck, I thought, and invited her to go along with me. Apia was about 80 miles away, a quick stint for Varuna, and for the first time, I would have somebody other than Dinghy aboard to talk to for the day, someone asking now and then if I wanted a cup of coffee or juice.
Colleen was disappointed that not a hint of wind let her experience Varuna’s capabilities under sail that day, as it turned out to be a flat-calm trip under power. The two main islands of Western Samoa are some of the largest in the South Pacific and it seemed to take forever to motor alongside the rambling and sometimes mountainous coastline. Finally, by the afternoon of the fourteenth, we motored through the pass of a barrier reef and up to the customs dock of Apia.
We were three boats straddled side by side awaiting Monday morning check-in, when we would be allowed to anchor away from the dock. I was worried about Dinghy and Mimine wandering to land and getting lost. But they stayed on the boats, scaring the britches off the neighbors rafted alongside by jumping down through the hatches and onto their stomachs in the middle of the night.
The Apia countryside was a fairyland of misty, mountainous peaks, speckled with cows. The homes were open-air—concrete foundations with columns holding up roofs shingled with pandanus leaves—and from the road, a traveler could glance like a voyeur right into all these mini-Parthenons of Samoan life. After I had visited a few islands, I discovered that a noticeable common denominator was the ubiquitous pandanus plant, which is an essential ingredient in the lives of the South Pacific islanders. Pliable and durable, it is woven into their baskets, forms their bed mats and the walls of their homes, and shields them from the rain and sun.
The Samoans keep their dead close to home and often, on the front lawns of the houses, there were brightly whitewashed graves decorated with flowers. There are no fences or walls marking boundaries of pastures and property, and the people still proudly rode around on horses bareback, through the flocks of goats and cattle that seemed to belong to everyone.
The Samoans are immense people, not fat but rather healthy, seemingly well fed and well muscled. Because of their Polynesian and Melanesian heritage, a lot of them have fuzzy hair, close to an afro, and many of the men’s light brown skin is covered from head to toe with elaborate tattoos of animals and exquisite geometric designs. They wore their beautiful tattoos with such great pride that I began to toy with the thought of having one myself.
The terrain of Apia was flat around the harbor and the sun reflected hotly off the pastel-colored colonial buildings. There was a peaceful, sleepy air about the place, such as I imagined Tom Sawyer’s village would have had. There wasn’t the inherently fiery Latin personality that I had come across in the French and Spanish countries; rather the islanders seemed more to take after the peaceful, slow-paced Germans and later, the New Zealanders who once colonized the island. The second language is English and almost everyone speaks it with a charming New Zealand lilt mixed with the music of their own accent. To me, Marquesan, Tahitian and Samoan all sound pretty much the same, a sort of phonetically spoken Asian language laced with many twists and rolls of the tongue, and I stuttered along with my usual Please’s and Thank You’s in Samoan, unable to get much further in the short time I was there.
Aboard Varuna, meat and dairy products could last no more than twenty-four hours, but eating out of cans was to be avoided as long as possible. Because of the steamy-hot climate and lack of refrigeration, going to the market for provisions was a daily ritual, until I met Kreiz.
The 65-foot French schooner Kreiz an Ael, which had arrived in Pago Pago the day before I left, arrived in Apia soon after Varuna, and dropped her anchor nearby. Colleen remembered meetin
g the captain in Tahiti, and before leaving Varuna, she introduced me to Fred, who introduced us to his crew—Patrick, a Tahitian boy, and three girls, Estelle, Laurence and Marie—who were all headed for New Caledonia.
I immediately felt like a gawky teenager around these three gorgeous French girls, but they all made me feel right at home and comfortably included me for meals or whenever there was something fun going on. They were a boisterous group and with the exception of Estelle, for whom this trip was a vacation from a dancer’s life in France, all had been bitten by wanderlust and were out to see the world.
Kreiz was a commodious beauty; Fred had designed the interior and, once inside, you almost forgot that you were on a boat. There were several sleeping cabins arranged around the main salon, with its dining table, galley and lounge. An immense freezer stored all sorts of goodies like steak, chicken and fish. Being able to store these things and consider them a part of provisioning was completely alien to me. Varuna only had an icebox, and providing I could even find ice, things could only be kept one step below warm for not more than a couple of days. After gourmet feasts, I would either cuddle up in Marie and Laurence’s cabin with Estelle for discussions on hand creams, foot massages and picture shows, or sit around with Fred in the main salon and discuss engine lubricants and water pumps. There was time for silliness with the girls and a time for seriousness between two captains.
Patrick, the Tahitian, was a shy, handsome boy and he said he wanted to get a new tattoo to add to the one on the back of his shoulder. He and Colleen found a local skin engraver named Sam and we went together to his fale to watch Patrick get a new adornment.
A group of huge Samoans gathered around guzzling beer while he lay down on the floor to await his surgery. It took two painstaking afternoons for Sam to create the design that encircled Patrick’s thigh. I watched carefully for any aftereffects or signs of excessive pain, but Patrick assured me it wasn’t too bad. That afternoon, I decided to have a permanent Samoan anklet tattoo engraved the next day.