Maiden Voyage

by Tania Aebi

  When Sam and three of his friends arrived at Varuna early the next morning, Colleen ran to purchase a painkiller bottle of rum, I boiled the water and Sam mixed it with the black soot from a kerosene fire to make the dye. Unwrapping a package of sewing needles, he strapped five of them onto a wooden stick with tightly bound string. While preparing, he told us that a real man gets a tattoo with a shark’s tooth instead of a needle. The tooth with the dye, which is considerably less pointed than a needle, is tapped into the skin with a mallet. One of his friends wanted to show off his tattoo of a flying fox, and turning around, he revealed the enormous South Pacific bat that covered his entire back.

  As I looked at all the pockmarks from the tooth, I began to feel a little queasy; the idea of five needles was bad enough. Colleen arrived back just in time, poured a coffee cup full of rum and, because I’m normally a nondrinker, I inhaled it and surrendered my trust and ankle to Sam’s ministrations. For three hours, I lay stunned on my bunk, as he painstakingly designed and then carved away with the sewing needles the most beautiful anklet I could have ever hoped for. Sam assured me that all his designs were one of a kind and that mine was an original. “I can’t remember any of them well enough to duplicate anyway,” he said.

  Patrick was so inspired by my tattoo that he asked Sam for another one, also around the ankle, as soon as mine was finished. But Sam had been slowly draining my bottle of rum and, unfortunately for Patrick, the next creation turned out to be a little erratic. That evening, almost everyone in the anchorage came by to either sneak a peek or to take pictures of my ankle. The next day, when the effects of the rum had worn off, Colleen had a ring tattooed on her finger, and a trend was started.

  As a last thank you to each other, I gave Sam, who loved to make music, my guitar. He was so grateful that he turned around and carved for me a pair of oars with Varuna’s name on each of them. One was crafted from the wood of a lime tree and the other, mango.

  One evening, I returned to Varuna from dinner on Kreiz to find an anonymous note attached to my lifelines.” We just want to tell you that someone wants to spill the beans about your crew from Pago Pago to Apia. We strongly urge you to go back to Pago Pago and remake the trip alone.” No signature.

  Feeling as though someone had kicked me in the guts, I read and reread the note, with the hackles rising up and down my spine. As far as I was concerned, taking Colleen was no secret. In Pago Pago, it had never entered my mind that taking someone for 80 miles out of a 30,000-mile voyage could be detrimental to a record, should I ever reach home in time to attain it anyway. That someone would assume I had any intentions of keeping Colleen a secret was an affront to my integrity, and now, to return would go against the grain of what my trip meant to me. I was doing this trip to see the world, not to be in the Guinness Book of Records. Even though several other people urged me to retrace my steps alone, I remained adamant. “I didn’t bring Colleen on a passage,” I insisted, “I only brought her on a one-day trip of 80 lousy miles out of so many. We didn’t even sail, we motored.”

  All these were cavalier thoughts. What my father would say and how disappointed he would be never entered my mind. After all, it was only 80 miles and it wouldn’t have killed me to resail it. But in the end, I felt that my honor was at stake, so without regret, I carried on with life and put the whole issue out of mind.

  • • •

  I told Fred that I had been entertaining the notion of going to Wallis Island, a French territory a little to the west of Samoa that boats rarely visited. A friend in Tahiti had told me all about it, insisting that it was a place that shouldn’t be missed, even with my hectic schedule. “Please go,” he had said, “it’s only two days from Pago Pago and on your path.” I had promised to meet Magrete and Reidar there and was looking forward to it. I fired up Fred’s imagination about Wallis, he described it to Patrick and the girls and everyone was in agreement. “It’ll be fun,” he said. “We’ll sail together and throw dinners to you.”

  I said good-bye to Colleen and all the other cruising people I had gotten to know in Pago Pago. Taking the route north of Tonga and Fiji, the island groups where almost everyone was heading after Apia, I knew that this was the last common meeting ground. From here on in, I would be taking a sailing route a little less traveled and wouldn’t be seeing many familiar boats; the itineraries of the majority were more relaxed than my own, and their courses would take them to islands farther south.

  On June 21, at 3:00 P.M., I hauled up Varuna’s anchor hand over hand and then motored out of Apia Harbor. Behind me, the girls on Kreiz huddled on the foredeck, giggling and pressing the button that automatically gathered in their anchor chain. A gentle, fresh wind was blowing from the east. I raised the sails, boomed out the genny, and watched Varuna take off down the waves, whispering a phrase I wanted to remember, “Tofa soy fua. Tofa soy fua. Tofa soy fua . . .” Thank you in Samoan.

  It was a gorgeous 250 miles to Wallis. Kreiz was reefed down so that Varuna could keep up, and I hoisted as much sail as possible to maintain speed. As a result, we went faster than ever before. My star fixes worked out perfectly when I checked them over the radio with Fred, and I ate like a queen.

  With the new solar panel, energy consumption was not the problem it had been on other passages. Thinking up ways to use all my newfound power, I talked with the girls on the VHF when they were bored on their watches and compared notes on the full moon that rose above us. They called to tell me what was on the dinner menu and I called back just to say hello. Every once in a while, they would increase their sail volume and come close to Varuna so that we could take pictures of each other.

  By late afternoon on June 23, the low, rounded hump of Wallis peeped above a horizon afire in the orange and yellow rays of another setting sun. Even with the security of Kreiz, I was nervous about this landfall. Wallis island would be the closest thing to an atoll that I ever had to deal with. The fringing reefs extended well beyond the limits of the coastline and there was only one cut large enough to enter the lagoon. The pilot books bore ill tidings for boats attempting Honi Kulu pass, and had warnings of nasty 5-knot contrary currents and huge waves. The lagoon filled up with the breaking Pacific swells that thundered over the reefs, but the water exited mainly through this one pass. Worried that it would be impossible to enter, we approached, Kreiz first and Varuna following sheepishly, engines idling.

  With a go-ahead signal from Fred ahead, we revved up and forged our way in. Even with Varuna’s engine up to full revolutions, the current was so strong that it took nearly twenty minutes to cover the 500-foot-long pass. The evening wind had picked up, too, and I motored against it in the dwindling light to where Kriez was anchored, protected from the ocean swell behind a reef. It was too late to navigate our way through the coral heads to a safer anchorage, so we decided to do it early the next morning, when the sun would be at our backs. Otherwise, the glare of the sun in front would obscure proper visibility through the water, and the first hint that a reef was there would come when we heard it crunching against the boat’s hull. Early, before the next morning’s calm had a chance to be taken over by the trades, we tied Varuna behind the larger boat and towed her around the coral heads to an anchorage in the lee of the island.

  Ever since we’d met, Fred had been eager to teach me everything he knew about boats, and as Patrick and the girls went to explore the island, we spent the next few days going over Varuna with a fine-toothed comb. At twenty-eight, Fred was master of his own magnificent vessel and he hadn’t achieved it through sloppy practices. Before attacking Varuna, he proudly showed me his engine, his new galley pump, and the master cabin with all his electronics. I commented on his diligence concerning the engine compartment, which was squeaky clean. He said, “When I was taught how to care for a boat, I learned that you should be able to touch any part of the engine with white gloves and they should remain white.” I thought about Varuna’s little red beast and how rarely I would even lift up the cover, much less bend over to wipe
it down.

  “Boats are tender,” he said. “You have to treat them like vain women who need lots of care.” Fred tried pumping Varuna’s toilet and shook his head. As we talked about our lives, he dismantled the pump, and painstakingly explained the working of it in detail. In no time, all the gaskets were exchanged for new ones and reassembled again. Up until now, I had never seen the insides of a toilet pump, simply praying that mine would be the special one that never broke.

  We hooked up my radio’s antenna by running it out the companionway, along the deck grab rail, and taping it up the side of the mast. In the past, I used to go outside with the radio and rotate the small telescopic antenna until I received a faint time tick by which I set my watch. That was the extent of my demands. But the radio was invented for a much grander scheme, and if it has a high enough antenna, it can reach its potential. Suddenly, with Fred’s improvements, I could receive all sorts of medium-wave music and news stations in different languages from the surrounding islands. I could hear the BBC, Voice of America, Radio France and Radio Moscow on the shortwave lengths. The world was at my doorstep and I was excited by the new pastime awaiting my next ocean passage.

  Then, after Fred put new terminals on the ends of the degenerated circuitry, we gently sponged down my engine with soap and fresh water. We reglued the wooden frame around a cockpit locker and he gave me all sorts of compounds that he had found essential over the years: double-component adhesives and metal pastes.

  We bought limes and he showed me how to keep Varuna’s teak clean and permanently bright. “These limes are magic,” he said, squeezing the juice all over the trim. “Who needs acid cleaners when nature provides the most efficient ways?” The wood gleamed, turning a completely different shade of light brown, breathing free from over a year’s worth of grime and oils. We took apart my self-steering gear and replaced all the worn-out pieces, then Fred attacked all the stainless steel on it, and my pulpits, wiping away any rust spots with his own special products.

  Fred was fanatic, but his fanaticism was catching. It was fun sprucing up the boats and figuring out ways to fix things with only the materials we had available. And the more time we spent together, the more I recognized how much I already knew. I’d had all sorts of patient teachers over the past year, and each had revealed to me new things about the workings of my own boat. In that time, I had gotten over any embarrassment about admitting ignorance of something and had learned not to hesitate to ask questions, questions and, if I was still too thick to understand, more questions. By no means had I learned everything, but I had come this far with one notable realization: anything can be dealt with by a level head and a little common sense.

  The Kreiz crew and I had planned on staying for just a few days in Wallis, but we found plenty of good reasons to remain for two weeks. As a vista, the slight, rounded island, unlike those in French Polynesia, was not much to write home about, but the beauty was in what the people did with their land.

  It was a minuscule place, about 9 miles long and 5 miles wide, but on this patch they had managed to fit in three magnificent kingdoms. The island was technically under French rule along with Futuna, another territorial island 120 miles to the west, and their connections with the outside world all passed by way of New Caledonia. Strolling down the neat dirt roads lined with flowers and charming thatched homes, it was hard to imagine a place more secluded from the sophistication of its French rule. Beautiful, unmarked and off the beaten track, the kingdoms of Wallis seemed to compete with each other to see which could be the most picturesque. One afternoon, I actually saw a man sweep his lawn.

  On Wallis, pigs were the princes. In the place of cats and dogs, piglets, sows and boars roamed around in complete liberty. Perfect little bungalows sat on manicured plots skirted with flower beds. Hibiscus hedges, mutated into myriad strains, colors and sizes, framed every tableau. Fred and I walked around in awe, passing the friendly islanders and saying hello. The fabrics of their pareus were exotic and gay; and they draped the beautiful bolts over graves in the cemetery and changed them often.

  On shore, where we landed our dinghies, was a house with a family of innumerable children and hordes of pigs. They smiled and generously pointed us to their well water to fill our jerry cans and, politely, we sideskirted their lawn in order not to upset the nap.

  The Polynesians have been traveling among these islands for centuries, astounding modern navigators with the prowess of their ancient sailing outriggers. They have created a vast network, connecting the neighboring islands into a sort of brotherhood and, regardless of changes they have endured at the hands of those who have tried to colonize them, fundamentally, they have remained the same.

  Patrick, arriving on a sailboat, was welcomed as a long-lost brother by the boys in Wallis, even though he spoke a different language. When I watched them talking, they seemed to understand each other perfectly, as if there were a sort of universal plane on which the different islands could relate to each other. They greeted him like royalty and he basked in his own novelty, Fred looking on with pride, like a father who made these things possible for his son. We would only see Patrick every now and then, when he rowed in with his friends to bring fish they had caught in the lagoon for Dinghy and Mimine.

  Magrete, Reidar and their two sons arrived and anchored Renica next door to us as a depression disturbed the peaceful skies for several days, postponing our departure. One day, our whole gang was invited to one of the kingdom’s annual feasts. Men and women in colorful costumes sang religious songs and danced in front of a veranda where the king and his entourage sat holding court. The dancers had petroleum jelly smeared all over their arms and shoulders, and onlookers stuck paper money on their favorites, in this way making a collection for a new building.

  Royal kava, a South Pacific potion made from the root of the kava tree, was served to the king and his family while fifty baskets with roasted pigs lay waiting in the sun. On the way down from climbing a tree to capture the festivities on film, I lost my footing on a stubby outcropping and fell to the ground, landing with my dress over my head. It took a second for the stars to clear before realizing that I was surrounded by a group of giggling children, thrilled by my exotic performance during a familiar ritual that had otherwise been boring for them.

  Soon enough, July 4 swung around. Not only was it the day of the anniversary of my country and the Statue of Liberty’s birthday gala in New York Harbor, but it was also Fred’s birthday. For most of the day, Laurence, Marie, Estelle and I huddled below on Varuna with my box of magic markers and colored pencils, making birthday cards and talking about possible presents. I bought a bolt of fabric and used it to wrap up the Fat Freddy’s Cat cartoon book that I had received in New York and that, by now, I knew by heart. On the card, I drew a picture of Varuna, Dinghy and Mimine thanking Fred for everything he had done and for being such a good friend.

  That evening, Laurence baked a chocolate layer cake with raspberry filling. Marie set up cameras and took pictures of our group and then we went out on deck to send off a red flare. This was the first time I had ever seen an emergency flare go off. It lit up the whole sky and slowly descended, bathing Kreiz’s deck in a rosy glow. The next morning, we realized that we had sent up an SOS a hundred feet from an island littered with people and nobody saw anything. I wondered what would happen in the middle of the ocean.

  Soon after, I had a last dinner on Renica before they set off for new islands the next day, and that gave the rest of us incentive to pack up and start thinking about moving on as well.

  Watching the skies and the barometer on the breezy morning of July 7, we picked up our anchors and said goodbye to each other, promising many letters. Kriez towed Varuna out of the lagoon. I stood on the bow, waving and calling goodbye as we threw last jokes back and forth.

  Saying goodbye had never become any easier. I thought of the drawing of our two boats that Fred had given me with a caption that described my feelings perfectly: “What a nice meeting. Exactly t
he thing I hate about our way of traveling. ‘Hello’ . . . ‘Goodbye’ . . . ‘See you’ . . .”

  Once were were out beyond the last reef, I cast off and went forward to hoist the mainsail. Taking in two reefs in the gusty wind, booming the main out and tying down the preventer cord, I went back to the cockpit to set the self-steering. Gathering up the jib, I clambered back onto the foredeck and started hanking it onto the forestay. Engrossed in getting Varuna under sail, I didn’t notice Kreiz on a collision course until we were very close, and then stood up in alarm to see if they were going to move. Everybody was occupied in getting his sails up, so I hollered a warning and ran back to disengage the self-steering to round up into the wind before impact.

  Too late. The bungie-cord fastening stubbornly refused to undo itself fast enough and, as if in slow motion, I saw Fred turn his head my way, his face register shock and Kreiz’s exhaust sputter blue smoke as he slammed her into hard reverse. Surprisingly, the hard jolt I expected never came. Varuna’s bow hit Kreiz amidships at the same moment that I was finally able to round her up, while Kreiz pulled back in full power.

  Quickly resetting the self-steering, I looked at Kreiz’s hull, expecting to see a gaping hole. There was nothing. Stunned, I looked at Varuna and realized that here, on the other hand, something was amiss. The lifelines hung limply down on the deck, and I looked forward to the bow pulpit. Stepping around the spray hood and holding on to the grab rail, I saw the damage. The pulpit had absorbed the entire shock and was smashed backward out of its deck supports and crumpled like an accordion.

  All of a sudden Varuna was naked and helpless, and I realized how secure those lifelines had made me feel. They had formed the perimeters of my playpen. Whatever happened outside of Varuna was all right, just as long as those two long strands of wire on either side held me in. With all my muscle power, I tried to push the pulpit back out and into some sort of shape, but the stainless steel wouldn’t budge. I ran back to the cockpit, down into the cabin and heard Fred’s voice on the radio.