Maiden Voyage

by Tania Aebi

  Doug, who was an electronics technician, took out the old broken VHF and installed the new one with its antenna that my father had brought from New York, while I started reorganizing and hauling everything out from Varuna’s interior to dry in the sun. Everything had been soaked in the knockdown, to the point where even the fastened Ziploc bags had water inside. For several days, the cockpit was a bedlam of Varuna’s innards—mattresses, tools, spare parts for the Monitor, sailing books, charts, engine pieces, fiberglassing compounds, foods, epoxies, dishes, pots and pans. One by one, I wiped away the salt, sprayed on lubricant and restored the essentials to their places, jettisoning things I had always kept for just in case, and now found to be of no use.

  The Teflon bearings of the self-steering gear were worn out from constant use over the past two years, so Mark and my father detached the Monitor from the stern and brought it onto the dock to replace all the weaker points with new parts. Then my father went off to have the bow pulpit welded into a stronger shape; the leftover fragments from my encounter with Kreiz in the South Pacific had begun to fall apart.

  Gibraltar was well stocked with everything a cruising boat needed for repairs and replacements, and the spray-hood supports were also rewelded. I ordered and installed a new set of weather cloths for the cockpit, had a smaller storm jib made, and continued to sort everything out, in between placing more orders for equipment to meet newly discovered problems and reorganizing the bags of supplies that kept flying into the cockpit.

  In order to reduce the weight aboard, I started handing out things I didn’t need anymore, like the spare anchor and the dinghy that was beginning to show signs of wear and tear. I bought six sets of long johns and stored them in new Ziploc bags, in the place of summer clothes and souvenirs that were boxed, ready to be taken back home with my father on the airplane. He had brought some extra sweaters and I had Olivier’s. The Atlantic was going to be a cold trip, especially for a body so long acclimatized to warm temperatures.

  I emptied out Tupperware buckets of grains and beans that hadn’t been opened since New York, having discovered long ago that the time it took to cook them in the heat of the cabin had rendered the chore not worth the torture in any of the tropical places we had traveled. I gave Mark the extras and instead filled up the waterproof tubs with electrical equipment, spare parts, nuts and bolts.

  While we were tearing Varuna apart, Maurice, an Irish bicycle-messenger friend from New York popped by. He had stopped in Gibraltar to make some money to continue his own travels aboard a motorcycle, and it was so good to see a real friend of mine from the old days. He was the first one to bring me news of other friends and to reconnect me with a past I had left behind. I shared my trip with him through photos and stories and, just like the good friends we once were, we sank into the old routine of jokes and gossip and flew around the small enclave of Gibraltar on his motorbike in search of things I needed.

  Next, my father bored through the deck with a drill just forward of the mast to install new U-bolts for lashing down the life-raft canister, while I crouched below, gathering up the fiberglass rinds and dust. Then we installed and bolted down the ARGOS onto the wooden platform in the cockpit. We sealed the operation with a poly-urethane bedding compound, and I grabbed the caulking gun to smear the sticky white gook around the bottom of the companionway slats that tended to leak salt water down onto the batteries. The welders at the local shipyard added a new handle onto the upper companionway slat so that I could easily close it behind me from the inside, and I fabricated some wood wedges to secure the slats even more tightly in place, in case things got too hairy out there.

  We ordered a new smaller solar panel, attached it to a plank and fitted it onto a mount on the aft pulpit in such a way that I could maneuver it to follow the sun’s path during the day for maximum efficiency. Then I bought a new breaker panel and on it attached the wires from the Autohelm, solar panel and a new fluorescent light for the backstay. A new storm jib had been created, and with the re-welded pulpit and new weather cloths, Varuna’s lifelines and closed-in cockpit felt secure enough to face the worst storm the Atlantic could dish out.

  On the fifth day, Maurice and I motorcycled across the border to the neighboring Spanish town of Algeciras to get some foam for mattresses for Varuna, and from that night on, sleeping became a new pleasure. The old mattresses had been so saturated with salt water and cat pee that they had shrunk to a quarter of their original thickness and the wooden frame of the bunk always jutted into my back. The salt then drew in all the humidity of the night, turning them into soggy sponges. The new foam was like a new lease on life and I found myself actually eager to try it out at sea.

  The British colony on Gibraltar had every amenity and convenience of a bulging-at-the-seams British town, but with a Moroccan and Spanish flavor that added just enough confusion to make it interesting. At the huge Lipton’s supermarket emporium, I stocked up on all sorts of canned soups, shepherd’s pies, instant noodles, rice dishes, chocolates and dehydrated meats, both the American and English varieties. I bought several boxes of bottled water, and Mark managed to lay his hands on some kerosene, which was hard to come by, for the heater and stove.

  Even Tarzoon tried to help by getting out from under my feet sometimes and once fell overboard chasing a fly. Much to the marina’s amusement, my seafaring buddy swam calmly up to the self-steering gear on another boat, clambered aboard and shook off the water.

  For six days, the Levanter blew while we ran around during daylight hours, and as soon as the sun set, we’d go with Maurice for huge meals at a harbor-side restaurant. Maria, the jolly, fat Spanish proprietress, felt that it was her duty to make me put on several extra pounds. At every meal I received two appetizers, one main course, a salad and two desserts, and she beamed at our table as I devoured every last morsel.

  By the end of the sixth day, everything was in order. I checked the engine, liberally sprayed WD-40 over all the connections, and opened the outside lockers to see the jerry cans of alcohol, diesel, kerosene and engine oil, all neatly stowed and battened down in their places. The spray hood was as strong as ever, and the black casings of the new VHF and shortwave radio sparkled out from their mounts on the bulkhead above my bunk.

  Proudly, I invited everyone down one by one, insisting that they take off their shoes before stepping in onto my new clean bed. With delight, I would open up the pots-and-pans locker resupplied with new dishes, frying pan and utensils, then the food locker full of colorfully labeled stacked-up cans and buckets full of staples. In the fore-peak was an extra water tank with an unscrewable opening large enough to reach into with my arm. I had never used it for water, instead letting it serve as a watertight food locker. Now it was loaded down with perishables: biscuits, cookies, candies, dried fruit and cat treats.

  Just for good measure, I opened up the tool and supply locker to take a peak at the organization that had taken place of the previous week’s bedlam; everything was neatly greased and bagged. We would be able to be autonomous for anywhere up to two months with all the provisioning. I even had a sailbag full of fresh wood shavings from a nearby woodworking shed for Tarzoon’s litterbox. Sitting on the new cushiony bunk, I looked around at the snug cabin. Everything was ready.

  On the last night, my father and I went over the charts one more time and I finalized my route. For every month on the North Atlantic pilot charts, the ocean was divided up into a checkerboard of 5-degree squares, and each one had symbols and numbers translated into information on the winds, currents and other prevailing conditions. In the corner of the chart was a graph, also divided into 5-degree squares, containing numbers indicating the average percentage of ship reports where winds of at least Force 8 had been recorded for the month.

  For all the pilot charts I had ever used, I had never crossed a square with more than 1-percentage factor of Force 8. The few times that Varuna had passed over a 1—once in the Pacific and another time in the Indian Ocean—my fingernails had been chewed to the
quick in nervous anticipation until we were safely out of the danger zones.

  The October chart for the 3,000-mile North Atlantic crossing was a scary vision of l’s, 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, and two 5’s. Also, there were bold red lines curving down from the northern seas, indicating that no matter what route we took, somewhere along the way Varuna would have to pass through the perimeters where average wave heights exceeded 10 feet.

  Unless we ducked the strong current of the eastbound Gulf Stream by heading in a more southerly route below the Azores, it would impede progress and we would be faced with fearful storms kicked up by the underwater river. But then, there was the risk of heading too far south into the fringe of the horse latitudes, a belt between the latitudes of 30 and 35 degrees north, characterized by a dearth of wind altogether.

  My fear of the passage increased as I stared at the 3,000-mile distance and the expected no-win conditions separating me from home. As the days plodded on toward Old Man Winter, the news from the November chart held even gloomier tidings. So, choosing the lesser of two evils, I decided to take the straight path from Gibraltar to New York, passing south of the Azores to avoid the contrary Gulf Stream and the higher risk of storms.

  “Yah, but there you will get a lot of calms,” my father warned.

  “Well, I’d much rather run the risk of a few calms than storms,” I insisted. The sole advantage of taking the Great Circle route north of the Azores would be that it was 400 miles shorter, but I didn’t really care about speed.

  “Well, you know best,” he said.

  “Anyway, Daddy,” I chimed in, as we folded up the charts that evening, “you should be concerning yourself about my twenty-first birthday present that I will have a lot of pleasure opening in the middle of the ocean.”

  “Hah!” he laughed, and we headed off with Mark and Doug to have a last feast at Maria’s.

  The next morning, I awoke and looked outside the companionway. The sky was bright blue, and puffy clouds streamed across the famed rock towering above the anchorage. The easterly Levanter was still healthy and in full swing, as if it wanted to help me onward. This was the big day. It was now or never.

  After wolfing down some breakfast on Lone Rival, Mark, Doug and my father were ready to follow me out to the entrance of the strait, catching Varuna on video before she turned westward and headed out to sea. Before the pandemonium of casting off the dock-lines, everyone gave me wrapped presents and cards to open on my birthday, and my father slipped me a letter to be opened on the tenth day out.

  I climbed back on Varuna, shuffled Tarzoon below to the safety of the cabin and undid the mooring lines for the last time. We were off. For better or for worse, my final game of solitaire was almost played out.

  12

  September 19. It’s dusk, our third day out. I’ve just come back in from battening Varuna down for the night, and finally there’s inspiration to write. It feels so nice to put ‘Destination: New York’ at the top of the page, although I feel lonely after being cut off so abruptly from all the excitement in Gib. The quietude is screaming out at me.

  “This passage frightens me more than any other in the entire trip, but Varuna feels good. It’s such a pleasure to open her lockers and find them brimming with delicacies, and the ARGOS and life raft give me the security I felt when Olivier and I were sailing together. This is the last crossing and I pray that it will be a safe one.

  “Ever since Australia, the journey has seemed long and hard, and the truth is that the ocean can still terrify me. Most of the time, I think about things that a girl my age doesn’t think about, and I’m bugged with thoughts of my future. Now that I am on my way home, everything is a big question mark. What will I do? Can I settle back down to do things a girl my age would do? Why are these questions still lurking after so long? Right now, I feel much older than I want to.

  “My fix today said that we’ve made 285 miles since departure. The barometer has begun to fall, so something’s brewing. I made a day, date and mileage-by-the-hundreds chart again, and am making a tape for Olivier that I hope we’ll listen to together. There are 3,115 miles left to go. I think about Olivier and pray that he is waiting for me. . . .”

  Very slowly, the frenetic week at the famous rock was beginning to sort itself out, and I felt a certain relief to be out on a big ocean again, where navigation wouldn’t be as crucial anymore, and shipping would no longer be confined to an enclosed body of water. It was taking longer than usual to wind down from the activity on land, and instead I remained idle, dwelling on my questions and feeling them loom larger the more I searched for the answers.

  For the first few days, the wind had continued to blow steadily at our back from the east, pushing Varuna along at a good clip through the Strait of Gibraltar and the thick of the Europe-Africa, Europe-America shipping routes. It was weary enough duty, and on the second night, when I had grown so tired that the thought of getting crushed by one of the never-ending stream of ships didn’t seem to matter anymore, I dozed off in a shallow sleep. Some kind of internal warning signal had awakened me, just in time to run out on deck, grab the tiller and dodge an oncoming freighter.

  On the eighteenth, we had finally passed the last outcroppings of Portugal somewhere over our starboard horizon and had forged out into the sanctuary of deeper ocean. Until New York, except for the island groups of the Azores 1,000 miles to our northwest and Bermuda 2,900 miles to the very far west, there was nothing but a vast expanse of gunmetal gray.

  This trip, I knew, would bear no resemblance to those already laid under the keel, and my mind kept racing over the knowledge that everything done on Varuna was being done for the last time. Foreign landfalls and new people were a thing of the past, and the finality that the name New York conjured up played the largest role in my uneasiness.

  Putting the logbook away, I reached for the radio knob to get rid of some static, and tuned in the BBC. The radio was going to become a good friend, and I congratulated myself on buying those extra batteries before leaving Gibraltar to keep it well fed.

  Lost in thought, I bent over to rearrange the floorboards that had splintered into five pieces during our Mediterranean fiasco, and then crawled into the forepeak for a snack. Reaching down into the storage tank, I felt around, pulled out a package of gingersnaps and then lurched back to the bunk. Opening up the cellophane, I took out two cookies and put the rest into the overhead hammock, unclosed. If they stayed exposed, then the humidity of the sea air made them chewy, instead of crispy and hard, and I liked my cookies better that way.

  After so many passages, I had begun to humor myself with eccentric time-killing techniques that had formed almost instinctively; one of these was the fine art of playing with my food. A simple bite of an apple took on a whole new meaning as the pulp had to be separated from the skin without ever leaving my mouth. The same went for the almonds in chocolate bars; they were never crunched along with the chocolate, but had to be singled out, rolled around and savored. Cans of food lasted forever as I made little designs in the soups, pastes or sauces with my tongue on the spoon and admired them; and that same spoon prolonged cups of coffee, which had to arrive in my mouth spoonful by spoonful. Crawling out on deck with a gingersnap for the evening’s entertainment, I stared at the water and watched Varuna nod slowly west. As we rocked downwind, I began nibbling away like a gerbil, around and around the cookie, letting the spicy little pieces crumble up in my mouth.

  Just then, flying in from the echo chamber of approaching nightfall, a yellow canary landed on the boom’s downhaul. I gulped down the few remaining crumbs and called out to it. Responding to the sound of my voice, my new friend assessed the situation and then hopped up onto the boom. I cooed again and then he hopped right onto my head! What an ornithological wonder! He wasn’t the least bit afraid of me. I ruminated for a moment on the piles of gooey white poop that always seem to be underneath birds, and shooed him out of my hair. It was too cold to take a bucket bath just because a bird couldn’t control its bowel
movements. Taking one last scan around, I went below, leaving the feathery hitchhiker to feast on the crumbs in the cockpit. A while later, the sound of a crunching noise pulled my attention out the companionway. Mr. T had a bloody mess of feathers sticking out of his mouth.

  “Oh my God!” I screamed. “You murderer!” But it was too late. Except for a couple of feathers blowing away and bloodstains on the deck, there was nothing left. In my eyes, that heartless scoundrel had been soiled and I couldn’t bear the thought of touching him for the rest of the day.

  Waiting for the wind to sort itself out, I listened to the slamming mainsail and opened up the bag with the letters and birthday presents to look them over, shake and squeeze things. There were only two and a half weeks to go until my twenty-first anniversary with life.

  All that day, I had fiddled with the sails, trying to make progress in the wimpy wind. According to my references, this wasn’t normal. We were supposed to be in the belt of the Portuguese trade winds that blow steadily from the north, and they now seemed to be nonexistent. Frustrated beyond belief at being entrapped by a calm so early in the trip, my body continued acclimatizing itself, and that night I awoke to see the dark shadow of a boorish squall passing astern.

  Unable to relax, I whipped up a midnight snack of Ryvita crackers, Miracle Whip and some dried beef strips that Tony had brought to Malta. Settling down again to munch, I listened to a narrated story on the BBC and waited. Dawn showed up with a gloomy disposition, and the puffy clouds of the day before were replaced by their wicked stepsisters. Soon the wind became confused, making a reappearance from the opposite direction, obliging us to trim in the sails and beat. Varuna heeled over on her new point of sail and from then on life carried on aboard sightly tilted.