Swell

by Liz Clark

  “Hang on tight, honey,” she repeats.

  Once the pole is secured on deck, I crank hard on the winch, relieved to see the sail inching out from under the hull. A minute later I’m able to yank the bulk of it onto the foredeck. After two hours of tedious line untangling and sail wrestling, the genoa rises back into place on a spare halyard, the pole goes back up, and Swell takes off like a racehorse again, surfing steadily into the troughs of the following seas. Amazingly, the sail is not damaged, but a large blue tattoo of bottom paint smears across it as a reminder to inspect for halyard chafe before a long passage, as Gaspar urged.

  High Seas Surfing

  On the morning of day seven we are perfectly on course and making great speed in the steady winds. I tidy up the cabin and whip up egg sandwiches with avocado, cheese, and sweet chili sauce as we suffer through the French for Dummies audio CD in an attempt to show up in French Polynesia with at least some basic vocabulary. Halfway through the nasally man’s lesson, the wind spikes. The seas increase sharply, and a wave rolls into the cockpit, sending Mom howling below.

  I try different strategies throughout the day to stabilize our ride, but the growing swells and strengthening wind continue to make it challenging. By dusk, we are reefed down to a sliver of a storm jib and I’ve altered our course to take the swells directly astern. Even then, we’re barreling down the steep ramps of water like a school bus with no brakes.

  We manage to get some grilled cheese sandwiches onto our plates for dinner, but getting them into our mouths is an entirely different story. We juggle our grip between the plates, forks, and cups that all slide back and forth and sideways on the little nav table with each roll and heave. In the event that we need something out of reach, Mom must hold everything at once while I traverse the three difficult feet for a napkin or hot sauce. Once we make it through the circus of a dinner, I pull out the computer, check our latitude and longitude, and scan the propagation chart for the frequency with the strongest signal for downloading emails and weather charts, then turn on the Sailmail modem that connects to my single sideband radio. I’m pleased as it buzzes and clicks and successfully downloads the messages, but then cringe reading Dad’s email aloud:

  “Ladies. I have some bad news. The swells are going to get bigger and steeper over the next five days. Hunker down and heave to if you have to. There’s an unusually large storm off northern Peru that is sending wind and swell your way. You shouldn’t see anything over thirty-five knots or twenty feet. Love you both so much. You can do this. Love, Dad.”

  We look at each other bleakly. “Five days?” Mom asks. After studying my other weather sources, I solemnly confirm.

  “I’m going up to check our course, and do some sail adjusting,” I tell her.

  “You are not going out there!” Mom replies matter-of-factly.

  I try to hold back my smirk. Our captain-crew and mother-daughter roles are confusing. We both laugh. I hug her and assure her I will be okay. She crawls into her bunk in the forepeak for the evening, and I hear her mumble something about “wishing she could be airlifted out” and that “this is where they should have sent Paris Hilton for punishment.” Ha!

  The night is long and mostly sleepless for me. Every time the white-water crests of the waves crash and roll along Swell’s flanks, she careens down a blue-water wave face and spins into a tail slide, tossing our bodies one way and then the other as the hull retaliates. Cups clang, teak joints whine, halyards slap, cargo groans, and the sea roars loudly past my head, reminding me that less than an inch of fiberglass separates us from all of that wild water.

  Day nine finds us more resigned to “living in a washing machine,” as Mom calls it. Sarcasm becomes sporadic relief from the constant, inescapable bucking and lurching. The swells remain tightly packed and confused, with fingers of the thirty-knot winds running wrinkles up their massive faces. Every step is a gamble, as the floor constantly falls and twists beneath our feet. Snacks become meals and our already basic hygiene further slackens. When just going to pee is like a bad trip through a fun house, showering and tooth-brushing lose their normal priority.

  That afternoon I stand on the aft deck watching the swells with frustration, my body braced between the solar array and the backstay. Some swells come at us from the south and wedge into intimidating peaks behind the stern. Others sneak across from the north, sending Swell bucking to port and complicating the determined lines of westbound water. My limbs go numb and I lose my breath when it appears the next wave will break right over us. I grip the backstay tighter as the stern rises and Swell seesaws as the water mountain moves underneath us. I plead with the sea to calm down as the next lurking giant approaches—please, for Mom!—but its face is twisted, scattered, and unavailable for discussion.

  Like lost tourists on a busy New York City sidewalk, we do our best to go unnoticed, maintain the flow, and stay out of the way of that powerful flood of indifference. Mom complains little but refuses to come out of the cabin—the “roiling sea” is just too frightening. She spends most of her time on the starboard half-berth in the main cabin, bracing her legs against the nav table, brow furrowed and eyes locked on the pages of the ironically named Carefree Crossword Puzzles book. The woman on the cover is wearing a white one-piece, sprawled across a lounge chair at the beach under a white umbrella. I want to be her.

  “What large diving bird has only four letters?” Mom asks as the boat careens into a trough. I’m totally impressed that she can focus on all those little letters; the mere thought makes me nauseous. I’m not much help with the crossword puzzles, as I reel between frustration, seasickness, fear, and thinking about the Spaniard. I haven’t heard from him for days. The hours bounce on like a bad dream we can’t wake up from, and I’m forced to let go of my vision of our dreamy mother-daughter cruise.

  On the morning of day thirteen, the aquatic carnival ride calms slightly. I alter our course back to the rhumb line, then attempt to get the wind vane self-steering pilot working. The electric autopilot continues to steer like a champ, but I fear burning it out by running it all these days without a break. The wind vane—if I could figure out how to use it—is made expressly for long passages like this and operates solely with the push of the wind. I’ve read the manual a dozen times, and go slowly through each step, but every time I set its steering pin, Swell rounds up to port. I give up and steer by hand for a while, enjoying surfing her down the open ocean peaks. When I finally turn the autopilot back on, I pay out the fishing line for the first time since the swell spiked, and lie back on a cushion. Gaspar appears on the inside of my eyelids. As I doze off we are diving through underwater caves holding hands.

  “ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz!” Fish on! I reel in a lovely bigeye tuna, then clean and fillet the gorgeous red steaks.

  That afternoon, I’m back in dreamland when something strange happens: stillness. My eyes flash open in a panic from a nightmare that we’ve run aground. I jump up to find we are moving along at seven and a half knots with full sails. The demon swells are gone!

  “It feels like we’re floating on a cloud!” I shriek.

  “It’s the strangest sensation!” Mom calls from below, and now, for the first time in five days, she comes up into the cockpit. We embrace at the glorious respite. Relief. Appreciation. Hope. Mom sips on her precious last beer, and I launch eagerly into a three-pan seared tuna dinner as Swell glides smoothly past the 1,500-nautical-miles-to-go mark. Halfway there.

  Sea Spell

  Once the awful swells have passed, the days begin to blur behind the distorted lens of sea travel. After two straight weeks at sea (three times as long as I’ve ever gone before), the sensation of timelessness is unlike any I have ever known. This expanse of blue seems infinite, and it feels as if time has no beginning or end. Landfall is still far away, meaning there’s no hurry to do anything, and no hour of the day holds any particular significance over another—especially since I’ve stopped trying to contact Gaspar on the radio. Mom and I just sleep when we f
eel tired, eat when hungry, and move when the body demands.

  The trade winds blow with intense purpose—nothing like the manic swirls of convection in Central American waters. In every direction our view is an endlessly dynamic canvas of blues and whites. All day long, innumerable indigo windswell peaks, driven by the force of the trades, push west across the sea surface. Whitewater toppling from their crests looks like the wind’s shoes sprinting west. Plump white tufts of clouds trot through the unbounded azure overhead. On and on and on. All of us headed west.

  The blue-water scene is so hypnotizing that my usual high-speed demeanor is lulled into a persistent lethargy. Without a reef to hit for a thousand miles in any direction and winds so reliable that the sails rarely fuss for attention, there isn’t motivation to fight it. I shuffle about in a peculiar haze. One afternoon, I intend to straighten up the cockpit, but instead find myself lying on the heap of cushions with my head partially over the rail, content to watch the purply-blue swirls of our wake radiate outward from the push of Swell’s hull.

  Mom has hit a similar stride. Other than reeling in our next meal when the line squeals and beholding the sun’s colorful traverses of the horizon, we float through the days between conversation, sunbathing, a bit of cooking, and cuddling.

  Looking out over the seamless blue, there is absolutely no indication of our current place in history. I’m reading Melville’s Typee, and over one hundred and fifty years later, his description of this same ocean passage couldn’t more perfectly match our daily observations.

  “Every now and then,” he writes, “a shoal of flying fish, scared from the waters under the bows, would leap into the air and fall like a shower of silver into the sea.” As I look up from the page toward the horizon, the fanatical little water-walkers shoot out all around us, right on cue.

  A day later, I pick up Typee again while lying on the bunk in the main cabin, after finally tiring of watching the food hammock swing back and forth above me. In Melville’s next passage, he describes a “blatant languid spell” that cast a sort of “disinclination to do anything” over him and the crew during their twenty days through the trades. “Everyone seems to be under the influence of some narcotic,” he continues. “Reading was out of the question: take a book in your hand and you were asleep in an instant.” That’s as far as I get before my eyelids fall like little anchors and Typee spreads across my forehead to block out the daylight.

  Vision in the Clouds

  On day fourteen the full moon arrives. We watch her glorious golden roundness rise from the sea behind us as we savor cabbage salad, spaghetti, and the sunset. After dinner, Mom washes the dishes while I chart our position and make notes in the logbook. I kiss her good night as she heads for her bunk in the forward cabin, then grab my headphones and iPod, slip into my harness, and head out on deck to be with the moon.

  As I sit leaning back on the mast, the night scene takes my breath away. The tall, puffy cumulus clouds look like statues in an evening sky gallery—spotlighted by soft, silver moonlight. The sea is dressed for the occasion in stunning black sequins. The infinite sparkling moonbeams make it difficult to take my eyes off her. I’m underdressed in my underwear and inside-out T-shirt, so I let my hair down to feel a bit more elegant. The seascape before me is as clear as day, but without the harsh rays of the sun I can just keep staring. I turn on my star-gazing playlist and sway with Swell’s rhythmic downwind gallop. I haven’t heard from Gaspar in more than a week and have been troubled by his silence. Tonight I don’t want to think about him. The surrounding scene feels sacred, like visual poetry. I want to be present.

  Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata plays into my headphones. There’s glory all around me, and yet that damn Spaniard keeps creeping into my head. I feel so empty not having any news. I want to mentally swim in these glittering moonbeams, I want to give all my attention to Mom and Swell on this passage, but I constantly wonder where he is and why he hasn’t been in touch. Warm water wells in my eyes and I close my lids to push the tears out. There’s so much to be happy about, but I feel a chronic anxiousness. Am I enough for him? Maybe I’m not pretty enough. Maybe if I had bigger breasts or girlier clothes he would have written. I wipe my cheeks, take a deep breath, and look out over the mercury-coated sea.

  Floating above I notice something extraordinary. I blink and rub my eyes, but it’s still there: The perfect figure of a woman sprawls across the sky in the clouds. This isn’t just the kind of cloud form where it looks like a rabbit for a moment and then quickly morphs into normal clouds again. This is different. She is perfect. Exquisite from her flowing hair, to her round chin to her petite ankles. Lying on her back with her arms folded behind her head, she stares peacefully up at the entire universe. Her naked body is as anatomically correct as if Michelangelo himself had sculpted her.

  I shake my head and stand up. But she’s still there, floating over me as deliberately and undeniably as the moon. She smiles casually toward the heavens, bathing in the decadent moonlight. Am I really seeing a woman’s flawless form in the clouds? Will she mutate into a hamster or a bulldozer in a few more seconds? Will she leave as soon as I move to wake Mom?

  I’m motionless ... I hardly breathe ... but she doesn’t go away. Minutes pass, then all at once, I understand why she is there. A clear notion emerges into the forefront of my thoughts.

  “You are more than enough. You are divine—as beautiful and grand and limitless as I. There is nothing to worry about. Be present. Be patient. Treasure this precious time with your mother for healing and growing.”

  Emotion washes over me, and more hot, silent tears flow down my cheeks. As a tomboy growing up in a culture that values women mostly for their physical appearance, I have never felt beautiful enough or comfortable with my unique femininity. In fact, I associate femininity with weakness, so I have fostered only the traditionally masculine aspects in myself—the ones that make me a good surfer, a capable captain, a problem-solver and go-getter. But I long to feel more balanced in my feminine skin. To be softer and more accepting of others and myself. To stop beating myself up for not looking like the women in beauty magazines. The cloud goddess has reassured me that it’s possible and that there is much more going on here on Earth than I understand. Am I somehow truly a divine part of it? All I can think to tell her is, “Thank you.” I repeat it a few times under my breath as she finally dissolves into the other clouds. Then run to grab my journal and sketch her form so that tomorrow I won’t wake and wonder if I had only dreamed her.

  Blue-Water Bonding

  On day seventeen we are thrilled to see the miles-to-go number on the GPS drop below 500. I write in the logbook, “This endless river of blue is simply incomprehensible. We cannot imagine finding a speck of land among it. We’re down to canned food and sporadically blurt out food cravings just for the mouthwatering torture of it—rosemary mashed potatoes, freshly picked blueberries, handfuls of arugula, chocolate mousse, cheesecake! I can hardly stomach another stale Ritz cracker or canned green bean. But on the bright side, we’ve had a lot of time to talk.”

  I’ve learned more about Mom in the last week than in all my years before. Born only thirteen months after her sister, she was “likely an accident,” Mom says. She came into the world fighting for life as a tiny two-pound preemie and spent her first five weeks in an incubator at a hospital in downtown Los Angeles. Her alcoholic father usually waited in the car when he brought her mother, Myra, from Gardena for visits. Twelve years later, Myra divorced him, and moved Mom and her sister and older half-brother into a small apartment in Downey.

  Myra had come to California alone in her mid-twenties. One of nine children raised on a small subsistence farm in Virginia, she stopped going to school after the fifth grade, for lack of transportation. When she tired of living on a riverbank with a boyfriend, fishing and shooting rabbits, she headed west with dreams of a new beginning. Working in local convenience stores, she did everything in her means to feed, clothe, and educate her children, but of
fering emotional support eluded her, as it was something she herself never had. In great contrast to my privileged childhood, Myra’s limited income and work schedule made extracurricular activities, holidays, travel, and extravagances rare, and Mom was never encouraged to dream or explore her interests. Her father died of a heart attack when she was only sixteen.

  Mom met my father in junior high. He fell in love with her mischievous, fun-loving spirit and wooed her through high school on dates to drive-in movies and bay cruises in Fleety, his fourteen-foot day-sailer. Although they attended separate colleges, Dad couldn’t let her go. They were married at twenty-one and moved to San Diego, where Dad started law school. His first law practice was successful, and they bought a barely habitable structure on a lot with an ocean view. They rebuilt the old heroin den into a lovely cedar-sided beach home, and seven years after their wedding, my brother, James, arrived. My sister and I came two and seven years later.

  Mom and Dad plunged joyfully into parenthood, but their own emotional needs often went unmet. Neither having been raised by parents in a loving relationship, they didn’t quite know how to nourish each other emotionally. Even when money was no longer an issue, and they were settled in a beautiful ranch home on ten acres a few miles inland from the beach, they still couldn’t seem to connect deeply. Dad turned to alcohol; Mom was medically labeled with “depression.” Dad soon put law aside for real estate, but when his investments suddenly evaporated, they decided to take the family on a six-month sailing trip to Mexico. Afterward, Dad was offered an entrepreneurial position developing cancer centers. After losing both his father and Mom’s mother to cancer, this new work offered significant meaning. He started flying all over the country, often leaving Mom on her own to take care of us kids.

  For the first time I see Mom not just as a parent, but as a friend and a human with an entirely different story than my own—and I’m surprised to learn that her tender, sensitive soul is, in fact, so much like mine. I’ve always seen our relationship from a child’s one-sided perspective. I’m sad, realizing that she had never lived her own dreams—nor was she ever encouraged to dream at all—before dedicating herself to motherhood.