Swell

by Liz Clark

  “You and your generation must shape the world you want to live in,” Barry replies. “It takes courage and creativity to think outside of society’s box, but most of the changes I’ve seen in my eighty-three years have happened because of people who persisted toward a dream or a belief about what is ‘right.’ The Environmental Studies Program is a good example. When the oil platform blew up off the Santa Barbara coast in January of 1969, crude oil spilled into the channel and covered beaches. Students complained that their education was not equipping them for this kind of problem. I met with a group of 21 faculty to discuss the possibility of promoting some form of environmental education at UCSB. By the fall of 1970, the ES program had been started. Our first graduating class had only 12 students, but today there are more than 5,000 alumni. Each graduate becomes an active part of our society’s environmental awakening. Just look at you. Keep going, dear. People will take notice. Maybe a few more dreams will be chased because of you.”

  His reply makes me feel a little better; I hadn’t thought about it like this. Still, despite Barry’s encouragement and how backwards the system seems, I have to face the fact that my savings are running low. Plus, if I am to get across the Pacific this season like all the other cruisers, I need to get moving. But the film crew arrives tomorrow, plus my brother is getting married in a few weeks—my father has proposed to fly me home from Tahiti on a frequent flyer ticket. Following the filming rendezvous, I must find a safe place to leave Swell.

  10,909

  Nautical Miles Traveled

  Wind

  in

  My Hair

  Change of Course

  My three weeks in San Diego passed in a flash. It was wonderful to be home for James’s wedding, but between errands, visits with friends, and shopping lists, I was a human pinball. I’m exhausted, lying here restless in my bunk in the predawn hours, trying to decide what to do next. Swell gently pulls against her docklines at the marina in Tahiti, as if she’s ready to get back out to sea.

  With cyclone season approaching, I feel the pressure to leave right away if I’m going to make it to New Zealand—the safest, most common place cruisers choose to spend the South Pacific storm season. It would be about 3,000 nautical miles of sailing with only a couple quick stops. Although I’d love to stick around, cyclones do hit French Polynesia and my current visa is only for one month. I’m also worried that the community I’m building through my blog and magazine articles will lose interest if I don’t keep moving to ever-new destinations. I hesitate to jeopardize the trickle of income they provide. Despite my fatigue, heading west seems like the best option.

  While I lie there mulling over the necessary voyage preparation to leave for New Zealand, it occurs to me that I am shaping my trip around assumptions of what I think my supporters back home want me to do. They don’t know how busy I constantly am to keep up with the endless maintenance, passage prep, checking the weather, emails, crew scheduling, social invites from other cruisers, and writing updates, on top of daily chores and feeding myself.

  What do I want to do? I suddenly ask myself, staring up at the light blue ceiling where the dawn light illuminates the photo of my family and a sticker of Mother Mary above my bunk. My mind flashes to that leisurely week in the outer islands after Ryan and Taylor had left.

  I want to slow down.

  I want the freedom to move at a more natural pace. I want time to reflect and work on myself. I want more nature and solitude. I want to live by the moon. No one is requiring me to hurry across the Pacific in one season; I’ve been putting that pressure on myself because it’s what all the other cruisers I’ve met are doing. What about going north?

  A surge of excitement flushes through me. I throw back my sheet, leap from my bunk, and pull down the roll of charts from the bungeed stack above the nav station. While back in San Diego, I’d come across the National Geographic Magazine I’d saved since my youth, containing an article about Robin Lee Graham’s sailing adventure aboard Dove. I scan the chart, and there it is—the little string of islands in the Republic of Kiribati he had visited—1,500 miles to the north, and out of the cyclone danger zone. It’s almost perpendicular to the trades from here, so if I choose a good weather window, I should be able to make it back and explore more of this area after cyclone season.

  A young sailor from a neighboring boat has a car and agrees to help me run errands to provision for the trip north.

  “There’s nothing but palm trees up there,” he warns. “I’d get more rice.”

  His words excite me even more. I pile the cart high with cans and dry goods, and I even spring for a bike, knowing I’ll have time to explore during the five months of cyclone season. The next day he helps me change my engine’s water pump impeller and tighten the spring on my shaft packing system. I buzz through my checklist with adventure on my mind—I take on fuel, top off my water tanks, look over my ropes and rig, and head to downtown Papeete to check out of the country with customs and immigration.

  And then, on my last evening tied to the dock, I receive an email from the Spaniard. “I already tired of Central America. Is too many tourists and water very polluted. Te echo de menos mucho (I miss you dearly) y el Pacifico too. I’m coming back for find you. I arrive in Marquesas in one month. Es possible for you leave Swell in a marina in Tahiti and fly up to meet me? We can enjoy Marquesas together, then sail down to pick up Swellito. Te quiero, Gaspy.”

  I blink. I blink again. I reread it. I stare in disbelief at the words in front of me. I shoot up from the table and dance around the cabin. My true love is heading my way!

  Feels Like Freedom

  I sail Swell out of the harbor the next morning with no hurry, no guests on the way, and a variety of nearby destinations to choose from. I wrote the Spaniard right back with my plan to head north for cyclone season, and explained that I didn’t have the money to fly up to meet him and pay the dock fees for Swell. “How about we meet in the middle?” I proposed. He agreed that in five weeks’ time, we’d meet at a small island in between Tahiti and the Marquesas, and then take on the passage to Kiribati with our boats side by side.

  I have plenty of time to make my way to where we’ll rendezvous. It feels foreign not to have a course already plotted as I slip out of the pass, but I tell myself that this is exactly the luxury I’ve desired. Instead of letting a schedule or obligation plot my course, I will let the wind, weather, and swell direction choose my next ports of call.

  As I move off the island and scrutinize the angle of the wind, a spotted ray leaps repeatedly from the sea off my port bow, precisely in the direction that seems to be the best heading. I take this as an affirmation, and Swell lurches in acceleration as I push out the boom and ease the jib into the plump trim of a broad reach. I set the steering vane, turn up the volume on my new French audio lessons, and lie back like a kid in a lazy river to enjoy where the elements take me.

  Over the weeks to come, I find a rhythm with the swells and wind. When I find an anchorage near a wave, the wind happens to drop off. And as the swell dwindles, the wind fills in and carries me onward. Is it just lucky timing, or the result of tuning into the rhythms of nature? In either case, with all the conflicting and uncontrollable factors in sailing to surf, each opportunity to ride waves must be seized!

  When the anchor is down, I keep things simple: I paddle to the breaks instead of launching my dinghy, eat minimally, and spend mornings playing in the waves. I return to Swell for a midday hiatus, sunscreen-caked and red-eyed. Pulling a ripe avocado from the cooler, I slice it in half, drizzle it with hot sauce, then splay across the cabin floor where the breeze from the forward hatch cools my sunburnt body, savoring each spoonful. After napping or writing, I often paddle back out for an evening session, then use candles and headlamps when I return to Swell so I don’t have to run the generator to charge the batteries. I sleep early, and wake up before the sun to see if there’s surf again. Despite my burning shoulders, anything but full attention to the waves feels sacr
ilegious. Such is life dedicated to a sport as ephemeral as surfing!

  When the forecast predicts a drop in the trades, I decide to take advantage of it to move more easily east. At sea again, the wind in my hair feels like freedom. Between sail adjustments, I sing and dance topless in the sunshine. Is it okay to be this happy all by myself?

  I hadn’t always been so excited to be alone. In fact, I used to be terrified of it. Before my voyage, I would panic at the thought of spending a Saturday night by myself. I had abundant friends, boyfriends, and overlapping schedules—always making more plans than I could keep. I think I was avoiding being alone—maybe so I wouldn’t have to face the parts of myself I didn’t like?

  Luckily, most things are scarier when you’re thinking about them than when you’re actually doing them, and my fears about being alone proved unfounded. Now that I’ve had some extended stretches of solitude aboard Swell, it’s a relief to know that I actually enjoy my own company.

  Since my choices affect only me, I’m learning more about what I like, what I want, and how I thrive. I don’t have to explain myself. The days ebb and flow with the rhythms of my body and the environment around me. I move between tasks and basic human needs in a spontaneous, instinctual manner. The simplicity of it delights me. I can pee right off the leeward side, take a bite out of the block of cheese for dinner, or devise an extravagant new recipe that only I will suffer through if it’s a failure. I can be totally immersed in a project and then drop down suddenly for a ten-minute siesta. In fact, I find myself indulging in intermittent catnaps, as if I’m catching up on years of missed sleep. When the faintest hint of fatigue tugs at me, I curl up and shut my eyes—sometimes in the cockpit or on the cabin floor with a damp towel or a week’s-worn T-shirt as a pillow.

  Out here, there is no one to compare myself with—there’s not even a full-length mirror to critique my appearance. I let my hair go wild. I laugh out loud, and break into dance without a second thought. I can fester in my filth or spend half an hour massaging shampoo into my scalp. I wear any odd ensemble from the clothing bin—or nothing at all. Some granny panties that Mom gave me have become my go-to sailing uniform. I can scream, cry, and sing all in one breath with no one to judge me. I want everyone to feel this deep liberation.

  Being alone allows me to tune in to signs, nuances, and feelings. I refocus on buena manifestación, being present, rooting out my negative thoughts, more flowing, and less forcing. I change my mind and my destination as often as I want. If that little voice inside me—the one I have always been so good at ignoring—says, “Don’t go today,” departure plans are pushed back without another thought. I begin to seek a relationship with that voice, those intuitive moments, and I notice positive outcomes each time I go within, listen, and act from my gut. There must be something to this.

  Without anyone to remind me of my humanness, I float in the clouds, dissolve into the wind-ripples, and dance with the glittering moonbeams illuminating the dark sea crests. I’m free to fall through the sky with the shooting stars and raindrops. I let go of limits I’ve placed on myself for the sake of how other people might judge me, and try to recognize my own self-judgments too. I feel ready to be me, whatever the consequences.

  “Maybe I’m losing it,” I say to the circling frigate bird, “but I don’t care. This feels so right!”

  Pēni Te Fare

  Daydreaming, I follow my furry new friend on a morning walk along the edge of the reef. Rocky, a sweet, lanky local dog, yips and wags his tail, madly bounding after fish in the tide pools while I pick shells, cartwheel, gaze at sea life, suck on urchins, and admire knotted driftwood along the mix of beach and reef. When the midmorning sun grows too strong, we head back across the islet toward the bush where I stashed my longboard early this morning. I sidestep a pile of coconut husks as we come around the front of a home, and then nearly trip over the foot of a wooden ladder that blends into the sand below.

  “Whoa!” I exclaim as I catch my balance. I look up to see the hulking figure of an old white-haired Polynesian man teetering at the top of a rickety handmade ladder, spackling spatula in hand. He’s filling the cracks between the new plywood sheets on his lagoon-front dwelling. His great round belly up there looks about as steady as a bowling ball balancing on a toothpick.

  “‘Iaorana!” The Tahitian greeting sails from his mouth.

  “‘Iaorana!” I reply.

  Despite the obvious strength that remains in the man’s body, the great mass of his chest leaning way out while he works with both of his hands concerns me. I cringe as each gust of wind makes his tuft of white hair lean farther and farther over, threatening to upset his fine balance. To make matters worse, I notice he has only six toes between his two feet.

  To my great relief, he comes down, and introduces himself as Tautu. He walks over to a faucet for a drink of water, and offers me a glass. I’m parched from the morning’s excursion, so I gladly accept and follow him into the overhanging shade of his house. After a bit of verbal floundering, I understand that he is getting ready to paint the house—peni te in Tahitian. He has spent all of his seventy-some years living on the island, the last ten alone. His wife had passed fifteen years ago, and his only son had moved away to find work.

  I spontaneously offer to help. I never want to see him on that ladder again! A great smile spreads across his face. We finish up the spackling, and make a plan to meet at 7:30 am tomorrow to start painting.

  I wake the next morning to clear skies and paddle my longboard ashore. First, Tautu and I roll two empty fuel drums over and set them on end, then place two long two-by-six-inch boards atop them for scaffolding. I work on the upper walls, while he covers the lower. Despite the towering language barrier between us, his calm, wise presence reminds me of being with Barry. The thick white paint goes on sticky by midmorning, and we work our way around the house, following the shade. Rocky chases crabs nearby.

  Around 11 am, Tautu lumbers down to a platform in the lagoon shallows where his neighbor leaves him a daily supply of fish. He cleans and scales five or six small reef fish, then walks back behind the house, where a large iron spike protrudes from the ground. He thrusts a brown coconut onto the metal spike, tearing off the dried husk circularly until only the hard, round inner shell remains. He then taps around its circumference with the dull side of a large kitchen knife, and the nut magically falls open into two perfect halves. Next, he pulls out a wooden board with a metal grater attached and places it on the step of his house. Sitting down on the wooden end, he scrapes both halves rhythmically until all the coconut meat is grated into the bowl between his feet.

  I watch curiously, continuing to roll the walls with white paint, carefully covering up small patches Tautu had missed. Soon after, he calls out something that I take to mean, “Lunch is ready!”

  Following him into the house, I wash my hands while he sets an overflowing pot of white rice on the table in the kitchen next to a glass bowl of carefully sliced raw fish and onions. He then fills a square of white tea cloth with a couple handfuls of the freshly grated coconut meat, and squeezes it out over the fish. The thick white milk dribbles down his hands and into the bowl. With a few squeezes of lime, lunch is served.

  Sitting at the table across from Tautu, I think back to my many lunches with Barry, and days spent helping around his house—hauling firewood, taking the trash bins in and out, or climbing up to fix something difficult to reach. Young and old need each other. I want to live in a world where there is time to help others, where the elderly are not put away in nursing homes. Barry was in good spirits when I called a couple weeks ago. He’d been out sailing aboard a friend’s boat, and even took an icy dip in the sea, one of his favorite pastimes. My plan to go north excited him; his encouragement continues to be unfailing.

  Three days later, the final touches to the second coat of paint make the house gleam like an overly whitened smile. As he does every evening, Tautu sends me home with more fish than I can eat for dinner. I tie them togethe
r and place them on the nose of my longboard. A curious pack of small black-tip reef sharks follows me home. I drop them a fish or two once I’m safely onboard.

  Rotten Reunion

  I haven’t heard from the Spaniard in a month, and I’m beginning to worry that something happened to him. I’m here where we’d planned to meet, but there isn’t another boat in sight. Nearly every day, I connect to the Sailmail station via the radio and download my emails. Before this stretch of silence, he was emailing constantly. Then all at once, no news?

  Finally one stormy morning, his name pops up in my inbox. I open and read, “Lissy, I am arriving in four or five days more.” Yay! But wait, there’s more ... “I need to tell you that I invite Elena to meet me since you couldn’t come and we are sailing together for three weeks—is the girl from Easter Island I told you about when we meet in Galápagos. I hope you not be angry. We both get ciguatera very bad and very sick most of the time. She return home by plane yesterday. I decide to pass another time with her to be sure when I come to see you. Hasta pronto. Te quiero. Gaspy.”

  My heart hits the cabin sole. How could he? Why didn’t he tell me sooner? The wind howls through the rig and driving rain beats down on the decks. I’m suddenly terribly lonely. How could he leave me wondering for weeks, while he’s been off on a romantic sail with someone else? For the next few days I mourn the future I’d been anticipating together. Being alone no longer feels peaceful. I mope around Swell, swinging between sadness and anger.

  I must make a choice. I can leave quickly, or stay here and face him. I don’t feel good about seeing him in my fragile emotional state. I’m hurt and jealous, and I know I won’t be able to let it go right away. This is no way to start our dream life. My gut screams “Run!” But my stupid heart wants so badly to feel his love once more. I slowly prep the boat for departure, but all the negative emotion has left me weak. I’m cautious because I know that in order to go to sea, I have to be at my best.