It is Saturday morning and we are
packing up to leave. We have been anchored in a bay in the Las Palmas harbour,
Gran Canaria, Canary Isles for a week and this morning we are going to pull up
our anchor and head to the Cape Verde Isles a trip which will take about a week
or ten days. It has been calm for
several days but today the wind is howling which makes HS happy and me less so.
With a certain amount of trepidation I make sure all my belongings are stowed
safely where they won’t get thrown onto the floor as the boat is tossed about
at sea. I put on clean nickers, give my teeth a good floss, shave my pits, and
realize that I didn’t put on my seasickness patch last night. (You’re supposed
to do that a day ahead of time so the medication starts seeping into your body.
I’d better drink lots of water and get my ‘sickypoo’ pot out ready for when I
start vomiting.) I clean up the inside of the boat putting away tools and other
random things that have been left out. I walk outside and take down our drying
line which has been strung between the stays, collect up the bag of clothes
pins, look for any other loose items that need stowing.
HS, I have to grant, is good at
weather. He chose today as a day to leave quite a long time ago based on the
fact that he thought the wind would come today, and come today it has. He is
cooking up a Stuemer Special breakfast, a hash of onions, potatoes, bacon and
eggs all mixed together. It is quite delicious. (I hope it will be as good
coming back up!) I meanwhile, having done the first tidy up of the boat, am
listening to the wind howling in the halyards and starting to worry. It still
seems a bit scary to me, the thought of heading out on the ocean on this wee
tiny boat with only our wits to keep us safe.
After breakfast we do another tidy
up, lash the TV down, put every last thing away, make sure all the cupboards
and drawers are shut – they have sort of babylock type fasteners so they don’t
fly open at sea – and make sure the port holes are closed and securely
fastened. We pull up the dingy, our little boat which we have been using to get
back and forth to land, and lash it on the front deck of our sailboat, start up
the motor, pull up the anchor, drive over to the gas dock to fill up with fuel
and water, and then, akkk, head out to sea.
Normally we would pull up the sails
before leaving the protection of the harbour but today it is very busy. The
harbour is huge. It ‘harbours’ three marinas with up to 300 boats each, a large
anchorage for the boats that don’t fit into the marinas, a navy base with its
various ships, a dock for police and coast guard and search and rescue boats, a
cruise ship dock with up to 3 large cruise ships in port at any time, a wall
with thousands of containers on it and cranes for loading and unloading up to 2
huge container ships at any time, enough space for two other ships, such as oil
super tankers, to come in and be re-fueled, two oil rigs, various bouys marking
off different areas, and other assorted boat stuff. You would think that a
harbour this big would be more than adequately large enough for us to put up
sail in, but today, as well as all the above the junior sailing club is out
en-mass for its weekly lessons. There are, to my best count, 24 windsurfers
having beginner lessons and falling into the water all over the place, 48
lazers each with a teen, 48 lazer2s each with two pre-teens, and 48 optis each
with a little kid, plus all the instructors zipping about in inflatable zodiac
type boats… and these almost 200 extra boats take up most of the available open
space. We motor out of the harbour into the ocean proper, where there are only
about a dozen big ships anchored, before putting up sail, the advantage to this
is that there is a lot more space, like 3000 miles, the disadvantage is that
the waves and swell are huge. So, I stand up on the front of the boat exposed
to the elements, as she faces into the wind, lifting and crashing, to pull up
the main, but she doesn’t go all the way up, something is wrong. HS comes up
front to help me and we both look up, is the halyard twisted round a mast
light, are the batons caught in the lazy jacks, it all seems good. After a
while HS diagnoses the problem, the second reefing line is tangled, sorts it
out, and I continue. It takes a while to do all this by which time I have been
covered in salt spray. I love it.
.
I have decided to do this leg, and,
therefore, to keep a positive attitude. I had been infected, more than just a
bit, by Nick’s negative assessment of HS, and, though I agree with it
completely, I feel my choices were to leave or to stay and suck it up. I have
decided to stay and suck it up so I tell HS how happy I am to be here, I
compliment him on his good weather sense, and I vow to myself to do my shifts
as competently as possible without complaint. Since there are only two of us on
board for this leg I have 2 six hour watches 2:30 – 8:30 am and pm. I decide,
actively, to follow that old adage and change what I can and accept what I can’t,
to take up a ‘don’t worry, be happy’ attitude, and to make sure that there is
at least a little laughter in our lives every day.
We sail all day alongside the
island we have just left and I get another great view of the huge crater I had
visited by bus. I try to take a photo but feel it is really a ‘you have to be
there’ type of situation. I consider my impulsivity and how it has affected my
life. I jumped off the bus at the top of the ridge just to get a photo, I
jumped onto this sailboat for a four-month sail without doing any real research
about what I would be getting into, some might say that I similarly jumped into
my marriage. I am supposed to be here planning what to do next. Unfortunately I
don’t seem to be in the mood to plan. Working to a deadline is one of my great
strengths – procrastination some might call it – and I can’t put my finger on
the deadline for my current project, figuring out what to do with the rest of
my life. Part of my problem is also that I actively like the random pot-luck
outcomes that come from not making decisions. Alexander and I did several last
minute panic vacations recently and I usually just booked whatever was cheapest
(Hey, we’re going to Jamaica tomorrow!) after which I would stop by the library
to pick up a guide book and decide what to do when we got there. Fine by me. On
this trip HS has decided which islands we are going to visit and which ones we
will pass by. I haven’t seen any of them before, understand that we don’t have
time to see them all, and am happy to go and explore the ones that he has
chosen. Fine by me. I feel it ought not be that way, I ought to want more
control over what I do, where and with whom, I go on vacation. Where and with
whom I live my life when not on vacation. Maybe part of the problem is that I
am lazy. I don’t know. (AH, I do have a deadline, just realized, July 31, the
date I am getting kicked out of the house! Good, now planning should be easier!
Ha!),I conclude that perhaps for the little things, like jumping off a bus to
see the view, impulsivity is just fine, but that for bigger decisions, like who
you are going to have as a significant other, if anyone, for the rest of your
life, a little serious thought wouldn’t go astray.
My first night shift is amazing. It
starts off very slowly. The wind has fallen to 3 knots, which is almost
nothing, so when I get up at 2:30 am HS has taken down the sails and is
motoring. He says that if the wind comes up to 10 knots I can put the sails
back up or come and get him. We both assume I will not put sails up by myself
in the dark. However, as we motor along, and I sit outside watching the phosphorescence
in our wake and the shooting stars in the night sky, I think, ‘Why not?’. I
expect the wind to rise just before the sun does so I have 3 hours to review
the steps in my head and gird my loins. Sure enough, by 6 in the morning, when
the sky is still dark and filled with stars but there is the faintest glimmer
of lightness on the horizon promising that the sun will be up in an hour, the
wind has risen to a steady 10 knots. I do it. I put up the sails, put the
engine into neutral for five minutes to check how we are doing, and then turn
it off. I sit outside in the cockpit as the sun rises and admire “my sails”
with such joy and pride you’d think I’d given birth to them or something.
‘I want to do as much sail handling
as possible,’ I’d told HS before we left and I guess I meant it. He had given
me a funny little look at the time and sail, ‘You’ve already done more sailing
that my wife did.’ ‘What,’ I ask, ‘do you mean by that? She sailed round the
world with you.’ ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘but she didn’t once put up the main. She
didn’t ever adjust a sail. Not even the jib.’ ‘But,’ I protest, ‘wasn’t she on
shift 12 hours a day for hundreds and hundreds of days.’ ‘It wouldn’t have
occurred to her,’ he says, ‘to have touched a sheet.’ It’s all very odd. They
lived the dream, bought a boat, took their kids, sailed the world for years…
Yet HS doesn’t like sailing and she had nothing-what-so-ever to do with the
sailing? Weird. I don’t get it at all.
My second night shift is shitty. We
had, at one point during the day, put up the spinnaker pole to hold the genoa
out so we could go wing on wing and the sails are still set in this
configuration. The wind however has shifted to the beam and the genoa now has
wind blowing against the front of it which is actually breaking us, slowing us
down. Really we need to change the sail configuration completely, take down the
pole, move the genoa across to the other side, pull in the main but this is
still too big a job for me to do on my own even during the day to say nothing
of at night and I am perfectly sure HS does not want to be woken to do this at
night either, so, I sit, watching these incorrectly set sails, gritting my
teeth, waiting for my shift to be over, being an obedient crew, doing what I
honestly believe it is he wants me to do which is completely ignore the situation.
I respect HS immensely for having
had the balls to live the dream, even moreso now I have seen his sailing style,
but I am still amazed. I had expected to respect him as a sailor, if nothing
else, and repeatedly find myself shocked that I cannot do this at all. In the
fall of 2013 he is leaving Rio and sailing down south around the tip of South
America then cutting across the Pacific and going to China. I had assumed I
would be out of work next year and would beg him to be allowed to continue on
as crew. At the moment I can’t see that happening. I will enjoy this
experience, to its utmost, despite the ups and down (metaphorical, of course,
since we are actually at sea level the whole time!) but likely look for another
boat for next year – though, once again, I guess I am getting ahead of myself!
As we head further south the days
start to blend into one another. It is always beautiful outside. Always. HS
still does his shifts stuck in the nav room but I do mine, both day and night,
out in the cockpit. Each sunrise is a gift, each shooting star a wish. If it is
very quiet I will take my book outside to read while ‘watching’. If there is
anything to photograph I grab my camera and take a picture or two. Since we are
working alternate 6 hour shifts we actually see little of each other because it
is standard procedure when you get off shift to make yourself some sort of
snack and then have a long nap, you turn around and it is your turn to go on
shift again and the other person if off to have a nap themselves. The wind is
low for several days so we put sails up, sail, take them down, motor, then put
them up again. I eat bowls of hot oatmeal with fresh plums for breakfast,
tomato sandwiches for lunch, yoghourt and clementines for snacks, pasta and
stew for supper. We don’t get a lot of exercise on the boat and I fear I am
getting fatter and fatter. The life suits me though. I am happy with my shifts,
love being outside everyday to see both sunrise and sunset, love watching the
dolphins that accompany us by day and the stars overhead at night, love feeling
that we are the ones staying still and that it is the world which is turning
slowly beneath us. I am finding that I am very relaxed and at peace with
myself. Almost ready, I decide, to start making decisions about my future, but,
first, well maybe I need another nap…
