RIO

RIO?

Rio, that huge magical exotic city, land of samba, our final destination... Our guidebook says that the ‘insolent charm of the marvellous city is irresistible’.

Unfortunately at first it all seems very anticlimactic. We sail in under cloudy skies and arrive at our intended marina in the pouring rain. It is full. Instead we end up somewhere which is expensive, does not have a pool or laundry facilities or working internet, and is in a district about which the guide book says, ‘ take a taxi home’. The weather does not improve. It rains with a vengeance for the first few days. I wander about the city but, still spooked still from my experience in Salvador, stop at each corner and do a two second check asking myself, ‘Is it safe?’.

The things I most want to do; take the gondola to the top of Sugarloaf, hike to Chirst the Reedemer, and visit the botanical gardens, I would like to have sun for, or at least grey skies, but certainly not this continuous downpour we have.

I buy an umbrella. It helps with the rain. It helps with an old groin injury that has reappeared. It could even, I tell myself, be used it to fend off an attacker - though to be perfectly honest my real strategy here is to hope any such person becomes so incapacitated with laughter at my pathetic attempts to defend myself that I have time to get away!

The third day in the early afternoon the sun peeks out and I decide to walk along a series of bike trails and beaches to the legendary Bonofogo beach itself. The trails, beautifully landscaped on a wide strip of parkland right beside the ocean, are totally empty, which is sort of eerie. So too is the first beach. I assume the weather has something to do with this. I had expected each beach to be full of people. The infrastructure is certainly there; a line of booths selling water and beach toys stretching off down the top of the beach towards the horizon and dozens of permanent soccer goalposts and beach volleyball nets, but no people. Eventually a young gay Italian couple arrive and I walk most of the way along the beach with them until they stop and get out their towels. On the second set of bike trails I pass by a group of teens working out. A lone kid on a bicycle starts to pedal back and forth past me so I stop and sit beside an old fisherman, the only other person in view, hoping that eventually someone else will come by that I can walk with. No one does. I am in the middle of a city of 10 million, where is everyone? The fisherman speaks only Portuguese but I manage to ask him if it is safe to walk on the bike trails and his answer - which I had sort of guessed by then – is, ‘No!’. After a while he walks me to the nearest road and, disappointed, I flag down a taxi and take it back to the marina.

I have thanked HS profusely for taking me with him across the ocean. Despite our shared experience we have little to say to each other. I am cranky for the weather to change so I can go out and explore the city and it is obvious he has no desire whatsoever to do so. He is, apparently, content merely puttering about the boat. I consider moving into a hostel in the hopes of finding other people to ‘tourist’ with. In case I choose to do so I pre-write in his “cottage book”.

Herbert,

I am honoured to have been allowed to take part in one leg on Northern Magic. I will always remember how willingly you got up to sit with me during the night every time a squall passed by, or a ship, or even just a shadow that spooked me. Thank you for loaning your flippers, for allowing me to use your computer when in port, and for the many fantastic Stuemer Sunday breakfasts.

I hope you make it to China and walk the great wall.

Cheers, Emily.

RIO!

I take the plunge. I pack up my stuff and say goodbye to HS one last time. I check into the ‘Art Hostel’ which is not only filled with art but has as its logo, ‘the art of bringing people together’. Perfect. I choose a dorm room over a single room because my objective, is, after all, to meet people and though I end up with a room full of British teenagers on a GAP year who all take Portuguese lessons in the morning and volunteer in an orphanage in the afternoons they nonetheless manage to inspire me. Each morning over breakfast they ask what my plans are for the day and then later are keen to discuss what they should put on their list of things to do. They are young and vibrant and filled with a joie de vivre that is both fun and contagious. They have read the Rio guidebooks and have suggestions, things I would not have even considered. In the evenings our room is filled with laughter. The weather does not improve much but I take my trusty umbrella and go out and about and see what there is to see. The Rio I find is like Disneyworld, everything is larger than life and everyone is enjoying themselves. Carnival does not start for a week but fever is building; street performers fill the public squares, huge ‘block parties’ materialize as if out of nowhere, and free concerts on the beach are the norm. Even the local kids are out demonstrating their skills juggling or rope-walking. Totally in tourist mode, I tour the city proper, visit parks and markets and museums, climb the hills to marvel at the views and walk the beaches, which, now the sun has more of less come out, are indeed filled with a million people. Police are everywhere, usually four per intersection. There are ‘real’ police and tourist police, military police and members of the municipal guard and they carry, variously, real guns, or stun guns, or merely large batons. I have no shame; if I am out late by myself and the streets are clearing out too fast I ask them to walk me to the subway. It is all good.

Also I eat. On every street corner someone is cooking up and selling something delicious and the fragrant aromas prove irresistible. In one week I manage to gain back the 20 pounds I lost at sea. And it feels firmly put on. The most interesting snacks are sold in the old city, in amongst colonial architecture, by gentlemen dressed in stereo-typical African or far-eastern garb. I hand over money and shrug and am given a hot delicious curried coconut spring roll or a basket of deep fried squid or something so mysterious that even after having devoured it and licked my fingers to the bone I have no idea if it was meat or vegetable. The best deals however are in what I call the nick-nack market where thousands of stalls are selling used cellphones and CD’s and knock off watches and (stolen) cameras. There you can get an ‘Americano’ burger combo for $2.50 that starts with a fresh baguette bun and a huge beef patty and ham and a fried egg and cheese and generous layers of tomato and lettuce and then is topped with pickles and condiments of your choice. It comes with a milkshake, included in the price, in which a large blender is filled half and half with fresh fruit and vanilla ice cream and made for you on the spot. As they hand all this to you you think you will not be able to finish it but somehow you do, and it is so cheap that it hardly seems as if you have even had lunch so when you pass a popcorn stand an hour later you buy a $1 bag, which is large, and you accidently choose the caramel coated option, and then they pour a can of condensed milk over it before handing it to you, which is, of course, another gazillion calories.  For supper the girls and I often go out to one of the many small corner store restaurants where I generally choose something totally indecipherable off the menu. For $5, which includes a generous tip, we each get a meal large enough for three, which usually comes with a salad, a drink, and a pastry for desert. And then, of course, we all go out for beer.

I try not to think of the many many people starving a mere stone’s throw away. I actively choose not to visit one of the many flavelas (the Rio slums that cling insect-like to the steep hills surrounding the main city) though I feel I ought to. Armed guards take you up a back path by motorcycle and then walk down through with you one-on-one explaining the cultural significance of these neighbourhoods and making sure you are not mugged by the omnipresent drug dealers. I have unintentionally seen enough poverty over the last few months that I cannot bear the thought of deliberately rubbernecking through such a desperately destitute area merely to take pictures of others’ misfortune. I feel that, if I were to go, it ought, theoretically, somehow enrich me, give me greater perspective and understanding about my own existence, perhaps through allowing me to see another side of our mutual human condition, but I am too tired to participate intelligently in the exercise.

It is, I note with shock, time to go home. 

Couch Surfing

We stop in Buzious, a lovely little fishing village that has transformed itself into a tourist town without losing its charm, and anchor just offshore. The harbour is busy; fishing boats come and go, water taxis ferry tourists from one beach to another, and cruise ship tenders take passengers back and forth to land. It looks at first glance much more prosperous than many of the places we have been so far in Brazil with well-kept-up houses climbing the hills amongst the palms trees and nary a high rise nor slum in view. The main street that sweeps alongside a long sandy bay is full of upscale shops and restaurants catering to the many tourists, and the hotels are what I think of as European style, merely nice hotels with lush gardens, as opposed to the Caribbean style all-inclusives that try to lock up sections of beach for the exclusive use of their guests. Buzious is spread out on a cape, it has 11 distinct beaches each in its own cove, almost as many neighbourhoods, and wild cacti covered hills separating the different areas.

We are only going to be here one night so I decide to try to make the most of the time and recapture the same type of wonderful experience I had had in Fernando de Norohoia. Consequently I pack a sheet into my backpack with the intention of using the afternoon to explore, taking in some night life, sleeping on the beach, and then doing something different again the next morning before we leave. My plan starts out well; I check out the tourist region of town, stop at an internet café and catch up on missed e-mails, then head out across the cape to a beach on the far side. There I walk the beach, take my requisite photo of some fishermen, these ones sitting on land fixing their nets, hike out to the end of a long isolated point, and end up in a deserted bay surrounded by cliffs that is supposed to have good snorkeling. I sit on the bare gneiss shore, so similar to the rocks of the Canadian Shield, unsure if I have the guts to go swimming here by myself. There could be rip-tides or an undertow that would carry me out to sea. I just don’t know. Is it safe? Before I have decided a family with small kids shows up and the father is looking like he wants to go swimming. I talk to him, in gestures, and despite a lack of a common language we are both obviously thrilled to have a swimming partner. I leave my backpack with his wife and we have a grand swim together. By the time I have walked back to town it is dark and so I know HS will be back on the boat already and would be disinclined to pick me up even if I had any way of contacting him so I wander the tourist area again cheerfully looking for a good place to have lunch and sit enjoying my chosen meal intensely.

Then, unfortunately, it starts to rain, that sort of drizzle that looks like it is settling in for the night. I re-consider my plan to sleep outside and look for a water taxi to take me back to the boat only to discover that they have been shut for hours. I walk back and forth along the main beach a couple of times stopping at the different piers looking in vain for a boat that might be heading out that I could hitch a ride with. At the end of one of the longer piers, fortunately one with a roofed in gazebo at the end, I stop to chat to a couple of Argentinians who are hanging out there. By now it is about 8 pm. The drizzle turns to rain and the rain to a downpour. We stand and chat for a while, all of us reluctant to leave the shelter of the gazebo, as the rain gets heavier and heavier. It is very dark out, lightning is flashing all about, and the rain continues beating down. It doesn’t look like I will be able to find a random boat to take me out to where we are anchored and the prospect of sleeping on a park bench, even a protected one, is not looking too pleasant.

When one of the Argentinians offers to let me sleep on his couch I gratefully accept. He moved into a new house that day, had come downtown to buy a towel since he couldn’t find any in his stuff, and had merely walked to the end of the pier for a smoke. We wait about another half an hour for the rain to abate but when it shows no signs of doing so we agree to head back to his place despite the weather. We are totally drenched within minutes. In town the streets are running with water 3 inches deep in places. We stop at a GT clone for a towel and I buy two so there will be one for me too. Ironically, back at his house, he lathers up completely before learning that, despite the downpour that continues outside, his shower has no water. After his landlord has come by to fix this and his neighbours dropped in to say hi, we finally head out together to share supper and a beer. By this time it is midnight. We sit and eat together, chat very amiably about all manner of things, and, although this is not exactly what I had planned, I am totally content with how my evening has turned out. Back at his house I unroll my sheet on his couch and am asleep in minutes with barely time to worry about what Cheryl might think.

The next morning I get up early and catch the bus back into town and then a water taxi back to our boat. HS is there, binoculars in hand, very concerned about where I have been. I tell him of my adventures and then fall into my bunk for a pre-departure nap. All in all it has been another great stop.

The Argentinian’s house, by the way, was not, to say the least, glamorous. It was small, very small, and dirty, very dirty, and did not have many of the features that we who live in Canada might expect. The bathroom, for example, aside from not having running water, did not have a door, or even a wall. It was merely a large open closet-like room with a toilet bowl, no lid, no sink, and a hose for a shower coming out of the wall. The living room/ kitchen was about 10’ by 10’ without a fridge or stove or table or a single cupboard or shelf, just a couch on one side and a counter running along the opposite wall with a sink. The sink did have water but, I was told very clearly, not drinkable water. The only window in the whole house was about one foot square and plexiglass. I cannot think of one person I know who would have even considered moving into anywhere even remotely like this place. Since I couldn’t think of a single positive comment to make upon being shown around (all I could really think was, ‘Thank goodness I have my own clean sheet to put on the couch!’) I asked instead, ‘How do you like it?’ He replied that he was thrilled to have his own place, that it was bigger than the house he had grown up in, that the neighbours were excellent (read: had weed to sell) and that the landlord had agreed to run an extension cord to the counter when he could afford a hot-plate. AKK!

If I hadn’t met this guy on the end of the pier I would likely have checked into one of the many nice hotels. I assume he offered me his couch since, for him, staying in a hotel for a night would have been too expensive a proposition to even consider. In retrospect I am not sure why I took him up on his offer – mostly I think because it was given with such obvious genuine concern about my presumed predicament. The possibility of sleeping on a park bench had made it into the conversation and that of taking a room in a hotel had not. I could, of course, easily have been raped and/or murdered if not by him then by his neighbours. I see I learnt nothing in Salvador after all. He was, thank heavens, a decent guy. I was genuinely interested to hear his story about how hard life was in his own country and how fortunate he was to be here in Brazil with a job (illegally employed selling hot-dogs on the beach) making enough money to rent a house on his own and he, I think, was equally interested in my story about my trip and the boat. 

Couch surfing is, I conclude; a) very interesting b) somewhat chancy and c) best suited to burly 20 something males!

Not all roses

Chapter 1: Just another long night.

We are doing short passages of one or two nights as we hop slowly down the Brazilian coast headed towards Rio. Our jury-rigged auto-pilot system means than we don’t have to hand steer all the time but it is not working perfectly either. My four shifts per day on this current leg are 3-6 and 9-12.

MY SHIFT (9 – midnight) The wind was all over the place sometimes breezing 10 knots (almost enough wind) and sometimes blowing 28 knots (almost too much). The auto pilot tended to work pretty well in the light winds but just couldn’t hold up in the heavier ones and, to both of our great frustrations, HS could not manage to explain to me how to correct it when it was not working. Sometimes, if it is beeping, which means you are more than 15 degrees off course and it doesn’t think it can fix the problem by itself, you just have to wait patiently through the annoying sound because, in fact, it can indeed fix itself but is too impatient itself to realize this. Sometimes you have to adjust the magnetic course setting on the tiller auto-pilot. Sometimes, instead, you have to decouple the lines that are wound around the wheel, readjust them, and then recouple them. HS explained to me, several times, when to do what, but for some reason my mind just couldn’t untangle the subtleties involved, and, consequently, as the wind was often blowing too hard for the auto-pilot to hold course, he spent most of my shift setting and re-setting the auto-pilot for me.

HIS SHIFT (midnight – 3 am)  I had lain down for a nap at midnight but shortly thereafter heard something snap loudly, almost like a bang. I then heard HS swear. I stuck my head up and sure enough a line on the auto pilot had broken. I took over hand-steering and HS repaired the broken line, quite a tricky job as it was back behind the boat down near the water line, and, of course, it was dark, and the boat was moving all over the place. This process took about two hours. Now, admittedly, he was the one fussing with tools and extra bits and whatever, but I was working hard too. Hand-steering, especially in 28 knots, which is what we seemed to have most of the time, is, excuse my language, a bitch. I lay down for twenty minutes at the end of his shift before mine began but didn’t even doze off. Mostly I just hoped that the wind would miraculously go down.

MY SHIFT (3 am – 6 am) The wind did not go down before my shift started. Not only that, but, apparently, just before 3 am is when the fishing boats head out. At 3 am when I reported for duty, the wind was still blowing a fair shake and there were at least 10 fishing boats all around us heading out to sea and there were, also, of course, why not, at least 2 large ships leaving a nearby port and heading towards us, and, on top of all that, we were heading into a lightning storm. I was not happy with this whole situation, at all, but HS was knackered and so I (somewhat reluctantly) let him go off to bed and took over. No sooner had he gone down the stairs than the frickin’ auto-pilot started to beep. I tried this, I tried that, I fussed and worried and babied it, but it just wouldn’t do its job on its own and I knew that, in 28 knots of wind, if I gave up and turned it off completely and hand-steered that I would not possibly have enough concentration left over to keep track of where all the fishing boats and ships were. I didn’t want to wake HS up. I knew he’d barely had any sleep. But in the end I couldn’t deal with the situation, so, very embarrassed and therefore a tad whiny, I went and woke him up and told him that I just couldn’t do it. I don’t think I had ever before gotten him up just simply because I couldn’t cope. He got up and came up. He was not happy but what choice did he have? And, although I hadn’t realized it, there was in fact a real problem with the auto-pilot, a block, which is a pulley, had broken and the wire was stuck in it. Hmph. I went back to hand-steering (uurgh) and HS tried to fix the block. Unfortunately it was un-fixable so he had to replace it, a procedure which, in the dark and blowing wind and rolly seas, took about 2 hours.

By then we were both pretty much exhausted. I went down into the nav room to check our course on the computer and accidently checked the wrong ‘x’ turning the whole program off. (In my defense I have to say that the mouse that goes with the computer is broken and the touch screen feature is not well calibrated so you have to touch a very different place that where you actually want to be which is maddening at the best of times and a nightmare in the early morning when you have been up most of the night dealing with too much wind!) However, nonetheless, when this happens it takes about 15 minutes of work to re-load the nav programs. HS swore at me and I burst into tears.

I could vaguely remember, less than a day before, writing a journal entry about how much I loved the lifestyle, but right then I couldn’t remember why that might possibly be, and I even, very briefly, considered jumping overboard and swimming the 10 miles or so to shore.

HIS SHIFT (6 am – 9 am) By 6 am HS had the auto-pilot working again and the computer stuff re-loaded and running, it was getting light out, all the other boats had dispersed out to sea, and the wind was slowly dying down. I knew HS was more tired than I was and that he would work more than his fair share of hours the next day as we got into port so I offered to do his shift for him. Normally he is very strict about us following our own shifts. Even if he has spent most of his shift helping me with stuff he still comes up to take over at the allotted time and tells me to go and take a break. This morning, however, he took me up on my offer and went to lie down below.

I was left alone on deck with a somewhat drab grey morning emerging all around me. It took me several minutes to notice that there were mountains rising out of the mist off to starboard, several minutes longer to properly appreciate their beauty, and several minutes even more than that to recalibrate my emotions and rediscover a sense of calm. I did, however, do it, and, despite the ghastliness of the past night, started to look forward to the rest of the day.

Chapter 2: Anchoring woes

IN PORT: As we dropped sail and started to motor into the bay where the marina in Vittoria is the wind picked up again and was suddenly howling away. Not a good sign. The old boat, with its full keel and all, does not turn well in the best of times, and going into a marina under heavy wind is a nightmare at best. Then the marina was full. Then we anchored just offshore but our anchor kept dragging. Then we tried to set a stern anchor too but got the line fouled around the prop. (HS swam under the boat to untangle it.) Then we left the stern anchor behind with a float to mark its position so we could pick it up later and went to anchor somewhere else. Then we put the dingy in the water so we could go and retrieve the stern anchor but the tender line broke and the dingy sailed off by itself. (I swam after the dingy and rowed it back.)  The wind, of course, continued to howl through all of this. Hmmm. I can’t remember when, exactly, the first four letter word was uttered but by the end we had been through a whole slew of them.

Chapter 3: Doing the detail dance

BACK AT SEA: We decided we didn’t much like Vittoria and so we cast off again the next morning. As we set out I asked HS what shifts we’d do for this leg of the trip. Our conversation went sort of like this:

Me: What shifts would you like to do this leg?

HS: Whatever you want.

Me: No, you’re the boss. You get paid the big bucks. I’ll work whatever you tell me.

HS: No no. You get to choose.

Me: Then, I’d like to do 6 hour shifts and work 2 to 8. (This means I work 2 am to 8 am and again 2 pm to 8 pm. I like these shifts, which we have done before, because I get to see both the sunrise and the sunset.)

HS: No no. I don’t like 8 - 2. If we have to do 6 hour shifts then we do 6 – 12 and 12 – 6.

Me: OK. How about we keep the same three hour shifts as last leg then.

HS: No no. I don’t like three hour shifts they’re too short.

Me: What do you want to do then? I’ll work whatever you like.

HS: No, no. You get to choose.

Me: OK. Let’s go back to six hour shifts then and I’ll take 6 – 12.

At this point there was a long pause. I could tell HS wanted to object. He had assumed that I would take the 12 – 6 shifts so I could see the sunrise but midnight – 6 am is such a nasty shift that no one really wants it. Back at the beginning of our voyage when I was trying to be totally amenable I would have taken 12 – 6 without a question, and back before I had said I was ready to leave the boat and he’d asked me to stay he would have just given me 12 – 6, but now there has been a subtle alteration in the power balance, and, given the conversation we’d just had in which he had kept insisting I got to choose, I could tell he was struggling over whether to take the 12 – 6 shifts or tell me to take them. In the end he didn’t say anything, so I get 6 – 12 and 6 - 12, but I have to admit I do feel a bit guilty about it all.

No, it is not all roses. (But I am still thrilled to be here!)

I don´t want to go home.

I don’t want to go home.

We spend a few days in a small village up a mangrove lined river. Our boat is moored free of charge to the community’s cement pier along with commercial diving catamarans and rickety old fishing boats and I wander the town carless and carefree. The houses are covered with tacky-looking tiles that are actually authentic 400 year-old relics. Maracuja ice cream with acai sauce is sold in 25 cent servings that are perfect samplers so unlike the gluttonous cones at home. I watch the kids doing double back flips off the pier into the river and I realize that, for me, time is suspended here. I remember being a child myself and when it was summer it was, just that, summer. It was not a holiday. It was a state. Like happiness. It was summer. Period. We lived on a beach and summer stretched as endlessly as the sand did. You could walk all day along the beach and never get to its end, there was always a point and beyond it another beach, and another and another. Summer had as many hours as the number of grains of sand. You could sit and lift up a handful of sand, peer closely at it and notice that each grain was a special sparkly mineral, and then let them spill slowly between your fingers like a velvet hour glass. And there were endless handfuls of sand, endless hours of summer, they both just stretched gloriously, boundlessly, on and on. And that is exactly what I have here in this lifestyle:the illusion of endless carefree time. And, more importantly, the PSG (perfect spiritual grace) that comes with it.  I am feeling infused with a very childlike and innocent temporal suspension, as if lost in a different star-trek dimension where time doesn’t pass, and I like it. Today is today. Today we are here. I am living in the present and loving it. I consider joining the kids and doing backflips with them off the pier.

I don’t want to go home.

Eventually the weather forecast is favourable so we untie our stern, spring, and bow lines, motor back down the river, and head out to sea. We lift the sails and kill the motor and all about us the water is an unbelievable shade of turquoise and we fly across this all day heading out outout from land until there is nothing but the blue of the sky and the green of the sea and it is there again, the feeling of suspension from reality, we could sail all day and end up a hundred years ago, three hundred, more, we could meet Columbus coming in the other direction… there is nothing holding us here in the present, nothing holding us anywhere. After a full day of this almost orgasmic sailing a group of islands appears in front of us as if by chance and we sail up, drop anchor by a beach, and, obligingly, the sun starts to slowly set behind us, turning the water into a million sparkling diamonds allaround the palm topped isles. I lie in the cockpit waiting patiently for the golden hues of the sunset proper to start to fill the sky and notice flocks of frigate birds riding the thermals above the islands. They appear to glide effortlessly, barely moving. ‘What are they doing?’ HS asks. ‘Enjoying themselves.’ I answer. And it looks to be true. They are there, soaring, floating, hanging really, being supported merely by warm air and their own joy. Like me. I am so happy here, so totally devoid of responsibility or stress, I feel I could float up right off the cockpit cushions and join the frigates high in the air.

I don’t want to go home.

In the morning the wind has died down a bit so I don my mask and snorkel and swim in toward the nearest island. As I get closer to shore the pristine sand that we are anchored in is replaced by coral lumps and there are a gazillion fish. I swim along the shore for an hour or more gazing at the different groups. I pull out my little underwater camera and take a picture of one or two of them just for the record but for once, ironically (since it is only my underwater camera that I have left) I almost don’t want to take pictures, I just want to swim along,be a fish.I could grow gills, learn how to eat coral, stay here forever. Why not? Back on the boat breakfast is eggs and bacon and fresh watermelon (better, actually, upon reflection, than coral). Afterwards HS goes out to read in the cockpit and I sit in the salon, out of the sun, and write this, my journal, waiting to dry off completely before going back out to snorkel again. The sound system speakers are top quality and beautiful Saturday morning music is playing,KD Lang’s version of Hallelujah and other similar songs that wash right through you, cleansing your soul, making you sure of only one thing -you just want to stop time, right here, right now, suspend it, or bottle it up at very least and save it for later.

I don’t want to go home.

That’s not strictly true. I would love to go home for a week, visit with my kids, make sure they are happy and on track with good plans for the summer and the coming year. I would love to go home for a week, visit with my friends, stop in at the school even and pretend that I belong there. Then fly, free, back here. But that is all I want. No longer certainly. The thought of the six months ahead of me fills me with dread.

I don’t want to go home.

I feel like a toddler who has pulled in a deep breath prior to starting a tantrum. I want to rebel. I want to stay here. I realize that I am incredibly fortunate to have had this break, how many adults manage to take four months off and just go? But, but but… I am reminded of a past canoeing partner. He was fantastic. He paddled and portaged, set camp and cooked meals, and sang wonderful songs the whole time. We didn’t see many moose but we laughed a lot. He was a complete joy to be with. Until the last day. The last day he would always get up late. I would have to pack up the tent and gear, put together any meals, stuff the bags in the boat. The last day he would sit in the canoe silent, almost sullen, and I would do all the paddling by myself. He didn’t want to go home. He wanted to stay on the river, and, despite his usually cheerful demeanor he could just not,on the last day, manage to remain reasonable. I thought this ridiculousat the time, but here, now, I am worried I might start to exhibit similar behaviour if I don’t watch myself.

I don’t want to go home.

I want to stay here. Not on this boat. Not with this man. But with this lifestyle.With this freedom.With this total lack of rat-race pressure. Everyone here has made enough money to do them for the rest of their life, or, alternately, decided that they never will and so they might as well enjoy themselves instead. I fit, of course, into the second of those categories but that is just fine. I want to wake up and snorkel if we are by an island, go for a walk if we are by a town, cast off and set sail if we are finished with being where we are and the weather is good. Don’t get me wrong – I’m willing to work, willing to work hard. I’m willing to haul ropes, scrub decks, mend sails, cook and clean, I’m willing to work alternate three hours shifts round the clock hand-steeringon top of all that if necessary… I just don’t want to wake up and look out my own bedroom window at my lovely familiar pine trees and wish desperately that I were somewhere else. I want to be ‘somewhere else’. I want to be here. … The Saturday morning music is continuing and someone is crooning away; “I want to live, I want to grow, I want to see, I want to know, I want to share what I can give, I want to be.”I don’t know who is singing these corny lyrics but they are obviously talking about being on a sailboat and are expressing my feelings exactly…

No. I don’t want to go home. At all.

I have decided that I will. I will go home and work hard at my job and harder at my marriage. I have decided to be committed to both.

But right at this moment a gentle swell is rocking the boat and I can see a lighthouse out the port hole and hear the wind tapping the halyards against the mast and smell the tang of salt water and I think I am dry enough to go snorkeling again.

Anchorages and Anguish

We are hopping slowly down the coast towards Rio stopping at delightful anchorage after delightful anchorage and at each one my heart breaks a little more.

First we sail a mere ten miles across the bay to stop by an island at a popular anchorage where there is a marina, a small village nearby, and a resort reputed to have an excellent restaurant. The purpose of this small jaunt is to test a new jury-rigged auto pilot system but that is a different story. Even on this, a weekday, there are a couple dozen other boats here. It is lovely. As we sit out in the cockpit to have a beer and watch the sun go down we comment more than once on how very pleasant it all is, the heat of the day has passed and the view is idyllic, on one side a brilliant sunset, on the other a picturesque scene with a brightly painted tourist boat and a church beyond.

I instinctively reach for my camera only to remember, of course, that I gave it away. (See previous post.) As time goes by I am getting more and more angry with myself for not having done anything – why didn’t I jump out onto the road, yell for help, kick and scream and make a fuss? Why didn’t I do… anything?

It is in the morning, however, that my heart breaks. 

As I stand on deck in the clear early light a small traditional dug-out canoe laden with fishing nets and sporting a bright orange sail comes out of the marina and heads to sea. Though I know it is pointless I snap a shot of it as it passes by with my small underwater camera, which has no focus and no zoom, then wave at the men and am rewarded with return waves and big grins. I ought to have waved first. I watch the boat as it slowly heads out until (sob) it has behind it a backdrop of dark blue sea dotted with islands and pale blue sky strewn with white clouds flying. The sun is still lighting its sail to a brilliant orange. My little camera is useless. Here is my dream photo opportunity. Here is my ‘Postcard from Brazil’. Here is the shot I have been waiting for all these weeks. It is perfect; the colours, the angle of the light, the sea, the sky, the men still eeking out a living by traditional means, the fact that there is a sail boat in it, the whole flavour of the shot. I don’t even bother to take a picture with my little camera, I know full well that given its lack of focus and zoom capabilities all I would get would be a smudged orange dot on the horizon.

Why, I think for the hundredth time, did I so passively let them take my camera. I have acquired a whistle to wear around my neck. I figure in a similar situation I could at least blow that. But this does not bring my camera back to me right now. I watch the small boat until it disappears out of sight, trying to appreciate being in the moment, trying to tell myself that I have been here, seen this, and that that is good enough. But I cannot actually convince myself that this is so.

I came here bound and determined to fall in love with an old red boat, ended up falling in love with my little red camera, and then just gave it away. I am sure that there is a moral in there somewhere but I’m darned if I can figure out what it is.

After one night we continue on south and sail for three days or so during which the wind is a mixed bag. It comes, it goes, there are breezes and good blows and patches with no wind at all. When the wind comes up we put the sails up, when it blows harder we reef them, and then when it dies completely we take them down and motor. And, two hours later, we repeat the whole dance. Each of these steps require both of us working together and so, though we are theoretically working shifts of three hours on, three hours off, it is actually more like four hours on, two hours off, round the clock, and we are both getting tired. Huge flocks of birds circle us at times, and fish, regular fish, not flying fish, jump out of the ocean to heights of 3 metres or more as we pass by. HS gets stuck in one fishing net and then another one. He is furious, “Stupid assholes, fishing at sea!” he yells as he cuts their line. ‘Where do you want them to fish, on land?’ I think. But I dare not make this comment aloud. I am sure that their opinion of him is not complimentary either, but I also keep this thought to myself. Our current jury-rigged auto-pilot, in which a tiller auto-pilot is attached to a wind-vane paddle which it attached to lines that wrap around the wheel, works but is testy. It needs constant attention and a certain amount of babying.  It is WAY better than hand-steering, but, still, a pain in the neck. Eventually, after having negotiated a long and tricky path weaving for hours between endless reefs and shoals, we motor up a narrow mangrove lined river as the sun falls and drop anchor in perfectly calm water just as it dips below the horizon.

Again we sit in the cockpit and enjoy a cold beer. Again we comment on the loveliness of the surroundings. Here we are in a completely different ecological environment, fresh water to start with, and lush green vegetation encroaching in on us.

And again in the morning a couple fishermen break my heart.

This time it is two younger men fishing with a net. The one in the back of the boat is paddling slowly along with a bizarre spear shaped paddle while the one in the front throws his net out, waits a couple of minutes, and then collects it up. Again I pull out my underwater camera, no focus, no zoom, and take a shot that I know will be marginal at best.

I am so angry with myself I could spit nails. Even my little lipstick camera, despite being red, could get such a much better photo. Why, why, why, did I give it away? What, on earth, was I thinking?

I could, I suppose, buy a new camera here, but I don’t really want to. I want to go home, talk to people I know who know things, make a more informed choice, get something that will do me for several years…

Bitch, bitch, bitch. OK. I am disappointed with myself but decide it is time to get over it. Move on. Survive without a camera. Stop whining. I lived almost half a century without a camera, have only had one for a couple of months, it really should be no big deal. But then a couple of different birds land on the muddy shore in the intertidal zone between the mangroves and the river, a very large grey sandpiper and a type of heron I have never seen before, and, oh, oh, I so want to take a photo of them, but, without zoom, I can’t. Stop. I tell myself. Just stop.

We will be here a few days. HS has to find and fix an oil leak in the engine and do something to the generator which spontaneously combusted last night. I will have time to wander the picturesque town. Perhaps, since I won’t have my camera to keep me company, I will take up smoking so that my hands have something to do!

Next we will head to Archipelago de Abrolhos – literally translated as ‘keep your eyes open’ – a group of small islands offshore where the snorkeling is reputed to be fantastic…

It is good. It is all good. Even, without a camera, it is all good.

To go or not to go?

HS has been getting on my nerves. He is pretty full of himself, is unnecessarily sharp and rude if someone (like me) doesn’t follow orders fast enough, and, certainly, always, assumes that any possible wishes his crew might have are well beneath his consideration. Despite having been with the boat for several months, for example, I do not ever get even a whisper of input with respect to where we stop or how long we stay there. And, should I dare be audacious enough to make a suggestion with respect to how the sails are set, for example, I am treated with both caustic disdain and unmentionable language.

During the beginning of our last passage, just before the auto-pilot broke, I when I was having a bad day, PMS or somesuch, I wrote the following:

Sailing SLOWLY from Recife south…

We are plodding along at just under 4 knots with the sails set terribly. I know Nick would have us going at least 5.5 maybe 6. HS just doesn’t care, at all, if his sails are set poorly, if our speed suffers. I don’t get it. It drives me nuts though.

I was thinking that I had nothing positive to write in his ‘guest book’  (like Suzanne’s cottage book) but what I would put, if he insisted I write something. I came up with the following:

“Herbert, you are arrogant, abrasive, boorish, condescending, inconsiderate, and, oh yes, don’t let me forget, petty. Both your lack of sailing skills, given your experience, and your contemptible hubris ought to embarrass you. You said the first day we met, in Ottawa, that you don’t like to sail. I didn’t believe you at the time. I believe you now. My suggestion to you is this: find something you do like to do, not only for your sake but also for those around you.”

Ohhh. Ouch. So, the real question is this: Emily, why are you still on the boat? You could have left in Gibraltar, in the Canaries, in Cape Verde, at Fernando de Nohoria, in Recife… Why did you stay? Why do you let yourself be spoken down to, debased and demeaned? Why do you give power to this ass by putting up with his uncalled for rudeness? Why, when you are so sure you would not accept this from your husband, or your boss, do you accept it from him? What is holding you in this almost abusive relationship? Not the sailing, obviously, since it sets your teeth on edge. Not the camaraderie of visiting land since whenever you get somewhere you are there on your own. So why? Just because you started? What do you have to prove by staying? It is truly a mystery that bears looking into.

I have to stress that this was written on a bad day.

Because, even if HS doesn’t like the sailing, I do. I love being at sea, being on sunrise shift and seeing the sky turn all manner of pastel colours before that big old sun peeks over the horizon, I love being always aware of the phase of the moon and the rotation of the stars at night, knowing when Orion will rise and where he will be at 3 am and when he will set, I love watching the phosphorescence and the shooting stars and the dolphins, and having the wind, of all things, push us right across oceans, and waiting for the next island to appear…

And, even though HS has no interest in visiting anywhere new, I do. I love arriving at a new port or anchorage or marina, reading the guide book, going to the nearest tourist information station, choosing to wander the beaches, or the town, or visit the museums or parks or fish markets, or take the local bus to the next village over, I love stopping to chat with other yatchies or other tourists or any of the locals, I love the surprizes and the discoveries...

I soak up - like a turtle basking in the sun - the solitude of being at sea, away from phones and internet and everyone I know, but instead connected to, embraced by, Mother Nature herself. Despite being very atheistic there is, for me, a huge spiritual component to being at sea, sometimes the sky is so painfully beautiful it is as if it were a huge canvas that God had chosen to paint for my pleasure alone.

I thrive on the adventure of making landfall somewhere anywhere new, reading about its history on Wikipedia (sorry folks but it’s true), and then venturing out to see what is actually there. Each new spot is a like different chocolate from an expensive box-full of delights; some are better than others, some unexpectedly sweet or bitter, but each one, always, exotic and fun.

I was getting to the point, however, that I felt I had had the Northern Magic experience, so to speak. When Sophie and Adelheid left in Recife, to hitchhike south, they asked me several times to join them. I don’t know if they meant it or not, as opposed to merely being polite, and, in retrospect, I don’t know why I didn’t consider the possibility seriously. However, I didn’t.

So. This morning I wrote:

I’m considering leaving the boat. Like today. But I don’t really have a plan. Would I find a hotel here? Bus to Rio and try to get an earlier flight home? Go to the other marina and look for another position as crew? And then what? I wish I could say I was looking forward to going home but even that is not particularly true - the boys Literacy class. Oh Joy. And only part-time work so not even a lot of money. And living on  my own with no kids and no husband and the days stretching endlessly before me. Hmmm. At least here I have HS and his contempt. I understand, just a little bit, why people stay in abusive relationships. The thought of leaving the known for the unknown is a tad scary. Quite a big bit of me wishes that I had left with the girls; it would have been fun and interesting and I would have seen a lot of the country, met people, had experiences. Here, now, I have stopped living every day to the fullest - yesterday I did nothing. 

It is, I am pretty sure, time to take a leap!

So I spent the morning investigating options; found a lovely Hostel in the safe part of town, learnt about buses to Rio, looked into re-booking my flight home early. I arrived back at the boat at noon ready to discuss with HS the possibility of my leaving. (I assume since he is driving me nuts it must be mutual.) (But, then, there is the broken auto-pilot to consider.)  I had decided that, unless he actively wanted me to stay, I would leave.

He was in a foul temper, something to do with paperwork required by the military police, and antsy for us to do a shopping run together. (He loves eating, and grocery shopping is an activity that calms him down.) I said that there was something I wanted to talk about first and went on to explain that I felt I had had the experience I had hoped for with him and so was considering leaving, but, given the auto-pilot situation I wasn’t sure if he would be happy for me to leave at this point or not…

He very, VERY, emphatically stated that he would extremely disappointed if I chose to leave right now, that the auto-pilot company in Australia had responded to his enquiry stating that they no longer manufactured, nor carried spare parts for, the auto-pilot on his boat, that he was going to try and fix one of the backup auto-pilot systems, but that he didn’t know what the chances of success were, and that he would VERY much appreciate it if I stayed with him as far as Rio, because, though he had said many times he can sail this boat by himself, that statement had always assumed a working auto-pilot, and that finding and training new crew, right here, right now, would be a nightmare. It was a clear answer. A very clear answer.

So I agreed to stay with him as far as Rio given the proviso that we try to make it there by the 20^th in order that I would have the option of trying to book an earlier flight home. He, willingly, agreed to this. (Now who knows, it may be that a series of ugly storms comes out of nowhere, like the ones that stopped us from leaving Gibraltar on time, and that we are stuck huddled waiting somewhere in some obscure bay for ages, or that something even more serious goes wrong with the boat, that we don’t make it to Rio by the 20^th or even the 30^th, that I have to leave him on his boat by himself and bus to Rio anyway… but, barring disaster, it is looking good.)

So, for now I stay. (And will be interested to see if his attitude mellows.)

Tomorrow morning we leave Salvador. We will do a short 10 mile hop to a nearby island to test out the new jury-rigged auto pilot system and anchor there overnight. Assuming all goes well we will, the next day, once again, head south. Rio, here we come!