Authors: Tania Aebi
Finally, after three and a half weeks at sea, we inched our way across the equator and back into our native Northern Hemisphere. On Nina's birthday, January 3, a new breeze began to freshen the air and I knew we had finally left the doldrums behind. I began informing Tarzoon of our exact position and ETA every time a fix was plotted and assured him that we would soon arrive.
The northeast monsoon lived up to its description on the pilot charts, and as we crept farther into its neighborhood it began blowing
in full force.
Varuna
, reefed down and heeling over 30 degrees as she beat into the 30-knot winds, had little time to adapt to the conditions, and for four days I lived on the walls. I started to see a trickle of ships, and then a steady parade formed. On January 7, we approached a highway on the horizon, my first real encounter with a serious shipping lane.
Twilight descended on an endless stream of lights from the enormous all-business tankers, square car carriers and gargantuan freighters. With only the little red and green masthead light, I felt inconspicuous and could only hope that
Varuna
was being picked up on their radar screens. I radioed a car carrier that was steaming by and the radio operator informed me that, no,
Varuna
did not appear on his screen. We were invisible. He only saw us after I blinked a flashlight in his direction.
Clutching the transmitter and hollering left and right, I must have created an incredible ruckus on the airwaves, making sure that certain ships knew that I was there. Some of them ignored my calls, so I had no idea if they heard me or saw
Varuna
. Paralyzed with fear as they plowed by, at the most desperate moment I even drew Tarzoon close, grabbed my passport and boat papers and prepared to abandon ship.
Dodging in and out of the moving obstacle course, I kept a lookout for the lighthouse on Dondra Head at the southernmost tip of Sri Lanka that would indicate we were only 28 miles away from our destination. Below Dondra Head, there was not a speck of land until the icy wastes of Antarctica. At 3:00
A.M
., January 8, the beacon revealed its light, we sprinted as fast as we could across the rest of the shipping lane and set a course for Galle Harbor.
Varuna
sped along until hitting the shadow of the landmass that obliterated the wind, and once again, we found ourselves on a flat calm. On tenterhooks, I fidgeted as the sun rose and Sri Lanka emerged from the horizon ahead, shimmering like a jewel in the blue expanse of the Indian Ocean. It had been thirty-one days, my longest trip ever at sea. Waiting for a few gusts to carry us along, I was so ready for land that I thought I could taste it in the heavy morning air. Fishing boats puttered by, reminding me suddenly that I'd better get dressed.
At about midday, after going absolutely nowhere except for the one mile the engine had covered before retiring, I scanned the beckoning shoreline and set a course for more affirmative action. Hailing the next fishing boat that came close, I hoped to stop and
bribe them into towing
Varuna
to Galle. As it drew closer, the staccato sound of the green and yellow open boat's engine reverberated through the air. As the first of the three men jumped aboard
Varuna
, I realized that none of us spoke each other's language, and, resorting to sign language, I demonstrated a boat being towed. The men giggled at me as I ran below to pull out forty dollars and a bottle of rum.
“Look,” I said, pointing at the loot, waving my arms around exaggeratedly, “me give you this, then you tow me in? OK?”
They haggled among themselves as I tried to fend off the larger boat that was gently rocking against
Varuna's
hull. “Please,” I pleaded, the day was steadily drawing again to a close. They continued to talk, every so often giving me a once-over and readjusting their wraparound skirts that seemed to have wiped up many a bilge.
“OK,” the leader said, pointing at my T-shirt. Anxious to make them as happy as possible, I hopped into the cabin, pulled out three T-shirts and distributed them. Finally after several hours of cajoling sign language and half the bottle of rum, they towed me 10 miles toward the coastline until a feeble day breeze picked up. Pointing to the ripples on the water and my sails, they motioned that
Varuna
could now sail herself and they would let me go. I nodded and thanked them as my two crew rejoined their vessel. Grinning and waving, they headed back out to sea.
For three hours, I played with the sails and jiggled the rudder back and forth as we crept by sandy beaches lined with coconut palms. Following the landmarks with the contours on the chart, we were two miles away from the entrance of the harbor when the thunderstorms hit. One after the other they swarmed down, totally obscuring any semblance of wind, so I used the opportunities to scrub the decks and take a shower. All too soon, evening approached and there was no more hope for us to get in before nightfall. It was so close that I could have easily swum to shore had I not seen the enormous dorsal fin of a shark earlier that morning. Resignedly, I went about preparing myself for another night at sea, when a sailboat came out of the harbor and motored up.
“Oh, thank you, God,” I said to myself waving and greeting another potential tow. “There's still hope.”
“Hi, Tania,” one of them called in an Australian accent. “Finally, you've arrived. Everybody is sick with worry.”
“What?” I hollered back at them, unaware of anyone that would be waiting and surprised to hear my name. It was practically impossible
for
Akka
to go faster than
Varuna
in those pansy winds. “Who's worried?” I asked.
“Your boyfriend. He's been waiting for five days.”
“Olivier? You're kidding.”
“Here, throw us a line. We'll tow you in.” Within half an hour,
Varuna
was tied up and I was in Olivier's arms.
Straightaway, we went ashore to the house of Don Windsor, whom the cruising guides said was the sailor's middleman in Galle. I followed Olivier up the stairs of a veranda, and was greeted by a dark-skinned man dressed in a white robe, who smiled when he saw me.
“Welcome, Tania,” said Don Windsor, holding out a telephone receiver. “Your father is on the phone.”
S
he has been described as a drop of milk from the breast of India, and Sinbad of old Arabia called her Serendib. From there evolved the word serendipity, the aptitude for making fortunate discoveries accidentally, and Sri Lanka certainly was a desirable sight for my sore eyes burned by the equatorial sun.
During the twenty-eight days to Bali, six to Christmas Island and thirty-one to Sri Lanka, I had had ample time to picture what this part of the world might be like. My imagination had done somersaults conjuring up elaborate visions inspired by fairy tales that were read to us as children by my mother.
I remembered back to the first time she took us to London when, to keep us quiet, she read from British books of India filled with pictures of exotic Indian rajahs and their princess loves bedecked in jewelry and flowing saris. An elfin sapphire-blue Krishna pranced all over the pages with a swirling octopod Vishnu waving his multiple arms all about. These tales, and later on
The Far Pavilions
, were enough to fire my imagination for this part of the world. Of course, I didn't expect little blue men to be jumping out of every corner but was anxious to see how close these visions would be to the reality of being here.
“Hello, Ding-a-ling!” my father's voice boomed through Don Windsor's telephone that first night. “What in holy hell took you so long? We've been going crazy.”
“Daddy? I didn't have any wind or engine, that's all. How did you know I was here?”
“I've been talking to Don Windsor all day. Thank God I had somebody to call. Oh, I'm so relieved. You have no idea what it's like to be waiting like this. . . .” And off he went nonstop, telling me how everyone was wild with worry. As it turned out, Olivier had arrived five fretful days before, mostly because of a firmer grasp of the frustrating weather patterns, and he had steered a course farther east. Most important, his engine had propelled
Akka
out of the doldrums and into the northeast monsoons while
Varuna
had wallowed.
“Well, anyway, here I am, all set to go to Sri Lanka right now and organize a search for you. I can't believe this. Everything's OK? I don't care, I'm coming anyway. Do you need anything?”
“You're coming here?” I asked incredulously, realizing that we hadn't seen each other for over a year and a half. “That's great. Yeah, sure I need stuff.”
I eagerly rattled off the top of my head a quick list of boat supplies that I was either without or unable to replace. We arranged to rendezvous two days later at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, the capital. Hanging up, I turned to tell Olivier of the latest turn of events. Although it was probably hidden deep in the complexities of my father's brain, I thought I knew the overriding reason he was coming. He wanted to see for himself who this Olivier character was.
The next morning, I went about the business of checking in. Sri Lanka has many complications in store for visitors arriving by cruising boat, and appointing someone to act on behalf of the vessel with immigrations and customs helps to smooth the bureaucratic waters. A man with a business, say a jeweler, and political aspirations and connections, would stand in very comfortable shoes if he were to act as a sailors' agent. Enter Don Windsor, whose house with its large veranda was the first to be seen upon leaving the guarded extremities of the port.
In Don's house the cruising folk gathered, and he opened his arms to them. His showers were our showers; his dinner table was our dinner table; and for a small fee, his servants took our laundry and beat it against the rocks to wash it. A well-educated man, Don seemed to have unturned every stone in Sri Lanka; he could recount extraordinary stories from his country's rich history, as well as arrange welding for an errant piece of a boat's stainless steel. And if you happened to want to buy a little jewelry, well, he just happened
to have a few cases to show you. Don whipped out the forms to be filled and took my traveler's checks; soon enough I was legal.
The first day in Sri Lanka was a feast for senses numbed after so long at sea. Olivier and I stood on the corner of the main road, waiting for the bus under the eye of a 15-foot-high orange Buddha. Vintage cars whizzed by, weaving past plodding, wizened brown men leading emaciated cows drawing carts with wooden wheels.
A variety of odors assaulted the nose. No longer did I have to rely on the salt air and occasional redundant meal to tweak my sense of smell. There was no comparison between the smell of land and that of the sea. Sri Lanka had the smell of people, many people, almost 12 million of them, plus their vegetation, their meals in the process of being prepared and their animals.
On the timeless ocean, the days had melted into one another and, if there were no clockworks or responsibilities for navigation, I would surely and happily have lost count of time. The only necessities had been to sleep, prepare food, keep a good course, fix and adjust the odd thing and plot the position once a day. Making a landfall was like shoving an extension cord into a 220-volt socket.
I experienced new languages and accents, arguments, the jigsaw puzzle of lists and trying to plan out one simple day, the apprehensions of planning for the next departure, the organization of the provisioning and the need to grease my jaw muscles in a desperate attempt to catch up on the conversation missed. My eyes had to adjust over and over again, taking in a new world of sights, streets, faces and customs.
My ears were reintroduced to the cacophony of screaming children, reprimanding parents, broken mufflers, outboard engines, braying donkeys, rather than the sound of water, wind and the occasional muttering of my own voice. No longer were there only the familiar things on
Varuna
to touch. On the veranda of 6 Closenburg Road, my hands felt the smooth molded wood of armrests on Don Windsor's chairs. My feet pounded down on the hardened damp dirt roads and hot and sticky asphalt. I could run my fingers through silky hair and rub squeaky skin just washed with fresh water, and I could feel the sensation of wearing clothes and standing up in them with material swaying around my elbows, arms and legs.
A man rolled by on an oversized tricycle, peddling with his right hand the gears that were mounted to one side of the handlebars. Olivier enjoyed watching my pleased reaction. “I love this place,” he said. “It's like being in another century.” Together we marveled at
each new sight until the bus finally arrived, canting over at a 25-degree angle. People rearranged themselves as we slithered aboard into the 5 square inches of extra space between the uniformed children returning from school and sweated out the ride into town. I looked into their faces and they openly smiled back without hesitation. Already, I knew that this would be a special place. A smile is a free pleasure and the people who realized it always made a welcome sight for a tired visitor.
It had been thirty-one days since Olivier and I had seen each other and we had only two days before my father was to arrive to be alone together, gather our wits, clean the boats and do a little sightseeing.
Varuna
looked as if she had taken a turbulent trip to Oz, and Olivier stared at
Akka's
rust stains with a look of dismay when we returned to scrub down the boats; there wasn't much we could do to the cosmetics in two days. Olivier, being Swiss French, understood only too well that we were facing my father's Swiss-German perfectionism and rued the fact that he hadn't had the chance to overhaul
Akka
in Australia, as he had hoped to do before meeting me.
We bought fruits and vegetables, tied the two boats alongside each other, hung the awnings over the booms for shade in the cockpits and scrubbed to alleviate the salt-stained, travel-weary aura. We did the best we could before visiting the village of Hikkaduwa, a 3-mile-long strip of beach with a pounding surf an hour up the coast from our anchorage that some new friends had recommended.