Authors: Tania Aebi
The month drew to a close, and after he had also hauled
Akka
for some new antifouling, Olivier and I prepared the boats for the 3, 100-mile trip across the Arabian Sea and halfway up the Red Sea to Port Sudan. The two harbors of Djibouti and Aden in South Yemen were available near the entrance to the Red Sea, but we were hoping to be able to do the trip nonstop.
We loaded down the boats with leeks, onions, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, water, diesel and the few processed foods that were available and, at 11:00
A.M
. on Tuesday, February 10, 1987, both anchors were on deck and no more excuses could be made. We motored out of the harbor. Pulling up the main and jib, I turned off the engine and the habitual gurgling of water rushing past
Varuna's
hull was drowned out suddenly by the very alien sound of water gushing into the engine compartment.
“Oh God,” I moaned. “What now?” We had only just departed. I pulled open the engine cover and saw a pipeline's worth of water rushing out of the stern tube where the propellor shaft passed by way of a stuffing box out through the hull. Furious with myself, I could see immediately what was wrong. The stuffing box should have been lubricated with heavy grease long before in order for the shaft to rotate smoothly within, but I had never gotten around to it. Now, the consequence of my ignorance and procrastination was that the stuffing box had adhered to the shaft and rotated with it when the engine was in gear, which wore away the grip of the flexible tubing that held it in place with a hose clamp. The stuffing box had popped out and the ocean poured in.
With a watchful eye on the ships passing on both sides as
Varuna
crossed the shipping lanes off the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka, I hammered the stuffing box back into the flexible pipe and retightened the hose clamp. The deluge ceased. Then, with a dainty flick of the wrist, I jettisoned my last screwdriver into the murky depths of the bilge. I swear I could have opened a hardware store with all the tools that were providing extra ballast to that hungry bilge after months of playing games with my godforsaken engine: screwdrivers,
wrenches, monkey wrenches, Swiss Army knives, vital screws, nuts and bolts and even a pair of scissors.
I continued to follow
Akka
through the shipping lanes, and we discussed my problem over the water. Later in the afternoon, the wind petered out and, with land still hovering on the horizon, we took down the sails and tied the two boats together. Olivier swam over with an extra screwdriver and wrench in his mouth. We tried everything we knew to fix the problem, to no avail. I was horribly pissed at myself. None of this had to happen if only I had properly read the instruction manual and kept the stuffing box greased. Instead, the greasing nipple had rusted and fallen out, and now every time the engine was put into gear, the stuffing box popped out.
We were 15 miles away from Galle and in a dilemma. Should we return, or could I try to sail without an engine the 2,400 miles that were left until Djibouti, where repairs could be made? The latter option would make all our timesaving plans of heading directly to Port Sudan useless. However, if we returned to Galle, the same time would be wasted in a harbor that we already knew. Olivier took
Varuna
in tow for about 20 minutes, and the decision was made for us when
Akka's
engine overheated. For the Red Sea, I needed the engine, so Djibouti it was.
After two days, Olivier and I were still within sight of each other. There had been intermittent and variable bursts of wind, but only until we got past Sri Lanka's wind shadow. Then, the weather changed dramatically. From bobbing peacefully along on a benign sea, in a matter of minutes
Varuna
began to heel over on a beam reach with a gusty wind, and the volume of noise multiplied tenfold with the sounds of speedy gurgling bubbles passing by her hull. The northeast monsoon piled up behind the island, and then unleashed its fury down through the 40-mile-wide channel between the island and India, whose continental shelf jutted well out into the ocean, building up a confused chop.
After a head-banging night of living on the walls, I awoke early on the third morning to look out of the porthole and check on
Akka's
proximity. There she was, still about a mile upwind. Olivier and I had an unspoken rule that whoever was upwind had the responsibility of closing in to the other boat. For once, it wasn't me. I popped outside and stood waiting at the spray hood.
The sun was shining down and beginning to heat up the day as the north wind whipped through the rigging on a perpendicular angle to our course, a steady and fast point of sail. The waves were
uncommonly steep and the lee rail buried itself underwater as we fell off a wave and created miniature rainbows in the splashing wake. I weighed taking in the third reef, which would let
Varuna
sit up a little straighter, but would also decrease our speed. The jib was already reefed down and there were two in the main. Looking back to
Akka
, I said to myself, “Nah. The two boats seem to be going at about the same speed and besides, we're screaming along.”
Satisifed that Olivier was slowly converging on me, I went back down to bed to grab an extra half hour of rest. “He'll wake me up when he arrives,” I thought, closing my eyes and reconsidering the decision of taking in the reef. All of a sudden,
Varuna
rose higher than usual on the swell of an extra-large wave, straightened out and then climbed a little higher.
“Oh hell,” I remember thinking. The strange sensation of falling slow-motion into limbo was followed by the boat's suddenly lurching over and thudding down on her side, launching paraphernalia across the cabin and throwing me sideways. As I shouted in shock, the crest of the wave crashed over
Varuna's
frame and plowed down through the companionway onto my bed amid all sorts of clanging, jingle-jangles and the sound of hundreds of gallons of water pouring overboard.
“I was just gonna take in that third bloody reef after all! You couldn't wait two damn minutes, could you?” I spluttered, hyperventilating with anger and frustration, and raced with Tarzoon out to the cockpit to see what happened.
Varuna
had been completely knocked down. The cockpit was still flooded, and my two jerry cans of fresh water, one companionway slat, my favorite hat and funnels, buckets and other gear were bobbing in her wake. I watched as the self-steering straightened itself out and, unbelievably, we continued sailing. By now, Olivier was close by and he sailed downwind of me, hollering over the racket.
“Wow!” he called. “That was incredible. Your mast almost touched the water. I wish I had my camera out. Are you all right?”
“No,” I screamed. “Not at all. I've got the biggest goddam mess in the world to clean up and no more water, except for that foul stuff in my tanks.”
“Why didn't you take in a reef?”
“Oh, leave me alone,” I screamed back. He was right.
“It's not my fault. Scream at the ocean,” he answered, smiling, and maneuvered
Akka
to stay close enough for conversation.
“I already did and you're the only one left. I'll catch up to you
later on.” I waved him off and went to take in that third reef, swearing to leave it there short of a flat calm. Climbing back down into the cabin, I found water lapping all over my bunk with a spilled can of powdered milk adding an interesting hue to the walls and mattress. Most of my belongings that had previously been on the windward shelves now floated in seawater on the lee side. As I began mopping and sponging up the milky mess, I remembered that half of my remaining supply of tools had also been in the cockpit.
It took a better part of the day to calm down and clean up. For several days after the knockdown, whenever I needed little things that had once been in the cockpit, I found that they too now lived in the briny deep.
The next morning, we hit the wind shadow of India and another fat calm, perfect for drying out my mattress on deck. For two days,
Akka
and
Varuna
stayed tied together, drifting along with all the garbage in the Indian Ocean. We were wallowing in the center of converging currents 100 miles off the coast of India and the filth was revolting. Black oils covered the surface and garbage floated every 100 feet. Not only did we stop diving into the water, I didn't even want to wash my hands in it. Rather we pulled the boats together and jumped back and forth. The filth that mired usâsludge, bags, plastics, styrofoam, dishwashing-liquid bottles, flip-flops and wrappersâcoated the hulls of the boats with a thick black film. Olivier and I lamented how any sea life could survive such appalling pollution. Indeed, here the ocean seemed completely barren of life and the scene was sad enough to make one cry.
Olivier passed me an extra jerry can with eight gallons of water to replenish my stores and I figured that, with rationing, I could live on one quart of water per day for thirty-two days before having to drink the disgusting water from
Varuna's
tanks. Finally the wind returned with gusto and we breezed through the shipping lanes at the Eight Degree Channel, the point at 8 degrees latitude where all the shipping passed between the Maldive Islands to the south and the Laccadives to the north. Along with several other giants, we followed the lighthouse beacon on a solitary island and passed onto the Arabian Sea.
During the following week, we took reefs in and out as the northeast wind alternated from heavy gusts to near calms. Night separated itself from day like two completely different worlds. The sun erased my fears of losing
Akka
and, steering side by side, we would have conversations; one day, I even lost my voice from screaming
above the roar of the wind. We talked about the meals we were preparing, the positions that we had calculated and the latest antics of the cats; since Australia, Mimine had become a permanent fixture aboard
Akka
.
At night, once the heavy dark shroud was pulled across the heavens, Olivier and I would take three-hour alternate watches, focusing on each other's kerosene lanterns. We set up a Morse Code system with the flashlights for when the changings of the watch occurred and we were too far apart to talkâshort, short, short, everything is OK; long, long, long, let's come together; and short, long, short, I blong you.
Sometimes on my watch, the phosphorescence became so thick that it was hard to distinguish Olivier's light from the sparkling crests on the waves. Every night, the dolphins came a-squeaking, torpedoing past
Varuna
like comets of light. I spent many an hour reading for fifteen minutes, then dashing out into the cockpit to pinpoint the feeble glow of
Akka's
lanterns in the distance. As a rule I kept
Varuna
as upwind as possible so that once the distance between us grew too much, I could speedily bear back down on her. Although there were the obvious disadvantages of lost speed and an additional burden of fatigue, the advantage of occasional contact with Olivier was well worth it to me, although we did feel quite ridiculous to be separately carrying on with life on two boats when we'd much rather be together on one.
Often, it was very romantic and beautiful to bear down on
Akka's
dark hull in the thick of a velvety night. I would steer up alongside her and listen to the methodical swishing and plunging as she glided like a phantom ship across an ocean sparkling from the bright constellations above and the aqua lightning bugs below. I knew Olivier was curled up on his bunk in a dream world and, fantasizing that I was his guardian angel, I steered alongside, keeping him from harm.
One day, soon after the Laccadive Islands, I made a cabbage salad for my dinner and was attacked by a vicious case of Sinbad's Revenge. Throughout that day and night, I lay curled up in a fetal position, groaning and holding my stomach, which felt as if it were being ripped out. Because of the pain, I couldn't keep a proper watch and the next morning found myself alone.
Akka
had disappeared.
Crushed, I began to cry. The ocean had incredible capabilities of amplifying the emotions and all I could think of were those fourteen days and sleepless nights of course changes and speed adjustments, all lost to a bellyache. I took down the sails to wait, imagining Olivier's
dismay when he found out that we had separated. Distraught and with swollen eyes, I changed my mind and decided that he had gone ahead. I hoisted
Varuna's
sails and then remembered that
Akka
had a tendency to head farther off the wind than
Varuna
, so I headed a few degrees to the south. “But, then again,” I thought, “Olivier may have readjusted the self-steering,” so I headed more to the north.
I wore a permanent groove on my feet from standing on the mast steps to get a better range of the horizon, and then finally, realizing the futility of it all, I gave up. We were most definitely alone again and I reckoned that we might as well get to Djibouti as fast as possible.
Forced to readjust my life to a new daily pattern, although I sorely missed Olivier and our hollered conversations, songs and jokes, I began to sleep better and was more relaxed. The sea became calm and the wind blew at a gentle Force 2. When my spirits picked up, I decided that it was time to clean house, turned on the cassette player and threw myself into the lockers, closets, shelves, engine, cockpit and even the bilge. Four days of bleached, wrinkled fingers and Motown later,
Varuna
was spick-and-span.
In the midst of the cleaning blitz, a ship appeared on the horizon and I called it on the VHF. It didn't answer, but another one that I couldn't see did. “Well,” Sparky told me, “call when you see us and I'll give you a fix.” About twenty minutes later, he called again. “Can't you see me?” he asked. “We're about two miles off your stern.”