Authors: Tania Aebi
As the sun was setting that afternoon, I was back at the Offica de Telefono in town placing an order for a collect call to the States, huddled up on a bench, rubbing my arms in the freezing air-conditioned air. An hour and ten cigarettes later, the call still hadn't gone through and I began to crack up. The language barrier, fatigue and the knockdown caught up with me all at once. I tried to hold in the tears but there was no stopping them.
Self-conciously hiding my tear-stained face as a group of younger people came into the office, I heard the familiar sounds of English and new hope made me look up. I asked one of the girls if she could please ask the lady in Spanish why the telephone was taking so long. She looked at me kindly and after getting an answer, said that there was an operators' strike. Christine was her name, and she was like an angel sent down from heaven. After a while, the operator signaled and I leapt into the booth to take the call.
“Oh, Daddy, I'm so scared,” I blubbered, telling him what had happened. “You can't possibly imagine how horrible it was. I lost so many important things. I need so much stuff and don't have enough money for it all. I promise I'll pay you back.”
“Stay right there in AlmerÃa,” he said firmly, “and sleep. Only head to Gibraltar when you're good and ready. Don't worry, Schibel-puff, I'll come right away.” Hearing his voice and knowing that he was coming to Gibraltar made me think that things could work out after all.
Ever since Australia, thanks to Olivier, I had been able to keep up the hectic schedule that would enable me to arrive in New York early enough to set the record. After the delays in Malta, every passing
day counted drastically when it concerned the crossing of the Atlantic, not so much because of the record, but because of the brewing winter. Now, with all the repairs that had to be done in such a short time, I needed help.
When I got back to the boat, my mind was in a tailspin, trying to sort out everything that had happened. I continued to ponder the tantalizing images of quitting and found, now that we were moored safely again, they really weren't as compelling as the image of stepping ashore in New York from the deck of
Varuna
. I was just too close to finishing the biggest thing I had ever started, and giving up the ship now would leave me wondering for the rest of my life if I had made the wrong decision to take the easy way out. I knew I couldn't live with that.
AlmerÃa, my first and second-to-last touch with the European mainland, was a place for regaining my resolve. For two days, I rested as Tarzoon jumped ship to kiss the ground and tell his own version to the Spanish cats that roamed the marina. I tried to fatten up with fried calamari and peppers, paella, steaks, salads and fruit ice creams at the lively outdoor terraces of the modern coastal town. When I felt ready again, after replenishing the fuel supply and scooping Tarzoon back on board, I cast off my dock lines and we headed down the coast for Gibraltar.
Varuna's engine faithfully puttered through one day, into the night and into the light of the next, as we skirted the margents of Spain toward the Pillars of Hercules. After thirty-six hours, the famous promontory, looming like a sentinel over the 8-mile-wide avenue of escape to the Atlantic, rose from the tail end of the landscape on the horizon.
Night fell again before
Varuna
could make it in, but the lights of Gibraltar illuminated the port and we motored slowly through a tidal rip that pitched us around a bit and then into the calm waters, that were only disturbed when gusts swept down from the great rock itself. Spying some masts in the distance, I motored to where a bevy of sailboats was anchored at the foot of an airstrip and let go the anchor. The next landfall, I thought as I fell off to sleep late that night, would be New York.
As I checked in at the customs dock the next morning, a little dinghy skittered across the marina, and there was my father rushing up to hug me, so beginning
Varuna's
brief pit stop in a race against nature's clock. Finally, the ultimate goal was almost close enough to reach out and touch, and after that moment everything began falling into place.
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Only two winds blew consistently through the narrow strait separating Gibraltar, at the southern tip of Spain, from the tip of Morocco in northern Africaâeither from the west or from the eastâfor days at a stretch. The easterly Levanter wind was the messenger that would carry
Varuna
through. If cirrus clouds appeared over the Rock of Gibraltar, they would herald an unknown number of days of the opposing westerly Poniente, and there would be virtually no way for
Varuna
to fight through the straits against the wind and current. Every morning for a week, I would listen for the regular easterly blowing across
Varuna's
cockpit whispering to me that we still had time.
On the first day, my father helped bring
Varuna
alongside
Lone Rival
, the boat of a family friend named Mark who was also from New York. Together with Mark, and a Canadian named Doug, who had singlehanded a sister ship of
Varuna's
to Gibraltar, my father had been waiting impatiently with a new VHF, RDF, shortwave radio, tape recorder and all kinds of other gear that he had assembled before jumping on a flight at Kennedy Airport.
After the encounter with the tanker outside the Suez Canal, there was no way that I wanted to cross the Atlantic without the confidence that I could save myself if something as unforeseen as that should happen again, so I had ordered a life raft in Malta, and now it was waiting for me.
Cruising World
had also sent over an ARGOS satellite transmitter that would enable the magazine and my father to follow my daily progress across the Atlantic. That there would be crowds of press and people anticipating my safe arrival only served to heighten the pressure. There would be no room for error now.
With Mark, Doug and my father, I was blessed with a refit crew of willing helpers. We worked from morning to last light every day, buzzing frantically around, repairing, rebuilding, reprovisioning, rewiring and preparing
Varuna
for her next opponent. Standing before the job that had to be done in such a short period of time, I wondered how it could have ever been possible for me to even think about doing it alone.
Doug, who was an electronics technician, took out the old broken VHF and installed the new one with its antenna that my father had brought from New York, while I started reorganizing and hauling everything out from
Varuna's
interior to dry in the sun. Everything had been soaked in the knockdown, to the point where even the fastened Ziploc bags had water inside. For several days, the cockpit was a bedlam of
Varuna's
innardsâmattresses, tools, spare parts for
the Monitor, sailing books, charts, engine pieces, fiberglassing compounds, foods, epoxies, dishes, pots and pans. One by one, I wiped away the salt, sprayed on lubricant and restored the essentials to their places, jettisoning things I had always kept for just in case, and now found to be of no use.
The Teflon bearings of the self-steering gear were worn out from constant use over the past two years, so Mark and my father detached the Monitor from the stern and brought it onto the dock to replace all the weaker points with new parts. Then my father went off to have the bow pulpit welded into a stronger shape; the leftover fragments from my encounter with
Kreiz
in the South Pacific had begun to fall apart.
Gibraltar was well stocked with everything a cruising boat needed for repairs and replacements, and the spray-hood supports were also rewelded. I ordered and installed a new set of weather cloths for the cockpit, had a smaller storm jib made, and continued to sort everything out, in between placing more orders for equipment to meet newly discovered problems and reorganizing the bags of supplies that kept flying into the cockpit.
In order to reduce the weight aboard, I started handing out things I didn't need anymore, like the spare anchor and the dinghy that was beginning to show signs of wear and tear. I bought six sets of long johns and stored them in new Ziploc bags, in the place of summer clothes and souvenirs that were boxed, ready to be taken back home with my father on the airplane. He had brought some extra sweaters and I had Olivier's. The Atlantic was going to be a cold trip, especially for a body so long acclimatized to warm temperatures.
I emptied out Tupperware buckets of grains and beans that hadn't been opened since New York, having discovered long ago that the time it took to cook them in the heat of the cabin had rendered the chore not worth the torture in any of the tropical places we had traveled. I gave Mark the extras and instead filled up the waterproof tubs with electrical equipment, spare parts, nuts and bolts.
While we were tearing
Varuna
apart, Maurice, an Irish bicycle-messenger friend from New York popped by. He had stopped in Gibraltar to make some money to continue his own travels aboard a motorcycle, and it was so good to see a real friend of mine from the old days. He was the first one to bring me news of other friends and to reconnect me with a past I had left behind. I shared my trip with him through photos and stories and, just like the good friends we once were, we sank into the old routine of jokes and gossip and flew
around the small enclave of Gibraltar on his motorbike in search of things I needed.
Next, my father bored through the deck with a drill just forward of the mast to install new U-bolts for lashing down the life-raft canister, while I crouched below, gathering up the fiberglass rinds and dust. Then we installed and bolted down the ARGOS onto the wooden platform in the cockpit. We sealed the operation with a poly-urethane bedding compound, and I grabbed the caulking gun to smear the sticky white gook around the bottom of the companionway slats that tended to leak salt water down onto the batteries. The welders at the local shipyard added a new handle onto the upper companionway slat so that I could easily close it behind me from the inside, and I fabricated some wood wedges to secure the slats even more tightly in place, in case things got too hairy out there.
We ordered a new smaller solar panel, attached it to a plank and fitted it onto a mount on the aft pulpit in such a way that I could maneuver it to follow the sun's path during the day for maximum efficiency. Then I bought a new breaker panel and on it attached the wires from the Autohelm, solar panel and a new fluorescent light for the backstay. A new storm jib had been created, and with the re-welded pulpit and new weather cloths,
Varuna's
lifelines and closed-in cockpit felt secure enough to face the worst storm the Atlantic could dish out.
On the fifth day, Maurice and I motorcycled across the border to the neighboring Spanish town of Algeciras to get some foam for mattresses for
Varuna
, and from that night on, sleeping became a new pleasure. The old mattresses had been so saturated with salt water and cat pee that they had shrunk to a quarter of their original thickness and the wooden frame of the bunk always jutted into my back. The salt then drew in all the humidity of the night, turning them into soggy sponges. The new foam was like a new lease on life and I found myself actually eager to try it out at sea.
The British colony on Gibraltar had every amenity and convenience of a bulging-at-the-seams British town, but with a Moroccan and Spanish flavor that added just enough confusion to make it interesting. At the huge Lipton's supermarket emporium, I stocked up on all sorts of canned soups, shepherd's pies, instant noodles, rice dishes, chocolates and dehydrated meats, both the American and English varieties. I bought several boxes of bottled water, and Mark managed to lay his hands on some kerosene, which was hard to come by, for the heater and stove.
Even Tarzoon tried to help by getting out from under my feet
sometimes and once fell overboard chasing a fly. Much to the marina's amusement, my seafaring buddy swam calmly up to the self-steering gear on another boat, clambered aboard and shook off the water.
For six days, the Levanter blew while we ran around during daylight hours, and as soon as the sun set, we'd go with Maurice for huge meals at a harbor-side restaurant. Maria, the jolly, fat Spanish proprietress, felt that it was her duty to make me put on several extra pounds. At every meal I received two appetizers, one main course, a salad and two desserts, and she beamed at our table as I devoured every last morsel.
By the end of the sixth day, everything was in order. I checked the engine, liberally sprayed WD-40 over all the connections, and opened the outside lockers to see the jerry cans of alcohol, diesel, kerosene and engine oil, all neatly stowed and battened down in their places. The spray hood was as strong as ever, and the black casings of the new VHF and shortwave radio sparkled out from their mounts on the bulkhead above my bunk.
Proudly, I invited everyone down one by one, insisting that they take off their shoes before stepping in onto my new clean bed. With delight, I would open up the pots-and-pans locker resupplied with new dishes, frying pan and utensils, then the food locker full of colorfully labeled stacked-up cans and buckets full of staples. In the fore-peak was an extra water tank with an unscrewable opening large enough to reach into with my arm. I had never used it for water, instead letting it serve as a watertight food locker. Now it was loaded down with perishables: biscuits, cookies, candies, dried fruit and cat treats.
Just for good measure, I opened up the tool and supply locker to take a peak at the organization that had taken place of the previous week's bedlam; everything was neatly greased and bagged. We would be able to be autonomous for anywhere up to two months with all the provisioning. I even had a sailbag full of fresh wood shavings from a nearby woodworking shed for Tarzoon's litterbox. Sitting on the new cushiony bunk, I looked around at the snug cabin. Everything was ready.