Authors: Tania Aebi
About an hour after sunset, the remains of the feeble twilight shone through the Plexiglas slats, getting feebler. It was almost night and this was going to be a black one.
La vide lune
, the empty moon, Olivier had called it. I remembered being struck by the poetic translation of the French, and knew that whenever this moment in the month's cycle arrived, the ocean was always at its darkest. The next evening, when the hours of daylight expired, a tiny sliver would light up the skies, growing with every passing night for two weeks, filling up until the moon brimmed over. Then, my luminescent orb of a night light would wane until it emptied itself again, a month from now. Would I be home then, I wondered, looking up to the heavens and wishing to be back at sea?
Staring through the secured slats, I eventually summoned up enough willpower to leave
Varuna's
cocoon to venture out into the void, whose only substance was the reassuring fiberglass solidity of the cockpit. As I shut the slats behind me, Tarzoon jumped out at the last second to join in the evening stargazing session.
The sky still had intermittent clear patches shining through the
clouds, and because the air was so much drier here than in the Med or the Red Sea, the stars seemed frightfully close, like hanging chandeliers. Even though there was no moon, they lit up the ocean along with the phosphorescence that kicked up sparklers on the cresting waves.
The wind had picked up during the day, and by the time it had reached its present force of 30 knots, we were confronted with a minor technical problem. The new triangle of a storm jib was too small for the conditions. It was intended for sailing in stronger winds, which usually churned up the kind of waves where headway would be impossible and I would be forced to take down the sails and lie ahull anyway. The next biggest sail aboard was too big. The sail that would have been perfect for the conditions had gone overboard in the knockdown, and in Gibraltar I hadn't noticed until it was too late to order another. So,
Varuna
staggered into the waves, underdressed, going nowhere.
As soon as the weather straightened out, I planned to remake an old storm jib that had been gathering dust since it had fallen apart in the Red Sea. “Maybe the storm'll get worse and the small sail will come in handy,” I thought as Tarzoon and I leapt back down into the neon glow of our cabin, replacing the slats behind us.
“Hallo, it's the 25th, 9:00
P.M
., and we've hardly gone anywhere. The storm worsened yesterday and Tarzoon and I scrunched up in a corner while it howled and pounded outside. Since last night, we've been sailing on and off, still with huge waves and a decent amount of wind. Right now, it's beginning to rain. A massive, low-hanging mass of mess is lumbering our way and I've taken down the jib again to avoid a nasty surprise
.
“A ship passed right behind us earlier on and I talked with the radio operator. He didn't speak English very well, but I did understand that they left Gibraltar two days ago, while for us it has been nine. He honked his horn three times in salute and asked if I needed anything
.
“I just keep looking at the chart and estimating our ETA. At this rate, we've still got 45 days to go. I never realized until Sri Lanka that there are so many ships on the ocean. Here I am, pretty far out, and still seeing a few each dayâall going east or west. Sometimes I like to imagine myself driving one of them, zipping across the oceans in one or two weeks. They just keep passing me by, regardless of the weather, while I have to depend on fair winds to push
Varuna
at a fraction of their speeds
.
“I'm fighting off a little personal depression, wiped out two books, and just keep praying for a happy last voyage with
Varuna. I
finished maneuvering around the neckline and am halfway down the back of the sweater and, as the knitting needles click, I keep dreaming of home.”
There was a special feeling about the day as I awoke the next morning, aside from the fact that the weather prognosis was looking up. Even though I had been anticipating it every day so far, it was only after my morning coffee, drowned in powdered milk and sugar, that I was able to pinpoint the source of this new excitement. In the bag with all my birthday presents and letters lived the bulky letter that my father had given me to be opened on the tenth day at sea. The day had arrived. “My dearest Tania, my firstborn,” it began, on paper ripped out of a European-style loose-leaf notepad.
“A few times I said to Mutti and Vati that even though I love them, it would be nice to be an orphan, because many desirable things could have been done that I wouldn't do otherwise because I didn't want to hurt them. When I talked to you tonight about the future and your hopes and dreams, and then tears came to your eyes, all those times came back to me. How I wanted to go to Australia to become a sheep farmer. How I wanted to go to the jungles of Brazil. How I cried with all my loves just because things didn't work out the way I thought. This is just to tell you that tonight, more than ever, I can feel how you feel.
“You are now out on the ocean all alone with Tarzoon and
Varuna
. You think of all the people who are dear to you. You try to deal with the present, the past and the future all at once. There are so many ifs and buts and there are no precise answers. I know. But you are not alone with these decisions, uncertainties and desperate searchings. All people have them to a certain degree. Even if it feels as if it will crush you, be grateful. Your sandhills may be other people's mountains.
“In the end, you will be alone to make the decisions. And without any hestitation, Tania, I would now go to sleep on your ship in any situation and only react when you request it. The same goes for your life. But please, my dear firstborn, remember that I am your parent. When I talk, it is not as a
co-captain. That doesn't exist. It is only as your Daddy. You and I will both easily remember what has gone on between us in the past. . . . You are very important to me and I care very much.
“All the worries that you have expressed about what is going to happen and how you are going to deal with it are not going to be a problem if you manage to stay true to yourself. This sounds like a ranting TV evangelist, but I can't tell it any betterâso be it. I do the best I can. You will be 21 in a few days and a happy birthday to you. Think of where you are right now when you read this and how you will remember it in 10, 20, 50 years. . . . Love, Daddy.”
It was rare for my father to reveal the emotions he had expressed in the letter, and the effort that it must have taken for him to write them left me giddy. At that moment, I knew that if someone were to walk up and ask who had been my role model, I would have to say that it was heâeven though I would rather have died than admit it before.
During the years after the divorce, as we children grew older and less dependent, my father had slowly become a sort of happy-go-lucky Jesus, hell-bent on creating for us the lusty excitement and dramatics that were his view of life. Always wanting the best for his children, and unable as he was to succumb to the ordinary, the circumnavigation had been his idea of the “all” for me. He had been desperate over my aimlessness in those days, and this had been the only yardstick he could come up with by which I could finally judge myself and change my ways.
In accepting the challenge and leaving New York, I had been searching for the unattainable golden apple of his approval, feeling that it had been lost beyond hope during my teenage years. However, realizing that for my father there would always have to be something more, I now knew that the rest of my life could not be spent doing only what he thought was the best for me. Somewhere along the way, my own dreams had finally been created and it felt all right now that they did not quite mirror his own.
In the end, maybe what I had really been searching for was his love and knew now I needn't have gone around the world to get it. I had been standing on the back of a whale, searching for minnows, and as he said in the letter, I had to be the skipper of my own life now. Unfortunately, I also knew that, like any good father, he would forget he ever wrote that.
I felt lighter as I read and reread the letter, as if the straps on a backbreaking burden had rotted away and the weight was falling off. The need for my father's approval would always lurk in the shadows. But, it just didn't seem to matter in the same way anymore. Life, I thought, wasn't really such a big complicated ordeal after all. As a matter of fact, as a whole, life, and this trip in particular, was pretty damn good. Later on, feeling more like myself, I pulled out the logbook and made the daily entry.
“Afternoon of the 26th. Hallo. The wind died this morning and I refashioned the old storm jib. I had to make holes in the luff and put on grommets and hanks. Then, all three clews, which had been ripped out in the Red Sea, had to be reattached with a hole puncher, hammer and twine. The cockpit is full of little circles of fabric. I hope it'll do. Afterward, it rained for several hours and the knot in my stomach got very tight. So far, this passage is by no means the height of ecstasy. On top of it all, I heard today on the Voice of America that hurricane Emily struck Bermuda, leveling the island, and is headed out to sea. This was all the announcer said: âFor land, she's history, but some shipping lanes still may be affected.' WHAT SHIPPING LANES, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE?
“I don't know what to do. I knit two rows, put it down and agitate. I read three pages, put it down and agitate. I pour myself a glass of medicinal brandy, pour it back in the bottle and agitate. I listen to the BBC, switch to VOA, switch to Radio France, turn off the radio and agitate. The sky is bruised with black and there are curtains of rain. Daddy's so lucky. It took him only eight hours to get home from Gibraltar. It'll take us forever. I want to go home. Click, click click, little red shoes. Nothing. “
The next day, the wind changed direction, the barometer climbed back up and, as the Portuguese trades finally arrived, the miles began ticking regularly by on the taffrail log. The chart was already full of holes from the dividers, as if measuring the distance countless times would bring me closer. After finishing off the last of the Miracle Whip, I lay down to take a nap, hoping that the wind would last at least a week, and that I would no longer have to stare at the chart and see only a wide-open space between the X and New York.
I had been reading a book of short detective stories and drifted to sleep imagining myself in the middle of the world's largest cliché: a smoky cabaret with heaps of suave Humphrey Bogarts. Upon awakening,
I looked out the companionway and my head crashed against the ceiling in a leap of surprise. There was another sailboat passing a couple of hundred feet astern! That eventuality had never even crossed my mind, because I had been unable to imagine somebody else wanting to travel this ocean in such a horrible season. I ran outside and disengaged the Monitor to head down toward them. After two minutes, it suddenly hit me that this other boat wasn't
Akka
and the occupants might think that I had a couple of loose screws to go off course just to see them. Self-consciously I reengaged the self-steering gear and headed instead for the VHF.
My reaction reminded me of a funny moment on
Pathfinder
a few years earlier, in the middle of the same ocean, a thousand miles to
Varuna's
south. Fritz, Nina, and I had been sweltering out on deck, poking along in some feeble wind when we finally had our first encounter with another sailing vessel. After two weeks at sea, Fritz had decided that transatlantic voyages were a bit much for a man with his social-butterfly tendencies, and when I had spied a sail on the horizon, he yodeled in excitement.
“Girls!”
he whooped. “Oh God, make me a happy man and let there be
girls
on that boat!” At the speed of light, he ran down below, brushed his teeth and shaved, ran back up on deck, took a bucket bath, then ran back down below to comb his hair and put on some aftershave and clean clothes. Then, he began pacing the deck.
“Ernst,” he blurted, “I know that you are the best navigator since Columbus,
and
the captain, but I also insist that you turn on the motor and get right over there.”
“Fritz,” my father pronounced, revving up the engine, “you are an animal.” Fritz let out a wolf-howl and focused all his attention on the boat in the horizon. We had all been as disappointed as he when we arrived to find four morose-looking men who glumly answered our barrage of questions and requested three liters of gasoline from us.
After the initial surprise and excitement, my present encounter ended up being a French voice on the radio who was staying in a relatively safe part of the ocean, heading from the Azores south to the Canaries. We chatted for a while, and after finding out where I had come from, where I was heading and several
ooh-la-las
, the voice asked me about pirates in the Red Sea. The Gallic baritone then recounted charming anecdotes about boats that had had frightening experiences or dismastings during Atlantic crossings that same year. I told him that my batteries were running low, bid him a
bon voyage
and signed off. By no means a masochist, I didn't feel like hearing any more.
“Hallo, it's 11:00 Tuesday night, the 29th and we've probably made all of 15 miles today. We're in the Azores high and in the throes of another flat calm. My God. We've barely made 900 miles in two weeks. How long will it take to get to New York? Tarzoon and I are going stir crazy. I'm almost finished with the sweater and don't know what to do with myself. I think about home, family and friends so much
.
“I stare at the wall for hours and think. Someone once told me that the solitude of the sea must be a very fertile place to find answers. But, for me, answers never seem to come as great revelations, and everytime one is revealed, a new question pops up. Today's is: âWhy the hell have I been given such lousy weather?' “