Authors: Tania Aebi
I had thought that I did, but just for good measure, had folded up the diagram and had brought it along. Now, in the throes of our first depression, I pulled it out and began poring over the meteorology chapter of a book, marveling at how fast a postcard-calm ocean could turn so quickly into a frothing boiling mess.
“October 15. Staring at the chart, the X marking
Varuna's
position is still miserably far from home. We are pitching wildly in the howling winds, slamming and beating, and it is getting difficult even to write. “
The days to follow were a blur of sail changes, veering winds and unprecedented weather systems. Following Olivier's directions sometimes helped me along, and other times nothing in the meteorology chapter or whatever I remembered or had experienced previously could explain the weather or how to better cope with it, other than waiting it out, as it worsened into a full gale.
“October 18. I don't know if I should cry, scream, head back to the Azores or what. We haven't had 24 hours of navigable weather in the last three days. It's been 40-45 knots since 4:00
A.M
. and
Varuna can't
make progress in that kind of velocity. Every tenth wave crashes over us. I slipped and fell this morning and think I sprained my arm; there's a persistent nagging pain. I want to wash my hair, my bed is damp, the sky is villainous, the waves are vicious, and it's howling in the rigging. I can't get up the nerve to go out to the foredeck and tie up the reefed jib and hank on the smaller one. But it must be done. “
To leave the relative protection of the cockpit and to go up forward on the lurching foredeck was petrifying, and I abhorred even the preparations for the ordeal. Except for the life harness, I went out naked to preserve my dry clothes. There in the darkness, the silhouettes of gigantic waves bore down on us like freight trains as I struggled to take down a wild piece of fabric with boomerang lines
attached. Each time, the fear was more overwhelming and, fighting with the flailing canvas, I wished that it were possible to stay locked up in
Varuna
and get to land without moving a muscle.
“October 19. This weather bears an awful resemblance to my Mediterranean knockdown caper. Black skies, huge waves and tons of wind. But at least everything is battened down this time; the companionway is completely closed and we seem to be keeping up with the waves. Now it's also pouring. When we go this fast, I look at the chart nonstop and calculate. At this rate we could be home in ten days. We have now entered the last square of the 3's. The next two boxes are 5's, then 4, then the last one before New York is a 2. The hard part is next. “
Aside from the trips into the cockpit for horizon checks and the sail changes, Tarzoon and I stayed huddled together on the sodden bunk, as I tried to read, crochet or concentrate on the radio to get my mind off the conditions. Determined not to let my physical strength deteriorate to the point it had in the Mediterranean, I forced myself to perform the galley acrobatics of concocting a simple daily meal. I cooked rice, some canned thing or another and vegetables in a pressure cooker and ate it from the same pot.
After we had been engulfed by waves for almost six days, there was hardly anything dry aboard, unless it was lucky enough to be in a sealed Ziploc bag. And because I'd been living so long on the wet bunk, without enough fresh water for a real wash, my skin was sticky from the salt water and my hair matted and itchy. After stripping down and before I pulled on the loathsome foul-weather overalls and jacket to go out on deck for another drenching, I could see the stinging saltwater sores that were beginning to develop on my bottom. There were still almost 1,000 miles to go and I counted the seconds.
I had to add extra days and dates to the bottom of the chart because we had reached the end of my original hopeful calculations and were only two-thirds of the way across. As I stared at the chart, my dividers recalculated the time of arrival over and over again, piercing holes through the paper along the way until it became a mushy pulp that had to be handled with care.
Most of my longest passages had been an average of twenty to thirty days, during which I usually had spent the first ten days agonizing over the departure, and the next ten anticipating landfall. By the twentieth of October, we had been at sea for thirty-four days and
could realistically count on at least fifteen more. As the debilitating conditions persisted, everything aboard that was not soaked was dripping with dampness. My morale bottomed out and I grew tired of being the sole person responsible for our progress. There was never anyone who could pop out on deck, just that one time, to relash an errant sail or to look out for ships on my behalf. Sometimes, a crew member conjured up in my dreams would offer to go outside for me but never came back in, and I would have to do the odious chore again.
“October 20. Time is crawling by. I hear things on the radio that stun me. A commentator might say, âMr. So and So made a statement on the proposition that was made two weeks ago.' I shake my head and look again at the dates in the
Nautical Almanac. I can
remember the proposition being made, but was it really two weeks ago? As far as my time frame goes, it could have been yesterday, or this morning, even five minutes ago. “
VOA and the BBC were running continuous bulletins on the stock-market crash and I listened for updates on the Black Monday debacle as the Dow Jones average slowly began to climb again. Not that I had any stocks or bonds to worry about, but world news had become my fix, my private soap opera, the connection to a home that was getting closer and more real with every passing mile. Wall Street was New York, New York was my singular objective, and I listened more hungrily for news as the weather worsened.
My energies were continually refocused on small calamities aboardâa spilled container of sugar, the solar-panel wiring that corroded through, needing to be respliced and retaped, and the loss of the Swiss Army knife's tweezers. One day something that resembled horrible foot odor permeated the cabin, and after checking my own feet, I was unable to identify its source.
I checked all the lockers, and finally found the culprit behind the sliding panels of the locker next to my bed. A UHT carton of milk that had survived since Malta had exploded, spewing forth a vile lumpy white mixture that covered the bottles of oil and vinegar, wood splints, cans and the rest of its neighbors. As a result, I killed two good hours lugging buckets of water into the cabin, keeping them balanced with
Varuna's
motions, shoving a curious Tarzoon out of the way and scrubbing and drying all the contaminated objects and the locker itself. Two days later, with the first inkling of the
malodorous scent, I knew where to look when my last carton of milk expired in yet another glorious ascent to milk heaven.
The next system to hit, a stationary cold front, started as something comparable to steady trade winds from astern on the twenty-second, and by the next morning, we had three reefs in the main and a poled-out storm jib. The puffy clouds stacked up into an ugly black canopy that covered our skies from horizon to horizon.
Unlike the eastbound depressions of days gone by, the wind howled from the southeast, pushing us up and dropping us down the monster waves like a roller coaster gone berserk for thirty-six sleepless hours, whereupon it stopped and poured down rain as we thrashed on beam ends over the bumpy swell. During the four hours of torrential rain that followed, I climbed out into the cockpit and managed to collect several buckets of fresh water as it streamed down the face of the mainsail and channeled along the groove of the boom.
Then, out of nowhere, the wind rushed in from the northeast, picking up at a furious clip until the next day, when the mainsail became too much for the conditions and had to come down. The only foresail that could handle the spasmodic weather was the tiny storm jib, whose miniature size had earlier convinced me that we would never find a use for it. Now it was to be our salvation, as any other piece of canvas aboard would have been too much.
“October 23, and I'm really scared. I can't relax, sleep, eat or think about anything other than staying alive. The waves around us now are the biggest I've ever seenâprobably 25 feet high. The weather guys said that we have a cold front passing overhead. My heart is thumping so hard in my chest and I can't stop the tears of fear
. Varuna
is carried and thrown with each breaking wave, breaking over us, on our sides, in front and behind. The sky is black. There is very little sail up, we're going practically downwind, and we're going fast. I am wedged into my bed with Tarzoon as we listen to the noise and pray. I haven't been able to get a sight, but according to my DR we're about 880 miles from home. It's not like the Med, where after a storm there is a calm. Here it's just one giant, non-stop storm. “
The waves steadily grew into the size of alps, and in terror I watched through the Plexiglas slats as they caught up to us from astern, dwarfing
Varuna
and picking her up and throwing her down the slope to wait for the next. The heaving swells crashed everywhere
around the boat and hissed and pawed menacingly underneath us as they carried us along on a boiling froth.
Varuna
was continuously swamped, and the type of knockdowns that she had endured near Sri Lanka and in the Mediterranean became an hourly occurrence, except this time we were prepared for the worst, and that made all the difference.
The jerry cans, sails and cat-litter sacks in the cockpit were lashed down, the cubbyholes were stripped bare, and inside everything was securely lodged. As the thundering waterfalls flooded the cockpit, the water slowly funneled out by the way of the drains until it was empty and ready to swallow the next deluge. Unable to take a sight for days, I prayed that I was grossly underestimating our progress and hoped for a wonderful surprise if and when the sun ever shone again.
“October 24. It's the next day, the waves are even bigger and my DR says we're still 780 miles away from the mark. The sun hasn't been out in days. My heart is working overtime and I can't stop the trembling. The looming outlines of the waves are humongous, and we are so small and insignificant. This day feels like it will never end. “
Continuing to stare out the hatch, and hypnotized by the towering seas overtaking us, I lived on the edge of existence through that gloomy day and pitch-dark night. For forty-eight hours, I feverishly dealt out game after game of solitaire on the bunk beside me; if anything would get me through this, other than the taffrail log ticking away the miles, it would be my cards of fate.
“It is evening of the 25th, and my prayers are finally being answered. Last night, I reread Psalm 106â'And the waves thereof were still'âand things got less dramatic and began to clear today. This evening, there are no clouds in the sky and I can see the twinkle of stars on the horizon. The wind has veered to the west and is weak right now, but there's another depression coming up. I heard on the news today that this is the 365th day for some girl in a box on top of a pole who is going for the pole-sitting record, and laughed out loud for the first time in weeks. I wondered if she has a television and a telephone to call for take-out Chinese food. “
In the aftermath of the storm, there were gentle winds and clear blue skies. I thought about the past three days and how the ocean's
fury had brought me closer to the brink of a watery grave than ever before. When the storm had died, the ebb of adrenaline left me bobbing in the wake, feeling strangely empty. The storm had piqued all my senses, and with the calm came an emotional withdrawal.
On the twenty-eighth of October, my calculations established that we had reached the longitude of Bermuda, and so had crossed our outward-bound track of two and a half years before. Crossing that track meant that I was officially finished with the circumnavigation. I felt triumphant and shouted with joy, but then, a sadness began to gnaw away at the excitement. My round-the-world odyssey with
Varuna
was drawing to a close, and that thought began to make these last days at sea all the more sacred. Soon, all the tumultuous emotions, the endearing solitude, the beautiful days and nights at sea, and even the challenges of yet another storm would be no more than memories. This was the beginning of the end of the life I had come to know, and I knew that soon I would leave my ocean friends behind to play the role of an adult in New York City. Every mile
Varuna
laid behind was now over familiar ground, and the tension of homecoming began to build up a flock of butterflies in my stomach. We were really close now.
“October 30. It's 9:00
P.M
. and I just saw my first ship in two weeks. I'm dying to talk to them but my electricity is very low. The engine is inoperable, so there is no way to get a charge from the alternator; the new solar panel is too small and the sun is far south and not very strong. I need to conserve power to call when we approach New York. The ARGOS will let everybody know where we are in case I can't use the radio. I hope it's working. I keep catching myself holding lengthy conversations and arguments with no one. We're 450 miles away and I hope I won't go completely nuts before getting home. I forced myself to start
Dr. Zhivago
today, the book where Daddy said he found my name just before I was born, and am curiously waiting for a heroine named Tania to pop up from the pages. “
As if trying to prolong my days with
Varuna
and Tarzoon in our own little world, I put off raising the optimum amount of sail. My mind skipped and jumped, not only through the future and what it held in store, but over the days and the cast of characters I had come to knowâStubby, the tire-repair man in Borneo whose business depended on the migration of red crabs; Roberto Vergnes, the eccentric con artist searching for treasure on Cocos Island; Ibrahim in his
flowing robes and turban pontificating on the balance between the sexes and swigging from a bottle of desert firewater; Fred showing me how to take care of
Varuna
properly; Kerima de Lescure quietly strumming her guitar and singing her poetry of peace and beauty under the Panamanian palm trees.