Maiden Voyage (13 page)

“No more phone calls—
in
or our!” he screamed. “No more piano lessons! No more babysitting or going out of this house for
any
reason except school!” I grabbed my coat and fake I.D. and made for the front door.

“If you walk out now,” he hollered, “I will have one daughter less. You will have no home to come back to!” he screamed down the stairwell. “I'll never speak to you again, and you are forbidden to speak to Nina, Tony and Jade. I don't want you to
rot
them too!” His voice echoed in my ears as I ran out into the street. I moved in with Jeri when I was fifteen. My father told everyone he had disowned me.

Jeri lived with her two cats in an airy loft in Soho filled with colorful carpets, couches, plants and books. A collector of the arcane, she had knickknacks and paraphernalia on every table and every inch of wall space. Her kitchen was filled with big jars of pasta and spices, and there was always something wonderful cooking on the stove. She went over to talk to my father and they decided that she would try her hand at raising me. He was at the end of his rope.

The first thing Jeri did when I moved in was set the ground rules. “You're not allowed to go out during the week, but you can do what you want on the weekends. I love you, Tania. But you have to be honest with me. Do you understand?” I nodded, promising to try my best.

Jeri took me out of Brooklyn Tech and enrolled me at City As School, an alternative high school with the motto “Learning as an adventure” and a philosophy of education based on self-motivation. In addition to a few orthodox in-classroom courses, I worked for a Brooklyn city councilman, answering his hotline and helping his constituents solve their problems. I was also a tutor at a day-care center, and at night took a couple of college-level courses at the New School. Within two months, I was studying again, life had taken a turnaround and I was happy. My rowdy lifestyle didn't interest me as much as it once had, and slowly, with my friend Rebecca, I drew away from it all.

Jeri was a wonderful person to come home to every day. She was warm to every one of my friends and loving to me. After a few months, she asked if I would like to go with her to my father's for dinner. Did he want me, I asked? Whose idea was it?

“He wants you to come, really,” she said. “He talks about you all the time, and he's always asking me what you're doing.”

It took some coaxing, but finally I took the big step and went back over to the house with Jeri. I still didn't have much to say and sat quietly at the dinner table. But even though my father and I avoided each other's eyes, and even though I knew that I would never be able to live there again, it felt good to be home. The next time we would both live under the same roof was one year later aboard
Pathfinder
. The sea would be the great equalizer.

•   •   •

I looked out at
Thea
, a mile ahead, and checked the time. There were still fifteen minutes to go before radio check-in. Scanning the horizon, I noticed that up ahead the still waters of the immense gulf appeared to turn into a rapids, and as we approached the area
Varuna
started bouncing around. Instinctively, I screamed “Reef!” but I was wrong. Was it an earthquake? It stopped after about 60 feet and calmed, then picked up again like turbulent little strips of river for two miles. Skipjack tuna leapt by the dozen, birds swarmed in, pilot whales and dolphins squealed around the phenomena, and I was spooked, not knowing whether to think they were escorting me out or visiting something I hadn't heard about. At six o'clock, I flipped on the radio.

“Luc, what were those ripples in the water we passed?” I asked. “I've never seen anything like that. It scared the hell out of me.”

“It was just some kind of tidal rip or current,” he said. “It was probably carrying many fish with it. Didn't you notice the fishing boats?”

“Fishing boats? Oh, sure,” I answered, trying to sound nonchalant. “There is a little wind now. Do you guys want to try putting the sails up?”

“Yes, look outside of your shell once in a while,” he answered. “We've had our mainsail up for half an hour already.”

Signing off, I popped out on deck and Dinghy followed, meowing for his dinner. Jean Marie was on deck hoisting their jib and I hurried to do the same. The wind had developed into a gentle northeast breeze over the starboard beam, and both sailboats, out of practice, shook off the cobwebs and sped toward Cocos. After setting the Monitor on a new course, and with new optimism about the weather, I pulled out the chart and calculated that, at the current speed, our trip to Treasure Island would take about three days.

For a while, the boats managed to stay within radio contact, and this was both good and bad. It was great to have the company, but it changed the rhythm of my days. Instead of developing a natural routine, as on previous passages, my day began to revolve around the radio. I measured time not by the transit of the sun, but by the number of minutes left before I switched on the VHF to talk to Luc. I found myself jumpy and more moody than usual, but attributed that to the fact that I was out of whack with life at sea.

After our first beautiful evening, thunderstorms began to march like armies across the muddy-looking ocean. Apathetically, I read
and dried up leaks, waiting for the radio calls. The sea was churned up as plastic flip-flops, tree trunks, barrels and floating garbage rode by on the swells. My hands had become rather soft during our stay in Panama, and now began to wear raw from the constant sail changes as squalls came and went.

After four days of our fighting the contrary winds, currents and calms after the squalls, and four nights of sleeping, eating, reading and writing while living on the walls, the inevitable conversation occurred between
Varuna
and
Thea
. We would have to skip Cocos and would have to forge onward without stopping to the Galápagos, 500 miles farther to the southwest. If all went well, it would take me a week.

I read and reread my reference books dealing with the chilling Humboldt Current. The water around
Varuna
was very cold, even though we were approaching the equator. During the nights, I illuminated a masthead light while Jean Marie and Luc kept watch to stay within sight. During the day, the sky remained furiously dark as the strong current kept
Varuna
in a clutch that seemed, at times, to be pulling her backward. One day my taffrail log said that we had covered 100 miles and Luc's SatNav registered 75. For every mile we plowed through the water, the current had carried us back a quarter of another. Much to my surprise,
Varuna
kept up with and even surpassed
Thea's
speed. She was quick, which pleased me, and capable of heading several degrees farther into the wind. Luc was envious, forgetting that, for me, the performance really didn't seem worth the discomfort of being within the confines of such a small vessel beating into the wind.

Every day, I turned on the engine to recharge the batteries for night lights and radio power. On the sixth day, the monster didn't want to turn off. I discussed the problem with Luc over the radio, and he told me to put my hand over the air-intake filter and it would stop on its own. Not knowing the air filter from Adam, I put my finger over the air vent for the fuel tank, which was easily accessible in the cockpit. After a few minutes, the engine rumbled to a halt.

The next day, I turned on the ignition switch, and the oil, amp and temperature lights illuminated the dark recess of the starboard berth under the cockpit. Outside, I pressed the starter switch, heard the starter turn the flywheel, but there was no combustion. “Oh no, not again!” I cried into the wind, fearing the isolation confronting me if it wouldn't start. I fetched my tools, unscrewed the cover for the umpteenth time and tried the only troubleshooting technique I
knew—bleeding the fuel line. Nothing. Staring down at the fat little red monster of an engine, I tried to curse it, kick it and, finally, shame it into working. It just stared back at me.

“Luc, my engine stopped and won't start again,” I said when I talked to
Thea
that morning. “We have to separate. I don't have enough juice to talk on the radio or to leave the lights on at night.” My voice cracked and his came back out of the receiver.

“Did you bleed it?”

“Yes.” I answered. “But I don't know what else to do.”

“Well, let me think about it. Don't use up all your electricity, and turn off the radio. I'll call back in exactly half an hour.” For thirty minutes I prayed that he would offer to rendezvous and help me make repairs. As the seconds on my Cassio registered 60 in the twenty-ninth minute, I flicked the radio switch on.

“Tania, can you hear me? Answer, please.”

“Yes! Yes, I'm right here. What do you think I should do?”

“Listen, sail downwind in our direction and when we get close, I'll throw you a line and swim over to see what I can do.”

I was euphoric. We were going to have a mid-Pacific rendezvous. Disengaging the self-steering gear and unsheeting the mainsail and jib, I pushed
Varuna's
tiller over. We rounded until the wind was at our back and she cantered down toward
Thea
.

No longer a toy sailboat somewhere on the horizon,
Thea
got larger and larger as the distance between us shrank and I welcomed the familiar sight of her gray aluminum hull.
Varuna
rapidly made it to the other boat, gliding about 20 feet by before I rounded up, tripped to the foredeck and pulled down the jib.

As Jean Marie steered, Luc launched a line into my arms. The waves reverberated in between the boats as I wound the line around a cleat, completing the incongruous scene of two sailboats tied together in the middle of the ocean. Luc took one look of distaste at the frigid water, screamed a warning to the sharks and jumped in. My guardian angel quickly pulled himself along the line and then heaved his soaking self over the gunwale, landing in a heap on deck.

“Hello,
ma petite
Tania,” he smiled. “Long time no see, eh?”

Like a nurse, I handed him instruments while he fiddled around with the engine, tinkered, shook and rescrewed things, basically the same contortions I had performed, before saying, “Well, I think you are engineless.”

“No. I can't be. We have to be able to fix it somehow.”

He shook his head. “I'm sorry, Tania. I have no idea what is
wrong with the beast.” There was nothing to do but accept the predicament. The batteries would be drained in a couple of days, there would be no more power and therefore no navigation lights, reading lights or radio. Once again, just as on the way to Bermuda,
Varuna
would be totally powerless and isolated, but this time, the passage was a more complicated one. Also, without the radio, there would be no way to stay in touch with
Thea
.

“Tania, you are the bravest person I know,” Luc said, as we sat in the cockpit eating a cabbage-beetroot salad that I prepared in a zombie trance to postpone his departure.

“Me? You've got to be kidding. I am the last of the cowardly lions. Look at me. I'm a complete mess. I have no power. We have to split up. Nothing's going right.”

“Yes, you are brave,” he said. “The mountain climber who climbs the most dangerous peaks is not brave. He likes to climb mountains. Bravery is doing something that you are afraid of and confronting your fears. Now, stop crying. You can do anything you want to do. We will separate now, but in four days we'll see each other again.” We kissed each other goodbye and he jumped into the water, pulling himself along the line through the waves to
Thea
where Jean Marie stood waving. I waved as we each pulled up our sails and got underway again. At first light the next morning, Dinghy and I rushed up on deck to check the endless horizon. We were alone.

I would think of Luc's words on bravery many times during the next two years, whenever I thought I couldn't go on. I saw the truth in them, and the knowledge that I might really be brave, no matter how frightened I was at any moment, kept me going.

For the next three days,
Varuna
beat into the strong southwesterly winds and chop, as I read, did the chores around the boat, played with Dinghy and daydreamed about the future. Once in a while, when the sun peeped out of the cloud-fretted sky, I'd grab the sextant, take a sight and try to plot it out properly. But the fixes still weren't working out the way they should have.

My navigation was based on the occasional fix from the SatNav of a passing ship. With that I could easily advance my own position with some degree of accuracy by dead reckoning. But ship fixes were rare and from my own sun sights I felt no security. There was something very wrong with what I was doing and I couldn't figure out what. When I did get the occasional fix from a ship, it never agreed with my own calculations. Worry began to infect my days.

On September 11, my navigation confirmed a monumental occasion;
we had crossed the equator and entered the Southern Hemisphere. For the inaugural milestone of the trip, there were presents to open and I decided to cheer up, throw myself a party and do it right. First, I cleaned the boat and then, wedged into the cockpit, took a bucket bath. Drying out in the sun, I noticed that the boat immediately began to smell better.

Next, I arranged the packages from my family on the bunk, made a festive meal of macaroni and cheese and, after feeding Dinghy, sat down and feasted till I was satiated. The great moment arrived and I ripped open the packages that everyone had earmarked for the equator. Tony had secretly made a cassette of the family dinner-table squabbles that he titled “Family Bullshit Tape.” Nina gave me a bag of camper's chicken stew. My father gave me an envelope full of pictures of the family, snowy mountains and glaciers, a hundred dollars, candy, balloons and a hat umbrella. Gathering the loot together, I hooked up the camera. When everything was arranged and the camera focused, I looked down and saw my naked body.