Crew

It’s amazing how many young people want to get abused in the name of adventure. We posted this ad on a local backpackers website, and instantly we were flooded with responses. Travelers wrote us long letters, attached their resumes, brought us excellent bottles of wine. “Wow!” they wrote. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime!” “It’s always been my dream to live on a sailboat!” “How soon can I come on board?”

I know how they feel, because I used to be that young person. Specifically, I was twenty-four when I started prowling the docks in Fort Lauderdale, two years’ worth of savings in my bank account, hoping desperately that someone would ask me to crew on his yacht. During my searches, I met a French boy named Jean-Christian. “Eet ees so easy for a girl to find eh boat,” he moaned, with typical Gallic melancholy. “For a boy, not so easy.”

It was easy all right, especially if you wore a short skirt and a pretty smile. But there were other challenges for a girl looking to catch a ride at sea. Fresh out of a lifetime of private schools, I was clueless about the way things worked on the water. When an eight-fingered captain named Bob asked me to join him on a weekend trip to the Bahamas, I had to ask around for advice.

“He says he wants to show me how to sail,” I asked my hosts at the crew house. “Do you think he wants something else?”

Harry looked up from the television, where he was watching Animal Planet, a can of beer balanced on his gut. He looked startled, then burst out laughing. “COURSE he does,” he guffawed. “Cap’n Bob wants to get LAID.” Then he schooled me, as gently as he could, about “gas, grass or ass—no one rides for free.”

For the most part, he was right. There was the Captain who inquired, in an interview, what size bra I wore, and then there was the really creepy one—Captain Joe, who kept telling me how important it was for a captain and cook team to act like husband and wife. “It makes the guests feel right at home,” he explained, snapping pictures of me for his charter brochure. Later, while dusting behind the bar, I found a small pile of photographs. It was a stack of heads—my head—carefully torn from the prints and tucked behind the bottles, like a rat might hide a stash of rotten food. I cleared off that boat without even saying goodbye.

There are exceptions, of course. We’re not asking our crew to put out free sex, or pay for our gas, or supply us with drugs. We really are just looking for help. It’s a lot of work to go to sea, and with a toddler on board, it’s too much for the two of us to handle alone.

And that, I fear is where we may shatter some youthful illusions. When I was twenty-four, going to sea represented freedom, a red-blooded life in nature’s pulse, a long way from heavy books and dried-up, intellectual theorizing. Pushed by the wind, buoyed by the sea, illuminated by moon and sun, we were utterly independent of the world and its cynics.

Then I bought Sereia. And now that I’ve owned her for six years, I know that ideal is both true and illusory. We touch that sense of freedom at times, beam reaching on a moonlit sea, phosphorescence in the water, a magic carpet ride of stardust in our wake.

The rest of the time, it’s a hell of a lot of work.

Sailboats are powered by the wind, it’s true. But they also need tons of stainless steel, fiberglass, teak, epoxy, solvents, electronics, and thousands of square feet of sail. They need a crew, all of whom must be fed, clothed, cleaned and entertained. And in order to learn the skills that are necessary to pilot a sailboat effectively, the crew must delve into mountains of heavy books, then spend hours on the docks with other sailors, trading dried-up, intellectual theorizing.

Tim has joined us for this next leg, from Whangarei to Auckland. He’s laid back, he works hard, and he’s eager to learn. He’s also twenty-four years old.

I hope we don’t teach him too much, too fast. And I hope there’s lots of phosphorescence, lighting our way down the coast.





There's magic at sea, even when you're anchored in town. Here's some genuine Kiwi dolphins, cruising past Sereia.

Perspective

The other day I was having tea with a friend, and I asked her where the toilet was. When I excused myself to head off down the corridor, she hollered, “YOU DON’T HAVE TO THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW,” a gesture that was surely intended to be helpful to trolls like me who’ve used buckets for so long that we’ve forgotten how indoor plumbing works. So I peed on the carpet and festooned the walls with toilet paper, then returned to the living room to finish my tea. I hate disappointing my friends.

But the truth of the matter is that we’ve left the bucket phase of our lives behind us. When Peter dismantled the head this last time, he discovered that her main pump arm had snapped clean through, the victim of twenty-odd years of metal fatigue, corrosion, and low-fiber diets. There was nothing, short of Jesus, that could resurrect her. We progressed through the typical stages of grief: the anger, the denial, the guilt. Finally we accepted the fact that the only thing that could lift us from our life of eighteenth-century squalor was a new toilet, so we bought the cheapest one we could find. It’s plastic, and it’s made in Taiwan.

We’re not getting rid of the bucket.

But we are going sailing. Yes, three and a half months after leaving Invercargill, after an exhausting boat refit and a series of terrifying diagnoses for our son, we’re raising a sail. We’ll just head toward the Bay of Islands at first, an easy jaunt to an area with lots of fascinating history. There’s Waitangi, where New Zealand became an official part of the British Empire, and Russell, once known as “the Hellhole of the Pacific,” presumably because it was one helluva place for a party. Back in the day, the whole town was awash in whale blubber, booze and cheap whores, although now you’re more likely to find souvenir shops and a rather chic breakfast café or two.

I’ve been studying the history of the Bay of Islands, which gives me a valuable perspective on our voyage. While we’ve had our share of troubles, just think of poor Marion du Fresne, captain of the French ship Mascarin. In 1772, he and his men were logging kauri up in the Bay of Islands, working with the local Maori tribes to fix up their ships and reprovision. Somehow, they managed to annoy the locals, and before they knew what hit them, Marion and two dozen of his men were slaughtered, cooked and eaten.

When their captain failed to show up, the French stormed the local village, and they found Marion. Or rather, they found what was left of him: “the skull of a man which had been cooked some days before. All the remaining flesh had been eaten and upon the skull itself were still to be seen the traces of the teeth of the cannibals.”*

Death at the hands of cannibals. And to top it all off, the year was 1772. I guarantee you Marion had to shit in a bucket.

All things considered, buckets and brain-damaged babies aren’t so bad. It could be worse. There could be cannibals gnawing on our skulls.

* Dumas, Alexandre. Translated by F. W. Reed. Captain Marion. Christchurch: Cadsonbury Publications, 1998.

Local Knowledge

“WHY?” Max wanted to know. “WHY do you want to circumnavigate New Zealand?”

“Because it would be beautiful and poetic,” I replied, sounding like a total idiot.

He peered at me, not sure if I was pulling his leg. “But why not go up and down the East Coast? It’d be a damn sight warmer, for a start. All the good harbours are on the East Coast. There’s beautiful fishing.”

He made it sound tempting. And while I scoff at the concerns of people who don’t sail—namely, my mother—Max had already sailed around New Zealand. Alone. He knew what he was talking about, which was why we’d invited him to dinner, along with his partner Jen. We were spilling over with questions about safe harbours and potential itineraries, but first Max wanted to ascertain what the hell it was we thought we were doing.

“Let me put it this way.” He began folding his paper napkin between large, leathery palms. “What do you WANT from this trip? Do you want to have a nice, cruisy time? Because you’re not in California here. When it turns to shit, it turns to shit fast. It can be very bloody uncomfortable out there.”

“I want to write a book about New Zealand,” I told him, sloshing more Shiraz in our glasses. We were drinking a wine with the unfortunate name of Shipwreck Red. “I want to learn about the history, and see the country, and have adventures, and write about them.”

“You know Bill Bryson?” Peter joined in. “She’s going to be the next Bill Bryson.”

To his credit, Max did not visibly roll his eyes. Instead, he did his best to dissuade us.

“Stewart Island,” he began, “is the southernmost harbour in the world, apart from Cape Horn. They don’t even talk about swell down there. You get on the radio and listen to the fishermen, they’re all on about the lift.”

“Lift?” It sounded nice, like fluffy white clouds and magic carpet rides.

“Lift,” he repeated. “They’ll say ‘there’s a lift of twelve out there, can’t run the ferries.’”

“Twelve feet?” Peter smiled broadly. “But that’s no big deal, depending on the frequency of the waves. It’s if they’re breaking you’ve got a problem.” He leaned back in the forepeak, pleased with his command of nautical lore.

Max looked triumphant. “Twelve metres, boy. Swells of twelve metres. With a metre or two of chop, blowing off the top.”

Oh. Twelve metres is thirty-six feet. That’s the size of Sereia. I swallowed, the wine burning my throat.

Max drove his point home. “Why d’you think there’s so many Kiwis in all the great sailing races of the world? The whole country’s got the same population as Boston, and there’s a hell of a lot more Kiwis in the races than blokes from Boston.”

“Um. Because Kiwis like to sail?” I asked tentatively.

“NAH. Because it’s a prick, girl. It’s a prick out there.”

“So what are you saying, Max?” Peter wanted to know. “Are you saying we shouldn’t go? That it’s too dangerous?”

Max looked surprised, like we’d just bit him on the ankle. “NAH I’m not bloody saying that. I’m just saying be aware of what you’re dealing with. And listen to the weather. And take it seriously. Because it can bloody well smoke out there, and you don’t want to be caught in the shit.”

No. I certainly didn’t want to be caught in the shit. Certainly not with my baby on board. The mood of our happy little dinner party began to feel uncomfortably glum.

I tried to brighten things up. “So Max,” I asked, “after your trip, was there anything you wish you’d done differently? Anything you wish you’d seen, that you missed?”

He nodded, looking over at Jen. “I would have liked to have someone to share it with. Some of that scenery is so magnificent, you can’t believe what you’re seeing. You get punch drunk with the beauty of it. And when you finish,” he smiled fondly, “it is a magical sense of accomplishment. It would have been great if she’d come with me.”

Beside me, Jen burst out laughing. “Ha! Not me. I’m not stupid!”

Oh. I thought. Are we?

South

Sereia is ready. Or rather, she’s as ready as she’s going to get without an additional two months and fifty thousand dollars to burn. I’ve shelved my hopes for a deep flight submarine, and there’s still no washer or dryer on board. But where we’re going, we won’t need to wash our clothes, and we won’t need to change them, either. Like medieval peasants of yore, we plan to sew ourselves into our foulies, then burn them at the changing of the seasons.

Because instead of sailing to Fiji, we’ve decided to stay close to land. We plan to learn about this new country we’ve adopted as our own. And that, of course, means one thing:

We’re cruising to Invercargill. The frozen asshole of the world.

I’ve hesitated to tell people our idea, for fear they will call us stupid and crazy. The southern tip of New Zealand, is, after all, where we lived last year, and we just recently escaped with our lives. They have horizontal ice storms down there. They have a perpetually overcast sky, bleak with the smoke of coal fires. I’m only just getting over the rash I acquired in Invercargill, a sort of scrofulous skin rot that confounded the doctors and can only be ascribed to a prolonged bout of spiritual malaise.

In short, we didn’t like it. At all.

And it’s not just us. People who don’t sail can’t imagine why we would rather stay in chilly old New Zealand, rather than voyage a mere ten days to the north, where the beaches are made of white powder and the snorkeling is clear as air.

Then there’s the sailors, the people who actually know what they’re talking about. Like Ken, for example, our Kiwi friend who’s built several boats and sailed them all round these waters. The other day we were sitting at his picnic table, quaffing homemade fruit wine and chatting.

“NOW,” Ken declared, slamming his glass on the table. “WHERE YA THINKIN’ A GOING IN THAT BOAT A YOURS.”

Peter, who is more forthcoming than me, and who was also more drunk, gave him a straight answer. “Circumnavigating New Zealand. We’re going to circumnavigate New Zealand.”

Ken peered at him. “DAHN’T BE BLOODY STUPID,” he roared. “Right the way round? With that kid? You’re CRAZY.”

“You think so?” asked Peter.

“THE WEST COAST IS BLOODY AWFUL,” Ken declared. “Nowhere to go in. You’d need local knowledge.”

“Perfect,” I slurred, with the confidence born of homemade fruit wine. “We’ll talk to the sailors. We’ll get to know people along the way.”

“You serious?” Ken asked, squinting at Peter. “Christ, you’re serious. Right then, you’d better talk to Max. He’s done it.”

“Great,” Peter concurred. “He’ll tell us all about it.”

“He’ll tell you you’re BLOODY STUPID and CRAZY, is what he’ll tell you,” Ken replied. “Go to Fiji. Go where it’s WARM, fer Chrissake.”

So we talked to Max. That man is an encyclopedia about New Zealand waters. And he didn’t try to dissuade us. In fact, he lit us up with excitement.

“I’ve traveled all round the Pacific,” he growled, “and everywhere I go, they ask me what my favorite Pacific island is. They think I’ll tell them some bloody sand dune with coconuts. Na,” he shook his head. “I tell them I live there! New Zealand, mate! You can live off the bloody ocean here! Everywhere you go, you can catch your dinner! Where else can you do that, I ask you?”

His eyes narrowed. “But that West Coast can be a bit rough. Why don’t you stay on the East Coast? It would be a lot easier.”

I fully planned to dodge his question, but Peter came right out with the truth. “Because Antonia’s going to write a book about New Zealand. And this would make a great story.”

I cringed. But Max didn’t tell us we were stupid. And he didn’t tell us we were crazy. Instead, he started telling us where the good anchorages were to take shelter.

“What about Fiordland?” Peter asked. “I hear it can get pretty nasty down there, with those katabatic winds. Where can we pull in there?”

“If it really starts to blow in the Sounds, mate, an old friend of mine, who’d sailed there for years, he told me there’s just three places to take shelter. Remember that. Just three places ye’ll be protected, from whatever comes at ye.”

“Where?” we asked, in unison. I pulled out my notebook to jot them down.

“Precipice Cove, Precipice Cove, and… Precipice Cove. Other than that, you’re on your own.”

There was a pause, while we took this in. I looked down at the baby, who was clutching my leg. I thought about katabatic winds.

“But it’s nice there, right?” Peter asked. “I mean, if we go there, it’s worth it, right?”

“Fiordland? It’s bloody magnificent, mate. It’s like nowhere else in the world.”

Stylites at Sea

Yesterday we gave notice at Silas’ preschool, a move which struck fear into my heart. Actually, they don’t call it “preschool” here in New Zealand, they call it “crèche,” which is a French word meaning “that which prevents Mom from going batshit crazy.” Whatever you choose to call it, this magnificent institution has given us two days per week of baby-free productivity and adult conversation, and I am extremely nervous to see it go.

“Two weeks more?” asked the nice receptionist lady. “You’re off on your sailing adventure, then are you?”

“Yes, we’re off,” I confirmed, heart pounding in my chest.

She must have smelled the fear oozing from my pores. “He’ll be fine,” she reassured me.

“IT’S NOT THE KID I’M WORRIED ABOUT,” I shrieked, then corrected my voice to a more respectable level. “He’ll be fine. As long as he’s got us, he’s fine.”

“Fine,” she repeated.

“It’s… me,” I squeaked. How to explain to this woman how nervous I was to move back on my yacht?

For all she knows, it’s the Maltese Falcon, with a staff of twenty and a deep flight submarine, although the fact that I wear the same raggedy jeans every day might tip her off. She doesn’t know that we clean our dishes in sea water, shower with a tea kettle, and get one shelf each for our clothes. She’d be surprised to learn how rarely the toilet functions, and if I told her about the maggots we’ve met in the tropics, she’d probably call the cops.

And why would she guess? Why would anyone volunteer to live on a leaky boat, forgoing such modern pleasures as washing machines and cold beer, and periodically getting tossed around the cabin like a dried bean in a maraca?

There is an ancient tradition of saints and pilgrims, who do loony things like stand on a pillar in the desert for forty years. I would like to cast Peter and myself as modern-day stylites, enlightened ascetics seeking wisdom on the high seas. Perhaps we could build ourselves twin platforms at the top of our masts, from which we would pray fervently, hand down blessings to our disciples, and mortify our flesh with whips made from halyards.

Unfortunately, that image is flawed. First of all, we are too silly to have disciples. Secondly, we are hedonists, and I don’t think saints are allowed to sail naked, knocking back the rum drinks and trolling for sushi. And thirdly, I’m only engaging in the most reluctant maritime asceticism. As soon as we can afford it, I’m getting a refrigerator. And a washing machine.

And maybe, depending on how things work out, a deep flight submarine.

Dream Team

The compression post is in. Shaped from a length of exotic hardwood known as kwila, the post is lustrous, straight and strong. It elegantly transfers the load of our mast and rigging to our solid lead keel.

And I think it’s illegal.

But before you rush to judgment, allow me to share with you some persuasive arguments in my defense, which are:

• I DIDN’T KNOW.
• IT’S NOT MY FAULT.
• And anyway, it’s just a LITTLE bit of old-growth rainforest.

Furthermore, like consumers of Persian rugs everywhere—many of which are made in caves by little blind slave children—I have to add: It may be wrong, but damn it looks good.

It’s all Ken’s fault. Ken is Peter’s crusty Kiwi friend, a madman, carpenter and shipwright who’s in charge of the compression post. He’s the one who picked out the kwila.

Which comes from Papua New Guinea, in one of the world’s last stands of old-growth forest. The trees take almost a century to mature, and at present logging rates, they'll be extinct in about 35 years.

Did I mention how good it looks? It looks really awesome.

Tropical deforestation aside, Sereia’s renovations are coming along rapidly. This is because Peter has finally achieved the perfect team for Maximum Boatyard Productivity, which is: Crazy Coot and Young Buck. Allow me to explain.

When he was working alone, Peter had a tendency to drown in his lists. He would anxiously examine the old compression post for awhile, imagining the cabin top crushing his family. Then he would wander over to the galley, and think about how our old propane regulator might blow us all up. Then he would fret about the rudder falling off, and the engine overheating, and the steering quadrant going limp and loose like an old sesame noodle, and then he would have to go lie down for awhile.

As a Crazy Coot, Ken doesn’t worry about these details. He’s built a fleet of sailboats over the years, and he’s probably mowed down a few acres of rainforest, and these things don’t faze him in the least. “They cut a tumour out the back of me head a few years back,” he explains. “Took out my hearing in that ear, and my sense of responsibility with it.”

Hence, the illegal compression post. Which, while evil, is also lovely and strong.

Then there’s Zack. Zack, as I may have mentioned, used to be a responsible citizen back in the US, with a clean shave and a job. Then something snapped inside him—something fragile and irreparable, like possibly his sanity—and he moved to New Zealand to farm tamarillos. And now, thanks to our corrupting influence, he wants to sail.

“I just want to live on a boat. For six months. With a crazy old guy. Who knows EVERYTHING. And have him teach me EVERYTHING. He can beat me every day. I don’t care. I just want to LEARN.”

It is precisely this kind of youthful enthusiasm that Peter is eager to exploit. So he puts Zack to work, in the most filthy and uncomfortable jobs. And then he pays the poor guy in pizza and beer.

Little by little, through slave labour and illegal logging, Sereia is getting to be safe and seaworthy. One of these days, we’ll run out of excuses. Then we might actually have to go sailing.

Adventure

It is important to remember that adventures are horrible, especially while you are having them. By their very nature, adventures are uncomfortable, unpleasant and at least a little bit dangerous. These are necessary qualities, ones that distinguish the "adventure" from the "packaged holiday," in which consumers spend a lot of money to see beautiful things with no perceptible risk at all.

I have to remind myself of this when I get down-hearted about the fact that Sereia is still on the hard, eating away at our finances, while paradise beckons just a thousand miles to the North.

Take Thor Heyerdahl, for example. He crossed the Pacific in a balsa wood raft, just him and five other cute young Norwegians. They dodged sharks, they read Goethe, they turned the academic world on its head, and they all got bitchin’ tans in the process. It made for a great story afterwards. I have no doubt that if I had been around in the forties, and met up with a deeply-tanned vagabond named “Thor,” who spent the evening regaling me with stories about catching sharks with his bare hands on the high seas, I would have thrown myself at him in the most silly and embarrassing ways.

But consider, for a moment, what Thor and his mates actually endured. The Kon-Tiki expedition was funded by private loans, because the academic world thought Heyerdahl was such a wackjob that nobody would even read his manuscript, let alone give him a grant. Before they could even build their raft, they had to collect hundreds of balsa wood logs from the Ecuadorian jungle, dodging native head-hunters armed with poison-tipped arrows. Once they got out to sea, they contended with frightening weather systems and sharks who were lusting for tasty man flesh. And to top it all off, their food was provided by the US Army. Circa 1947. Delicious home cooking, it was not.

And at least the Kon-Tiki expedition had sunshine. What about Earnest Shackleton and his band of intrepid adventurers? With their ship sealed in ice for an Antarctic winter, they had to slaughter their puppies for food. They ate penguin fried in seal blubber, a flavor that Shackleton likened to “bacon… though persons living under civilized conditions would probably shudder at it.” And once they realized they wouldn’t make it to the Pole, and that their only hope for survival was to send out an expedition party to South Georgia, the men left behind on Elephant Island had to starve and freeze, chewing their shoe leather in the never-ending darkness of the frigid polar winter.

Allow me to emphasize here that the crew of Sereia has no plans to chew shoe leather. Actually, we’re just looking to enjoy some nice sailing and swimming off our yacht. But despite our GPS and lavish stores of extra-virgin olive oil, going to sea in a small plastic vessel is an adventure just the same. We live in close quarters, we cope with rough seas, we eat dried beans and we pee in a bucket—because all that discomfort, in the end, makes the world a sweeter place.

Besides. If this were easy, everyone would be doing it.

The Rumor Mill

Sereia got hauled yesterday, and it all went fine. Watching your yacht getting lifted out of the water by perfect strangers is always a bit nerve-racking, rather like how it feels to watch your child getting sedated by a doctor. In this case, it would be a dodgy-looking doctor, with a scraggly beard and a wild look in his eye, driving a giant bulldozer. But he treated our princess just fine. She’s up on blocks, scrubbed and ready for her surgery.

I mention this because when I logged on to my email account later that day, I had several messages from a concerned fellow cruiser. The gist of them was something like this: THAT YARD YOU’RE AT IS RUN BY A THIEVING GYPSY WHO’S GONNA OVERCHARGE YOUR ASS AND HOLD YOUR BOAT HOSTAGE TILL YOU PAY AND PAY AND PAY.

Naturally, this struck fear into my heart. I nearly texted Peter right away, and asked him to push Sereia back into the water himself if he had to, and sail away. But then I reconsidered.

Rumors get spread around the cruising community quicker than swine flu in a Mexican kindergarten. For a group of people that chooses to live such a crazy lifestyle, liveaboard sailors are surprisingly fearful. Remember, these are folks who cross oceans in Clorox bottles. You’d think we’d have balls made of stainless steel. And yet, we worry and fret, worry and fret, until it’s a wonder we don’t come down with swine flu ourselves.

Sometimes, being a paranoid neurotic can make you a better sailor. Peter is convinced that every system aboard Sereia is constantly on the verge of rusting out, breaking, or blowing up—and most of the time, he’s right. If he weren’t such a conservative sailor, we never would have come so far, so safely. Sereia would have caught fire long ago, blown sky-high by a toxic combination of propane gas, electrical sparks, and rum.

But then there’s the other kind of worrying. The kind where a fellow cruiser puts down his beer and leans in over the table, and tells you: “Mexico’s FULL of thieves, and the officials are ALL corrupt. Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile. All they’re after is your wallet.” Or: “New Zealand customs officials are out for blood. They’ll take ALL your food, and ALL your carvings, and ALL your woven baskets. You’ll be left with NOTHING once they’re done with you.” Or: “I know a guy who knows a guy who got cheated at that boatyard, so watch your back.”

The problem with this kind of fretting isn’t just that it’s often exaggerated, or just plain wrong. It sets up an expectation that can sometimes become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we left our boat for a couple of days in Acapulco, Peter and I didn’t tell anyone in the harbor we were going—we were too scared that all the local thieves would take that as a cue to clean out our boat. While we were gone, Sereia dragged anchor and smashed into two fishing vessels. That never would have happened if we’d just relaxed and asked someone nicely to look after our boat for us.

And when Peter checked into New Zealand, the customs agents who came aboard were nothing but charming and reasonable. Not only did they let us keep all our native art, some of which was made of filthy rawhide, but they were so busy chatting merrily with Peter that they forgot to confiscate half our food.

If you walk into a port captain’s office expecting to be cheated, you’ll come off as suspicious and hostile—which is a great way to incur an “attitude tax.” I know this, because as a naturally unpleasant person, I’ve incurred lots of them. Peter, however, has been coaching me on how to behave like a pleasant human being, and this has garnered us much better results with officialdom.

I don’t have time to be scared of rumors. I’m much too busy with real fears, like the fact that I haven’t seen a porcini mushroom since I’ve been in New Zealand, and I'm going into risotto withdrawal. I’m getting so desperate, I might have to bribe a customs official to get me some.

Only… damn. You just can’t bribe them here, like you could in good ol’ Mexico.

Here's a movie of Rei-Rei getting bulldozed around:

MAMA BEAR

Well, that little nautical love affair lasted for about an hour and a half. On Monday, as I may have mentioned, the diesel heater failed to light. The night was freezing cold, but that was OK. We were boat people. We were snuggling together in our berth like hot cheese, while the enchiladas and milk cooled in the bilge, or some such horse shit. And… hey! The toilet and stove worked great!

On Tuesday, the head broke. Again. Back to peeing in a bucket. While squatting and peeing on the freezing cabin sole, I began to have second thoughts about the bohemian glamour of yachting life.

By Wednesday, Silas’ cough was worse, and he was starting to sound like one of those wheezing babies in a made-for-TV movie about the dreaded plague. I took him to the doctor, and she noted that his ears were inflamed from congestion. She prescribed amoxicillin. Amoxicillin has to be refrigerated, but since we are carefree bohemians, we just sealed it in a plastic Ziploc bag, and stowed it in the filthy hole we call our bilge. We were essentially living in a refrigerator anyway, so surely that would work just fine.

Thursday and Friday, we didn’t work on the boat. Thursday was taken up with cleaning and repairing the borrowed house we’ve been living in. This entailed such projects as re-gravelling the driveway that we’d managed to tear up, replacing the electric tea kettle that we’d managed to melt, and replacing the $200 bottle of Courvoisier VSOP cognac that Silas had spilled all over the floor while batting it around like a wounded mouse. Yes, I did say TWO HUNDRED dollars. French imports are rather pricy in New Zealand. (And Silas’ new name, by the way, is “VSOP.”)

Friday was intended to be a day off, a “date” day, in which we enjoyed our boat and each other while our baby was occupied in nursery school. However, the romance was blighted somewhat by the fact that I still had to pee in a bucket. Also, by that point I’d caught Silas’ cough, and every time I was overtaken by a violent fit of hacking, I wet myself. Thank you, natural childbirth.

People are always saying that “being a parent is the most wonderful thing in the world!” Then they look at me expectantly and wait for me to chime in. Either they’re lying, or I’m a bad person, because I don’t really see it that way. Parenthood, as far as I’m concerned, is a lot like having a multiple personality disorder.

Friday night is when things really started to break down. Silas launched into one of his gurgling cough episodes, sounding like the consumptive heroine of some Puccini opera, and Peter lost it. He started frantically mopping at the walls with a rag. “This is dumb, this is bad, what were we thinking?” he started muttering to himself.

I peered at him from the galley. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s cold, it’s wet, our boy is sick—LOOK AT THIS CONDENSATION— this isn’t healthy, what were we thinking? Why are we doing this?” The right side of Peter’s face started to twitch alarmingly. He kept wiping the walls with his rag, trying to soak up all the moisture before it made his baby any sicker. But Sereia’s just an old plastic boat. The battle against condensation is futile.

Peter was already high on Dad chemicals. And then I felt the shift.

Just like that, Antonia receded into my unconscious, forgotten like an old childhood memory. And in her place, came... MAMA BEAR. Here is the thing about MAMA BEAR: you write her name in all caps, or she will rip your fucking head off. When you think of MAMA BEAR, you do not think of Teddy. You think Kodiak. You think eight hundred pounds and ten-inch claws.

“Don’t you even start with me,” I growled. “I am on a razor edge here, and I am THIS CLOSE to moving off this boat.”

Peter and Silas just stared at me. I didn’t even sound like myself.

“What you don’t seem to understand,” I snarled at my beloved husband, “is that I WILL GNAW OFF YOUR FUCKING ARM to keep this baby warm and dry.”

Peter blanched. “One week,” he urged me. “We’ll give it one week. Just give it a week, and we’ll see how it goes. Then if you want to move out, we’ll move out.”

I took a breath. MAMA BEAR retreated, and Antonia agreed. But Saturday morning, the skies opened up, rain poured down on Sereia, and winds gusted to thirty knots. We had this stupid idea that Silas and I would leave the boat during the day, so that Peter could work, but we didn’t really make provision for stormy weather.

So there I was, cuddling my sick baby in the main berth, while Peter poured diesel into our tanks. The floor lockers were opened up, so we couldn’t walk on the cabin sole. All the portholes were closed to keep out the rain. My head started pounding from the fumes. But there was nowhere to go. We were trapped. Silas started coughing.

And MAMA BEAR charged out of her den.

People who undergo a psychic break describe a feeling of unreality, as though they are moving in a dream. There’s a guy in New Zealand who’s just been convicted of stabbing his girlfriend 216 times with a pair of scissors, and that’s how he described it in court, as though he were looking down on himself, observing his own actions from afar.

Floating on the cabin ceiling, I watched as MAMA BEAR collected her baby, and held him out of the rain as she stormed into the marina office. I watched her make phone calls in a cheerful human voice, looking for a furnished flat to rent, short term. I watched her drive out to the rental, a cute little cottage with heat, refrigeration, and hot water. And I watched her rent it on the spot.

Peter was furious, at least at first. “I thought we were going to give it a week!” he protested. It isn’t cheap, after all, to rent a marina slip and also a furnished apartment. Puts a hell of a dent in the cruising kitty.

“It’s a done deal now,” I replied. Antonia had returned, and she was throwing Silas’ clothing into a bag. “Why didn’t you tell me how you felt before I agreed to rent the place?”

“It’s no use,” said Peter woefully. “You can’t argue with a mother when she feels her baby isn’t safe.”

Truer words have never been spoken. What is it they teach you when you go camping in the woods? Never, EVER get between a MAMA BEAR and her cub. Because before you know it, she’ll tear off your arm.

It’s much safer to let her rent her an apartment.

Ixnay on the Ijifay

Up until this point, Peter has been in charge of making Sereia safe for us to live aboard. He’s been fixing leaks, making sure the head and the stove work, and keeping electrical fires out of the bilge. Every time he looked at the bent compression post, he started babbling incoherently about hiring engineers and jacking up the mast, so we tried to keep things manageable. We avoided talking about what it would take to make Sereia safe for coastal cruising, or ocean sailing, because we didn’t want Peter’s head to explode.

And now we’ve moved on the boat. Sereia is safe for living aboard. And Peter’s head is exploding.

The problem isn’t that any one system is broken. Sereia is a thirty year-old boat, and she’s been held together with duct tape and dreams for some time now. Before I met Peter, when I first noticed that my chainplates were rusting out, I hired a rigger to take a look at the problem, and he said:

“Well, you’ll probably be fine. It’s probably just surface rust.” He was a very cute rigger, and he had an Australian accent. I wanted to believe him. But I had to ask.

“What if it’s not? What if it’s deeper?”

“Then you might lose your rig. But you wanted adventure, right? And that’s when the adventure begins, mate!” Then he charged me fifteen hundred bucks, and I realized it would be cheaper to get a husband.

Since then, Peter has drilled out the rusted chainplates and replaced them, and he’s upgraded our boat in countless other ways. But we’ve also cut plenty of corners. Sereia’s rudder, for example. Sereia has an enormous barn door rudder, held on by massive gudgeons and pintles that look as though they could bolt an elephant to the hull. Unfortunately, they are frozen shut, so the rudder can’t be removed and inspected. We know there’s water in the rudder, but we don’t know how much. Over the years, Peter and I have dealt with this by drilling small holes in the fiberglass, allowing sea water to drain out for a couple of days, then shooting the holes full of epoxy and calling it a day. “Ha, ha,” we’d say nervously. “If we lose the rudder, then that’s when the adventure begins, mate!” Then we’d have another beer, and talk about how we might dangle a wooden door overboard, to use it as a steering device.

Ha, ha. Side-to with no steering in massive South Pacific waves. Trying to save our own lives with a piece of a door, bobbing on the end of a line. While the baby is screaming down below. Getting rolled. Losing the rig.

Ha…Ha.

As you may have gathered, the problem here is cultural. Now that we are parents, we are raising the bar for acceptable safety levels at sea. Safe play areas, clean drinking water, and PFDs are all good. Broaching in large seas without reliable steering on board is bad. So are brain-eating worms. And busted masts.

Last night, we made a list of everything that needs to be done on board Sereia for her to be safe for a family at sea. Then we estimated how long each project should take, and whether or not we can be living on board Sereia while we do it.

The list looks something like this:


And the conclusions we have reached are as follows:

1. It is going to take between a month and six weeks of hard work to make Sereia ready to cruise.

2. By the time she is ready to sail, it will be too late in the season to go to Fiji. Even if we pick a good weather window, we would then have to spend the entire hurricane season in the islands, and we can’t be out of New Zealand that long without losing our visas.

On the other hand, by mid-September, the weather will be getting warmer in New Zealand. By October, it will be gorgeous. And we have tremendous cruising grounds, right here! We could sail to the Far North, check out all those hundreds of little emerald-rimmed islands that sparkle along the coast, practice fishing, learn a little Maori, explore this new country that we are adopting as our own, and maybe sail all the way down to Nelson and Cook Strait!

Then, come April, we’ll be very well-placed for a safe and timely trip to Fiji.

Our plans are changing. Stay tuned for lots of posts about rudders and compression posts. I expect there will be a few about Vegemite, as well.

It’s going to be a rough winter.

Boat People

Yesterday, we moved back on Sereia. No more refrigerator. No more hot water out of a faucet. We draw cold water with a foot pump, and if we need warm water, we heat it on the stove. No more flushing the toilet with a flick of a lever—now we have to open the valve, pump ten times with sea water, then close the valve and pump ten times dry. We couldn’t get the heat working last night, and the temperature slipped below freezing. In the morning, the docks were slick with ice.

And it's abso-freaking wonderful.

Who needs refrigeration when it’s this cold outside? Milk and cheese just go right in the bilge. And when it’s time to go to bed, the whole family snuggles up in the main berth. Under our big fluffy duvet last night, we were as snug as three little hot enchiladas in cheese sauce.

Perhaps I should back up. Our move was postponed for two days, due to a low pressure system that brought torrential rains and gusts of up to 75 knots to Whangarei. Yep, that’s seventy-five knots. We figured that might not be the best time for Silas’ inaugural voyage on Sereia, so we took the opportunity to do some serious movie-watching indoors.

Monday dawned clear and sunny. It took a little while to bail out the dinghy, which was flooded with about half a foot of water:



Antonia’s job was to keep Silas entertained, which she did by torturing him with his PFD:



Luckily, Peter had enlisted the help of this upstanding fellow:


Zack is a CPA who used to have a job and a clean shave. Now he’s running a tamarillo farm in New Zealand. Don’t ask.

Sereia was all ready with her new baby-catching net:


The netting, incidentally, was imported from Bologna. We’re not sure why a length of white net needs to be shipped to the opposite side of the globe, but I’m sure it made lots of money for a wide variety of people. It wasn’t cheap.

Soon after casting off from our pile mooring, Silas fell asleep in his new crib:


The “crib” consists of a custom-made lee cloth blocking off the forward area of the salon. The “blanket” he is using is a pile of clean rags. “You’re such a lucky baby,” I cooed to him as I tucked him in. “Little orphan babies in the Sudan only get piles of dirty rags to sleep in. You get clean ones.”

Once we arrived at the dock, Silas spent the afternoon charging around the boat, exploring every inch of his new home. Toys? Who needs toys? The kid spent twenty minutes playing with a garbage bag:

It’s a funny thing. Two years ago, when we first left Sereia and moved back on land, we made a very comfortable nest for ourselves. Our little apartment had hot running water, a freezer with ice cubes, and matching throw pillows. Each new possession made our lives more convenient. And with each new purchase, I felt the noose tightening around my neck:


As we have prepared to move back on Sereia, we’ve been shedding our stuff like a bad case of dandruff. As a Mom, I’ve been a nervous wreck. What if my baby is uncomfortable? What if my baby needs more space? What if my baby falls overboard?

But ever since yesterday, Silas has been babbling and panting non-stop. He has a huge smile on his face. If he could talk, I’m pretty sure he’d be saying “HELL YEAH!”

Because Silas is a boat person. And no matter how long we’ve tried to pretend otherwise on land, so are we.

Dithering

Some of you may be wondering why it’s the beginning of July and I’m still going on about throw pillows and peeing in a bucket. Here we are, fiddling around at the dock, while sailing in the Southern Hemisphere gets steadily colder and more bracing. Low pressure systems are bouncing all over the charts like cats in a hot buttered skillet. And meanwhile, just to the north of us, Fiji’s got swaying palm trees , tropical sunshine, and a friendly military dictatorship ready to welcome us with open arms. So what’s the hold-up, already?

I can answer that question in two words: compression post.

Sereia’s mast, as you may recall, was installed by Taiwanese children who lived in an industrial sweat shop and didn’t get much time off to go yachting. As a result, they stepped the mast six inches forward of the supporting beam. The problem with this is that when Sereia is under sail—as she would be, say, when completing a 1,000-mile passage to Fiji—enormous pressure is exerted on the mast from the combined forces of wind and rigging. I’m no engineer, and I don’t know exactly how much pressure we are talking about. Lots and lots of pounds, though. More than you could lift.

And in the case of Sereia, that pressure is transferred to the deck, which consists of a very thin sheet of marine plywood, sandwiched between two relatively lame-assed layers of fiberglass. This is a very dangerous situation, one that could result in the mast smashing down through the cabin top, thousands of gallons of sea water surging through our home, and Sereia sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Which would be unpleasant.

If you’ve been following our adventures for some time now, you will remember that Peter solved this problem in 2005 by installing a steel compression post beneath the mast. We were particularly fond of this fix, because it had the twin virtues of solving our structural problem, and providing us with a stripper pole in the salon.

At the beginning of the cruise, the compression post was straight and strong. Designed in two pieces so as to incorporate the dining table, it kept us safe through 12,000 miles of ocean voyaging.

Here’s what it looks like now:



Not sure what the problem is? Let me help you with that:



Now that our crooked steel pole has roughly the same compressive strength as a cornflake, Peter’s been having Dad nightmares. Usually these involve the mast falling down on the baby, an unhappy scenario that also creates a hell of a mess. Clearly, the pole will have to be replaced. Peter is considering several options, such as using a solid length of wood, or retaining the same design, but with much thicker steel.

Thank God I’m not the captain. I’ve been having much better dreams. Like last night, for example, when I dreamed I was standing at the helm in nothing but a fishnet body stocking and a harness made of black webbing and stainless steel shackles.

Unfortunately for Peter, he’ll have to get us to the tropics before that dream can come true. Strange… I’ve never seen him so motivated in my life.

Setbacks

Peter and I had a little contretemps on Thursday. Thursdays and Fridays are big days, because Silas is in nursery school, we are baby-free, and I get to row out to Sereia with Peter and do boat projects all afternoon. Last Thursday was particularly exciting, because with just one week to go before we move on board, I was looking forward to the finishing touches, like buffing the woodwork with a soft rag, and deciding what color scheme to use for my throw pillows.

When I got on board, one thing was instantly clear. Sereia isn’t ready for throw pillows.

To begin with, there was a six-inch hole in the cabin top. Peter’s temporary solution was a wad of shopping bags and duct tape, which had leaked, causing a geyser of water to cascade into the forward salon. He’d cleaned up the salt water and dried off my stores, thereby opening up all the lockers and destroying the single tidy area I’d managed to create on board. There were no safety nets or lee cloths to be seen anywhere, so visions of drowned babies floated gruesomely through my head. The entire boat was sprinkled with tiny bolts and screws, perfect for choking toddlers. And to top it all off, we still had to pee in a bucket.

I got very quiet.

After four years of marriage, Peter doesn’t care when I yell and make abusive wisecracks. Those are the good days, the days we cherish as a couple. He gets concerned when I’m kind and considerate, because that usually means I’m sick, and I don’t have the energy to be a bitch. And on the rare occasions when I shut my mouth completely and go quiet, Peter starts looking for places to take cover. It doesn’t happen very often. But when it does, I’m furious.

“But the head works,” he mumbled evasively. “It just leaks a little, so if you want me to fix the leak, I just have to take it apart one more time…”

“We have one week,” I snarled, my voice shaking with emotion. “AND I DO NOT FEEL SAFE ON THIS BOAT WITH MY BABY.”

Really, that is just the most cynical form of female manipulation. It was a Molotov cocktail of all the deadliest weapons in a woman's arsenal: I implied that Peter was a bad father by not making the boat safe for his child. I implied that he sucked at boat work, the activity that gives him his greatest sense of accomplishment. And I managed to sound simultaneously weepy (making him desperately want to protect me), and enraged (making him think he will never get laid again, ever.)

Also, my reaction was unfair. I knew perfectly well that Peter had been busting his ass for a month, and that the fruits of his labour were simply not visible while standing in the forward salon. This is due to a universal principle known to philosophers as “infinite regress,” and known to alcoholic sailors the world over as “a goddamned cluster fuck.” In case you are reading this and do not have a boat, allow me to illustrate:

Beginning your work with bright-eyed optimism, you start project A, but soon realize that because your boat was built by sadistic gnomes, you can’t work on A before completing projects B, C, and D. D is located under project F, which will have to be dismantled in order to reach project D. Unfortunately, once you access project D, you accidentally spill water on electrical part G, which will now have to be replaced. Luckily, part G is very easy to access. It’s just inside locker H, but the hinges on locker H have been frozen shut by oxidation, so you’ll have to saturate them in WD-40 first, then clean up the rust and open them with pliers before you can reach part G. Eventually, you manage to lubricate locker H, access part G, replace it, fix project D, and reassemble project F. Now you are ready to complete projects B and C, but B requires a very tiny specialized screwdriver that you haven’t seen since El Salvador, and C requires the use of a bedding compound that will only harden in sunshine, and it’s the middle of the rainy season. You tear apart the entire boat looking for the tiny, specialized screwdriver, but can’t find it anywhere (although you do find some very swollen sardine cans from 1997 and shocking number of dead baby cockroaches) so you get off the boat and drive to three different stores looking for the goddamned screwdriver. No one has it. You get back on the boat and notice that a) you’re taking on water, and b) the bilge pump is making a very weird noise, so you reach down among the filth and slime of your nasty bilge, only to find the teeny-tiny-assed screwdriver sucked into the bilge pump. Using the bitch-whore-piece of shit-fucknose screwdriver, you finally manage to complete project B, the sun shines just long enough for the bedding compound to cure on project C, at which point you ascertain that the parts for project A are only available in Bologna and will have to be ordered in Italian.

Then your wife yells at you.

I’ve lived on my boat for years. I knew this about boat projects, and yet I still rode Peter’s ass about Sereia not being ready. I choose to think of this less as selfish and unreasonable behavior on my part, and more as a form of delightful feminine whimsy. Peter, on the other hand, demurred.

“I don’t deserve this,” he retorted. “The boat will be ready. The boat will be safe. If you don’t feel safe, we’ll rent a place on land until you do.”

A place on land??? What would I do with a place on land? With all that refrigeration and pressurized water? With all those fruity throw pillows? I’d be bored out of my skull in a week. I’d be so bored, I’d probably have to get a job or something.

Besides, I’m good with languages. And somebody’s got to call Bologna, to order those parts.

Um. How do you say “turnbuckle toggle jaw” in Italian?

Progress

Now that we’re back in Whangarei, I’ve been meeting with the girls from my antenatal group once a week. We have coffee, watch our toddlers bash each other over the head with plastic trucks, and talk about the things that matter to young mothers. Our babies’ first words, for example. And home remodeling projects. One woman is taking advantage of the down market to move to a bigger house, and one is installing a patio so she can host elegant outdoor dinner parties over the summer. And as it happens, Peter and I are renovating our home as well, so I jumped into the conversation at my first opportunity.

“Our toilet can flush!” I chirped. “We don’t have to pee in a bucket anymore!”

The room fell silent. Sandra sipped her tea.

“And we have a heater! And a stove!” I gushed, sounding like a happy peasant in an ad for the Red Cross.

Leslie reached over and pulled her son’s diaper off his head. “But… didn’t you have those things before?” she asked, genuinely confused.

They have no idea.

By the time we anchored in Tahiti, we’d been cruising aboard Sereia for nearly two years, and her systems had begun a slow slide into chaos. The Christmas Poo of 2005, for example, possessed our toilet with a demonic force that sealed the outtake hose and mocked us with low, maniacal laughter. Peter eventually managed to exorcise it with a crescent wrench and a vial of holy water, but not before we’d spent a week on intimate terms with a bucket.

Sereia has an excellent diesel-powered heater on board, and when we were first dating, Peter and I spent long evenings gazing into its dancing flames while we cuddled in the forepeak. Then its flue filled up with creosote, so that one night, when we’d fallen asleep with all the portholes closed and the flame on high, we awoke to find our brains cooking with neurotoxins and the cabin filled with a poisonous black cloud. We haven’t had to use it since Northern California, and by the time we reached New Zealand, the heater had seized with a diesel-rust combo that looked like burnt concrete.

Our Force 10 stove, which Peter purchased for me in lieu of a diamond ring, made a valiant effort to survive. In fairness, few marine stoves have been asked to produce Hollandaise sauce, Tarte Tatin and puff pastry, all at a twenty-degree heel at sea. But by the time we reached the Tuamotus, we were boiling water over a gasoline-powered camping flame, and anxiously hoping that our fire extinguisher still knew what to do in a pinch.

Our electrical system is in pretty good nick, despite the fact that countless owners have installed layers of amateurish circuitry on board, so that the tangle of wires behind the main panel looks like a jaunty bouquet of rainbow-colored death. Once, when we were sleeping in the quarterberth, Peter woke up and murmured, “Isn’t that amazing? There’s mist coming down the companionway.”

We watched for a moment, mesmerized. And then we heard the live wire, sputtering and sparking in the bilge. The mist, as it turned out, was white smoke from an electrical fire that we’d managed to ignite beneath the cabin sole.

Now that we have a baby, poisonous fumes, electrical fires and puddles of flaming gasoline don’t seem as fun as they once did. And for some reason, the Red Cross doesn’t have an aid category for unemployed hedonists who live on their yachts. So Peter has been working long hours on Sereia, displaying the dogged work ethic that fathers tend to adopt in war zones and pandemics, when they are protecting their babies from imminent harm.

He is doing a fantastic job. In two weeks, he’s given us a working toilet, free from malevolent forces of evil. Our stove cooks, if possible, better than it did before. And the diesel heater lights right up, warming our little cabin with no discernable toxic cloud.

Soon we’ll have a floating home that’s cozy enough for a baby. If we ever make it to Fiji, we’ll be able to give elegant tropical dinner parties in the cockpit. No patio required.