WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW
We’re at the end of day 2 of our 9-day, 1,300-mile passage from New Zealand to Tonga.
Miles to go: 1,050
Air temp: 68F/20C in the cabin, about 60F/15C outside
Conditions: It’s been gray and cloudy for days. The air is wet though it’s hard to tell if the wet comes from humidity or misting rain or rain. Everything is damp. Winds have been steady 12-20 knots for the last 14 hours, helping us make great time in the direction we need to go (east-northeast). Seas are a little lumpy (meaning the waves seem to come from all directions) but they’re not big. Most swells are 1-2 meters with the occasional 3-meter troublemaker.
Listening to: Shakey Graves radio, “You are not alone” by Mavis Staples, the new Pink album, Trustfall. Harry’s listening to a podcast about the Pacific War.
Reading: Nothing yet. Seas will not allow. But I’ve started “The Winners” by Fredrick Backman. He wrote “A Man Called Ove.” Looking forward to getting back to it.
Watching: Nothing yet. Screens are dangerous.
Recent meals: French Toast for breakfast (WUT!), leftover pizza for lunch, leftover spaghetti for dinner. We are in “heat and eat” mode.
I’m on my second night watch. Since the skies have been so cloudy I can’t see any stars or the moon. It’s pitch-black dark beyond the frothy whites of the waves around us. The cockpit is very wet from waves splashing in and rain, so we’ve been down below in the cabin a lot. This is significantly more comfortable. We step up the companionway every fifteen to twenty minutes to scan the horizon and marvel at how impossible this would be without a compass. The sameness of the seascape in every direction is frighteningly disorienting.
THE FIRST TWO DAYS ARE HARD
We’ve never had a first day on passage like the one we just had. We were both terribly seasick for about seven hours. Even with seasickness medications in our systems. This probably happened because it’s been so long since we used our sea legs. We forgot how. We each staked out our preferred vomit position, Harry in the cockpit with a bucket (NEVER vomit over the side of a boat. This is how people fall overboard.), me in the galley at the sink. That was a tough, tough day and through this we had winds steady 20-25 knots and gusting to 32. So overall our re-entry to the ocean was met with mayhem. We handled it with our usual aplomb.
The next morning we were both feeling 80% better and we’ve steadily improved. Our bellies and our appetites are still off-kilter but we’re getting there.
I’ve been adjusting to how tired my body is on the sea. It’s true that not sleeping more than about twenty minutes in 36 hours has something to do with this. (Nobody sleeps on the first night of an ocean passage.) As does not eating for about 15 waking hours. But still. I can swim 3,000 meters of mixed stroke (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle) in about an hour. I am fit. But put me on a sailboat on the ocean and I’m taking rest breaks between enormous, overwhelming chores like hanging the towel up and scanning the horizon.
Earlier today I sat on the settee thinking through all the one chore I had to do and trying to decide if I should take a rest during the chore or just before and after. I needed to prop up the head of our mattress to get air circulating under it. This is an everyday chore since the air here is so humid. Our mattress butts up against the bulkhead (wall) that has the fridge and freezer on the other side. We get condensation on that wall that leaves the underside of the head of the mattress and the edge of the sheets soaked. If I don’t prop up the head of the mattress for air flow, eventually mildew blooms. This is a pretty simple chore and on an ordinary day it takes about twenty seconds. But this is how life at sea presents itself. Those simple, quick things become major events requiring careful planning and deep thinking about the strategy of rest breaks. Conveniently, I was able to flop onto the mattress for my resting periods on either side of this demanding chore.
If we can’t be in the cockpit, my favorite sitting spot is the starboard settee. Because of our angle on the wind, this is currently the downhill side of the boat. It’s like a gentle cradle as we’re heeled over. Because of continued slight seasickness I’ve been lounging on the settee and just gazing into the middle distance. I watch the rain make spider legs on the port holes. I think about how I’m feeling about these first few days on passage and about how serious everything seems. When you’ve just vomited for seven hours straight it’s hard to find humor. Part of me knows I’ll look back at me in this moment and I’ll think how naïve and inexperienced I was. Just five days from now, when I’m baking bread and vacuuming the floor like there’s no sea lurching around me, I’ll remember these first days and my seriousness and think I was so silly. But I have to live through this to get to that. The future me can’t exist without the present me in her serious and inexperienced state. There aren’t any shortcuts. I don’t get to skip the discomfort of naivete and inexperience and still get to grow and learn. We can’t have one without the other.
I’m honoring the present me who is struggling even while I know the future me will be fine.
WHAT’S NEXT
There’s a mystery in the cockpit to solve. After our first night at sea, I noticed some mud, little pebbles of dirt, on a cushion in the cockpit. It looked just like a puppy had pranced through after a walk in the woods. I can’t figure out where the mud came from. It wasn’t there when we left the dock. We didn’t have any on our shoes, and we haven’t taken anything out of the cockpit lockers that would have mud on it. It’s the strangest thing. Harry suggests it might be bird poop. I'm sticking with puppy prancing.
All my love,
Joy