Childbirth

On Friday November 6, 2020 I wrote this, “Finally, it happened.  Just like they said it would.  Today I found my sea legs!  It’s day four of our passage from Put-In Creak, Virginia to English Harbor, Antigua.  It feels as though we’ve left politics, COVID 19, and, well, the world as we knew it, hundreds of miles behind us.  Oh wait a minute, we actually did do that!  Albeit temporarily.  We are now about 750nm from where we started and I feel good.”

During the next five hours of my night watch, from 20:00 to 01:00, I continued to write, taking time out every fifteen minutes to check the sails, the radar, any AIS vessel locations, the weather, the speed over ground [SOG], the boat speed [BSP], the wind angle, the horizon, the sea state, and the bilge, while Michael, my husband, slept.  This is what I wrote that night: 

I feel so good that I’ve taken out my computer for the first time ever while sailing. I actually feel as though I can write without the urge to vomit over the side of the boat.  In fact, I just realized that I forgot to take my seasickness medication when it was due five hours and twenty minutes ago.  Clearly, something inside me has changed.

That’s the point.  Isn’t it? To change.  To complement my work as a writer, I’ve been reading how-to books.  Although these instructional books have taught me different techniques, the authors unanimously agree that one of the most wonderful ways to create change in the main character is to take them on a journey.  

“Fancy that,” I thought to myself this morning as I gazed out over the purple blue ocean.  “I am the main character on a phenomenal journey that will change me, most definitely for the better.”  This simple, private epiphany made all the difference.

In the beginning, I felt like a fish out of water.  What irked me the most was the profound sense of imposter syndrome that came over me in the weeks leading up to the Salty Dawg Sailing Association [SDSA] Rally to the Caribbean.  Even though I had earned my US Coast Guard Captain’s License, and been cruising successfully with my husband for five months, my confidence eluded me.  The more SDSA zoom calls we sat through, the more I believed that I wouldn’t measure up.  I had convinced myself that the sailors in the rally were elite sportsmen and women.  I was not.  I was just a nurse, with a sense of adventure, who loved and trusted her husband.  I could tell Michael felt at home in the group.  He had a full understanding of the complicated weather GRIBs, routing, and necessary preparations.  I had forgotten it all.

It didn’t matter.  We were going to Antigua with or without my confidence.  On the day of our departure, it was very cold, but sunny.  We had on lots of gear to keep us warm and dry.  It was bulky and mildly uncomfortable.  Just before anchor up, I set up a miniature tripod on Gerty’s cockpit table to snap a picture. 

We laughed at the photo of ourselves in our geared-up outfits, and gave in to the thrill of adventure.  Gerty, our Allure 45.9, prefers to sail downwind in twenty knots or more, so we set sail on the backside of a storm as planned and tore out of the Chesapeake fast on a WNW wind.

My first night watch went well, with a full moon to light the way and chocolate chip granola bars to replenish my dinner that had refused to stay put.  My synapses started firing and I remembered everything that I had never really forgotten about how to sail our boat.  

The sun came up and all was well, until the spinnaker pole swung across the foredeck and into Michael’s forehead while he was preparing to pole out the jib.  I could see the rising bump and split skin on his forehead from fifteen feet away and I prayed, “Please don’t pass out and fall off the boat.”  Then I glanced at his intact tether and adapted my prayer because he shouldn’t fall off, “Please don’t have a concussion so that I have to sail the boat alone.”  He steadied himself.  He made eye contact with me through the dodger window, mouthed the word, “ouch,” and continued to set up the rig.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the dolphins that came to raise our spirits after the mishap with the spinnaker pole.  They welcomed us into the gulf stream with a celebratory playfulness that was so surreal that it puzzled us.  According to our charts, there was now approximately 13,000 feet of water below us and the surface of the ocean extended as far as the eye could see in every direction.  How did they find us?  

We had a whole conversation about the color of the water.  I thought if my five year old self had a jumbo box of Crayola Crayons, the color of the ocean that day was the exact color of the crayon I would have picked to represent it.  We jointly praised the job Michael did strapping the dinghy to Gerty’s arch, instead of the foredeck.  “It’s totally secure,” he said with satisfaction.  We made the turn south. The winds eased to 12 knots NE and we ceremoniously raised Gerty’s asymmetrical spinnaker.  We had naturally nicknamed this sunrise colored sail our “Happy sail,” because it was impossible not to smile when it filled with wind.  All was well, as Michael likes to say.

In an instant the spell was broken with a loud bang when the Happy Sail tore from head to tack along the luff.   Again, Michael tethered himself to the jacklines and made his way along the starboard side rail gathering the sail as he went, eventually burying it in Gerty’s sail locker.  The death of such an exquisite sail is surely a reason to mourn.

Unless there are rainbows! 

The chance to see a rainbow, unobscured by land, is reason enough to make the passage to Antigua.  That said, Mahi Mahi is another compelling reason!  Imagine a neon green iridescent fish so beautiful that it’s painful to watch it die.  This delicacy is a pelagic Mahi and Michael caught a big one! 

Finally, a galaxy of stars scattered across a moonless midnight sky is yet another reason to just do it.

I was quite surprised when I next logged onto my computer about six days later, while sitting in Gerty’s cockpit over a turquoise blue English Harbor, and came across the narrative above.  This is because Friday November 6th was the calm before the storm, or said more accurately . . . before the squally, wavy, tilted, beam reach windy world that was to be our home for the remainder of our trip.

What is most vivid in my memory is the cacophonous symphony that droned on and on without intermission.  In the cabin, a horrific rhythm section made up of cabinet creaks and dishware squeaks played constantly, interrupted only by the percussion section, which was composed solely of our slamming V-birth storage cover.   A new age venue consisting of ten thousand broken baby rattles would cut in at random moments followed by the worst sound of all . . . dead silence.  The absence of sound could only mean one thing.  That Gerty had been thrown into the air by the might of another monstrous wave and a thunderous crash was imminent.  The crash would be followed by my whole body levitating against my will above the mattress leaving me in temporary hysteria as to my whereabouts, not only in the middle of the ocean, but within the confines of our boat as well.  In the cockpit the deafening sound of the sea and the wind was relentless.  It felt like I was being tortured by the white noise app I downloaded for free on my mobile.  Imagine having it cranked up to full volume on a phone with a magical battery that never, ever ran out of charge.

We were exhausted!  On November 7th, Michael, a captain who knows his audience, suggested it was time for us to heave to.  This maneuver, that effectively stops a sailboat in a luxurious holding pattern, was a necessary sacrifice.  Each minute in the heave to position would blow Gerty west, negating the precious easting that we had worked so hard to make, but for god’s sake, we needed a shower!  Fifteen minutes of relaxation could only be a benefit to our psyche.

Except that when Gerty leveled out, her bilge alarm went off.  I dutifully checked the forward bilge and saw six inches of water.  I didn’t panic.  I tasted it, exactly as I was trained to do.  Salt water.  It was confirmed.  We were sinking.  I cried.

The thirty seconds it took Michael to explain to me that miniscule amounts of water entering through the bilge pump hose had likely built up in the bilge over our extended time on a port tack, and that it was nothing to worry about was too long.  I was giving up.

It turns out that giving up on a sailing passage is like giving up halfway through childbirth.  It’s not an option.  Which is really, really good, on both counts!  (I don’t need to go into the risk/reward ratio here as it’s fairly self explanatory).

Our ship’s log tells a tale of repeatedly shaking and placing reefs that night. There is a written record of steep seas, a broken navigation light, fighting currents, upwind sailing, and squalls, but that’s not what I remember now.  I recollect waking up clean for my morning watch and feeling irritated that my continuously pounding headache had not washed away with the salty grime on my skin.  I was irate at the ocean for refusing to shut up, but Michael had said something that was still fighting for attention in my ears before he went down for a nap.  He said, “I couldn’t have done this without you.  I wouldn’t have done this without you.  We’re almost there.  We’re gonna make it.  I love you Jill.”  He was absolutely right.  We were definitely going to make it.

I got smarter.  I scrambled to find my noise cancelling headphones from the forward cabin and placed them on my ears, understanding that they probably wouldn’t recover from the salt water spray, but rationalizing that this plan was going to be worth the fifty dollars I spent to purchase them.  I watched as navionics, our navigation app reduced and itunes enlarged on our waterproof ipad screen.  I pressed, “shuffle,” and while standing alone in our drenched cockpit, I let out a giggle.  Out of the hundreds of songs we have in our music library, the powers that be selected this song for me, “Getting Closer,” by Billy Joel.

I focused on our two sons, our new president, the dolphins that were swimming beside Gerty, and the funny Iridium Go messages we had received from friends and family.  I marveled at all the things Michael had fixed while I was sleeping, including the head (toilet).  Apparently the base had come loose making it even more difficult to steady oneself on the seat, but I hadn’t even noticed.  I reflected on our amazing accomplishment that was about to be realized.  I had an incredible teacher in Michael, a loving husband, and the sexiest captain alive.  I had a floating house that made its own water, converted the sun’s energy, and harnessed the wind.  Of course, the most fantastic thing of all was that I had a new story to tell. Land ho.