These Hands

Years ago, I brought my daughter to work with me, as was the custom then (and perhaps now):  Bring Your Daughter to Work day.  When she came home, she let Jennifer know that she wanted my job, since all I did was walk around, talk on the phone, and move paper from one side of my desk to the other.  Then, as now, it’s clear that I didn’t use my hands very much in my “real-world” jobs.  Oh sure, I did the handyman thing around the house:  hanging drywall, painting ceilings and working the garden, but that was baby stuff compared to sailing fulltime.  The last 72 hours are a good microcosm.

We had arrived in Fatu Hiva, a small island in the southern Marquesas, a week or so ago.  These islands are volcanic, and rise steeply from the deep sea floor.  We anchored in 85 feet of water – which, to a sailor who cut his sea legs on the east coast of the U.S. is deep beyond experience.  In the Chesapeake Bay, or, for that matter, anywhere south of Maine, a typical anchorage might reach 20 feet or so … since the typical ratio of depth to anchor chain is 5 or 6 to 1, that means I’m used to letting out no more than 100-120 feet of line.  (It’s important to have the line angled, so that the anchor can grab horizontally into the mud; if the force were vertical, the anchor wouldn’t hold well).

So dropping anchor in 85 feet of water means you have to let out A LOT of chain; I only carry 300 feet, so I let out 275 feet, and prayed that the resulting angle would be acute enough to allow my anchor to set.   I was lucky; it set well.  However, then came the challenge of lifting 275 feet of anchor chain, along with a 50 pound anchor.  I have a windlass on my bow, which is a very powerful winch that can lift chain and anchor.  It’s powerful; the lights dim when it operates, since it draws so much battery power, and I need to have the engine operating when it’s lifting to assure an adequate supply of amps to the battery and windlass.  When we weighed anchor from  Fatu Hiva, the chain began to “jump” the windlass; the accumulated weight was so great that the chocks on the rotating winch were not able to grab the chain securely; as a result, the chain would slip back 3-4 links for every 8-10 links that passed thru the windlass.  I realized I could safely minimize this jumping if I placed my palm over top of the chain as it passed over the windlass gear; by pressing lightly, I could minimize the jumping.  All well and good, but I – not surprisingly in retrospect (but who thinks in retrospect) – rubbed my left palm a bit raw in my otherwise uneventful raising of the anchor.

Sailing north to Tahuata, a small island that enjoys the distinction of being the first landing of Captain Cook in these islands, we had the chance to raise sails and reef sails, requiring considerable handling of the lines.  As we had spent a week in Fatu Hiva, my hands were a bit tender (and the up anchoring didn’t help), so my fingers took a bit of a chafing as the lines passed back and forth.  We had a delightful but short time on Tahuata, attending Catholic mass in the small stone and wood “l’eglise” with an amazing stained glass representation of a Marquesas Madonna and child.  The Marquesans are musical people through and through, and, which lacking a choir (the island only has about 200 inhabitants), the congregation were well-practiced in multi-part harmonies, men and women, soprano and alto, with a wonderful overlapping set of round-like choruses.  It was a magical hour for me and Jennifer, and while we are hardly the world’s most observant Catholics, it reminded us of the power of faith, community, and the richness of shared rituals.  The mass was offered in Marquesan, a language with many vowels and few consonants, so the liturgy had a rolling feel to it, punctuated by those amazing harmonies.

Leaving Tahuata after mass for a 60 mile sail to Ua Poa, we managed to snag what turned out to be a 1.5 meter mahi-mahi, from which we eventually trimmed about 15 pounds of fresh fish.  Bringing this bull mahi-mahi onto the boat took over 45 minutes, with the fish fighting for every inch.  I’ve got 200 pound test line (we’re fishing for food, not sport), and with the boat sailing hard at 6-7 knots in 4-5 foot seas, I had to wait for each swell to pass under the fish, so that I could bring in a few more feet of line as it ‘surfed’ down the front of the swell.  Once at the boat, and with blisters on my thumbs from holding the pole and reeling in the line, we gaffed the fish onboard, and, another 45 minutes later, with minor cuts on my hands from the filleting process, we had 9 packages of 1.5 pounds of ocean fresh fish.  (The next day, we passed along a few packets to some sailors from the Pacific Northwest, en route on their own circumnavigation – of the Pacific, via Tahiti, Hawaii, and then home)

Last night, after anchoring at 10:00 pm in a new and tiny harbor whose entire length was cordoned off by a well-lit tug and two large dredging barges, we collapsed asleep.  My palm had begun to heal, but in a closed position … opening my palm was necessary and painful.  My thumbs were swollen and tired, and my by-now chronic carpel tunnel syndrome – first manifested in Panama, after our passage from the Bahamas, and a product of a lifetime of stiff three-finger typing and my recent rope handling, was a painful reminder that I no longer had a desk job. 

Waking up the next morning, under the spires on the island called Ua Poa, made it all worthwhile.  When my daughter arrives to visit us in either Tahiti, or Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, I just might ask her to come to work with me.  I’m walking around less; I don’t use the phone, and there’s no paper on my desk.  Maybe she still wants my job?