Monday, March 26, 2012

Henk

There's no two ways around it: this has been a long passage for us. As I write, we've been underway for 27 days, and we expect, given the anemic wind situation, to be at sea for another 2 or 3 days. We're more than ready to make landfall at Barbados, the eastern-most of the Caribbean islands, the only one not formed by volcanic activity, and the island closest to Africa. We're looking forward to anchoring, and sleeping through the night, without the groggy wake-up calls every four hours. The sight of another boat or two - any evidence of humankind - will also come as a welcome relief from the endless days of ocean blue and sky haze. It hasn't helped that the moon has been absent from the night sky these last ten days - the stars are distant, seem colder than when we started, and the deep darkness of the nights reinforces our sense of aloneness out here.

There's a dismal poetry to this endless procession of mornings, afternoons, evenings, and nights, skidding and sliding and surfing and stumbling across an ocean, through the doldrums, into the trade winds, marking legs of steady if unremarkable progress on a chart that spans Africa, South America, the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States on its single page. We've sailed across the bottom half of this chart, almost, and we're ready to put it away for awhile. But we have a few more days ... a few hundred more miles ... to go before we rest. The winds are sliding south of east, making it hard to keep both sails full while pointed to Barbados; we've had to point further north than we've liked, and today, we're ghosting along in less than 10 knots of wind, dead astern, the boat slipping through the water a just a few knots. If we had youngsters on board, we'd be inundated with "when are we going to get there" questions. As it is, the question rattles around, unspoken, in each of our heads, each of us unwilling to reveal our longing for landfall. It's been a long passage.

It's one thing to say, jauntily even, that we're sailing from St. Helena to Barbados; it's another thing to be at sea, on one's own, for four weeks. We're certainly not the first boat to make this passage. Others have made and will make voyages as long or longer. We recall our friend Tony, whom we met in Tahiti, where he related to us the story of his solo, non-stop circumnavigation - months and months at sea, alone. And we talk about our friend Henk, who is solo sailing his 26 foot Midget, Sogno D'Oro, around the world; he makes about 65 miles per day - about half the rate of our progress.

We first met Henk, the circumnavigating Dutchman, when he arrived in Durban, South Africa, after his 77-day passage from Darwin, Australia to Durban. Alone. Readers may recall our posts of Indian Ocean sailing - tough sledding for any size boat and any size crew, much less for a single-handed boat as small as Henk's. We hosted Henk for his arrival dinner in Durban, treating him to some nasi goring and cold beer. On this passage to the Caribbean, we've stayed in touch via the morning ham radio net, trading positions and weather conditions. The last few days have been tough for him; the winds are too light to power his self-steering rudder, so he's hand steering through the day and night, his tiny vessel rolling back and forth in the swells, his small sails flapping back and forth in the light breezes. He's got a few hundred miles to go to St. Martin, his next landfall, but he's not worried; he's got plenty of food and water, and has managed to catch a fish here and there.

He has reason to be happy; a few days ago, Henk crossed his outbound track of two years ago - thus completing his circumnavigation - and accepted the radio congratulations of his fellow sailors, many of whom are also in the final stages of their circumnavigations. He's a different breed, to be sure, and his cheery, matter-of-fact voice on the morning net brings a daily smile to our cabin. This morning, he reassured us, in the familiar Dutch-accented English of my childhood, that: "I've been in light winds before. The sun is shining, so this is no problem for me." We take inspiration from his beatific acceptance of the weather as it lies around him; we aspire to embrace our zephyr-like wind conditions with his equanimity. Most of all, we look forward to crossing our own outbound track in a few months, when we too can declare our circumnavigation complete, perhaps by echoing Joshua Slocum's adage: "Let what will happen, the voyage is now on record."

But we're a few months from that milestone, and it pays little to think that far ahead; we have a few hundred miles to sail on this leg, and safety and sanity demand that we concentrate on the conditions of the moment. The truth is, though, that concentration on the moment is not easy; it's been a long passage, and we're physically and psychically tired. We've done our best to stay busy, to stay distracted, to keep our bodies and minds active on an otherwise lethargic trip, but it's been a long passage.

We've read dozens of books, listened to dozens of podcasts. We've hosted a pod of dolphins, surfing off our bow, and a half-dozen pelagic birds, brown noddies, spent the night on our solar panels, resting from their daily flight. We've picked up dozens of stranded flying fish from our decks, and watched endless streams of sargassum weed floating in line with the wind. We've drafted blogs and we've discussed our plans for when we return to the States in July. We've rinsed the red dust of Africa, trade wind-borne across two thousand of miles of ocean, from our decks, our lines, and our sails. We've reefed and unreefed, raised and lowered, furled and unfurled our sails, matching our rig to the wind conditions. We've watched an entire lunar cycle, from waning crescent to waning crescent. We've seen a grand total of two other ships. We've baked bread, pizza, and cakes; we've barbecued, popped popcorn, and indulged ourselves with icy pops. We've played games of cribbage and worked on crossword puzzles together.

We've tended to boat chores, and rued the loss of our genaker halyard to chafe, even after we took care to check it regularly, and to reverse it on its turning sheaves mid-journey. We've jerry-rigged outhauls for our genoa, preventers for our main, and check the fluids in our engines regularly. We've sailed across the point where our southern latitude matched our western longitude, and we crossed the equator for the second time on this circumnavigation. We've managed through a few physical ailments, none serious, and we've managed near-daily showers on the back deck with fresh water rinses. We've kept the boat tidy, the decks clean, and our freezer full, adding a sailfish to the list of fish caught on our circumnavigation. We've made arrangements for our boat's safe storage in May, when we return home for our son's wedding, and we're keeping in touch with friends and family. All this and more, in a series of four-on, four-off watches, checking radar at nights, keeping each other company, scanning the horizon for ships and storm clouds, marking the steadily-increasing elevation of the northern constellations in the night sky. We see, for the first time in years, the north star, Polaris.

We've done our best to stay busy, to embrace this altogether pleasant passage - no squalls, no storms, no major equipment failures, steady winds -- but still, after all that and more, we find ourselves 350 miles from Barbados, wondering if we're ever gonna get there.

But of course we're gonna get there, we tell ourselves, and of course, we know that to be true. We'd like a few more knots of wind, a bit of a favorable current, and, truth be told, a seismic shift that moves the island of Barbados a bit closer to us. We'd like a regular dose of Henk's relentless optimism, to remember that we too have been in light winds before, that it's just a matter of time and patience to make any landfall, no matter how distant, no matter how measured one's progress.

So tomorrow, we'll reconnect with Henk, each of our boats a bit closer to its destination. We look forward to hearing his voice, and will again remind ourselves that "the sun is shining; this is no problem." Congratulations Henk, on your successful 2 year solo circumnavigation; your voyage is now on record, and we wish you fair winds, following seas, and sunny skies on your way back home to the Netherlands.

Are we there yet?

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