The chain rattles against the guide, there is that familiar thunk of anchor settling into place. Andrew wrestles with the pins while I steer us safely out of the shallows. We slide along the turquoise blue water that suspends us over white sand until it turns dark with depth. The odometer is clocking miles again, we have approximately 10-14 days (depending on wind and current) at sea before landfall in the Seychelles Islands. That is 10-14 days left for me to enjoy our six week reprieve from the world and all the uncertainty it brings us these days.
Andrew makes last minute adjustments, then meets me in the cockpit to pull the the sail open, hand over hand while I release the furling line. “Zhhuuuurrr-whiiiirrrrr!" The sail twirls pirouettes, the corner of it’s dancer’s skirt flying exuberantly into the breeze until it is full-flow, catching wind from Sonrisa's left side.
Erie Spirit and her crew are already out of our view, Mark can’t sleep the morning of a passage, so they always bail out at sunrise. Steel Sapphire and Sonrisa are both students of the 9:00 a.m. school of thought - at least for long passages. We enjoy our last hours of calm anchorage sleep, cook a nice breakfast, and build our sea berth last minute before upping anchor. If we have 12 days at sea head of us, what is the difference between sunrise and an leisurely wake-up call?
We loosen the ties that gather the mainsail tight against the boom, then crank it up as well, Sonrisa stretching her sails in golden sun. Andrew settles into the beanbag next to me and I hand steer until we slip out of the atoll exit. A perfect day to go sailing.
The wind builds as we break out from behind the atolls, tossing my hair every which way and forcing me to tie on my sailing bandanna. Steel Sapphire gallops away on all 50 feet of her waterline, leaving Sonrisa in her natural, solitary state. Soon, there is nothing but water surrounding us with a 360 degree horizon. We enjoy pork stew and a sunset with “god-rays” for dinner, Andrew heads to bed, and in the dark, my usual night-watch squalls start.
Having learned my lesson from the Chagos passage, I start my night watch in foul weather gear and take extreme care to huddle in the center of the cockpit, directly forward of the helm, under the lowest part of the dodger whenever it rains, as this is the driest option. I ride along here, bracing my feet against the starboard side, resting my back on a pile of all three beanbags.
Like clockwork, every hour a black cloud bank skitters through my sailing field, sliding before a silver stage curtain of overcast skies back lit by a full moon. The cloud bank deposits a shimmering sheet of water from sky to sea, howls like a banshee mid-tantrum, then leaves the stage, quiet again as if nothing happened at all. I've shortened both the main sail and our larger head sail forward to about half of their capacities. With each cloud's dramatic stage entrance, the waves build - an audience waiting for more. Sonrisa handles these seas with no trouble. She bounds up and over, side to side, and with a reasonably comfortable rhythm all things considered - if you can find a level of comfort while riding a Six-Flags rollercoaster, that's the kind of “reasonable comfort” to which I’m referring.
The hours click by, and as the dial rolls over to 0200 hours, Andrew arrives to take over. I give him the evening’s report: “No ship traffic. Sonrisa is handling well. .5 knots of current against us. When the squalls hit, they bring wind. I have the sails set to “squall,” so we might only be going 5 knots now, but you are due for another squall in the next 10-15 minutes. We’ve been hitting 7 knots + in the squalls.” Andrew nods.
By the time I wake in the morning, the wind is howling through the rigging. Andrew has shortened the main sail to its smallest possible point, and the large headsail is rolled in completely. Sonrisa is dressed in her itsy-bitsies, a small triangle of main sail and only the small jib out. The seas are a jumble, and I brace with both feet and both hands to maintain an upright position until I am forced to catch Andrew’s tea mug mid-flight as it lofts itself from it’s position tucked between a tangle of ropes on the cabin top. The sky is a thick grey, like you could stir the cloud-cream with a spoon. Andrew is tucked into the back corner of Sonrisa’s cockpit huddled under foul weather gear slick with the gloss of a continuous downpour.
Kitty decamps from her spot, scowling under the dodger, then swirls around my feet at the bottom of the stairs stumbling occasionally from the force of a big wave and clucking with a mournful sound of fatigue and misery.
“Oh poor, Kitty,” I say. “Just a minute.”
I dress in my foul weather bibs, and get Andrew settled into his bunk. I check our course, the horizon, the radar and the AIS to confirm we are headed where we wish, there are no ships anywhere around, and the rain is scheduled to go on all day. Then, I scoop Kitty up in her Tiger Beer Box and nestle her tigtly between my knees and my chest. I wedge my feet against the mast and my back against the salon bench while I sit on the floor. She looks up at me with large, green eyes then rests her chin on her paws to purr and snooze. I stroke the top of her head and coo at her. “I know, Little Cat. I know. It's day two.” My head spins with the movement of the boat, and I lean back to close my eyes. My watch counts down fifteen minutes before I have to go check the horizon again.
Sonrisa's hatches are all closed, and I can watch giant raindrops splotching against the plastic clears. When my watch alarm rings, I tuck Kitty under my arm like a football and climb the stairs to check the horizon, but I can't see far. The weather is so thick, the horizon is probably only a few boat lengths around me. The AIS and radar are more reliable “eyes” today. I tuck myself back down below, and Kitty nestles into my lap again grateful I am holding her against the tossing waves.
“Day two is always the worst day of all, Kitty. You’ll see.”
She grunts a little in response.
“I made you a pillow nest over here, you should try it!" I tell her. After watching her finally get settled into a pile of our foul weather gear pinched behind the coffee table on our last passage, I decided I would make her a pillow nest that would wedge her body in place in the waves for this trip.
Eventually, I'm too seasick to stay down below to hold her and it's too rambunctious on deck to take her with me. I gently lay her in the crook of the pillow nest and she looks up at me - first annoyed I have put her down, then second, pleasantly surprised by this new sleeping option. She settles and closes her eyes to sleep. I know she will be fine.
I return on deck dressed in my full foulies, now. I take a deep breath of the grey mist between the raindrops. Cool, humid, but a balm that calms the seasickness that tightens my throat. I stand at the helm, crossing and uncrossing my eyes in the waves while I try to focus on the heading numbers. Sonrisa remains perfectly on course; I have no adjustments to make.
"Sonrisa, you are such a good boat.” I say, and it’s easy to see she couldn’t be happier right now. The rain is washing the salt from all her crevices, the wind is strong enough to sail her favorite speed. The waves roll and play against her bow wake. She’s in her element, on top of her game.
Sonrisa, hitting her stride on a different but equally enjoyable sail.
I sit back in my beanbag and let her bound along. I’m a bit miserable (it is day two, after all), and the weather is….annoying. The waves are annoying. Just as expected. Usually in these moments on passage, I start designing the architecture of my land house, but not this passage. This time, I’m absorbing the rain and the certainty of my plight like a sink-sponge. Of course there have been miserable moments at sea since we left Addu, Maldives, but there has been the notable absence of uncertainty. For the last six weeks, I’ve known exactly what I should be doing, must do, and am capable of doing. I have known where I’m going, how I’m going to get there, and why I should go. This is the real reprieve of going to sea during the Covid Pandemic. For six weeks, I have savored certainty like a grape Jolly Rancher candy in my mouth.
“Mmm…” I hum to myself and closing my eyes until I feel Sonrisa slink back from her heeled position and the waves start knocking us from side-to-side. My beanbag (with me in it) slides across the deck, then returns again to where we started. I look across the sea and see a distinct lack of wind. I look up at the top of the mast to see which direction the wind is coming from and feel a quirk of memory. “Right, no wind chicken. Rest in peace Foghorn Leghorn…" I think to myself as I alter my gaze to the eight tails of red knitting yarn we tied to Sonrisa’s shrouds as a poor substitute for a wind chicken. Before we left, we carefully calibrated these strings of yarn to Steel Sapphire's wind gauge: they fly at 90 degrees in wind 10 knots or higher. Just now, they are limp, wet spaghetti noodles stuck uselessly against the wires to which they are tied.
“Damn!" I think. “We've lost the wind!”
To be continued.....