At Least we Didn't Die: A Non-Exhaustive List of Things that can go Wrong on a Boat Trip, Part 2

Location: Simpson Bay Lagoon, Sint Maarten

This was the peaceful part of the crossing during which I saw many constellations. It was amazing. The sun was out, the floors were only slightly damp, and there was so little slamming that you could actually sleep properly. We had almost reached the Dominican Republic, and it looked like there would actually be an end in sight. Of course, that end would still be in a while, as, due to the drop in wind speed, we were only making 5 kts. We took advantage of the calm seas to finally bathe. Of course, when you go back inside to to cook, you immediately start sweating again, but I'd accepted that it was an "out with the old, in with the new" kind of situation.

During this part of the trip, it was calm enough that you could sit outside without being splashed. Before leaving, I had downloaded an app that allows you to see which constellations are in the sky. Back home, the light pollution makes it so that you can only see Orion and sometimes the Big Dipper. Out in the middle of the Caribbean sea, constellations fill the sky. Three beautiful nights of my log are filled with constellations that I could see at all hours of the night. I saw the full Orion, including his bow, I saw the birds Cygnus, Aquila, Corvus, and Columba, I saw the zodiac symbols Taurus, Scorpius, Leo, and Virgo. I saw Ursa Minor under the curved tail of Draco, and the full Ursa Major, and the Southern Cross, peeking in between the horizon and the arch of Centaurus.

It's amazing seeing the milky way in the dead of the night, knowing that that's our galaxy, that hazy white line is billions of stars, billions of light years away. And the constellations are huge. You see one after another after another, and they're immense, they fill the sky. You imagine Hercules leaping down from his perch, and you feel almost scared because the sky is so big and you are so small. In the stars you see thousands of years worth of stories. There are heroes and monsters and birds and music, and looking at that darkness that is not dark, you understand why people place their gods in the sky. You're in the middle of the sea, watching the oldest spectacle in the world, you see the myths and the people in the myths, and somehow, it feels apt that your yawns have tears in them.

Some constellations are beautiful. Cygnus the swan is elegant, and Aquila the eagle is powerful. I like Orion because of its familiarity and the Big Dipper because of its simplicity. Scorpius has a long, elegant tail that rises slowly out of the horizon. Hydra the water snake, I find to be interesting, because the sail obscures most of it so I have no idea how big it actually is. Some constellations, however, are butt-ugly. Virgo is, at its core, a trapezoid with some stub appendages. The rest of the stars are too dim to see easily, and that makes her very plain. She's so plain that I need to look for the nearby Corvus the crow, which is another trapezoid yet somehow is infinitely nicer, to locate her. Even Ophiuchus the snake-holder, a giant, empty pentagon, is more interesting than Virgo. Also, I feel that the nobility of the names of certain constellations is somewhat lacking. For example, there is one called Antlia the air pump. (This and others were later additions, used to fill up the gaps between pre-existing constellations.) Furthermore, Friday night, my constellation-watching was rudely interrupted by the lights of Dominican Republic, including a grid of bright red lights that flashed in unison and seemd to be either very bright or offshore. Jem thought that it was radio-related. Anna and I thought that it was probably aliens.

In addition to the night sky, the sailing was beautiful as well. On Saturday, the sea was so calm that I could open my cabin ceiling hatch. I sat next to it (in case a wave hit), relaxing in the shadow of the sail, watching a faraway cargo ship pass while saffron-coloured seaweed patches striped the swells. I also managed to do a little yoga, although my exhausted body did not let me carry on for long. That evening, there were few clouds on the horizon, and we watched the sky glow in post-sunset red. I had a gin&tonic in hand and, as I listened to small waves lapping at the hulls, I felt like a proper cruiser. We marveled that we had had a 20-kt wind change in 24 hours.

Three food-related things of note: one, that the excellent sriracha mustard purchased in St. Vincent had a best-before date of September 16 2020, which was two months before we had purchased it. Two, that Anna makes the best burgers in the world, although grating bread led me to appreciating store-bought breadcrumbs more than ever. And three, that Anna and Jem persuaded me to try a baked potato with tuna. I ate it, but I would not willingly do it again.

The winds during this part of the trip averaged 10 kts during the day, but they would increase to 20 during the night. Once, after performing a tack, we noticed that a bird was perched on a horizontal part of railing on the windy deck. Jem, ever the pilot, was impressed by its landing skills. The bird flew off, but returned two hours later by suddenly whizzing two feet past my ear and scaring the bejeezus out of me. Also during the night, as we moved eastwards from Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, the labels in the charts took on a decidedly American flavour. I saw "airspace warning area," "submarine cable," and, more vaguely, "weapons."

I've started reading Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World by particle physicist Lisa Randall. The book was chosen purely due to its similarity with our boat name, but it has turned out to be a fascinating read. It covers subjects such as quantum mechanics, the Large Hadron Collider, and black holes. There is also a Star Trek joke in Chapter 10. I highly recommend that my father read this book, although I would suggest that he skip the entire Part 1 as well as Chapters 11 and 12, which are, respectively, a 70-page long introduction and commentaries on scientific thinking for non-scientists.

Monday, Jem broke the news. The boat was too broken to be able to be fixed in a week. The engine oil sensors were still acting strangely, the generator didn't turn on once, the hot water was still unusable, there seemed to be a pipe-like object floating in the water tank, the windows, hatches, cabins, and main floor leaked, the lights in the starboard hull's hallway had stopped working due to water damage, one of the reinforcing fabric strips on the genoa had come un-stitched, the rudders were out of alignment, the autopilot chain was loose, and there would surely be more to come. It would take at least six weeks to complete the repairs, if not more. The Atlantic was no longer an option for me. It was a day of blue skies, light, wispy clouds, and deep waters whose waves undulated rather than crashed. I sat on a pillow-strewn couch watching the calmness of the world outside, and on that beautiful morning, I suddenly felt very sad.

It seems that this has been a year of adaptation. In my particular case, covid cancelled the gap year that I had planned for five years, which was to join a program called Class Afloat and board a tall ship (an old-style wooden ship with square sails) with approximately eighty other people and sail to twenty-something locations while crossing the Atlantic three times. When that got cancelled—a fact that my mother brutally targeted in the entire first paragraph of our annual Christmas letter—I spent the summer applying to as many charter boat companies and sailing schools as I could. However, the tourism industry wasn't exactly looking to hire people at the moment. Out of the one hundred (not a hyperbole) emails that I sent, I got one concrete offer to work in the beautiful Bay of A Thousand Islands in northern New Zealand. Unfortunately, New Zealand was closed. I then joined various websites that connected sailors to boat owners looking for crew. (For those interested: Crewseekers is good but requires a paid membership, Findacrew has an ugly interface, and Crewbay is actually quite pleasant.) It was here that, in September, I finally found Heaven's Door. 

Once I got to the boat after a strange quarantine (you can read about it in the archives), the official plan was to island-hop from Grenada to the BVI's, and to Panama in the new year. However, various quarantines persuaded us to sail directly to Panama, with the plan of crossing the Pacific in the new year. And then new year's arrived, and 90% of the Pacific islands closed their borders. (Meanwhile, Anna was in a month-long wrestling match with the various rules and regulations of different countries to try to make her way to the boat.) With the Pacific closed, we decided to cross the Atlantic instead, passing through St. Maarten along the way. Then, bad weather forced us to stay in Cartagena for a week. Finally, on the way to St. Maarten, everything broke. And that is how I wound up having a beer an hour after waking up.

And so, yet again, plans were changed. We were still several days away from the island, and so we had plenty of time to think of what to do. The current plan is to stay in a marina for a month or so so that we can live comfortably. (Living in a hauled-out boat is apparently not ideal.) During this time, Jem will get as much topside work done as possible (engines, windows, etc.), while  Anna will look to board another boat, as she would still like to cross the Atlantic. Technically, I would too, but I seem to have grown attached to Heaven's Door. If she stays in St. Maarten, so will I. On a positive note, this extended stay will allow me to complete various diving and sailing certifications, including a first-aid recertification which is needed for my summer job. Finally, in May, if quarantine procedures aren't much of a faf, as Anna likes to say, Jem will haul the boat out to get hull work done and we would all like to fly to England and meet up at Jem's beach house on the south coast. But we'll see. Plans these days don't exactly have a habit of sticking. Also, I haven't finished the story of our Caribbean odyssey. Part 3 will will be posted shortly.