It may seem odd on the eve of a potentially historic blizzard to be posting pictures of a sailboat. But, you see, I come from a long line of storm chasers and sailors, so to me, on nights like this I recall various storms I've experienced and how some shaped my character to the core.
Pinion. That was her name. She was a 48' ferro-cement cutter that I helped, in the final stages, to build. Ron Ouellette was her master builder and my boyfriend.Her beam was 13', she drew 6' and weighed 29 tons. I lived on her for three years. Two in Maine, then sailed her to St. Croix and lived there a better part of a year. She died in Hurricane Hugo. She was lifted up and out of Christiansted Harbor and crashed down on the tarmac where the Island Goose plane flew.
Pinion, as in the flight feather of a bird (or rack and pinion steerage). I remember driving home at night and rowing out to her at the farthest mooring from a marina in Harpswell in the summers.
In the winters we were lashed to a bait wharf and frozen solid in the sea ice. Returning home late from work, I'd park by the bait shed, and walked down the ramp to the dock. One grand night I remember carrying a bag of groceries down the ramp on a particularly low tide, so I was paying special attending that I didn't miss a slat and go screaming down bridge and smack into the dock. When I reach the dock I felt as if something was watching me or just not right. I looked around and out of the corner of my eye caught my first glimpse of them. Large sheets of green, grey and black shimmering lights rolling around me in a circle above my head; Northern Lights! I stood there for many minutes taking a mental video of the pulsing and undulating energy of the natural light show.
Afterwards, I'd go below deck, start the fire, heat up the soapstone, and drag it through the sheets so the bed wouldn't be too icy before I climbed in to read myself asleep by kerosine lamp light. Mornings I'd wake up with my breath frozen above me on the ceilings and be able to draw frost pictures while the wood stove warmed up.
Ron worked at BIW as a pipe fitter by night and on the boat by day and on the weekends.. I worked as a cabinetmaker by day and on the boat weekends and nights. During the week we overlapped in bed for half the night. That was our routine in Maine. In St. Croix we had many jobs. But that is another story.
The storm that defined me was the hurricane we sailed through between Beaufort, NC and Buck Island, St. Croix. There are two schools of thought when folks leave NC to make their easting for the West Indies; North-east or South-east. Either a major tack or a beeline. Some wait for the westerly winds and go SE. Other wait for the southerlies and go NE. We were of the latter ilk.
We'd been in Beaufort for several days. It was October of '81 and the locals were trying to get us to stay for a annual Halloween party. It was a very sailor friendly town. There was an old Ford truck that anyone could use to get supplies. The Mad Hatter was a bar that had loads of free appetizers and shucking contests (as many oysters as you could eat). And the harbor was filled with stories from around the world. You see, that was our plan, to eventually sail around the world. That was why she was built so big and strong. Pinion was going to be our way to circumnavigate and we'd play turtle.
We had no sat-nav, no Loran and no blue water navigation knowledge beyond what we'd read in books. What we did have was luck. Earl-the-Pear Crandall was an high school pal of Ron's. He was also a tugboat Captain that ran various routes in the Gulf of Mexico. Earl, and Jake Apuzzo (a DA from the Bronx) were our two crew for this cruise. We also met two South African guys, who were living on a steelboat a few anchors over, who'd just crossed from the Cape to the Caribbean using their sextant and they were offering lessons, above another bar in town, in the afternoons. All four of us attended.
We'd sailed from Maine, through the Cape Cod Canal, down Long Island Sound, sprinted over Hell's Gate down the East River, around to Sandy Hook, out and off the New Jersey Shore and into the mouth of the Chesapeake. From there, we'd mostly motored down the Intercoastal Waterway (to avoid Hatteras) to Beaufort.
We met so many people who were generous to us with their time, attention or handiwork. I'll never forget waking up to knocking on the hull one morning in Norfolk, VA. We'd been in the harbor, beside the largest Navy Base in the world, and a crab fisherman saw me rowing ashore and gave me the lowdown on the best and safest direction to go for a run. He later came by and met the others onboard. It was the next morning, knowing that we'd be hauling anchor soon, that he came by with a 10 gallon bucket full of beautiful crabs (he knew we were living on of beans and rice). As I came walking up the gangway, he waved me off. He just smiled, nodded and said "have a good trip" as he motored away. He'd also put a baggie of spices and instructions inside the bucket. That was his way of being part of our trip.
Back to Beaufort. We picked our wind and by extension the group that we'd be leaving with when the wind blew right. The morning we left, the locals were sweet and some were still trying to talk us into staying for Halloween, now a few days away, but we shoved off.
I want to say there were 10-12 boats that left that morning. It was still, warm and clear. We each had our own heading, by mid afternoon we were only within sight of a few other boats. One boat was competing with us for who could catch the first fish for dinner that night. We kept pretending to catch one, and then they'd drawn near, only to hoot and holler and razz them off again. We got closer and closer as the pranks became more elaborate. Finally the other boat was close enough for us to pull the supreme prank of hurling water balloons at their mainsail and getting everyone on deck wet! Yup, that was the way we rolled.
Dusk turned to dark and their running lights faded before the first watch was done. Earl and I were on for 4 and then Jake and Ron for 4. I don't remember how we met Jake. He was a lawyer from New York, who had somehow found his way to Portland, not knowing that it has the highest per capita percentage of lawyer of any US city, as so many go to USM's Law School and then don't want to leave Maine. He was looking for a new challenge and sailing with us to St. Croix was it. Sailing through New York City with him was a trip; stories of old girlfriends and crime scenes littered the East River views.
By the next morning the wind had picked up substantially. There were 20' rollers and the birds were heading West, towards land. Earl kept whistling and I was 'bout ready to bash him in the pussier, as we all know that whistling brings up the wind! He kept grinning at me, while having to whistle louder , as the wind was shifting such that it was blowing his song over the transom. Not a good sign. Also, I'd had an uncharacteristic bout of sea-sickness, which I later attributed to my first blue-water sail. I think it was my mind realizing that it would take over a day of sailing to get back to land and it just short-circuited my system for a spell.
As the day progressed so did the wind. It started building and we reduced the sails. The waves had grown to easily 40 feet, so we were now riding down waves that were nearly the full length of the boat. We began to wonder if that was safe for the rudder and if she shouldn't hove to. We didn't. We also were having a harder time making out a horizon, an essential piece of being able to use a sextant in a sure-fire way. Thus our exact location was a bit murky.
This continued for another day. Then the wind switched directions, so that we now had two huge columns of waves coming at us. I had to wedge myself in the wheel, that was about as big around as I am tall, and tie with off with a slack line, just to keep her heading dead into the wind. Flying fish were enjoying the winds. They were rising up out of the water in huge schools and sailing up and through the waves. A few taps of the tail on the surface of the wave and they acted as self-skipping stones. More than a few ended up on the deck, not all were noticed before dawn, and some died.
The jib tore and Ron went up on the bow to get it. I'd made some safety harness from some old parachute strapping I'd bought at a flea market somewhere, and added some galvanized rings to them. That is what Ron was wearing, while snapped into the stanchions in case he fell over. That was the most scared I allowed myself to be on the trip. Wedged in the wheel, waves crashing over the bow and Ron furling in the torn sail while I prayed he wouldn't go overboard. He made it back with the sail, went down below decks to get the awl and hand leather to mend it. I could finally breath a full breath again.
Over the next couple night the winds and waves grew. At one point I swear they were double the height of the mast, which was 60' off the waterline. No matter how water tight we believed our portholes and housings to be, water forced its way into the hull. Everything was wet. Our foul weather gear was soaked. Our skin was caked in salt from the wind blowing sideways and it was starting to eat patches from our faces. We had to put 2x4's lashed across our bunks to have something to brace against while we tried to sleep.
Jake, the DA who could comfortably walk into a crime scene where there were brains splattered on apartment walls, was losing it. All the men on the boat were in their 30's. I was 19. Jake was sitting below on the engine hatch and repeating this mantra: This is nice, but I'm never going to do it again. Over and over and over. Ron wasn't getting enough rest, as he was paired with Jake on the night watches. I finally made an executive decision. I told Jake that his new job was to make food for us, so that we could stay strong and he could stay below decks. He was a bull of man. Big round head, thick, powerful arms and legs with a barrel chest, that I could imagine puffed up and persuading jurors in courtrooms. But out here, as far from humans as one can get, he was lost. So oatmeal and boiled eggs were his new mission in life. Being of use gives humans purpose and focus.
There was a night of thunder and lightening. Nothing scarier than realizing you may be the only lighting pole for hundreds of miles around in the middle of the deep, dark ocean. The only saving grace was the temperature of the wind and water was getting warmer, some how a promise of life within the chaos.
The next night, full of open sores and starting to have highly developed hallucinations due to lack of sleep, I was up, alone taking my watch. I was remembering a woman I met on a cabin cruiser in the Instercoastal Waterway taking about seeing Scotties on deck during her watch. She said that was what came to her when she was sleep deprived, but needing to stay awake. She loved dogs. My hallucination was tankers and large ships. Ever since were arrived the mouth of the Chesapeake at dawn a few weeks earlier I'd been obsessed with the Leviathan of the seas. We'd arrived before daylight and I was trying to help Ron figure out exactly where we were by reading the charts and making sense of the lights on land and the lights not the chart. They kept not aligning and I was doubting my sense, as the city seemed to be moving, too. As the sun rose, we realized by we couldn't understand the topography of the city. It wasn't a city at all. It was a flotilla of aircraft carriers waiting for pilot boats to guide them in to the Navy Yard!
The waves were steady at my guesstimate of 120', and still in two solid rows. So basically I was riding in mountains and valleys of water. This combined with the blistering rain, made it impossible to get a fix on the horizon. In terms of our location on the chart, that was also anyone's educated guess. When I was on the peaks, that is where I'd imagined seeing my Cargo Ships or Aircraft Carriers or Cruise Liners. Only on this night, there was a ship I could see from the summit that wasn't in my usual repertoire of hallucinations. I called down below to Earl, who'd heard me cry wolf enough to give me a good teasing as he came up on deck. At the next mountain top I pointed to my mind's plaything. Earl's eyes shot up and he said, "that's real"!
Luckily he got the on the radio, they were a British tanker, and they said that they "were having a might bit of trouble" and couldn't imagine how we were doing! You see it takes them 5 miles to turn, in the best of conditions. They'd seen us on their radar and wanted to know our heading. We told them we were hove to (the forward jib pulled on one tack and the mainsail on another- like a weather vane pointing into the wind) and being pushed backwards. They went around our bow in a very safe and wide arch. They also gave us our coordinates, so at last we knew where we were!
It was as if making that connection with another wayward vessel appeased the wind gods and they graciously started to ease up. The next morning we saw the first bird we'd seen in many days. A White-Tailed Tropic Bird. I'll never forget it. Seemed like an angel descending and giving us a big cheeky wink of welcome. Welcome to the other side of the storm. Our Pinion of the sky!
Funny thing was, I knew, as it was happening, that I'd never be the same. The sea, salt, lightening and my company had forged a new element into my character, a fearlessness and sense of self that remains a part of my DNA to this day.
The waves slowly diminished, the winds went from hurricane strength to tropical trades, and the sun, oh yes the sun, finally showed its smiling face once more!
Then signs of land and humans. Coconuts and Coke cans. More that a day from sighting land, but cans and coconuts.
The radio started to pick up Puerto Rican and USVI stations.
On the last night at sea, as if to welcome us to the Caribbean properly, we saw fireworks exploding over Vieques Island, off the east end of Puerto Rico.
The next day we'd anchor at Buck Island, a National Park just East off Christiansted, where'd live and work. My first look down into the tropical waters...gin clear and teaming with fish. I swam ashore and couldn't walk to save my life. I kept falling. It would take me hours to get my land legs back and days to not have my inner ear want to rock the earth every time I stepped on her. I would fall madly and permanently in love with the creatures under the sea and the people of the islands. I would be a minority for the first time in my life....so many lessons. Lessons that would give me strong flight feathers each time I had to sail through storms as I continued to grow and stretch as young adult, and to some extent, even now.
But I'd sailed through a hurricane. It was supposed to be a week long leg, that was nearly two weeks in length. We guess the hurricane was 5 or so days of that. That was a storm that shaped my character. That anything that might be tough, uncomfortable, alienating or risky, if it was worth doing, you must push on through with all your might. It is in those moment when we learn what we're made of; when we push beyond our known world and limits and explore what we think is only a fantasy, not a doable reality...to sail off into the sunset, while chasing a hurricane.
Yup, that's the way I still roll, with storm tested rack&pinion steering.
Good night, all you storm chasers and lovers of working hard to achieve your dreams, G'night!
(White tailed Tropic Bird; my guardian angel)
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