FIRST PASSAGE

My first experience sailing the Lady Pauline started out well. We tidied up the boat making sure everything was stowed away properly. It's particularly important because, when under way, the boat is often at a very steep tilt so that you sometimes feel as if you are standing on the wall more than the floor. Loose objects in space can go a flying. So everything must be tucked into cubbies and cabinets and hanging net hammocks, clipped in, wedged under, or battened down. We took off the sail cover and undid the sail ties, hooked up the jack line for us to clip into in rough weather, took the motor off the dinghy and set her in her harness tethered behind us. We had cleared out of customs that morning and were now flying the yellow quarantine flag which shows us as legally being outside all national boundaries. This is a concept which intrigues me. As do all issues involving the idea that someone can draw an arbitrary line down a piece of the planet and that means they get to decide which citizens of the earth get to cross that particular line. All the borders and boundaries of the world are like tripwires in my path. But the idea of being out of bounds completely is another idea altogether. I remember crossing borders on foot in southeast Asia and there was always a few hundred yards of land between exiting one country and entering the next - like a buffer zone between worlds belonging to neither. Here we can sail away from a country fully supplied and never go to land and be effectively or at least politically "nowhere" - literally in no man's land - for weeks at a time. Free citizens of the seas tacking back and forth between the province of the Caribbean Sea and the principality of the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, if we were acquainted with the maps of the mer people most likely this claim would be ludicrous and we would know exactly where we were based on what land mass in the deeps we hovered over. Or what submarine municipalities we strayed near.....

We hauled anchor and scrubbed off the six weeks worth of sea life that had grown along the chain; organic, kelpy, rasta dreads twining back into the sea. We raised the main and stay sails and set off on a close reach with the current in our favor quickly reaching 7 knots. An auspicious beginning though short lived. I learned to make sense of the traffic jam of lines all around the cockpit, with two furling lines, four sheets, and several halyards. The furling lines and the halyards are for raising or dropping the sails, and the sheets move them across the boat to catch the wind at different angles. All the lines have different color patterns to help avoid confusion, and there are different latches that lock or loose the lines, as well as winches and pulley systems called block and tackle to help move the lines around. Sometimes they crank through with ease. And other times you're heeled over with your leg braced on the side of the cockpit, the mast at a seemingly 45 degree angle to the water which is coming at you in 8 foot swells and all kinds of angles of its own, and you are hauling on that line with all your body weight while trying not to lose your balance over the crest of a wave. When we're heeled over like that, and not adjusting sails, I like to sit on the high side of the boat, so it feels like I am kind of straddling it like a floating log with my leg hanging down across what would normally be the sitting surface. Or I twine my arms through the rails and perch like a monkey on a branch. Other times I stand on the seat behind the wheel and hold onto the frame of the bimini which shields us from the sun and also holds our solar panels. From there I can see over the top of the bimini and I plant my feet and surf the largest surfboard ever.

I never tire of sitting on watch. I love to have the wind blowing over me. We have a wind vane which you set to a course and then it follows the wind and steers the boat acting as a natural autopilot requiring no electricity. It only can be used if there is enough wind, but it is quite amazing. You have to monitor it but you don't have to touch anything unless the wind shifts away from your course. So most of the time, being on watch is primarily about paying attention. Making sure you know where any other boats are or any strange obstructions - like for example, sleeping whales - keeping an eye on your course and watching and adjusting sails so you are getting as much out of the wind as you possibly can. And in between your moments of attention you enjoy the wind, the waves and the watery world around you. We saw reams of flying fish, like large insects, buzzing like dragonflies, burst in formation from the side of a wave, skimming a few inches over the surface of the water for 100 feet or more then colliding into the face of another wave being absorbed once more into the mysterious world below. As you stare down at the shifting of the water surface, you become aware of the difference in hue, out here offshore, like a gargantuan sapphire with fire flickering through all its many facets.

All in all, the trip went pretty well, except for the contrariness of the wind. The winds, which had been blowing unceasingly from the east for the last three weeks, chose this moment to pack their bags and move north - so that they might correspond exactly with our chosen course. Which meant a hard beat the whole way. For those of you wondering what the hell that means - if you think about using the wind to power your sails, you think about it in terms of a compass. You are at the center and the all the possible directions from which the wind might come are dialed out about you like compass points. The possible choices of usable wind are much wider and more varied than someone unfamiliar with sailing might think. In fact, before I started this journey, I really didn't understand sailing at all. I thought, naively, that the wind was behind you pushing you along and that was that. What I have learned since is that it is a bit more complicated than that. It has to do with the fact that the stretched sail is curved creating a convex side and a concave side and therefore when the wind is split into 2 regiments by the knife edge of the sail these regiments are eager to rejoin each other at the other end of the sail - but the convex side has farther to travel and in order to keep up with its better half it speeds up accordingly to reach the reunion site at the appointed time. This causes a change in air pressure which effectively sucks the sail in the direction of the speedier wind regiment on the convex side of the sail which is generally angled in the direction that you would like to sail toward. Which also means that a lot of the time the wind is really pulling you more than pushing you. This is a terrible description, I know, with very little real science in it. But what can I say - I will never be a scientist. What science I understand has always been understood intuitively by a mind that believes magic is just science that we don't understand yet and science is just magic that some of us do understand. I mean, no matter how many times someone might try to explain to me why airplanes can fly - I look out at those big hunks of metal in the sky and it is still magic to me. But forgetting all the science, all that's really important here to understand is that you can pretty much use the wind coming from any direction except one - directly in front of you. And that, of course, is where we wanted to go.

To beat against the wind means to take a zigzag course back and forth across the direction of the wind trying to stay as close to your intended course as possible without actually being on it. And the zigzag of course reconciles you when you are veering too far away from your intended destination. It's a less comfortable way to sail, and of course, more work, but more importantly it takes longer because the fastest route is always the direct line not the zipper line of switchbacks revolving around it. But it did give me several opportunities to see how to tack the boat (change sides) with 3 sails up, and get used to using all the lines.

I sat night watches with Russell nearby. The most important thing at night being to pay attention to any lights you see and trying to determine if they are approaching or of any concern, and adjusting sails if the wind changes. He didn't want me feeling daunted on my first overnight trip if something happened and I needed to get his attention quickly so he tried dozing through his off watch time sprawled out in the cockpit. I must admit it was a bit daunting to have the boat still surging forward, still heeled way over, sails still flush with wind, and darkness all around you. The stars under way were quite stunning, with no lights anywhere to dim their fire. There were so many of them that the hunter, Orion, which is normally the most prominent constellation in the sky here, was almost lost in the forest of stars around him, as though he were hiding in a blind stealthily awaiting his prey.

It was a long night and I spent many an hour clipped into the railing on my monkey perch counting stars and lights and checking to see if our dinghy still followed like a faithful puppy. The watches are normally 3 hour shifts - so one person sleeps from 9pm to midnight and 3am to 6am and the other from midnight to 3am and 6am to 9am. But often the times get shifted about if problems come up and more hands are needed. The first time I went off watch I lay awake feeling the roll and heel and thinking about everything that could possibly go through my mind. It was only 9pm and quite early for me to be trying to sleep. The second time I went off watch was 4am and I rolled into my bunk like a log immediately dropping into sleep, and found myself automatically propping my leg against the wall to offset a change in heel without even waking. After 2 hours I woke feeling somewhat refreshed and went to spell Russell. It was light by then and he thankfully went below leaving me alone with the boat.

It was a pretty glorious morning. I learned during a brief squall that there is a small space on either side of the dodger (fabric and clear plastic windshield) where a person can fold herself up and be sheltered from the rain - every so often poking your head out to scan the seas around you. The morning was full of rainbows - of shapes and varieties I had never seen before. Besides a normal double bow that filled the sky there was also a rainbow like a smear on the horizon in a vaguely half oval shape with all the colors in the right order but no real distinction from one to the next as if the skins of all the colors had burst and the edges just bled together. My favorite of all were the invisible ones. Like when as a child you would write secret messages in lemon juice and you couldn't read it unless you used heat to make the words appear. The mist created by the waves crashing over the bow would float back along the boat wafting by the cockpit illuminating ephemeral strands of gemlit colors all around me. The mist acted like magic glasses that showed what was hidden, but the mist itself was fleeting, so there were only teasing glimpses of the prismatic fairies dancing and then they would be lost once again to the world unseen until the next puff of mist passed by to expose them like an X-ray into another dimension.

As we approached town we took the sails down and started motoring since the wind showed no sign of budging from it's collision course and we were running out of room for tacking. Russel was still trying to catch a bit of rest as he had been up all night, so I had the helm to myself. I started hand steering towards the end as the autopilot (not the wind vane) seemed to be having trouble keeping a true course in the current. I found that if I stood on the seats of the cockpit I could see over the bimini and have a full view of the horizon. Then by holding on to the crash bar over our compass, I had three solid points of contact that left my right hand free to turn the wheel while the rest of my body moved and shifted and pivoted with the boat.It was a very fluid and powerful dance. I felt like a charioteer soaring through the heavens, surfing on a giant dog sled over light - or like good old saint nick must feel guiding his team of flying steeds over the intricate and fluid surface of the winds.

The steering became more pedantic as we came close in and I guided us between the reefs - following tensely the green and red bouys marking our path. We entered Marin harbor on the south coast of Martinique, a floating garden of masts as far as the eye could see. French flags were everywhere in this yachting capitol of the French Caribbean. Our first 24 hour passage was complete. We dropped anchor and dove for our bunks for some much needed rest.