The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey Page 3

  We motored down the Ottawa River with masts down, allowing us to clear under numerous bridges on the way. The kids screamed with delight at the roller-coaster ride that resulted when fast-moving motor-boats crossed our path. They stayed glued to the bow of the boat, where the motion was the greatest, hoping for ever-more thrilling rides in the wake of the huge container ships and speeding tugboats that passed by. I joined them and we spent hours there in laughing, splashing, bouncing splendour, right until sundown, when we anchored for the night and realized it was already two hours past suppertime. Several times the kids remarked that if this was fun, just imagine how much fun the ocean would be, with really big waves. I wasn’t quite as thrilled about that idea.

  Soon, we began school lessons, concentrating on the basics – reading, writing, French, and mathematics. The boys studied these every day except Sunday, unless we were off the boat or conditions were too rough. They also began writing journals about the trip. Our main objective, however, was to take maximum advantage of our ever-changing surroundings, and many of their assignments reflected this. We made a decision that if there had to be a choice between the trip or doing homework, the trip would come first. Sometimes I worried that I wasn’t doing a good enough job, because I had to improvise the boys’ lessons on a weekly basis, depending on where we were, but on the whole I think this was the best approach for us.

  It wasn’t only the kids who had lessons to learn. One night, when attempting to drive in reverse out of a lock, we had a moment of excitement when the buoyed line trailing our dinghy got tangled up in the propeller, causing our engine to come to an unexpected and inopportune halt. We were forced to drop anchor hastily so that Herbert could try out his new scuba equipment, bought just the day before we left, to disentangle the offending line. In the meantime, we bumped against the lock wall, damaging our wind vane, a self-steering device operated by wind, which protruded from our stern. Mercifully, no spectators were around to see the embarrassing sight of us floundering around. Back at home in Ottawa, a large proportion of the people who’d seen the story of our departure felt we’d never make it. Even the editor assigned by the Citizen to handle my weekly dispatches at first declined the job. As a sailor herself, she felt there was no way we would succeed; it would be a bad career move to be associated with an effort that was clearly doomed to failure.

  After many days of travel, we took a break in the lovely town of Saint-Denis, on the Richelieu River. The locks ahead of us were closed for the next three days, so we enjoyed an involuntary hiatus in this picturesque rural town of a thousand people.

  After sailing down the Richelieu River we joined up with Lake Champlain and entered New York State. We set off early into Lake Champlain on an intemperately cold morning and found that the wind, blowing at thirty knots, made our progress slower and wetter than we expected. Without her masts to stabilize her, Northern Magic rolled wildly. The bucking and beating into the waves caused whomever was on deck to be drenched every fourth or fifth wave by freezing cold spray. Every time we ploughed off the top of a big wave and buried our bow into the next one, our two aluminum masts, which were lashed rather precariously to our decks, shifted ominously back and forth. With each wave, they seemed to shift and slide more. The last thing we needed was to lose our spars in the middle of Lake Champlain, so we sought refuge in a small harbour and winched the masts down more securely before continuing.

  Afterwards I baked a big batch of Aunt Linda’s Excellent Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, a magnificent recipe given to us by my sister, Linda. I baked them in celebration of an important milestone – the first official bout of seasickness, experienced simultaneously by Michael and Christopher, and only narrowly avoided by me. This baking of ALEOCCCs, as they became to be known, thus became entrenched as an important and oft-repeated post-barfing ritual on Northern Magic.

  At Castleton-on-Hudson, a small village on the Hudson River near Troy, we said goodbye to Michael’s friend, Ian, and finally stepped up our masts. It was a magnificent sight to see those clean white sails flapping up the majestic height of Northern Magic’s fifty-eight-foot main mast for the first time. Already several weeks into our circumnavigation, we had still never sailed our own boat. The next day we left for New York City and the Atlantic Ocean. Northern Magic was champing at the bit, the scent of salt water in her nose, her proud head at last held high.

  Passing the Statue of Liberty and freed of narrow river channels, we ploughed into the ocean for the first time. It was just an overnight hop, but it was our maiden voyage on the ocean and felt like a momentous occasion. It was, to tell the truth, a little scary, even though we’d be no more than twelve miles from land.

  The waves were small but choppy, and before too long the jerky motion began taking its toll. We were motoring into the waves, against the wind. Michael and Christopher were the lucky recipients of special wristbands that purported to reduce nausea – and indeed, the two boys fared the best. Still, Gravol began making the rounds as the afternoon turned into evening.

  After bravely persevering with my attempts to provide a nutritious supper for our crew, I discovered that all the children had fallen asleep, leaving me alone with freshly cooked corn on the cob. Later, I figured out that none of us would ever have any appetite on our first day on the ocean, but I didn’t know this then. Now, the normally agreeable smell of corn on the cob was more than enough to send me retching to the toilet. In the end, only Captain Ironsides ate supper, and I gratefully joined the children for a nap.

  Herbert awoke me at around 10:30 p.m. for my turn at watch. My stomach was still in a state of active insurrection. Seeing that it wasn’t too rough at all, I was disgusted with this betrayal by my body. What would happen when it really got wavy? What would happen on that endless Pacific?

  Steering the boat in the darkness was also unexpectedly taxing. Not only did it take sustained muscle power to control Northern Magic in the confused waves, but when steering a compass course at night without anything else to orient yourself, it took powerful concentration. Our autopilot had broken and was back at the factory for repairs, so we were forced to steer by hand.

  Your job, as helmsman, is to steer a consistent course against the forces of the waves and currents, which are trying to tear you off it. Your main tool is a large, illuminated spherical compass set in the centre of the cockpit. By watching the compass, you must keep the boat heading within a few degrees of the direction the navigator has set. Standing in the darkness of night in the open ocean, surrounded by the whooshing of passing waves and staring at the huge glowing eye of the compass, is strangely mesmerizing. As fatigue sets in, it develops into a bizarre kind of battle between you and this unblinking, unforgiving eye. Every few moments you have to will yourself away from this almost hypnotic state in order to keep watch for other passing ships. Of course, in my case, I also had to take brief sickness-breaks every ten minutes or so, but I managed to do this without ever letting go of the wheel.

  Gradually, my eyelids began to get heavy and then close, opening each time with a start a few moments later to record the latest deviation from our course. With sheer willpower, I would force my leaden arms to regain control of the wheel once more. At some point, when my eyes were more closed than open, I finally tied up the wheel and went to rouse Herbert, who performed some magical calculations to determine our position and gave me permission to return to sleep.

  Inside the cabin, things were quite a sight. Christopher had fallen asleep on our bunk, lying sprawled around a half-finished game of Monopoly. I returned the game pieces to their tattered box and slid my littlest one carefully under our sheets. As I did so, he woke up, smiled his angelic five-year-old smile, and said sweetly, “Mommy, I barfed!”

  In the galley were the repulsive, uneaten remains of supper. My stomach heaved at the very thought of going in there. I left them untouched and put myself to bed in Michael’s berth, as Michael had fallen asleep on the narrow settee behind the dining table. As I dozed off, Northern Magi
c’s motion gave me the impression of riding on the haunches of a giant cat, pouncing over and over on its prey. This image, of a jaguar with me on its back, accompanied me into a fitful sleep.

  My next watch started at around 3:00 a.m., when a very tired captain woke me up and gave me our new heading. We had passed Atlantic City and were heading now for Delaware Bay. Once again I subjected myself to the relentless stare of the compass until I began spotting various lights that heralded our return to the mainland and blessed relief from seasickness. I felt miserable. Was I crazy to have signed up for years of this?

  Fortunately, the kids were not as severely affected by seasickness as I was, and awoke extremely chipper as morning dawned bright, warm, and beautiful. Herbert and I took turns napping while we motored Northern Magic down the bay and through the D&C Canal that leads to Chesapeake Bay and Annapolis. Near suppertime we anchored in a peaceful bay, surrounded for the first time by the sounds and sights of saltwater.

  We continued motoring, and occasionally sailing, down the eastern seaboard of the United States, learning as we went. We used this period as our shakedown cruise, making periodic stops to improve the boat and work the kinks out of her systems. Gradually, we began turning ourselves into sailors.

  One of our stops was in Washington, D.C., where my Aunt Gina invited us to stay for a night at her house. I had been looking forward particularly to sleeping in a real bed, but in the middle of the night I half-woke, worrying about whether our anchor was dragging. Leaping out of bed, I rushed to the window and pulled the curtain aside. And there I saw, to my horror – a tree! We were hard aground!

  The shock of this terrible discovery woke me up completely, and only then did I realize how silly I looked. I checked to see if any one had noticed my yell, then I slunk sheepishly back into the bed. It was a month since we had left home, but somehow, I really was becoming a sailor.

  A few weeks later we arrived in Florida, just in time to watch the launch of the space shuttle Columbia at Cape Canaveral. The next day we had Northern Magic lifted out of the water and placed on stands in a boat-yard in Titusville so we could attend to some long-overdue painting.

  We stayed in Titusville a month, trying to finish off the tedious and long overdue exterior work of de-rusting, sealing, and painting Northern Magic’s decks, and stripping and staining her teak woodwork. The obvious lack of these finishing touches had been a continuing embarrassment. We arrived at Palm Beach, Florida, looking much improved, just three days before Christmas.

  After singing Christmas carols and feasting on Christmas cake sent by Mom, one by one we hung up our stockings on the ledge beside the Christmas tree. Then, as always, I read The Night Before Christmas, and three excited boys climbed into their bunks to be rocked to sleep by the gentle rolling of the boat. It was the first of four Christmases we would spend on board Northern Magic.

  It was during our stay in Florida that I learned a stern lesson in boatmanship.

  I’ve always felt rather competent and able to quickly master most new tasks given to me. But in Florida I began to develop a suspicion that perhaps there is some masculine bond between a man and his outboard motor that is beyond the ken of the average female. Or beyond me, at least.

  My adventures began one afternoon when Michael and I decided to motor over to a nearby marina to make some phone calls. I was still a little shaky about manoeuvring the dinghy, as all my instincts called for me to turn the outboard the opposite way than was actually required. As a result, I was extremely tentative about steering, first trying a little baby-turn before committing myself. No one else on Northern Magic seemed to have this particular disability, as both the older boys quickly became adept at handling the dinghy.

  Herbert had always tried to convince me that it was easier to go at a faster speed, so that the dinghy planed. So as Michael and I left, travelling at my customary slow pace, Herbert shouted a series of instructions again – an irritating habit, I felt – and I reduced throttle to hear what he was saying. This caused the dinghy to stall, adding greatly to my annoyance.

  Without power, the dinghy began drifting rapidly to shore – to the wrong shore, of course. I could see the captain of a nearby sailboat watching me curiously, but I put my head down and concentrated on starting the motor by pulling on the cord. It almost caught, but not quite. A few seconds later, the other captain was hanging over his boat with a pole, offering to secure me to his vessel.

  “No thanks,” I responded cheerfully, with what I hoped to be a voice of confident authority, “I’ll get her going in a second.” And I continued onward, yanking at the starter cord, the powerful current towing us rapidly away, my arm muscles slowly giving up. On Northern Magic, Herbert stood, silently watching the unfolding debacle. After a few more pulls, the motor ceased to give any sign of life. I began cursing myself for having rejected the offer of help. I looked up, pleadingly, at that maddening husband of mine, and as our eyes met I saw him begin to ready our second dinghy to come to our rescue.

  In the meantime, we found ourselves entering the surf that was bringing us at a rather rapid pace to Peanut Island. Not just surf, but a rocky shore as well. Stupid, stupid, stupid! As soon as we came near the rocks I had no choice but to jump overboard, fully dressed, and push us away from those menacing hazards lest we pop the inflatable dinghy. Michael giggled at me, and I did manage a rueful smile as I waited, soaked to my waist, for Herbert to row over to us. Then he lifted up the fuel line that had become disconnected from the motor, plugged it in, and effortlessly started the dinghy up again. As I said, stupid, stupid, stupid!

  That evening we entertained the couple from the other sailboat whose help I had spurned. We chuckled about the afternoon’s entertainment I had provided. Half jokingly, I used the word “incompetent” to describe my dinghy handling skills. To my horror, everyone present smirked and nodded in agreement! I went to bed in a stew. I would show them. If my children could handle a dinghy, by gum, so could I!

  The next day I volunteered to ferry Herbert to shore so he could do his morning’s errands. It was an extremely windy day, and the water was choppy. After Herbert got off at the dock, he again encouraged me to give a little more throttle. This time I did, heading off into the wind and back to our anchorage.

  Within seconds I was in trouble. The combination of wind on the nose, the unruly waves, and my unique style of dyslexic steering caused the dinghy to wag alarmingly from side to side. Somehow I wasn’t able to bring it back under control without accidentally executing a neat U-turn right in the path of an oncoming speedboat. It might have been obvious to everyone else that I should have been shifting my weight to the front of the dinghy to weigh it down, but it wasn’t obvious to me.

  I waved apologetically to the two guys on the speedboat as if I had merely changed my mind about where I needed to go. Gritting my teeth, I headed back into the wind. I was not going to let this dinghy get the better of me. But it was the first time I had ever driven it alone, much less in winds and waves like these. With no one in the bow to weigh it down, the front of the dinghy rose up as I increased speed, trying to plane, just as Herbert had instructed. It took no more than two seconds for a fierce gust of wind to swoop right in under the uplifted bow and throw it up vertically. In the next instant the dinghy flipped high into the air and I was thrown head over heels.

  As the dinghy cartwheeled, I managed to leap out sideways so at least it didn’t land on top of me. There I found myself, treading water awkwardly in long pants and a heavy sweatshirt. The bulging fanny pack containing all my important papers, money and credit cards, was threatening to slip down over my hips, and my left sandal was coming off my foot. The two fellows on the powerboat had enjoyed a front row seat for my acrobatic stunt and within a few seconds were by my side. “Would you like us to help flip her back over?” they asked, with nary a grin.

  “Yes, please,” I answered primly. I did this with great dignity and politeness, as if accepting their offer of a cup of tea.

  Afte
r we flipped the boat over and threw all its floating contents back inside, it was my turn. Twice, I unsuccessfully attempted to drag my fully clothed and waterlogged body back into the dinghy. I just couldn’t do it. In the end, I succeeded only with the help of a strong pair of hands that grabbed my clothes to hoist me over. I looked much like a disobedient kitten being carried by the scruff of its neck.

  That night we had a family discussion about what to name the dinghy that had played a large part of my adventures for the previous two days. The four boys on board were actually fond of our inflatable, but I knew that there was some kind of malevolent anti-female spirit lurking inside that innocuous looking pile of red rubber. I wanted to name it Male Chauvinist Pig, or MCP for short. My idea, however, got vetoed, in favour of an absolutely ridiculous name the boys put forward and approved with great laughter and applause by a majority of four to one.

  Flipper.

  In Florida, with our departure from North America imminent, provisioning was a major preoccupation. It was my job to fill every possible free space with food before Herbert claimed it for tools. Each shopping trip would consume the better part of a day, as each item had to be carried aboard, removed of its packaging and labels (water makes paper labels fall off), identified by black marker and placed in some obscure little hole. By the time we were finished, Northern Magic was positively bulging; every drawer, locker, cupboard, bilge, and space beneath every floorboard was crammed full.

  We had to think about many items we would need to stock for long-term travel: things like dental floss, deodorant, shampoo, insect repellent, and – oh yes – Hershey’s Kisses. Somehow on the trip I’d fallen into the terrible habit of munching on these addictive chocolate morsels. My expanding belly was already beginning to emulate their shape.