The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey Read online

And so, as we prepared for the longest ocean passage we would ever undertake, we did so with a sinking feeling in the pits of our stomachs. In this context of grief and incipient disaster, the task awaiting us felt more awesome than ever before.

  It was our last night in Puerto Ayora, our last chance to buy supplies before our big crossing. We had completed a full day of shopping, tramping up and down the length of the main street at least six times, searching out all the things we would need. Herbert and the two older boys headed back to the boat to unload while Christopher and I continued with a few final errands. As we wandered around town, my mind was a morass of fear and confusion as I wondered what awful news the next e-mail might bring.

  Half an hour later, we were waiting under a storefront for Herbert’s return. We waited more than an hour, taking shelter under the eaves during a torrential downpour of rain. There was no sign of Herbert. Finally, almost two hours late, as dusk was falling, the familiar figure of our captain came hurrying down the street. He was soaking wet, out of breath, and his face had a hard edge to it.

  “We had a squall, out in the harbour. Flipper is ruined!”

  Flipper had been tied to Northern Magic as the squall had hit, bringing with it sudden high winds and big waves. The swell in the harbour was already close to two metres high, but as the waves created by the storm piled on top of that, the effect on the anchored boats was dramatic. Suddenly, there was chaos as anchors began dragging and crews on every boat were jolted into high alert to avoid collisions.

  Herbert had positioned himself at the wheel, his eyes scanning the chaos around him, formulating plans for every possibility. Then there was a sound, a dramatic explosion of escaping pressurized air. It took only a moment to realize what had happened. Flipper had popped! The protruding end of our steel wind vane had impaled her and split her wide open.

  Herbert yelled for Michael. Quickly, the two of them began fishing Flipper’s contents out of the water. Michael, who was a strong swimmer, jumped into the big waves and swam after floating objects. But Flipper herself was foundering, her heavy outboard motor dragging her down.

  Herbert quickly loosened the main boom and attached a belt and pulley to it to help raise the motor out of the water. With Michael back on board and positioning the boom over the side, it was Herbert’s turn to dive into the water and sling the belt under the motor. Then the two of them hoisted the motor into the air, where it swung precariously from side to side with each wave, before raising it over the lifelines and dropping it safely on deck.

  Now they were faced with the formidable task of wrestling Flipper’s remains on board. Her water-filled pontoons made her incredibly unwieldy. There was no way for the two of them to hoist her on deck. Crews from other boats had been watching sympathetically, but with their own boats to care for they had been unable to come to Herbert’s assistance. Once the worst of the squall had passed, however, Greg from the Australian boat Bimbimbi hopped in his dinghy and helped Herbert heave Flipper’s heavy, water-filled corpse on deck.

  Herbert, still concerned that our anchor might drag, had positioned Michael at the bow, ready to pull up anchor on command using the power winch. Michael stood there heroically, bracing his slender eleven-year-old frame against the driving rain and drenching waves that splashed up each time the bow crashed down.

  Finally, the emergency over and everything secure, Herbert set about launching our second dinghy, Northern Magic Junior, so he could come and pick us up. Unfortunately, due to difficult conditions on the heaving deck, the forty-kilo fibreglass dinghy hit the water upside down and immediately filled with water. Somehow Herbert managed to manoeuvre Junior into a more suitable position, and with Greg’s help, bailed her out before setting off to his much-delayed rendezvous with Christopher and me.

  It was fully dark and almost bedtime by the time everything was sorted out and we were all back on board. Supper was by now only a fanciful dream. We contented ourselves with a quick bowl of soup before collapsing into bed. The raging waves made sleep difficult, and Junior, carefully tied to our side to avoid being similarly trapped under our stern, was banging noisily against the hull as we bucked two metres up and down with each wave.

  Herbert climbed out on deck during the night to reassure himself that everything was in order. But early next morning we were roused from bed by Jonathan, who was outside and shouting in alarm. When we emerged, bleary-eyed and tousled, we couldn’t believe our eyes: Junior, so carefully tied up and rechecked during the night, had still somehow made her way to the scene of Flipper’s demise. Just like Flipper, Junior was now in the process of being demolished by the crashing wind vane on our stern.

  She was already filled with water, her fibreglass hull almost smashed in two. The wind vane had knocked gaping holes all through her, and within a few minutes she would be completely gone, dragged down by our second outboard motor, which was already submerged. To lose not one, but two dinghies within twelve hours was not only a terrible blow, it was exquisitely embarrassing to boot. I thought Herbert would commit hara-kiri on the spot, using that lethal wind vane on himself.

  The drama replayed itself – Herbert diving into the water, wrestling the remains of Junior away from the stern anchor line, dodging the wind vane, and slowly manoeuvring Junior over to the side. Hans, our friend from the German boat Mahili, now came to the rescue, and after some discussion he and Herbert towed Junior ashore, fearing that if we attempted to hoist her on deck she would break completely in two. Less than a metre of fibreglass was holding her together in the middle.

  This was the morning we had been planning to leave, in company with Mahili. Clearly, now, we couldn’t go without fixing at least one of our tenders. By the time Hans had finished helping us deal with the aftermath of our disasters, Mahili’s departure, too, had to be delayed until the next day.

  Early the next morning, one more misfortune added to our feelings of fear and foreboding. Hans, a tall, distinguished, and superbly fit man of sixty-one, with finely chiselled Teutonic features, set about freeing his stern anchor in preparation for departure. Because the harbour was crowded and there was so much wave action, we all had two anchors out, one from the bow and another from the stern, to stop us from swinging into each other. Hans was following his stern anchor line, hand over hand, and discovered that it was set almost directly underneath Bimbimbi, beside us and slightly astern. As I watched, I saw him get closer and closer to Bimbimbi’s bucking bowsprit until he was bent over right underneath it, trying in vain to free his anchor. It was clearly a very dangerous situation for him to be facing alone.

  I called over, asking him to dinghy over and get Herbert to help, but he reacted just as every German man I know would have done, by shaking his head and continuing his work unassisted. Undaunted, I shouted down to Herbert to swim over and help him before he got hurt.

  My appeal came too late. Even as Herbert was donning his swimsuit, I watched in horror as a particularly large wave brought Bimbimbi’s heavy metal bowsprit crashing down on Hans’s skull.

  Herbert dived into the water to swim over to where Hans sat in his dinghy, cradling his head and still in terrible danger of being smashed a second time by that bucking bowsprit. His face was covered with blood. By the time Herbert got to him, Hans’s entire upper body was crimson. Herbert just about suffered a heart attack when he emerged from the water to face that terrifying sight. He helped Hans back to Mahili and the ministrations of his wife, Renate, who had watched the accident in helpless horror.

  With his wound bandaged, Hans stubbornly insisted he was fine and would leave as planned. Herbert and Renate tried to change his mind, but to no avail. I sympathized with Renate; I too am married to a German, and I know the type well.

  Herbert and a bandaged Hans returned to free the anchor without further incident. Soon Mahili was sailing off into the ocean, to be joined by us at another island as soon as we could follow. We felt tremendous misgivings as we watched them disappear over the horizon.

  Two days la
ter, with both dinghies nominally repaired, we followed Mahili, setting off for an uninhabited anchorage at Isabela Island, one of the westernmost islands in the Galápagos chain. By doing this, we knew there would be no chance now of flying home for my grandmother’s funeral if she should die within the next month. We departed with Futuna, a German boat we would continue to sail with, on and off, all the way to Indonesia. We already had a good friend on Futuna in the person of Oliver, one of the last-minute line handlers who had helped us on our transit of the Panama Canal.

  By early morning on May 18, we were passing beside the beautiful, volcano-studded, C-shaped island of Isabela. That afternoon we set out to explore, and Isabela Island paraded before us the most incredible display of living creatures we will ever see in this life.

  First of all, there were the great frigatebirds, soaring and circling overhead like split-tailed pterodactyls from some prehistoric age. There were dozens and dozens of them, one after the other, gracefully swooping down and plucking fish from the surface of the water. As we got closer to shore in Junior, we entered the pelican zone – with literally hundreds of brown pelicans flying, swimming, sunning, and diving all around us. At times, there was barely room for our dinghy to progress with this seemingly impenetrable wall of pelicans in the water around us, oblivious to our presence until they were actually in danger of being run over by the slowly moving dinghy.

  Next were the boobies, by the hundreds, proudly displaying their startling bright blue feet on the rocky shore or dive-bombing into the water all around us. And then we spotted what I had been hoping especially to see – a Galápagos penguin, the most northerly penguin in the world. There were dozens of them: swimming, head down, on the surface of the water, looking almost like miniature sea lions; paddling around in cheerful small groups; or standing in that pompous penguin stance among the ponderous pelicans and slightly silly-looking boobies on the shore.

  Peering into the water, we noticed we couldn’t see the bottom – we were looking into an absolutely solid mass of fish. Everywhere we looked, there were small silver baitfish, packed so closely they could have been sardines in a can, the backs and dorsal fins of the ones on top forced above the surface. The view resembled a million miniature shark fins cutting through the water. All a bird had to do was open its mouth and it was guaranteed a feed. Of everything we saw, this solid moving mass of fish was probably the most stunning. There were so many fish in the water, the birds didn’t even bother to pick up the ones they dropped by accident from the air. The bushes around the water’s edge were decorated with thousands of dead fish bodies, hanging down like sparkly Christmas ornaments.

  We soon found ourselves in a small lagoon, right in the middle of hundreds – no, thousands – of creatures in an orgy of feeding: from above, frigatebirds swooping and boobies diving; from the surface of the water, penguins and pelicans coming up with a mouthful every time they ducked their heads; and from under the water, sea lions and large green marine turtles, lazily claiming their fair share. Baby sea lions would periodically take a break from their feeding to swim over to our dinghy and look at us curiously. You could imagine them saying, “Hey, Mom, look at the tiny humans!”

  All around us, we heard nothing but the sounds of gluttony – splashing, snorting, flapping, and swallowing. It was a scene of wild and terrible beauty.

  We stayed at mesmerizing Isabela Island for two days while making our final preparations for crossing the Pacific. Then Futuna was gone. The day after, Mahili and Northern Magic were to follow, into three thousand miles of empty ocean.

  I awoke early on the morning of our departure. A familiar tightness gripped my throat, a strangling constriction that only happens when I am afraid. This was the day. There was no going back. Finally, I was so tired of dreading this passage I was actually feeling eager to get on with it.

  Beside the computer, I noticed the little e-mail light was on. It had an ominous glow to it, so early in the morning. Suddenly all thoughts of the looming passage disappeared. “I know this is bad news,” said Michael over my shoulder, voicing my own fears.

  In a short but eloquent message from my father, we learned that my grandmother had passed away just two hours before.

  There was no hope of returning home for the funeral. As much as my heart cried to return, I had known once we left Santa Cruz Island that there would be no way to make it back in time.

  “Do you still want to leave today?” Herbert asked, softly, after a time.

  “Yes,” I nodded. There was no point in delaying the inevitable. So, as Herbert continued readying the boat for departure, quietly taking over my chores as well, I sat at the computer, with a mournful Michael trying his manly best to comfort me.

  As we set sail for the Marquesas Islands, across an unimaginable expanse of water, I didn’t stand on deck to catch a last glimpse of land receding in the distance. My place was inside, hunched over my computer. I said my goodbyes to Nana there, paying honour to her the only way I could – with my words of love and respect. My father had earlier asked if I would help write her obituary and eulogy. Now it was time to perform that last loving act. As I worked, my tears flowed freely.

  5

  Facing Fear and Grief in the Vast Pacific

  Our first week at sea was a low time for me. I had to deal with my usual lethargy at the beginning of a passage, my fear about facing the huge expanse of ocean, and my grief at the death of my grandmother. My thoughts, for the first few days, were focused on what my family was doing at any given hour – attending a memorial service, standing at graveside, gathering in the home I have associated with my grandparents since earliest childhood, a home I would never enter again. I felt my place was beside my family in Canada. Instead, I was heading out into three thousand miles of empty ocean.

  On the seventh day, the funeral over and done with and my last tears shed, I awoke, bright and hopeful, to a sunny, perfect day.

  Seized with a new energy, I decided to scrub down the galley. A boat is a terrific factory for the production of bad smells – a hot, close environment with lots of bodies, tremendous humidity, and not enough refrigeration for the amount of food that is packed into it.

  So, armed with Lysol, I attacked every corner that might harbour mould, mildew, or any other unauthorized organism. Within an hour I had scrubbed the galley up and down so that it smelled like new. Now, truly hungry for the first time on the voyage, I decided to offer scrambled eggs and bacon to our crew. During a passage, when I was typically less than enthusiastic about cooking, they considered themselves lucky to get an empty bowl and a bag of corn flakes tossed at them. Herbert normally only managed to scrounge up one meal a day. My uncharacteristic offer therefore received a gratifying reception, and I set about retrieving some of the 150 eggs I had purchased in Galápagos for the voyage.

  I had followed the instructions in my reference books as to how to preserve eggs without refrigeration. This involved either dipping them in boiling water for five seconds, or covering them with Vaseline. Jonathan and I had tried both methods. Now, almost two weeks after buying and carefully treating them, I would test the results of our efforts.

  Cracking the eggs proved to be more of an adventure than the ocean passage itself. I discovered to my disgust and frustration that at least half of them were already questionable or worse. Soon, I was juggling eggs all over, trying to put all the good ones together in containers and isolate the baddies for disposal overboard. This was harder than it sounds, unless you consider that the rolling motion of the boat was constantly causing all my bowls of eggs to tip over and slide around. My original objective of making breakfast was soon put aside.

  Then, for the first time in my pampered and sheltered life, I experienced the smell of a truly rotten egg. This evil thing simply exploded in my hand like a grenade, spraying its noxious contents all over me, the galley, and in particular the lid of the top-opening fridge. Before I could react, the egg-grenade’s incredibly foul contents were dripping down right inside t
he refrigerator.

  At the sound of this startling explosion, I issued a scream of my own. Everyone came running to see what had happened. Then, confronted with the stench of chemical warfare, my erstwhile rescuers, noses plugged, beat an equally hasty retreat.

  By the time I had finally assembled the requisite number of eggs, had dealt with a second smelly egg explosion, and had cleaned up as best as I could, my appetite had vanished. My pristine, fresh-smelling galley now smelled worse than the city dump. Rotten black egg goo had dripped and drooled its mucousy way everywhere.

  Finally, I silently served the long-awaited plates of eggs, neglecting to set one down for myself. Everyone took exactly one bite and then, in unison, slapped their forks back down in disgust. “Yucck! These eggs taste funny!”

  “They’re not rotten,” I said, defensively, my eyebrow raised scathingly. “I can assure you of that.”

  “No, they really do taste funny,” said Herbert hesitantly, scarcely daring to meet my baleful glare, known in our family as a Hairy Eyeball. He was fully aware of the sacrifices I had made to prepare this meal. “They taste fishy.”

  They were right. The eggs really did taste like fish. So of the 150 eggs that I had so carefully bought, treated, and stored, there were approximately sixty left that had not gone bad. And still I couldn’t serve scrambled eggs to my family. Instead I had a fridge that, even a week later, still smelled like something banned by the Geneva Convention. We didn’t eat a single egg on the passage and eventually I dumped all the rest of them in the sea.

  The opportunity for breakfast having long since passed, I now set about preparing lunch. I will confess that perhaps I was a little less cheerful than before. My stomach, which had started out the day feeling pretty robust, was now a quivering mess. Even the thought of an off smell made me want to retch.

  Still, determined to carry on with the pretence of being the efficient, cheerful first mate, I gritted my teeth, braced my body against the inexorably rolling motion, and set about getting some potatoes out of the potato bin. If I couldn’t get a decent breakfast together, at least I could offer a filling lunch.