ailing is a world of extremes. The highest emotional highs, the lowest lows revolve around like weather patterns- regular yet not always predictable. Rarely has our time on the seas been hum-drum or dull- I can remember most everywhere we’ve been since our departure 5 years ago with vivid recollection. But somehow those bad days, which sometimes can stretch into what seems an endless period of darkness, are always followed by the purest simplest joy. Those times of darkness become very hazy in our recall, often even replaced with fond, if not happy memories. All those times we curse to ourselves and make a pact with our inner being that no matter what, when we reach land this time (take the analogy anywhere you like) we will walk away and never set foot on a boat again. This pact is somehow completely forgotten with just a glimpse of a perfect sunrise, a turn of the moon under a setting sun, a brief encounter with porpoises or an albatross. It’s like pain. Agony is replaced (not always through morphine or advil…) with discomfort; which is replaced with healing; and eventually the mind can barely remember what the pain felt like as we skip merrily down the street- our injury forgotten. Everyone I know who has gone through a serious injury, myself included always comes out of it learning a great deal- it forces us to slow down and do a bit of soul searching, precious time difficult to find in the world these days.

We left Vanuatu for Fiji after just three days to recoup after our long passage from New Zealand and its various trials and tribulations. Sailors familiar with the South Pacific already know where this story is going. You do not sail from Vanuatu to Fiji. It’s only 600 miles- but it’s 600 miles going the wrong way. If we’d had time and a bit of luck we could have waited for a low pressure system to pass over Vanuatu and ride its winds east as far as we could. But as fate would have it the weather stayed, as it should this time of year- with strong tradewinds out of the east, which was exactly our route to Fiji. There’s an old adage that gentlemen don’t sail to weather. There is a reason for this- we call sailing to weather “beating”. Sailors use this word because sailing close hauled, which simply means as close to wind as you can “beats” the hell out of you. It is incredibly hard on rigging, sails, fittings, causes endless chafe and most of all- kills the crew. There is another aspect of sailing in the trades (tradewind areas) called the intertropical convergence zone. This is a narrow band of completely crappy weather that can extend hundreds of miles long. If you sail near or under this zone you will experience endless torrential rain, thunder, lightning, high winds, confused seas- it is not pleasant.

This is exactly where we sailed for 6 of the longest days I have yet experienced at sea. Going the wrong way, in the worst conditions we could have had. And all of it was totally my fault. You see, sailors- and we are no exception; are frequently penniless. In order to afford wandering around the world in a yacht we take paying clients with us to share in the adventure, and pay at least some of our bills. Unfortunately when you have clients you are put on a schedule that the weather does not always cooperate with. So we left Vanuatu knowing full well we were going to get the crap beat out of us. Did we ever.

For six days we were ambushed by crazy seas, unending downpours, rogue waves, and a home racked with salt water and humidity. Saoirse took such abuse that her seems were literally coming undone. The stress a yacht takes from 6 days of pounding to weather is significant. Saoirse is a very very strong yacht and sails excellent to windward. But time took its inevitable toll and she, like us came in limping. Just before we left Vanuatu I started a fever which seemed akin to the fever associated with malaria- bouts of cold sweats and a bit of hallucinating. We laughed that if I did in fact have malaria, this would be an excellent time for Jody and Francis to run our ship for once not under my Captain’s watchful eyes. A child thrown into a pool who does not know how to swim will quickly learn what it takes to stay afloat. Turns out I didn’t have malaria, but I’ve never felt so ill at ease at sea. The only time in my life I’ve felt seasick was in a nasty storm in the Bearing Sea commercial fishing about 15 years ago, when four of us were laying in the salon getting four feet of air taking waves over the bow. I don’t know if it was the fever or seasickness, but I felt much worse during this passage. Cooking was out of the question. Sleep nearly impossible. Exhaustion, the kind that leaves you hoping for some further catastrophe just so there would be an end to the suffering went to the bones. Jody didn’t eat or drink a drop in almost four days. Francis, who has one of the toughest stomachs I’ve seen had more than one occasion tasting what little food he’d eaten the second time around.

A rogue wave is a statistical fact. Waves are measured meteorologically in terms of “Significant Wave Height”. So when you have 10 foot seas, this means the larger 1/3rd of waves will average 10 feet. About every 2 hours, or 1000 waves you will get a “rogue” wave of twice the size of the significant wave height average- or 20 feet in this example. This in itself is not very serious until you get into really large seas, but rogue waves also have the tendency to come from a different direction than the prevailing seas, which can have serious repercussions if taken unawares. One 25 to 30 foot rogue wave alone wiped out a section of our soft dodger windows, broke the staysail wire which left our entire mast seriously jeopardized, ripped the surfboard off the deck, bending and breaking two stanchion posts, ripped the forward bulkhead off the stringers (boat jargon for serious shit) and sent gallons of salt water below decks, soaking electronics, cushions and tired bodies. We’ve sailed in much bigger seas and angrier winds, but 30 knots on the nose and 15 foot seas (30 foot rogues) is all you need to experience total discomfort, which is what we had from start to finish. For 6 days we couldn’t open a hatch except to go on or off watch and still the water came- through the decks, through the port holes, down the mast. Everything but everything was wet, soaked, awash, flooded with salt water.

At one point about day 3 Jody said I woke up in a feverish panic in the middle of the night and stared at her with boodshot eyes, covered in sweat and said, “tell me where we are.” She replied sanely that we were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I persisted, “no- show me right now where we are on the chart. It’s the one in the middle, between the last one and the next one.” This feverish nonsense must have made her even a bit more uneasy- her captain was going insane. I vaguely remember waking up convinced we were about to crash into a reef even though we were 300 miles from any land. But I truly have only faint memories of the entire trip and cannot say what maelstrom was brewing in my mind. I do remember that it seemed we would never reach Fiji and that certainly the mast, whipping around like a noodle would come down. But it didn’t and we did finally reach Fiji. A bit late, a bit hammered, totally wrecked in mind and spirit.

But that is all a distant memory, remembered now not with sorrow but with achievement. The sun has been out for two weeks. The repairs were made in due time. The stars twinkle each night and we’ve feasted daily on gifts from the sea that cannot be had in any restaurant for any price. The laughter has returned in full. Just yesterday we caught a 30 lb. yellowfin tuna which we promptly brought onboard, put into a bucket, then watched the bucket tip over and launch the tuna down the aft hatch with a knife in its head and flop down the stairs onto Audrey, one of our clients. The knife laid a perfect backflip and stuck into the floor like a Comanche thrown axe. I’ve never seen a 30 lb flying fish, but stranger things happen out here all the time. Wahoo, tuna, lobster, crab, squid, octopus, mackerel, parrotfish, sailfish (105 lbs.!) grace our plates and quell our hunger like nothing else can. There is so much beauty out here it’s staggering. The winds propel us to new destinations where the only intruders to the scenery are thoughts of our next meal, next dive, next kitesurf, or the next book. One of our clients summed it all up nicely last night upon finishing a massive platter of yellowfin, which we prepared as sashimi, nori rolls, carpacio, seared in balsamic glaze, seared in a ginger soy sauce, seared with dill butter, seared rolled in cracked pepper…”that wasn’t dinner- that was a symphony.”

Would I do that passage again to experience this music? Absolutely.

Yasawa Group, Fiji. June 2004