“If this keeps up,” I told Eric enthusiastically, “we could be in port in three days!”
The Second Mate smiled back from his perch on the low forward corner of the cockpit seat. A short jaunt would be more than welcome – the nights had gotten colder. Already the three of us, beginning with Brian, had donned our shoes and socks as evening faded into dark. Eric held out to the last (“I’m from Montana,” his mantra went, “I’ll put my shoes on after both of you do.”) Now, however, we basked in the warming sun and luxuriated in the steady wind. Oops, did I say steady?....
It had looked like we’d be able to clear the point ahead, the twelve mile mark from Bahia Tortuga. But as we approached the wind direction slid around to the west, forcing us to tighten sheets until we were beating at the highest angle possible – 30 degrees off the wind – to make it around the projecting land. It still looked like we could cut it if the breeze remained at this stiff 15 knots….wait…I mean 10.
We’d make the point, I now knew, but we were going to have to tack out anyway. The drop in wind speed made and increase in our angle of sail caused us to fall off a little; it was just enough that as we came even with the point, a mile off shore, we were heading directly into a large patch of kelp floating at the surface. A panga from the Turtle Bay fishing fleet bobbed in the middle of it, its crew so intent on hauling up their net that they hadn’t noticed us creeping up on them. I called the tack just before the bow would have sliced into the orange-brown mass. The scream of the winches and flap-and-boom of the sails startled the net-haulers, who paused for a moment to stare at the apparition of a small sailing craft leaping out of nowhere in a flurry of sound, suddenly twenty yards away. We waved to them as they shook their heads and went back to work.
Our change in tack was actually forcing us to head southwest, opposite the direction we needed to go. If we just got further out to sea we could remain clear of the really large islands of floating kelp, thus being able to maintain a course more or less due northwest. Oh, and that would also depend on a cooperative wind…Which failed us completely as we made our escape from the kelp beds.
The engine came on: if only we could get around this point maybe the breeze would pick back up…or not. I powered the last two hours of my shift, always hoping to catch the zephyr again. It didn’t happen. And it continued not to happen all through Eric’s turn at the helm. He and Brian finally shut down the power to conserve fuel, ghosting on the nearly nonexistent wafts of air current. I came back to the deck for the evening to find us barely five miles further along. Shit, I thought, if this keeps up it could take us two weeks to get there.
This would be a bad thing. I was expecting to meet my friends Stacy and Eric (Goodman) in Ensenada. If we fell more than four days behind we’d miss them entirely. Noooooo!
Brian and I calculated while Eric whipped up something warm for dinner. At an average of sixty miles per 24 hour period we’d be at sea for five and a half days. Oh the anguish! This would be a relatively short jump compared to some of the monster excursions we’d so far taken. We could count on the engine (and an average speed of 6 knots) for almost half of it. But still, without a consistent blow for at least a long stretch we could conceivably end up in port WAY later than we hoped.
No, hold on. Relax. Enjoy it. The wind will as the wind wills….
And the wind did as it would: for the next three days and nights it pretty much wouldn’t. We often had to drop sail and drift, then turn on the engine to take ourselves back out ten miles or so as we got too close to shore for comfort. We weren’t buffeted by storms – in fact it never so much as rained. A marine layer of thick clouds hung almost perpetually to the west, occasionally overtaking us at night. Cold dew would collect and we’d shiver before the coming dawn. The mates suffered especially. Brian and Eric drew the shift encompassing the five o’clock hour. In the predawn darkness the air temperature would drop damply, swatting the ocean surface with bone chillingly cool air. I’d come above at six each morning, just after sunup, to find them huddled deep in their clothing, shivering on the slick decks. Morale dipped precipitously during these times, perhaps the only thing that held the crew together was the simple knowledge that we’d come too far to give in, no matter what was thrown at us. Somehow, the stagnant wind and crawling pace was far worse than storms. It gave us too much time to think about being miserable, I suppose.
I fell back on the fact that the rudder jury-rig was functioning so well. Aside from the occasional clearing of seaweed from the lines running down to the rudder our nylon and nails were working exceptionally well. Just let it keep doing that, I prayed, I don’t want to go down there to fix it again. Surely we could do a pull-out in Ensenada for a real repair.
We just had to get there.
In the comforting balm of daytime sunshine things didn’t seem so rough. We’d dry our raingear, laze in the sun, have a nourishing lunch. You’d never believe how good a spam sandwich with squeeze-cheeze could taste! Really. You use up a lot of energy staying warm at night so that by 10:00 am you’d be ravenous. A healthy dose of sugars, fats, carbohydrates, (and of course preservatives,) would be just what the old body was craving. Not to mention the almost narcotic effect such a feast can have on the mind. By evening we’d once again be a band of brothers. And then the isolation of wet, cold and dark. Tempers, so satiated, would build until we didn’t want anything to do with one another as the night had its way with our psyches.
We each developed our own response to this demon of self-inflicted pain. I got quiet and introspective. I’d watch the water, the sails, the shore. Conversation was forced, and usually served as a device for examining a problem I perceived in the attitude of one of the other two: “Eric, what’s up? Brian, you need anything?” Just keep them comfortable, just keep them talking to each other, just keep them at a distance from myself. Let no recrimination become explosive.
Unless it was my own: “Goddamnit, we don’t have enough fuel to be running the engine this much! If we have to sit here and bob then we sit here and bob!” This, of course, in retaliation to my own deep desires to be moving, to GET THERE, not to disappoint my friends. Any of them.