Being at Sea

Wynne Hedlesky
Taioha'e, Nuku Hiva, French Polynesia
1125 local time, 0855 GMT

            After twenty days at sea, we arrived in Taioha’e Bay on the island of Nuku Hiva at around midnight. Smelly, salt-encrusted, and longing for a night’s rest without our beds pitching and rolling, we still had to navigate around jagged rocks at the mouth of the harbor, hoping that we had correctly interpreted the navigational aids. Thankfully, in a harbor as small as Taioha’e, they weren’t very complicated—one set of flashing red range markers, and one green buoy marking a dangerous rock half way down the bay (on the right, unlike in the United States). Slightly more challenging was finding an anchorage. There were several dozen sailboats and motor yachts scattered throughout the harbor, some stupidly without anchor lights. We kept our tired eyes peeled, and managed to successfully drop the hook on the second attempt. Frederic, the owner of Le Pelican, stayed awake to take bearings and make sure our anchorage was solid, and Kristian and I gratefully slept, this time without rolling onto each other or being packed like sardines against the wall of our cabin as the boat heeled.

            We awoke to a dramatically drizzly morning in Paradise. Being a high volcanic island, Nuku Hiva creates its own weather, and the heavy, gray clouds semi-permanently cloaking the peaks of the steep, verdant mountains dropped occasional cool showers. Aside from the overwhelming beauty of the mile-wide, bowl-shaped valley, I immediately and unexpectedly appreciated two things.

First, smells. Land has smells—earth, vegetation, decomposition, car exhaust, food cooking far away. The ocean doesn’t smell like much. Second, and of immense psychological importance, the boat was still. Well, relatively; the occasional ocean swell would still sneak in to the sheltered harbor. But compared to being on the open ocean, the anchorage was a long-awaited relief from the constant, harrowing fluctuation in local apparent down. On a boat on the open ocean, the laws of gravity are different. In order to even move around, one is compelled to follow the climber’s rule—three surfaces of contact at all times. Two feet on the ground will simply not suffice to keep you upright without a hand gripping a counter edge, or a bum pressed against a vertical. For instance, when I needed to use the head (that’s what we call a bathroom on a boat), I had to use both hands, and have my bum un-pressed against anything in order to pull down my pants. During this time I either had to endure a few desperate seconds where I risked face-planting the wall of the head if a big wave hit, or I had to wedge my shoulder against the head door for stability. Unlike in the normal world, where things generally stay where you put them, on a boat they tend to maliciously hurl themselves across the room when you least expect it. Beverages, playing cards, and small children seem especially prone to this.

This brings us to one of the other major psychological strains of my three-week, trans-Pacific adventure—children. As much as the unpredictable motion of, well, everything, and the stuffiness down below when we couldn’t open the hatches because of the spray, and the  inability to have a proper shower for three weeks, and the difficulty in sleeping while the boat was moving and heeling, and the various stress-inducing technical difficulties (such as the dysfunctional roller furling system, the rudder shaft leak, the diesel leak, the raw water cooling system leak, and the shortage of fresh water, to name the major ones), the main source of stress for those on board Le Pelican was the children, particularly the very young one. I believe I speak for all on board when I make this statement.

The Gillot family consists of a mother, Isabelle, a father, Frederic, and two quite wonderful children, Hakan, who is eight, and Charles, who is two. One lesson we all took from this experience is that two-year-olds and long sailing voyages are not necessarily a good mix. Charles spent about 70% of his time crying. I don’t blame him; being on a boat is scary, even for grown-ups. Who wants to be stuck on a tiny speck of fiberglass, thrown around twenty-four hours a day, surrounded by certain death? Due to the limited space of a sailboat, it’s also difficult to find ways to entertain young children. And due to the dangers inherent in life on a boat, young children also require constant attention. Between his frequent bouts of crying and his constant, unwitting attempts to throw himself into the path of danger, Charles had us all pretty worn out by the end of the trip.

I am a bit ashamed, but I must confess that thinking about the difficulties and discomforts of life at sea took up a good bit of my time. On June 20, four days before we reached the Marquesas, I wrote in my journal, “I’m ashamed of my current cowardice, my softness. I hate that I find myself grumbling, wishing for showers and beds and coffee and worrying about made-up (or even real) diseases while I’m in the middle of the greatest adventure of my life to date. I should be in awe of the sea every moment, overwhelmed by the sky, studying the subtleties of the sails and wind…If I expected this experience would instantly change my life, I guess I was wrong. If I thought I’d find God, fall deeply in love with the sea, or magically become a super sailor, I was wrong.”  And then, to compound it all, I was disappointed that I was disappointed.

This is what happens when you have expectations, when you undertake a project or a journey partially because of its narrative value for your life, because it makes a good story. Perhaps I expected, as I stated in the same journal entry, “to spend my days swooning in wonder, staring out over the sea, hair blowing in the wind.” I then noted, “In fact, your hair doesn’t blow because it’s a hideous matt of scalp oil and sunscreen, and, though the breeze is distressingly powerful and unceasing on deck, it never seems to have any interest in going through the tiny window and blowing around anything in your suffocating little cabin.”

Ok, I’ve said it; I’ve confessed that by some standards, three weeks at sea sucks. However, it is also sublimely beautiful, and at times beautifully something else.

The sublimely beautiful moments are what we all would expect from a life-changing, trans-Pacific sailing adventure. There was Getting Underway with Dolphins Playing at the Bow, there was The Most Beautiful Full Moon in the World Night, there was The Bioluminescent Plankton that Look like Stars Night. When the sun shone, the water was a freakish blue the color of the sky as seen at 30,000 feet, and you knew it was four miles deep because that’s what the chart says, even though that number is incomprehensible. Every night near the Equator the great Pacific Ocean put on its evening light show, with heaping cumulus clouds pink and glowing, and the orange sun, perpetually serene regardless of the chaotic sea state, burning its way down to the horizon. There were the infinite expressions of the sea, the subtle interactions of wind, water, and light. Some days it looked like a delicate, mirrored meringue, and other days, when the wind was high, climbing and descending the 20 foot seas was like traversing miniature mountain ranges, complete with snow-like, sea-foam peaks, and looking down into miniature glacial valleys. At night, the moon duplicated itself a million times on the surface of the sea and made a living, dancing carpet of light all the way to the horizon. The ocean rages and shines and writhes with life out there, whether anyone is around to see it or not. I was often shocked by this fact, that the vast Pacific plays almost every day for an empty theatre, and only the occasional reckless, half-mad human ventures far enough out of his element to witness it. In my journal, every day, I spilled ink trying to verbalize what is for the ocean as natural as breathing is to us.

That something is beautiful is relatively easy to comprehend. What is even more amazing is that the ocean is often something else—something not beautiful, but powerful in some other way. For example, the ocean is often very boring. Powerfully boring. So boring I could go for hours, reading a book, not even noticing it was there. I think that perhaps boredom is the only reaction one can have about the ocean sometimes. When it isn’t particularly beautiful or trying to kill you, it’s just big, and your mind is largely protected from the shock of realizing just how frighteningly big it is by its inability to fully, or even partially, comprehend the ocean’s vastness. You look out over it, to the horizon, and it’s like two dumb, brutish creatures indifferently occupying the same space; like an ant crawling on the back of a lion.

At other times, it does feel like the ocean is trying to kill you, and then it’s just scary. My night watches were frightening for the first few days. We were sailing more or less down wind, in relatively high seas, constantly under the threat of an accidental jibe. Sitting at the helm, alone, with the bimini and dodger up, I couldn’t see much of the sky, the sails, or what was in front of me. The stern light right next to me more or less ruined my night vision, so I was effectively deprived of my sense of sight and relied primarily on the anemometer and compass to stick to the correct heading. I could feel the boat unpredictably tossing in the waves, and I could hear the water washing everywhere. In the middle of the ocean, I was actually experiencing claustrophobia. It took some effort to convince myself we weren’t just spinning in circles in the dark, or about to capsize. As Kristian pointed out to me, it’s not often that you just plow ahead without being able to see where we you’re going. A person would never do that anywhere else. Cars don’t have autopilot; it would be dangerous even to walk blind. But there’s not a lot to hit on the open ocean, and even if something were there, if it didn’t have navigation lights it would be almost impossible to see anyway.

There was also the much-anticipated equatorial crossing. We crossed the line on my watch, at exactly 2324 PST on June 19. It was a dark, cloudy night, and I was reading a book on the not-yet-defunct Kindle in order to distract myself form the combination of boredom and anxiety that was my usual mental state during night watches. As we neared, Kristian and I went down below and loitered around the GPS display, waiting excitedly for the moment. Kristian practiced taking photos of the display so that when the time came, our money shot wasn’t obscured by an odd reflection on the display or something like that. All the excitement woke up Frederic, whose cabin is right next to the chart table. He didn’t seem to mind, and even got into the spirit of the moment with us a bit. All together, it was like a very mellow New Year’s Eve countdown. Kristian’s picture came out perfectly—photographic evidence that we were in fact there, at the magic line, entering the other side of the world. Afterwards, I went back up on deck and continued to read my book.

The next day, little had changed; we were still surrounded by water. The Pacific still put on its daily show. But now that we’re in Nuku Hiva, I realize we have entered a different world, and the miles of ocean crossed are proportional to the difference between this place and the United States. One of the things our new friends here on Nuku Hiva taught us was how to find the Southern Cross, and that, along with learning to eat raw crabs and roast breadfruit, is helping me start to feel the anticipated sensation of embracing the unfamiliar. I look forward to many more passages, difficult or easy, and many more unfamiliar shores materializing out of the haze on the horizon.

The complete and true chronicle history of our transit from San Diego to Nuku Hiva

Kristian Isringhaus
Nuku Hiva, French Polynesia
062511/1307 local time, 2137 GMT

060411

Before even casting the lines, I go ahead and break my right middle toe. A protrusion on the deck, skillfully camouflaged as an even part of it, decides to collide with my foot. The unmistakable cracking of the bone is well audible despite a rather moderate impact. I can now freely move the front part of the toe in all kinds of directions and make funny figures with it. It’s a blast. Anyways, I’m thinking of taping it even though it’s only a toe. After all, a free mobility of the front part of the right middle toe is helpful only in so many situations.

Early in the morning, we cast off our lines. The day we picked could not possibly have been more perfect. It is chilly, but it’s always chilly in the cold near costal currents on the west coast of the Americas. At least the sun is shining.

In addition to Wynne and I, the boat owners are also on board: Frederic and Isabelle with their sons Hakan (8) and Charles (2). The Gillots are from France. What would I do without the two years of French I took in high school 18 years ago? I always knew they’d come in handy some day. I’m glad I can say ‘bon jour’ and ‘alors’ and ‘Tour de France’.

A whole bunch of dolphins accompany the boat, playing around the bow, spreading joy amongst us and themselves. Important question for evolutionary biology: what did dolphins do for fun before there were boats?

We set sail for Nuku Hiva. Nuku Hiva belongs to the group of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, and is located about 3,000 miles south southwest of San Diego. According to the weather forecast, we won’t find a decent breeze out on the open ocean today, so we plan to stay near the coast with our course set due south. As soon as Aeolus decides to have mercy on us we will head as straight as possible for our first way point: the spot where we want to enter the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone. The ITCZ is the area where the north and south trade winds meet. Dangerous tropical storms can develop there at this time of year. The zone moves with the sun and is currently located between the equator and 10° north.

According to our weather dude our chances of finding enough wind—but not too much—are best around longitude 127° west, since the problem with the ITCZ at this time of the year is that unless dangerous tropical storms are developing, it usually is very calm. Too calm.
Anyways—so 10° north and 127° west is our first way point. From there we will assume a southerly course to take the shortest possible way through the ITCZ. Once out of there we will head straight from the Equator to Nuku Hiva.
So much for the plan. It takes about a half day to prove the weather dude wrong for the first time, though. We do find plenty of offshore winds and thus we slowly move away from the coast of Baja California. The ocean is calm but the ten knots of wind that Aeolus grants us are enough to cruise at seven knots over ground.

After only a few hours I start to get the feeling that this trip might turn out to be a vacation of unexpected relaxationessity. With all my sailing experience coming from working on tall ships, I never realized that sailing could be just that. We have an auto pilot on board. An auto pilot! Pretty much all I have to do is keep an eye on the wind and the sail trim. And maybe on the horizon every once in a while.

Well, I guess it might turn out to be not quite so easy. I suppose there will be a lot more to do, like fix the boat once it starts falling apart after a few days, like every boat does. Also, I haven’t stood my first watch yet, and I suppose those could get cold at night until we reach the tropes. And traveling with kids is always a thing, too.

We’ll see.

060511
I have the ‘sunrise watch’ from 4 to 8. It got its name from the fact that the sunrise coincides with the AM watch in most latitudes at most times of the year. Often, the sunset also falls into the PM watch. I like 4 to 8.

My morning watch is cold, but the sun rises way before 6. For the first time in my life I see the green flash, a phenomenon whose physicallical blah I cannot explain without consulting the interbrains first. But whatever the reason for its occurrence—it looks awesome. Right before the sunrise, a fraction of a second before the first orange dot shows at the horizon, there’s a green light at exactly the same spot. That’s it. Wouldn’t be too spectacular if the sun were green, I guess. But it ain’t for some wave lengthy reason, and thus seeing it shine green is cool.

Now, here’s the spiffy thing I always do during sunrises on the ocean. As I see the orange disc move away from the horizon, I keep telling myself that it is not doing just that, but the earth is tilting towards it. Knowing it doesn’t suffice, you have to keep telling it to yourself. By doing so, and maybe adding a ton of imagination, I can actually feel the earth’s rotation. Now, ain’t that cool? Feeling your planet move right under your ass? It’s the power of autosuggestion. On the other hand, it’s little more than some esoteric bullcrap.

Later on I see a bunch of fish jump out of the water as if harassed. Minutes before, I saw the tips of two shark fins. I wonder if there is a correlation.

At night we reach the island of Guadalupe and pass it on its east side. This is of no greater significance except it’s the last bit of land we will see for the next 20 days. We will have nothing but water around us for a while.

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Fish are rude these days. Trashy ocean trash. I have to be frank and blunt, wishing it weren’t so. Wouldn’t the etiquette of any society compel someone to accept something generously proffered? Well, the fish of the Pacific Ocean think it appropriate to refuse the banana peel that I so beautifully assemble on a hook, with a lot of attention to detail, and a malicious goal.
Unfortunately, the boat’s fishing kit is even more rudimentarily equipped than the one Wynne and I brought. It consists of a spool of line and three hooks. It does, however, not provide sinkers and I don’t want to waste ours. They are meant for reef fishing. Banana peel is the best I can find for bait, and for the lack of weights I let it float on top of the water. Seeing that we’re moving, pulling the bait behind us, I am obviously going after predators that hunt down moving prey. Oddly, though, no fish seem to prey on banana peel skimming the surface at 8 knots. I guess fish will not be on the dinner menu all too often during our transit. Seeing how rude they are, I’m not even sure I want them anymore.

I wonder if ancient island people asked themselves the question that so many people ask these days: are we alone? I suppose we wouldn’t be more surprised and thrilled if an alien space ship landed in the Hudson River than the Polynesians were when the first Spanish or French or English vessels came near their coasts.

Right upon the first beholding of these ships, dudes, cast out from society for their lunatic ideas of intelligent life beyond their shores, would walk around smiling knowingly, forgivingly, showing that they are above saying, ‘I told you so.’ The tribe’s chief would climb on a rock covered in goat skin and speak to his people: ‘My fellow tribesmen, the question whether we are alone has been answered...’ Exactly like president Pullman in ‘Independence Day’. I’m almost entirely sure that it took place precisely this way and not an iota differently.
Well, I guess Polynesians must have known that there were other people, seeing that they originally came from places where other people lived, too, but you know what I mean. You get the point, right? Right?

Anyways. Enough of my deep anthropological insights. Back to boat life. My French is getting better. When the Gillots talk among themselves I can now sometimes guess the subject of the conversation that I don’t understand.

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When a pre-lingual kid is not feeling well, is sea sick, or scared of the ocean, his only means of communicating that is crying. When he is sea sick or scared of the ocean, parents can do little about it. When nothing is done about it, the crying continues. Simple math.
Now, toddlers don’t cry, really. They rather yell cries. Have you ever seen one take a deep breath in between cries to ensure the highest possible volume and pitch? Charles takes very deep breaths. Really, really deep breaths.

The roller furling mechanism of the jib is not working properly, the bearing seems in need of some lubrificationing. I wake up in the middle of the night because I hear Frederic swear on deck. Swearing during a night watch usually means problems and so I’m up there in boxers 10 seconds later, helping him with the jib. There is nothing like some delightful sail handling in the middle of a decent night’s sleep. A previously decent night’s sleep, that is. Around noon we down-rig the jib in 15 knots of wind, give the bearing a drop of the finest of oils, and haul the sail back up. Even with a winch that thing is still pretty damn heavy. I winch until I have a golden arm and decide that I like sweating lines better.

Yes, my dear fellow tall ship sailor brothers and sisters, we do have a furling mechanism. And winches. So what? I do miss the hard work on a tall ship, but for the moment I am a content yacht sailor. I furl by hauling on a furling line, if need be with a winch, and I steer by telling the autopilot where to go. I’m not soaked in tar anymore, for the kids’ sake I fucking stopped swearing, and to not scratch the pretty delicateness of the delicate everythings I do not wear a rig anymore.

Fishing is stupid. I try one of Frederic’s rubber baits because these rude and trashy fish don’t even deserve my banana peels. It turns out that this bait has very particular hydrodynamics. When being dragged through the water it spins like a propeller. After a few hours the line is so twisted that it’s reduced to 20% of its length. Even with a knife it takes me a half hour to free the bait from the line that is twisted and tangled around it. It looks like the line even managed to tie some overhands into itself in the water. I spend another hour untangling the kinky line. After all, it’s Frederic’s and I want to return it in good shape.

Wynne mocks me for my pathetic attempts at fishing. The thing is, I am aware of the fact that sinkers and proper bait would be nice. Her mocking does not really help. I would love to use the right equipment. But I can’t because we don’t have it. I keep asking Frederic if he has anything that I could use for a weight. In my opinion it wouldn’t hurt if I took the big bolt cutters and cut a piece out of the middle of the stainless steel backstay. The important parts are the ones that attach the stay to the mast and to the hull. The middle part is pretty much almost dysfunctional. For some reason Frederic won’t let me do that, though, and so I remain sinkerless.
Alright, fishing is not stupid. It is stupid only when one doesn’t have the right equipment. In Nuku Hiva, on the other hand, where our highly specialized circle hooks can unfold their evil, where we have sinkers and plenty of fish, we will soon need to rig a smoker to preserve the surplus.

060811
We are not alone. Shortly after I start my watch at 4 AM I see two lights somewhere in the pitch black darkness. Both of them are white, I can’t see any green or red navigation lights. The radar tells me that the ship is less than two and a half miles away. And it’s coming my way.
Because we are under sail I would theoretically have the right of way. But I can hardly imagine that a 7 brazillion megaton tanker would feel ever so happy about having to divert from its course for me. We wouldn’t be much more than a bug on a wind shield for them.
I suppose I could simply just tack but naturally I don’t want to divert from my course either. We are planning on being in Nuku Hiva in two and a half weeks. No time to be the chicken in this chicken game. I much prefer chewing nervously on my trail mix, running below decks to check the radar every thirty seconds, trying to penetrate the darkness with my eyes in between radar runs. I’ll spoil the ending for you: we do not hit them. Anyways—David Ogilvy, the godfather of advertising, once said an ad without an idea will pass like a ship at night. He might not know how exciting a ship at night can be when it gets this close and you stubbornly claim your right of way.

A tad later something glowing blueish white, about a foot in length, drifts by. Some type of squid I suppose. Bioluminescence is cool.

We reach the Tropic of Cancer. During the whole trip so far it got warmer and warmer every day. By now I don’t need a jacket anymore for my AM watch. But the wind is still chilly. I am fairly sure very soon I will wish for this chilliness. It has also been cloudy for a couple of days now. What’s up with that?

060911
The sea is rough. We reef the main deep. Even with the sail area reduced significantly we still make an easy 7 knots. During my afternoon watch I set a new speed record for the trip at 10.3 knots. We must be flying. I look over the side to make sure we’re still touching the water. ‘10.3 knots?’ small boat sailors all over the world will ask. ‘What about it?’ Now for a tall ship sailor that’s a lot. That about it.

The weather douche who’s supposed to keep us updated via satellite phone does not understand that we can only receive messages of a maximum of 120 characters. He’s supposed to send multiple messages if they exceed that amount but doesn’t seem to care. This way we do get the part of his text warning us about tropical storm Adrian on the west coast of Central America that will turn into a hurricane on its path north. We do however not get the part in which he suggests what to do. The message ends in a comma indicating that there’s more to come. Only it doesn’t. Super douche. We decide to play it safe and go further west. If he didn’t want us to move away from the storm he probably wouldn’t have told us about it.

Sleeping is tough in these rough seas. During my morning watches I have to fight dozing off more and more. It doesn’t help that by now the sun rises more than an hour later than at the beginning of our journey due to our progress west.

061011

Finally, the sea has settled into a steady rolling. The swells are higher now, around 8-10 feet, but they come with a certain regularity and almost straight from behind. Every once in a while a wave wants to be all special and hits us broad side but in general the Pacific Ocean seems to have found its rhythm after a week of practice. It was probably a little over excited about us starting our trip.

When I get too tired to read during my morning watch I climb on top of the bulwarks and stare into the blackness. Somewhere out there the black ocean ends and the black sky starts. So much is happening out there that I don’t see. Whales are sleeping under the surface, night hunters like some sharks are hunting, and jelly fish are drifting in the currents. In general I can have anything be out there that I want to be out there. It is up to my imagination. If I want a sea monster to be there I imagine a sea monster being there. No one can prove me wrong. Especially when no one else is on deck. The ocean at night is but a huge and empty canvas that my imagination can paint on whatever I want.

We cross the path of the sun. Henceforth we will be south of Helios and see him in the north at noon. It’s fun because it upends one of the pillars of our northern hemispheric upbringing, something every Boy Scout learns at the age of 6. Now what does that mean for the moss on the trees again?

Just like the Pacific I have found my rhythm. This is what my every day looks like: get up, morning watch, breakfast, sleep, read, snack, learn French, tan (can be done as I read, learn, or snack for I’m a skilled multi-tasker), afternoon watch, write journal, sleep. The first week flew by like a flatulence in 20 knot winds. I’m sure the following two will not get boring either.

061111
I told Wynne time and again that we will most likely find dead flying fish on deck every once in a while, for you can’t really cross the Pacific Ocean without some of those buggers landing on your boat. She kept mocking me for that. Until today.
During my morning watch, I go out on the foredeck to take up on the preventer. Frederic likes a preventer to be loose and to just keep the boom from jibing accidentally. I, on the other hand, think it’s better for the rig and for everybody’s sleep if it’s tight and keeps the boom from moving back and forth at all. Due to fairly high seas and rather low winds the boom is actually swinging around a lot, wearing on the rig and making tons of noise. Seeing that it’s my call now, I decide to take up on it.
So, as I’m kneeling on the foredeck doing just that I see a dead flying fish right next to me. It startles me for a second. Now, due to the circumstances, I might be a little less relaxed than usually. It is a pitch black night and we are in high seas, so walking on the foredeck is a little apprehending. Also, I surely don’t expect to see what I see. But still: a dead fish startles me? Really?

However. Now for something less embarrassing. It is crazy how dark the nights get out here when it’s cloudy. In cities these nights are bright because the clouds reflect the city lights. Not so in the middle of an ocean. If the cover is thick enough to block out all moon light from above there is nothing left to reflect. One can see white caps about 10 feet away from the boat. Beyond that there is nothing but blackness. It feels like drifting into nothingness, into a black hole. Only a strong belief in the revolutionary theory of the globular shape of our planet keeps me from yanking the wheel around in order to avoid falling off the end of the world. I know that this belief will get me in trouble with the Spanish Inquisition, but I’ll risk it.

In general, sailing through a dark night is a crazy concept. Moving when not seeing shit. Where else would one do that? One wouldn’t just sit in their car, close their eyes, and drive through the night. Or walk. With nothing but a green light on the right side, a red light on the left side, and a white light at the backside. On a boat, however, we do just that.

I use the fish stranded on deck for bait. I cut them into halves to make them bite size for dorados even though I’m a little worried that bloody bait might attract the wrong predator, knowing that sharks have a well developed sense for blood.

The bait works. On my very first try something bites after about 30 seconds. There’s a sudden strain on the line, a pull almost strong enough to yank the spool of line out of my hands. Then, all of a sudden, the strain is completely gone. I haul in the line: it has been bit through, the hook and the bait are missing. I guess there’s a fish somewhere out there in the Pacific now with teeth sharp enough to bite through 20 pound test line and with a hook in his mouth.
The fact that I made something bite my bait remains my only fishing success. I now try different size pieces of bait, but nothing works. The lack of a sinker still seems to be the biggest problem. The 4 inch squid that we find in the middle of the foredeck right by the sheet traveler doesn’t work either. We can only guess that a wave must have left him there. Wasn’t his day, I suppose. It isn’t my day either. My success rate is at a whopping 0%.

Wynne and I debate about what causes the green flash. She says the atmosphere works like a prism, splitting up the light of the sun. And then green light is visible a fraction of a tad longer than red light because of its wave length and place in the spectrum. Or something like that. It sounded better when she said it.

I, on the other hand, believe that the green flash is caused by earth’s gravity bending the light of the setting sun with the green portion of its light still being visible even when the sun is already beyond the horizon. However, I do not know where I got that from and I tend to believe Wynne. She definitely seems to be surer about her theory than I am about mine. One day, Wikipedia, the mother of all wisdom, is going to tell us who’s right (if either of us is, that is).

061211
We see a whole bunch of birds. They are not migrating birds on their way or anything—that is obvious from their behavior. They actually live out here. I never knew there were birds, let alone that many different types, that live so far out on the open ocean. They feed out here, they apparently even sleep out here. At least for reproduction purposes, though, one would think, they have to find a patch of soil. We are about 400 miles away from the closest land consisting of a few tiny little uninhabited islands, hardly big enough to host a whole population of birds, let alone multiple populations. The closest land mass bigger than a rock protruding from the ocean, Baja California, is about 1,200 miles away from here. It is almost inconceivable how many birds there must be out here considering how many we see in this minuscule fraction of the ocean.

A ton of dolphins migrates past us in the distance. They are way more playful out here than the ones we encountered near the coast, possibly a different kind. These ones jump 10 feet and more out of the water. Unfortunately, they decide to not come over and play with us.

061311

Despite the fact that our course was straight down wind most of the time, forcing us to zigzag our way, we should have reached the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone by now. One of the reasons we haven’t is the weather douche. Diverting from hurricane Adrian probably cost us at least half a day. It turned out the next day that there was no need to divert. The part of the message that exceeded 120 characters and that we thus didn’t receive basically told us to stick to our course and not to worry about Adrian.
And now, here the weather douche comes again with the first 120 characters of a cryptic message warning us about a tropical storm in the ITCZ. We divert again going further west. We start to worry that we will end up too far west which would, if the winds blow as predicted, mean that we will have to sail very close to the wind all the way from the equator to Nuku Hiva.

Except for the weather douche being a douche everything is unicorns and rainbows. The temperatures are finally as tropical as our latitude. Even for my night watch I don’t wear anything but swim trunks anymore. It’s hard to believe that less than a week ago I even had to put on Wynne’s jacket for my night watches because my long sleeve plus sweat shirt was not enough. I’m glad we finally have some nice weather. Below decks, however, it is grossly stuffy and hot. We are impatiently waiting to enter the ITCZ.

061411
Frederic finds a leak by the rudder shaft. We’ve had water in the bilge since the beginning of our trip but he kept thinking it was from a water tank spilling over or something. I do not believe that there is a quick fix for this leak while underway with the tools and materials present. It looks like a part is worn out and needs to be replaced. Also, even for temporary relief we’d need the rudder to be entirely still, not exposed to any wave or current. Seeing that the leak can hardly get worse fast we decide to just let it be for now and clean the bilge once a day. About 8 gallons collect in the course of 24 hours, which is not really anything to worry about.

Flying fish are dumb. I mean, it’s obvious, seeing that they keep landing and dying on our deck. But even just looking at them fly in general makes me doubt their actual flying skills. It always looks fun when a hundred or so of them shoot out of the water at the same time, dart like arrows through the air for some 200 feet and then crash back into the water. For that is what it looks like. Their return into the wet element always appears to be more of a crash than a planned and coordinated dive. Also their flight looks rather random and rapid.

I suppose there might never have been an evolutionary reason for them to develop a graceful dive or even flight. The ability to shoot out of the water when harassed by a predator and get some distance away from that spot is most likely why evolution gave them wings. I should be a marine biology field researcher. If you are one and want to use my findings in one of your papers, feel free to quote me.

Despite the cloud cover the night is unbelievably bright. Just a couple of days ago I wrote how dark cloudy nights are out here. I guess that is only true when the cover is thick enough to block all of the moon’s light. This night, however, the full moon easily penetrates the light cover of clouds. Its light is then reflected back and forth between the water and the clouds, rendering the night little darker than it sometimes is at daytimes when heavy grey clouds darken the sky.

061511
Yay! At least in terms of personal hygiene, this trip will henceforth resemble Melville’s travels of 150 years ago. We are out of fresh water. Going through almost 300 gallons in eleven days is a pretty impressive performance. Wynne and I took one shower each, one short marine shower each. Traveling with kids is always a thing. Luckily, drinking water is separate and not running low yet.
I don’t mind too much. My hygienic standards have not been the highest recently anyways, and I guess I’ll have to lower them even more seeing that we will probably not be able to afford accommodations with showers anywhere we go during our travels. We’ll bathe in the ocean, in rivers, lakes and the rain. The latter I should be able to do here on board, too, every once in a while. Whether it’ll suffice to remove the considerable patina of sun block, sweat, and salt that covers my person, I highly doubt. The last time I showered was five days ago. I guess I’ll have to go another ten days now.

Unfortunately Charles doesn’t take these things as lightly as I do. Or maybe it’s not the water situation but something else that bothers him. It’s hard to tell because his communication is very basic. Even the most skilled baby language decipherer would probably come to no other assessment than that something not further specified is bothering Charles. I personally claim to be pretty skilled in said discipline. I know every single one of the two different elements of baby language: laugh means happy, cry means not so much.

Except for the water and volume levels everything is swell. We make good progress. We are in the ITCZ by now and still have decent winds. It is a whole new feeling to be able to follow the course we want instead of just zigzagging our way. For a week we’ve done nothing but adjusting the course according to the changing winds, always trying to stay as close to down wind as possible. Now, finally, we will be able to adjust the sail trim according to the changing winds, sticking to our set course. A whole new feeling.

Flying fish do not die on impact. I find scientific proof for that. At least they don’t die on impact with humans. I acquire this knowledge during my morning watch when the uncoordinated flight of a rather dumber specimen ends at my shoulder. He is still alive, though, after the impact, and wriggles and flops his way back into his home element.

‘Under the scorching sun of the line’, as Melville calls it, I manage to make my back match my front again. Both are almost exactly the same beautiful shade of purple now.

061611
The night is the prettiest I’ve ever seen in my life. The sea is flat like a… like something really flat. No wind waves, just the constant rolling of a tiny swell. The full moon illuminates the water and the bizarrely shaped random clouds while stars sparkle between them. This night is incredibly peaceful. I guess I found peace on earth sooner than I thought. Alright, everybody do what the ocean did that night and we’re good. Hear that, Muhammar?
Is he even alive still? A viral zombie apocalypse could have hit mankind and I wouldn’t know.
Back to my peaceful skies. One of the few clouds decides to pour its refreshing contents over us and I get my first fresh water shower in six days. Even soaking wet wearing nothing but a pair of swim trunks standing in the wind well before sun rise, I am still warm. I like the tropes.
For the first time in my life I see a rainbow around the moon. I’ve heard of this phenomenon, mostly with a feeling of envy, but never seen it before. Like this night needed being beautified to more perfection.
After the sun rise the wind dies and forces us to motor sail. In general we are making pretty good progress through the ITCZ, though, averaging more than 6 knots.

061711

Frederic finds another leak, this time in the exhaust of the sea water cooling. Getting the bilge dry takes about an hour now and induces heavy sweating. We get an easy 15 gallons of water out of there these days when we run the engine quite a bit.

Because of the leaks we decide to shoot straight for the Marquesas now instead of going due south to get out of the ITCZ as fast as possible.

061811

I realize that the small single clouds that are distributed randomly all over the sky and hang ever so low enhance the perception of the third dimension. You find these types of clouds mainly in the wet parts of the tropes where the heat and the humidity provide the best possible environment for their thriving. Yet another revolutionary scientific field observation: the world is more three dimensional here in the tropes than other places.

My daytime naps are getting longer and longer. The increase of the amount of sleep is proportional to the decrease of interesting field observations or encounters in general which is why my journal entries get shorter and shorter by the day.

061911
Today we will finally cross the line. Unfortunately, I’ll have to stay up way past my bedtime for that, since we should reach the equator around 2330. It’ll be way worth it, though.

For the first time in 9 days I take a shower. For the lack of freshwater I have to use saltwater that I pump into jugs and then pour over my person, but the cleaning effect is nonetheless significant. My shampoo fights bravely against the patina of sweat, sun screen, and salt that has collected upon my very skin in the past 9 days. I feel so clean. The ensuing 4 hours of sleep also contribute to my well being.

The actual crossing of the line is rather unspectacular. We unceremoniously stand by the GPS to take a picture of it the moment the latitude shows zeros only. We cross at longitude 133° 36.800’ west. Then I go to bed.

062011
Frederic wakes me up at 2:30 AM. It’s his watch and he needs help reefing, since the winds have picked up. I do the line handling while he steers the boat up wind. Yay, I get the hard job. The sudden request for energy addressed at my metabolism is answered by a hurried overproduction. When I go back to bed 10 minutes later my body is still generating energy at a high level which is pretty soon for the lack of use of it transformed into thermal energy. I perspire profusely and have trouble falling asleep.
After my late bed time caused by the equator crossing and the little reefing interlude I am tired all day. The only thing that keeps me awake during my AM watch is the prospect of a decent post watch nap.  High waves striking the beam make the ride bumpy and my person roll around in bed like some trollop in Rangoon (oh, Cappy John). My ever so cleverly plotted nap plan is thwarted.

Wynne has turned our digital reader, the Kindle, into an invincekindle by wrapping it into a see-through plastic bag. We add a desiccant pack and—voilá—we can read it under water. I make instant use of that by lying down on the weather side of the fore deck. As waves splash over me I read Crime and Punishment.

062111
What a day! Long before the sun rises I already save two lives. Within 10 minutes, two flying fish land on deck right behind me and wiggle and flop around wildly. Frederic gets pretty lucky here, for their struggles take place inches from his open cabin window. How awesome would that be, waking up to a flying fish flopping vigorously in your face?
Seeing that I have completely given up on fishing without sinkers, I pick them up and throw them back into their beloved H2O. Had I known that there was going to be a second one I might have kept the first one, since both of them together would probably have sufficed for a decent fish soup. These are the biggest specimens I have so far encountered, both well exceeding 8 inches in length. The average flying fish we find on deck is maybe half that size, some young ones are barely longer than an inch. Whenever I find those, I’m severely surprised at how these tiny buggers manage to jump on deck.
It takes me a second to figure out where to grab them in order to toss them over board. I don’t want to grab their front part to make sure I don’t hurt their wing-like pectoral fins. I also don’t feel like touching their middle part, since I know their anus is located right there. How do I know that? Interesting biological field observation: flying fish poop themselves as their last breath is leaving their little gills.
So I don’t want to touch their front or middle parts and I can’t grab the rear end of their body. What with all the sliminess on their scales my fingers keep slipping of that end. I ultimately decide to grab them by their tail fin, a part I also didn’t want to touch because of its delicateness. It takes some skilled timing to grab them in between desperate wriggly flopping fits.

Today is not just a day to save lives—it is also the shortest day of the year. For me personally, it is probably the longest shortest day I have ever encountered. Due to our proximity to the equator, the day can be but little shorter than 12 hours. Seeing that we will proceed south for three more days each of those days is probably going to be shorter than today, which is the shortest one of the year. See what I mean? Me neither. Not sure, anyways.

I love our Kindle. Our invincekindle is awesome. It is well made, light to hold, and equipped with a full keyboard, the battery lasts for a whole month, the display provides a clear contrast even in bright sunlight, and the swift design and unpretentious color please the eye. In addition we have more than 120 books saved on it. I really love it. I do, however, think I might have loved it a tiny tad more when it still worked. Don’t get me wrong—it is still light to hold and the design and color are still pleasant to the eye and all that. It also still holds over 120 books. It would just be nice to be able to actually read these books. It is a funny coincidence that it happened to decide to cease working exactly the same moment that Wynne stepped on it.

Now, it’s not as badly broken as you might think. The lower tenth of the display still seems to work, and we all know that it’s that part of every page of any book that contains the important stuff. The upper right corner will forever display a part of a page of ‘Crime and Punishment’. If, when reading a book, you usually skip the first nine tenths of every page anyways and happen to like Dostoevsky, you might be interested in getting a good deal here. Send your offer to crossingtheline11_at_gmail_dot_com.

I take another salt water shower and, for the first time in nine days, I wash my hair. I probably lose about 5 pounds by flushing out significant amounts of sun block, salt, and sweat, and also three or four little sea bird hatchlings.

062211

The second last day of our journey is the stormiest so far. 14 foot seas and 27 knot winds toss the boat around and take us for a ride. I stand aft on the bulwarks most of the time and enjoy the rough ride. Walking around is hard and I try to limit it to a minimum. Isabelle is seasick and Charles is not happy about all the motion. As much as I have enjoyed every minute of our transit, I am starting to look forward to reaching Nuku Hiva.

After dinner, I volunteer to do the dishes. With no fresh water and the boat heeling to starboard while rocking violently, this might be the least fun chore I’ve ever done in my life. I have to pump sea water with my one foot while trying to balance my person on the other. Needing both my hands for the dishes I try to jam my elbows in on the counter. Because of the strong heeling the sea water inlet is mostly above the water line, causing the tap to splash and splatter with air. When I get a good gush of water, it is usually related to some violent motion of the boat that causes me to adjust my stance or even drop the dish in the sink to hold on to something with my hands. Naturally, that keeps me from making good use of the precious water and I then go back to washing dishes in splashes of air mixed with a few molecules of H2O.

It takes me about an hour to do the few dinner dishes and I’m soaked in sweat when I’m done.

062311
Same old story: Wynne and I have to get up at 2 AM to help Frederic give the main a third reef, I sweat profusely, I sleep badly after, I am insanely tired when I actually get up for my watch at 3:45 AM.
The weather stays the same all day long. Up to 20 foot swells out of the east rock us around. But the excitement about reaching our destination tonight exceeds the frustration about the weather by far.
Shortly before sun down we see land. Two hours later we reach the north eastern cape of Nuku Hiva. The bay of Taioha’e is on the south side of the island which is the second biggest in French Polynesia after Tahiti. Around midnight we round the south eastern corner of the island and head west.
The night is dark. With a flashlight I stand at the bow while we slowly drift through the bay in search of a good mooring spot. Just the night before our sonar stopped working so we don’t know how deep the water is. We pick a spot, drop the anchor, and haul it back up. Too deep. The second spot we pick is better. At 2:30 AM, we finally get to bed.
The only thing we can see of Taioha’e is that it consists of very few houses and that mountains slope up steeply right behind the shore. I can’t wait for the morning to see whether the place is as beautiful as Melville claims. After 20 days at sea the first leg of our circumnavigation is over.

Budget Travel, Isringhaus Style

San Diego, CA
1737 PST

For a long time now, Kristian has been reminding me that this is a budget circumnavigation, and we need to think of every possible way to decrease expenses. Of course, I understand this. I don’t feel that my tastes are extravagant. I’m accustomed to, and enjoy, roughing it, living outside, eating camp meals. I’ve even quit smoking and, a most unexpected and significant sacrifice which is surprising even me, I quit drinking coffee (for the time being, at least), partially in an effort to save money. I’m all about frugality.

Nevertheless, some of Kristian’s money-saving plans seem a bit over the line. When he starts talking about hunting wild goats and building desalinization systems out of collapsible jugs and ground tarps, it throws me into a passionate rage of anxious, pessimistic nay-saying, and drives me almost to desperation. I am starting to detect subtle indications of a mildly malicious enjoyment on his face when I flip my buckets on these occasions. I simply can’t tell if he’s serious, and I’m not sure he can either. I know he enjoys thought experiments; perhaps he gets a kick out of hypothesizing about the most effective spot to stab a shark with his marlinspike. That’s probably all it is.

I would console myself with this thought, if it weren’t the case that even his sponsorship proposals were laden with what are, in my mind, unrealistic allusions to “camping in the wilderness wherever it is legal and living on the resources of nature like fish, small mammals, and fruit.” I reminded him that there were very few mammals at all on Nuku Hiva, and that we were unlikely to catch them even if there were. There are goats, he retorted. The goat debate still continues to this day. I also requested he remove the section of the proposal that declares, “For the last two years we have worked on traditional tall ships. Thus deprivation and hard physical labor are no strangers to us.  We will eat raw fish that we just knifed with our sailor knives if need be.” Although we frequently worked twelve hour days, six days a week, I would hardly describe the life of a tall ship sailor as one of “deprivation.” Aside from that, I immediately considered the impracticalities of fishing with a heavy rig knife, as well as the absurdity of telling someone who we wanted to give us money that this was our plan for finding sustenance.

At first, I was skeptical about fishing in general, thinking that we didn’t have room for the required gear. Oh yeah, and we have no idea how to fish. But I have warmed to the idea since soliciting my family members for advice, which they are all quite happy to give, sometimes loudly and simultaneously. It seems I am the only Hedlesky who is not a competent fisherman. I was inundated with advice about circle hooks, bait-catching rigs, appropriate hook size and line test, where to and not to cast for which and not-which fish, until my brain mushified. In a normal world, I would buy some gear, try it out, and if it didn’t work, I’d go buy something else. However, since we are assuming it will be expensive to purchase anything in Nuku Hiva, we have to come with everything we need. We bought some 12- and 15-pound-test line, some circle hooks of various sizes, and, when we find a stick of driftwood suitable to be a fishing rod, I’m sure we’ll be merely a few patient hours away from success.

            Because, of course, we will catch an impressive excess of fish, Kristian wants to create a smoking device out of found objects to preserve the fish for later consumption. When he presented this idea, naturally, I descended into a cranky, desperate, nay-saying fit, and found myself ten minutes later on the Internet, researching how to build a smoker out of a cardboard box. I’m sure it will be the same with the issue of water on the Tuamotus. The Tuamotus, the largest group of atolls in the world, are located south of the Marquesas and north of the Society Islands (the group to which the popular vacation destination of Tahiti belongs). Since none of the Tuamotu Islands are more than a few meters in elevation, they have no natural sources of groundwater, and the inhabitants therefore rely on catching rainwater, which amounts to about 55 inches  per year.

           We reminded ourselves of this fact this morning. "I guess we’ll just have to buy water if it’s such a scarce commodity," I said.

          

          “What? Absolutely not. We don’t have the money for that. We’ll have to rig a desalinization system of some kind.” I felt the “nays” rising, eagerly clamoring for a voice.

“We have that jug, and that tarp. We’d have to have the whole thing thoroughly enclosed, so no water is lost to the atmosphere.”

“I’m not going to respond, Kristian.”

“You’re taking all the fun out of this for me,” he said with an adorable smile.

Now that we’re at a café with WiFi for the last time, I’d better get on looking up solar water distillation methods on the Internet before it’s too late. After all, we need to be thinking about our budget.

Wondering About

Kristian Isringhaus

060211/2310 GMT, 1510 PST

'The Living Room', San Diego, CA, USA

As the beginning of our trip is closing in on us I catch myself more and more often wondering about the same questions that might ever so soon be cruicial for our survival:

- Where do I need to stab a wild goat in order to kill it with a single strike of my rig knife?

- Can I rig a sufficient sea water desalination plant out of a plastic tarp and a collapsable one gallon jug?

- Can shark blood replace the nutrients that rain water lacks as opposed to ground water?

- Does a shark die if I ram my Marlin Spike right through its eyes or gills into its brain?

- How can I make a water tight pouch out of goat skin?

- Can I build a smoker out of whatever I can find in the woods to preserve the abundances of fish we are going to catch?

These are some of the questions that keep popping up in my head. If you have any answers, feel free to post them here. It drives Wynne nuts when I talk about this because she can't tell whether I'm serious or not. Unfortunately, I can't help her with that for I'm not sure myself.

First Wildlife Sighting

Kristian Isringhaus
060111/0023 GMT, 053111/1623 PST
Balboa Park, San Diego, CA, USA

The first night on board was a tired one. We tried to stay up as late as possible to get rid of our jet lag. Falling asleep early and then waking up in the middle of the night all rested didn’t sound too appealing.

For a few moments though we forgot our tiredness when we spotted a most peculiar species. I have not yet engaged in further research about the life form but seeing that neither Wynne nor I had ever heard of it there definitely is a chance that no one ever has. We did find something beautiful, we might have found something new and—to the best of our knowledge—possibly extra terrestrial. Unlikely, I guess, seeing that I am familiar with an estimated gazillionth of the species of this planet, but still possible. I shall inquire some day.

Anyhow. As I was coming back from the shore facilities where I had exercised extensive dental care, I saw something glowing in the water right next to the boat. Bioluminescence. Not scared of the unknown and possibly dangerous beasts I called for Wynne knowing that she would not want to miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a hobby field biologist. We investigated further.

The creatures were little worms, about a millimeter in diameter and 10 to 13 millimeters long. (That’s about 3/64 inches in diameter and 25/64 to 33/64 inches in length. Does anybody else think the imperial system is retarded?). They excreted a bluely phosphorescing substance. Maybe phosphor? We couldn’t rule it out. The creatures themselves must have been almost transparent for they themselves were glowing from the substance still inside them. They swam in spiraling circles leaving nothing but a trail of the purest beauty behind.

We indulged in watching them for a while before we decided that sweet sleep might be the only thing on earth that is even more beautiful.

Please let us know if you have heard of this species before. If no one has we—as the discoverers of this life form—claim the name Wormus Wynnekristianis for it.

Traveling light

Kristian Isringhaus
053111/2332 GMT, 1532 PST
Balboa Park, San Diego, CA, USA

We made it to San Diego. After doing basically nothing all day on the day of our departure from NYC we managed to leave the house too late and thus in a hurry. With an easy 160 pounds of luggage on our backs we had to run to the subway station. Our flight did not only leave from Newark, NJ, but also at an ungodly hour of the night, forcing us to use public transportation at a time when public transportation is more public than transportation.

Despite our best efforts to travel light the pile our luggage amounted up to was impressive. I’m not entirely sure how that happened. Maybe we exaggerated a little on real books seeing that we have a Kindle. Do we really need two travel guides for French Polynesia in hard copy? Maybe we overstocked our medical kit a little. Or maybe it’s because I’m traveling with a girl while the girl I’m traveling with is traveling with a dude who’s traveling with a girl. So there were a lot of girls involved in the packing process. Whatever the reason, we brought a lot of crap. You saw the list in my last blog entry.

The best thing about my 100 liter, 3 foot tall back pack is, though, as it turns out, that it sticks out over the edges of the scale at the airline check in distributing some of its weight to the scale's frame as opposed to the part that actually does the weighing. Even this way it came up just half a pound shy of the limit. With Wynne’s back pack being much smaller than mine we had stuffed it with most of our heavier belongings like the 5 pounds of back up batteries and what felt like 17 liters of sun screen (how much is that in cubic Fahrenheits again?). I jammed it on the scale between the wall and my back pack hoping that the wall would carry some of its weight. It worked.

That left us with our carry-ons consisting of a filled-to-the-rim 20 liter dry bag, a ukulele, two sleeping pads and our smaller back pack containing—amongst other necessities—40 pounds of books.

The funny thing is that the point of this whole ordeal was nothing more than just to get our crap to the boat. The real fun won’t start until we go hiking. Then we’ll have to cram everything into our two big back packs or at least tie things on to them. We have a four week Pacific passage to figure it out, and a couple pounds of seine twine to rig it.