Rowboat in a Hurricane (10 page)
Other than our near death, the day was going well. The weather was improving quickly and we ate our first hot meal in two days—rice pudding and coffee. After breakfast, Colin pulled up the drogue and took the first rowing shift while I made our daily water supply.
The technology that enabled us to convert salt water to fresh water was incredible. The desalination unit uses a heavy-duty pump to force salt water past a semi-permeable membrane at high pressure. The pressure creates a process that is the reverse of regular osmosis (where a solute moves from an area of low concentration to an area of high concentration), and fresh water passes through the membrane. The final result is drinkable water with
97
per cent of the salt and minerals extracted.
This sewing-machine-sized desalination unit almost thwarted our journey before it even started. When we received our boat in Lisbon, we discovered our water-maker was defunct. It was an older unit; the malfunction stemmed from leaky seals and problematic valves, which negatively affected the pressurizing mechanism. (If the water cannot be brought to high enough pressure, fresh water is not produced.) The motor whined and groaned, but no fresh water came out. We had two choices: fix it or replace it. We already knew that none of the marine stores sold compact desalinators, so it would have to be shipped in from elsewhere (a process that might take weeks, especially when Portuguese customs was factored in) and would cost five thousand dollars (money we didn’t have).
Our only option was to fix it. After countless inquiries and many dead ends, we found a local business that specialized in making gaskets and O-rings, the components we needed. Two bus rides later, I found myself in the industrial section of the city, holding the prized rubber rings in my hand. Meanwhile, Colin had disassembled the unit; when I returned I found him hovering over dozens of meticulously oiled pieces of metal, looking more than a little distressed. Together we cleaned off the various components and replaced the O-rings. We swapped the tired-looking valves with a new set that, by some miracle, we found in the bag that contained the pump manual.
After a full day of tinkering, the desalinator eventually sputtered to life and produced fresh water. I felt a pang of anxiety knowing that we would rely on this decrepit machine to produce enough water to cross an entire ocean. As a precaution—in case our water-maker decided mid-Atlantic to gush gallons through a gimpy gasket—we brought three backup solutions: a small hand-cranked desalinator, a basic still consisting of little more than a pipe, and a rain catchment system.
After just a week at sea, our desalinator performed flawlessly; its electric motor hummed steadily while fresh water trickled forth. After two hours, our ten-litre plastic jug brimmed with clear water that could rival Evian.
We were fervently frugal with our water and used it only for drinking and food preparation. We used salt water for everything else: cleaning, washing, and even cooking noodles and rice (in a diluted solution). Our water-maker was our most treasured piece of equipment, even more precious than the
GPS
, which sadly did not share its longevity.
“The
GPS
went out again,” Colin said. “Can you try restarting it?”
I pressed the button on our electrical panel to cut its power supply, waited a few seconds, and then turned it on again. “Does that do it?”
“No, I’m still getting that error message that says the antenna connection has shorted.”
I leaned out of the cabin and unscrewed the antenna cable from the back of the
GPS
. It looked okay, but I blew on the terminal anyway to clear any hidden debris before firmly reinserting it. Nothing. Although the unit was brand new, the connection had started to cause problems a few days before, and the short was occurring with increased frequency. Now, no amount of cleaning or fiddling would bring it back to life.
I pulled out our small emergency
GPS
. It was vastly inferior because it was independently powered and thus could not be left on permanently. Instead, we would turn it on periodically to check that we were still on course. This meant we couldn’t continually monitor our speed, which was important for setting the ideal course to accommodate for the variable currents.
The row had been tough so far. We’d lost our drogue, our main
GPS
had malfunctioned, a tanker almost introduced us to Davy Jones, and we still felt seasick. The experience was very different than my preconceptions, but I wasn’t complaining. It seemed a miracle that we were still afloat and still healthy. We were now making good speed, and it appeared our silver lining had finally arrived. The weather continued to improve throughout the day. The winds subsided entirely, but we had a strong, favourable current.
Two birds slightly larger than seagulls soared above us for much of the day. They were white with black shadows near their wingtips and heads. Their flight seemed effortless. With outstretched wings they glided on air currents, a “shearing” flight technique that earned these pelagic birds their name—shearwaters. We now saw only seabirds, and then only two types. The other was the storm petrel, a small black bird with white markings that flew slower and lower to the water than the shearwater.
It was incredible to imagine that these birds spent most of their lives flying above ocean waters. Shearwaters could easily fly a million kilometres in a lifetime. The only thing they couldn’t do on the water was breed. For that they would have to travel to a remote island, maybe in the Azores or the Canaries, where the female would lay a single egg in a burrow or rock crevice. But now the two birds I was watching had other priorities: their only concern was the fish they periodically dove into the water for.
THE NEXT FOUR
days slipped by quickly while we carried out our routines with pseudo-military precision. If it wasn’t for my journal, I could barely distinguish one day from the next, and even these entries were quite brief. The main thing that differentiated the days was what we ate and any sighting for our “I Spy” game.
Colin had started “I Spy.” The rule was that you could choose any object on the ocean or in the sky, but nothing on the boat. It may sound lame, but when you’re in an unchanging world, the slightest intrusion is exciting. Shearwaters or storm petrels, and sometimes a jumping tuna, were the usual objects. Occasionally it would be a freighter in the distance or a jet contrail. And more often than we liked, we saw a piece of trash float by.
It seemed strange to see garbage so far from land, in such a massive ocean. Where did it come from, where did it go, and who cleaned it up?
According to the
2006
Greenpeace report
Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans,
an estimated
8
million pieces of litter enter the oceans each day. That’s
6
.
4
million tonnes of trash a year. An estimated
20
per cent of that garbage comes from the cargo of ships accidentally lost in storms. The remainder comes from land—trash washed into rivers and storm drains, or offloaded by cities that use the ocean as a de facto landfill site.
We saw at least a piece of trash a day, almost always plastic—a bottle, wrapper, or some other unidentifiable chunk of man-made polymer—which, sadly, was unsurprising, as
9 0
per cent of the trash floating in the ocean is plastic, according to the
2006
Greenpeace estimate.
This is not good news, because unlike trash in the past, which eventually decomposes, plastic endures. It takes
450
years for a plastic bottle to break down, and what it leaves behind is far from harmless. Unlike natural materials, which decompose into simple chemical components, plastic is synthetic and can’t biodegrade. Instead it photodegrades: sunlight breaks it down into smaller and smaller particles. The plastic never leaves the sea; it simply becomes increasingly ingestible, but not digestible. The small, hard polymers still can’t be broken down by the wildlife that mistakenly consumes them.
But now there is another danger: the smaller plastic particles absorb non-water-soluble toxins and pesticides, becoming a sponge for
DDT
and
PCB
s. The concentration of these chemicals in the plastics is up to one million times higher than in the ocean. In parts of the ocean, plastic outnumbers plankton six to one (in some areas it’s as high as one thousand to one), and jellyfish who cannot distinguish between the two consume copious amounts of poisoned plastic particles. The jellyfish are eaten by other animals and the toxins move up the food chain, becoming increasingly concentrated as they accumulate in creatures with longer life spans. At the top of the food chain are whales, which are now so polluted that, when they die and their bodies wash up on shore, some species are treated as toxic waste. Killer whales are the most contaminated species on Earth.
Soon we crossed trash off the list of eligible items for I Spy. It just wasn’t fun lying in the cabin guessing bird, plane, or fish while a plastic bucket floated by.
O
N OCTOBER 4,
our twelfth day at sea, the ocean reached its calmest state yet. The sea gleamed like molten metal as a lazy swell gently rocked our boat. The sky was devoid of clouds. Our little red vessel was the only object that gave us perspective in a vast world of blue.
During my first shift that day, I pulled long, steady strokes on the oars, and I realized that for the first time since leaving Lisbon, I didn’t feel seasick. I was ravenous when Colin relieved me at eight, and I wolfed down the meal waiting for me—rice pudding followed by instant coffee laden with full-fat powdered milk. After enjoying one of the most relaxing breakfasts I’d had in a long time, I rinsed my dishes and stowed them under the stove. I exchanged the empty water jug for the full one and turned the desalinator on. As the machine whirred comfortingly, I pulled out a book, shuffled some bags to make a comfortable seat, and began reading.
After a few hours, I glanced at the instrument panel and noticed something was wrong. The amperage meter, which monitors energy inflow from the solar panels, was only showing three amps instead of the usual six at this time of day. With few clouds in the sky, the electrical generation should have been at its peak. Were the solar panels malfunctioning? Perhaps there was a bad connection between the battery and the panels. I groaned inwardly. Our electrical generation system was fundamental; it ran our navigation, communication, and video equipment. And most importantly, it powered our desalination unit.
I clambered onto the deck to see if the solar panels were all right; perhaps they were encrusted in salt and needed cleaning. But I was struck by a bewildering phenomenon. The whole world was dim. It was as though the sun’s light had suddenly been obscured by a massive thunderstorm, except the sky was clear.
“What the hell?” I said.
Colin was also looking at the sky, trying to figure out why our world was going dark. “It’s a solar eclipse!” he exclaimed excitedly.
I squinted and quickly glanced at the sun; only a large crescent remained. I was amazed. I had seen partial eclipses in the past, viewing them through special glass or, when I was at university, a modified telescope. But I had never seen such a full eclipse. It seemed especially magical since we’d had no idea it was going to take place.
Later we would learn that we just happened to be in one of the best viewing spots in the world for this rare event. It was an annular eclipse, which occurs when the moon is sandwiched by the Earth and sun in such a perfect line that the sun is almost completely blocked. Only a thin halo spills out over the moon’s edges, creating a ring of fire. We noticed the eclipse shortly after it began at
8
:
41 AM
in the North Atlantic. We were seven hundred kilometres south of the moon’s azimuth, so instead of a ring, we saw a very thin crescent.
Colin stopped rowing, and I climbed on deck. We snapped photographs and marvelled at such celestial beauty. It was not difficult to understand why myths and superstitions accompanied eclipses in previous millennia. The ancient Greeks believed that day turned to night because the gods were angry. Within the hour, the sun returned to its full glory, and we put it back to work to produce our drinking water.
DURING THIS TRANQUIL
period, we kept busy catching up on tasks that were impossible during rougher weather—writing in our journals, taking photographs, organizing the cabin, and one of our most eagerly anticipated chores: retrieving fresh food supplies from the now-accessible deck hatches. Until then, we had relied on a small amount of food stored in an easy-access hatch near the cabin. But that supply was almost gone and, if not for our seasickness-suppressed appetite, would have been consumed days before. Most of our remaining food was stored under the deck, which had been awash during the rough weather.
I pulled out my diagram of the boat’s compartments and the list of what was in each of the sixteen holds. The boat’s limited space and excessive cargo made it very important to maintain a high level of organization, which quite appealed to the German side of me. I gladly took on the double responsibility of ensuring not only that we could find the chocolate chip cookies, but that we would not eat them all in the first month.
“We’ll need to get into all eight round hatches,” I said, gazing at the drawing. “The square hatches under the rowing seat have food for the second half of the trip, so we can give them a miss.”