Ten Degrees of Reckoning (5 page)

In another instance, in the Marquesas, John and I walked over to visit a family who needed to repair a board. There were children of all ages gathered around, watching John work in the very hot sun, all of them loosely supervised by the oldest sister, Angela. She had three little children of her own, one a baby; there were thirteen family members in all, and I saw nothing, absolutely nothing in their simple abode. No beds, hammocks, cooking supplies, food, utensils, diapers—nothing. But when we got back to our dinghy, someone from that family had left us a giant stalk of bananas.

Every day, in anticipation of seeing Angela, I would stuff my backpack with anything we could spare. She always had something for me, a tapa cloth made from breadfruit bark, the stripped jaw of a feral pig, a bit of shredded coconut. I taught her some English; she taught me some Polynesian words—not too easy for a woman who likes her consonants. Everywhere we went villagers would ask me why I didn’t have children. Even with Angela’s tutoring, I didn’t have the words to explain my own childhood illness and surgeries. Angela was the most curious of all, and I finally showed her my scars to satisfy her probing nature. On the last day, I gave her my backpack, big enough for her to carry the baby, filled with canned milk and powdered eggs, all my soaps and lotions, and soft cloths to use as diapers. She offered me her baby.

Over the years, we rarely felt unwelcome or put upon. Usually the experience was so affirming and the people so warm and generous, it was difficult to leave. Still, there was not one place we visited where I would have wanted to settle forever. Before the sun went down, I was always glad to climb into the dinghy and head back to our boat. Like turtles, we carried our shelter wherever we went, and, like a turtle, I was often ready to tuck my head in for a little privacy.

Mike and Judy had read articles in several magazines about cruising families. The majority of authors wrote that the best time to cruise with children was when they were between the ages of five and thirteen. After that age, no adventures could compete with the company of friends. And while there were some risks, all the information that Mike and Judy gathered revealed it was far more dangerous to take a child in a car on urban roads than out to sea. As we crossed the South Pacific Ocean, we encountered a fair number of families, and most of the children seemed to adjust well to the life. It appeared to be easier for the parents when there was more than one child aboard, and often boats with children would travel in tandem. The children were “boat-schooled” utilizing correspondence courses, with adjunct lessons in navigation and sail trimming for older children. There was always something to learn. Ryan, one of the toddlers we met in Mexico, was carried aboard straight from his birth, and learned to walk on the family’s thirty-two-foot boat. With all that motion, he had the calf muscles of Lance Armstrong. And like Mikhail Baryshnikov, whenever he ventured onto land he could walk only on his toes.

Four
 

Bonjour de Guadeloupe

WHEN THE SLEAVINS STARTED THEIR BIG TRIP IN MARCH 1993, they had detailed charts of the entire west coast of Mexico and decided the number of stops would depend upon how well the children adapted to overnight sailing. By Judy’s birthday on April 7, they had made great progress and were celebrating in Zihuatanejo.

Over the last two years we’ve spent 80 percent of our free time preparing for the trip, and it’s all been worth it. The boat is great, and, more importantly, the kids are doing great. They’re happy and becoming more self-sufficient every day.
—Mike Sleavin, in a letter sent home 

A month later, at the beginning of May, John and I flew to Acapulco, Mexico, for a month of sailing with the Sleavins on the
Melinda Lee.
We were going to make the passage with them from Mexico to Costa Rica. We were loaded down with several boxes of equipment and supplies that Mike had ordered, and we took a taxi to the marina where the
Melinda Lee
was berthed. Before we had the chance to ask anyone where to go, Ben and Annie, and then Mike and Judy, came running up the dock to meet us. Everyone looked wonderful and content. They were lean and fit from lugging supplies in backpacks, from walking everywhere, from trimming the sails and pulling up anchor chain. Mike and Annie were a deep brown, Judy a nice tan color, and Ben, who had the fairest complexion, was a rosy pink. Acapulco itself sparkled turquoise, from the water in the harbor to the paint on the hotels surrounding the bay.

It was an easy decision to join the Sleavins: we had kept in close touch ever since returning from our voyage to New Zealand three years earlier, although we lived in Seattle and they lived near Los Angeles, some thousand miles south of us. They had called to tell us when they found the perfect sailboat. In fact, I flew down to visit them and spent several nights on the
Melinda Lee
in Oxnard, California.

When they invited us to join them for a leg of their circumnavigation, we accepted gladly. It was a way to share a small part of their long-planned dream. In the two months since their departure, even Annie, at four and a half years of age, had become an old salt (the term applied to a seasoned sailor). Ben took my hand and my duffel bag and led the way to the dinghy. He was six and a half and ready to sail to Central America.

As we sailed south from Acapulco, we were delighted to see how quickly the family had adapted to their seafaring life, how engaged they were in its activities, and how they stood up to all its challenges. When we reached Puerto Angel, our first stop, we realized a new aspect of cruising: when you are accompanied by children, every door in every village is opened to you immediately. Of course, there were added responsibilities for the parents. Judy and Mike had to provide schooling and guidance and diversions. But even on the Pacific side of Mexico, even so early in the journey, John and I noticed the easy tone of accord and adjustment.

The kids accepted and followed all the rules and regulations. They kept their life vests at the bottom of the aft companionway and put them on before coming up into the cockpit, regardless of how hot and humid the weather. Ben and Annie never went from the cockpit onto the deck without an adult and a safety harness and tether, and never at sea. They always got into their berths willingly when it was announced that night watches were to begin, understanding that the adults needed to pay full attention to the sea.

During the day, each time Ben and Annie came up from below, Judy would smother them with kisses and tell them how much she loved them. Then she would look over at us and say, “Aren’t they wonderful? Aren’t they gorgeous? Aren’t they exceptional?” We would all laugh and nod our appreciation. But there were lessons and responsibilities that went along with all that loving tenderness. Ben, full of goodwill and confidence, would return to the table in the cabin and do his homework. Annie, who wanted to do everything that Ben did, followed him.

“My daddy said your boat is the twin to ours,” Ben said one morning.

“The twin to
Mika,
your first boat, not
Melinda Lee
,” I replied.

“What is it called?” he asked.

“Shahar,”
I said.

“What does that mean?” Ben asked.

It was a good question. We had done quite a bit of research, and had checked in Grandma Ruth’s seven foreign-language dictionaries, but we were stumped. It might mean “moon,” we were told, but
Shahar
’s sole previous owner had died overboard in Puget Sound, and his representative was not able to give us any information. We wouldn’t have considered another name anyway; sailors are a very superstitious lot, and renaming a boat only brings bad luck. I grew to love the name
Shahar,
with its exotic flavor. I didn’t care if we never solved the mystery of its meaning. Even in gale-force winds, I always felt we led a charmed life on
Shahar.

In essence, out cruising, you become your boat’s name, so strongly are you identified with it. Even in a tight-knit sailing community, other cruisers rarely remember your last names, sometimes your first names, but always your boat’s name.

“You’re lucky your boat was named
Melinda Lee,
” I told Ben. “It’s easy to pronounce in many languages when you get to all the foreign ports.”

“When I talk on the radio, do I have to say, ‘This is
Melinda Lee,
’ or can I say, ‘This is Benjamin Sleavin’?” Ben asked.

“You say, ‘This is
Melinda Lee,
this is
Melinda Lee,
do you copy?’” I said. “That means ‘Can you hear me, do you understand me?’”

“But we never met the girl Melinda Lee,” Annie said, “whose daddy named our boat after her.”

“Well, it’s a good name, and an old tradition not to change the name of a boat. When you get back, we’ll read
Treasure Island
together. In that book, Robert Louis Stevenson talks about not renaming a boat.”

Mike came up with a theory about the name of our boat. “What were the names of the previous owners?” he asked.

“Arne and Diane,” John replied.

“Shoot, I thought I had the meaning of
Shahar
figured out,” Mike said. “Sharon and Harry.”

Ben and Annie both loved watching John expertly gut all the fish we caught. Judy was teaching the children school lessons three hours a day, five days a week, and I asked if there was anything I could do to help. I warned her that I wasn’t at all familiar with the Calvert School correspondence course in which Ben was enrolled. Annie tried to keep up with him, although she was too young to participate.

“How about some nautical jargon?” Judy suggested.

“Can’t fathom it,” I replied.

“You catch my drift,” Judy said, grinning.

The next day I explained the names of the ropes on the boats, starting by saying the ropes that went from the
Melinda Lee
to a cleat on the dock were called lines. I told the kids that when they got to the Panama Canal and rafted up to another vessel, a crewmember would ask them to “throw me your lines.” Ropes that trimmed the sails were called sheets, and ropes attached to the bow of a dinghy for towing or tying up were called painters.

“Then what are sheets on a bed called?” Annie said.

“And what do you call the guys who paint pictures and walls?” asked Ben.

We discussed fathoms the next day. I told them that the depth of the ocean was measured in fathoms, with each fathom being equal to six feet.

“So if we hang Daddy upside down into the water from a dock, he’ll be one fathom deep instead of six feet tall,” Annie said.

“Just make sure he knows it’s your idea, sweetheart, and not homework,” I said.

She looked at me very seriously. She didn’t want me to get into trouble. “Okay,” she agreed.

“Why can’t we stop every night in the ocean?” Ben asked.

John and I explained that the
Melinda Lee
carried only about three hundred feet of anchor chain, and some parts of the ocean were even deeper than Mount Everest was high. Ben was too young at that point to discuss depth sounders and windlasses and scope, but he laughed and clapped when the lesson dissolved into the four adults singing Irving Berlin’s “How Deep Is the Ocean? (How High Is the Sky?).” We were definitely in tune with one another.

In the anchorages, other cruisers hailed the Sleavins as we sailed in, and often came by in their dinghies for a visit. There was laughter and gaiety, and many times freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Mike told us about the birthday celebration for Judy we missed in Zihuatanejo. “There were lots of boats in the anchorage, so we had twenty-one people on
Melinda Lee
for the party. The only problem was the cake I special-ordered. It was supposed to say
Feliz Cumpleaños, Judy,
but instead it said
Feliz Cumpleaños, Lori.
We didn’t know who she was, but she was obviously also having a birthday, so we sang to both of them.”

One of the visitors told me, “They’re so competent. We always want to know where and when they’re going next, and then we secretly follow in their wake.”

Mike was known for being overprepared. He and Judy had so many spare parts that I overheard a sailor remark, “Going to the
Melinda Lee
is just like going to West Marine.” If he had poked his nose into the lockers in the galley, as I did, and seen the year’s supply of peanut M&M’s and barbecue sauce, he might have thought he had wandered into the storeroom of a 7-Eleven. If he had looked into the galley freezer and seen the hundred yellow, and still feathered, Mexican chicken breasts, as I did, he might have speculated that Judy had a poultry fetish. The cruising community knew that Mike and Judy were always willing to share the fun, the food, their knowledge, and even those spare parts when necessary.

We had chosen to join the Sleavins for this particular passage because they were going to have to cross the legendary and feared gulfs of Tehuantepec and Papagayo. With the children just getting used to the routines and in need of supervision, it would be advantageous to have four adults sharing the watchkeeping responsibilities. These gulfs are associated with low-lying areas of land bordered by high mountains. This topography creates a wind tunnel as the winds are compressed between the mountains from the Bay of Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of Tehuantepec, which we would cross first. Farther south, there is similar topography, and the wind funnels from the Caribbean Sea across the isthmus into the Gulf of Papagayo. Storm and gale-force winds (we heard anecdotes describing them as high as 70 knots) can accelerate suddenly and unpredictably on the Pacific Ocean side. Sailors wait for days in Salina Cruz, the southernmost port in Mexico, for a weather window before making this coastal passage.

We, too, wanted to be as prepared as possible. We studied charts of the areas, and the four of us discussed whether to head farther offshore or to hug the coast. We made the unanimous decision to keep two people on watch while crossing these areas, one in the cockpit and the other at the navigation table, studying the radar and GPS. We didn’t let the stories told by other cruisers of winds knocking down masts and blowing out sails affect us. We were not casual or arrogant; we had all put in enough passage time to know we could handle what came our way. When the time came, we faced near-gale-force winds, and the boat did remarkably well.