The Art of Stealing Your Own Boat, Part 3: Constant Vigilance
Part 3 of a series. See Part 1, The Art of Stealing Your Own Boat and Part 2, Passage. For more context, please read previous posts: Check-In Checklist; Improv; and When the World Goes Crazy, Do the Right Thing.
We’re safe. I can unclench my fingers, slip into the rhythm of passagemaking.
To make a passage is to cross blue water–open ocean–overnight or longer. Days at sea are not predictable. Crew could nap an afternoon away or change sails three times on one watch. Even a well-prepared captain cannot control conditions, freighter schedules, acts of God, pandemics. Relationships.
To be on passage is another thing entirely, an interior journey.
The first three days, sleep deprivation dominates. You acclimate, like adjusting to a new baby. Up every three hours, bleary-minded. Listen. Check. Soothe. Experience moments of pure joy and wonder. Change. Fret. Try to sleep. Repeat. Once my biorhythms make peace with reality, I could go for months.
Now I’m on passage time. Stand watch. Chart the course. Trust yourself. Trust the boat.
Stand Watch
International law says we must keep a proper lookout at all times; use sight, hearing and all available means to detect and avoid collision. Common sense says use your head. Be Here Now. Constant vigilance.
James and I agree to a schedule of three hours on, three hours off. He’s stood watches since he was ten, when we moved onto SV Delos. Over 30,000 miles, the work of keeping his family safe helped mold him into a responsible adult. He knows what to watch for: lights. Freighter lights. Buoys. Fishing trawlers with nets spread out behind. Smaller boats, sometimes unlit. If he sees anything, he’ll wake me.
Not that he’d have to.
My sleep is disturbed by all available means, including phantom sight and hearing–a helicopter spotlight shining down, an order through a megaphone. “Step away from the boat.”
Heart racing, I comfort myself like a frightened child. “You’re safe.”
Safe from what? My own imagination?
When I show up for my watch, James says it’s been quiet. Only a couple of fishing boats. He’s made up the pilot berth. Sleeping in the center, where it’s stable, is a trick you learn growing up on a boat.
He dive-rolls in and slides the curtain shut. He needs his space.
Pilot berth, before…
A pilot berth is an amidships trundle that expands over the settee.
…and after.
Chart the Course
I climb the companionway steps to the cockpit feeling grateful that he’s here at all. A few months ago we barely exchanged sentences. I was worried I would lose my son. Any parent would recognize the conflict, head-butting between a grown-up child and a mother who won’t recognize autonomy. I don’t know how to make it better.
A full moon illuminates the water, makes stars fainter. Once I gain my night vision I pick out both lodestars of navigation. The Southern Cross at our stern is seeing us off; ahead, the North Star hovers in our future. An uncertain future, given we left Ecuador with only a vague plan.
I’ll claim pandemic and see what happens. If Panama accepts us, James will have to leave the next day. What about the boat? What about me?
Every ten minutes I scan the horizon with binoculars. No wind. No sails to monitor. We’re motoring so the batteries are fine. No log to write in thanks to plausible deniability. You never know who might demand to see it.
The Iridium GO! forecast says there’ll be wind tomorrow. Starboard quarter, straight up the coast. Broad reach. Slow and sloshy. I calculate the course, recalculate. Our four-knot speed might get a boost north from the Humboldt Current. No matter how I tweak it, we’re looking at four more nights.
With so little to do, my mind burrows deeply into the rift with James. We’ve each spent half the year in pain caused by loss, neglect and miscommunication. Healing calls for patience, for time together to really see one another, a willingness to rebuild trust.
That will take faith and a passage.
I listen to a book, make tea. I play nice with the AIS, poke gingerly at the new piece of electronics like a suspicious dog. Its job is to tell me the course and speed of any large ship out there. We’re still in stealth mode, wearing our invisibility cloak, just in case we’re being followed.
Every ship within 500 miles is coming from Panama or headed there. Its Traffic Separation Zone is one of the world’s busiest shipping channels. I really ought to figure out how the system works before we get there. I still don’t see why radar, that shows you ships and land and buoys and even squalls, isn’t enough.
“I am a rock. I am an iiiiiiiiii-ai-ai-land….” I’m belting lyrics from a seventh-grade song when a red light appears to the northwest. Its white stern light is high, so far back it could be a different ship. Freighter. Maybe a container ship. Whatever it is could slice a sailboat in half, sink her, and never know.
Trust Yourself
Am Here Now. Entirely present. Red light means port bow. Southbound. I consult the AIS to verify. It’s a container ship making twenty knots, bound for Manta. We’ll pass port to port.
I automatically turn on the radar, expecting a fat green blip off my port bow. Instead, the screen is full of neon green splatters, like some radioactive Jackson Pollock work. Another broken, twenty year-old instrument to cross off “all available means.”
Hmm. Time to take the AIS out of stealth mode, make our presence known.
“Stand watch. Chart the course. Trust yourself. Trust the boat. ”
Despite our dramatic departure, we settle into a typical passage. Uneventful. More spa retreat than Captains Courageous.
James and I spell each other during the day, depending on how tired we are. When we overlap, we talk companionably– about books, history, politics, the human condition. We relish the sunshine together, kindred spirits on the sea.
By the third night we’re crawling north, parallel to Colombia. Our new insurance carrier excludes this stretch of water, won’t take responsibility for anything that happens there.
I’ll ask for forgiveness, not permission.
James cooks every evening. We eat together and talk the way we used to. We laugh. The passage works its magic. We’re going to be okay.
From now on I will practice constant vigilance.
Trust the Boat
Four nights after leaving Ecuador, we’re closing on the Traffic Separation Zone, a marine superhighway with a two-mile median strip. I’m just getting the hang of the AIS when a squall hits, leaving us blind for a few minutes. As it clears, a freighter noses out two miles away. I double-check the AIS. There’s no sign of him. I’m incensed. Large ships aren’t supposed to be able to turn off their AIS signal.
The Inshore Zone, where we’re allowed, parallels theTSZ northbound lane, where relentless traffic spaced five miles apart creeps up on us. It sets off the AIS alarm so often it’s impossible to focus. James turns it off. We can keep a lookout.
Fifteen miles before the Zone ends, day breaks. We seem to be motoring through a fishing area with hundreds of makeshift floats–soft drink bottles, plastic containers, pieces of wood–scattered every few meters.
A palm tree floats by, then a half-dozen branches It must be rainy season. Constant vigilance.
Container ship exits northbound lane, Traffic Separation Zone, Panama.
It’s only my third time negotiating the designated anchorage, where northbound ships wait to enter the Canal. It’s a parking lot for scores of freighters. Dozens of tankers. Container ships, a couple of them looking like city blocks compete with three cruise ships for largest vessel honors. So many more than last year, all sidelined by the pandemic. A whole new world.
Lightning crackles above us as we slalom around them. Beyond, clouds lift enough to see the skyscrapers.
Panama City.
I haven’t lost the boat. I haven’t lost my son. The rest can wait.
Panama City skyline.
Ocean passages deserve better planning than our impromptu trip. At minimum, you need good safety equipment that you know how to use. Experienced crew helps, as well as knowing your route and destination, weather conditions, how long it will take, and sufficient food and water.
More details of our passage are included below.
Fair winds,
Christine
Do Tell
How did this passage compare to one of yours, real or imaginary?
Passage Essentials
BASIC INFORMATION
Destination and Route - Ecuador to Panama. Offshore. NNW.
Conditions - Light winds, southerly (downwind); squally near landfall
How long - 700 miles, five days
OFFSHORE SAFETY EQUIPMENT
Personal Flotation Devices (PFDs) Water- impact inflated life vests with lights and whistles. Double D rings in front attach to tethers.
Tethers - webbing segments with carabiner and quick-release fasteners to secure your PFD to the boat or jackline.
Jacklines - webbing secured along both side decks from bow to stern to clip tethers onto for on-deck work at sea.
Life raft - stored behind the cockpit within easy grabbing distance.
ELECTRONICS
Automatic Identifying System (AIS) A collision avoidance system that signals other ships with a vessel’s name, course, size and speed.
Navigation equipment/chart plotter I used Navionics charts on iPad and phone. They show our GPS position overlaid with AIS targets. Our new chart plotter will be even better.
Radar. Ours stopped working last year so I relied on AIS. (Installed new radar in Panama.)
Satellite phone Iridium Go! for weather forecasts, texts, email, and emergency calls.
