The Art of Stealing Your Own Boat, Part 2: Passage

Note: This is the fifth installment of a series about my eighteen-month kerfuffle with Ecuadorean Customs. For more context, please read the earlier posts: Check-In Checklist; Improv; When the World Goes Crazy, Do the Right Thing; and The Art of Stealing Your Own Boat.

After eighteen months on land, I’m finally motoring away from Salinas.

Usually when I’m steering the boat I feel a flood of confidence that comes from knowing what I’m doing.

Today I’m an Insta kart of emotions. What I need is unavailable, replaced by something less satisfying. I want exhilaration and get nervous laughter; will myself to calmly face reality but obsess on what might have happened; seek assurance I am doing the right thing and feel only fear.

I’m about to leave Ecuador on short notice in the middle of a pandemic because staying could cost me $50,000. I have no zarpe (port clearance) and the Port Captain could still prevent our leaving. What am I doing, making a 700-mile passage on a boat that hasn’t moved for eight months? There’s been no time to check the systems. I have no idea what may have rusted through or rotted while she was on her own.

Do these actions scream “competent captain?”

Maybe not, but I’m doing this.

Safety First

Safety first. Don’t leave the sight of land without jacklines, tethers and a PFD.

First things first.

Seasickness unfailingly incapacitates me unless I take something to prevent it. I switch the boat to autopilot, raid the first aid kit for a transdermal Scopalomine patch, and stick it firmly behind my right ear.

My son, James, has already retrieved the tote of safety gear. My wing-on-wing man starts untangling a mass of webbing, sorting yellow jacklines from blue tethers. I pull out two Personal Flotation Devices (PFDs), water impact-inflating life vests with double D-rings in front. I hand him his and put mine on.

James runs the fifteen-meter jacklines down each side deck, tying them strategically to cleats.

I place a couple of tethers at the helm for night watch. They’re about as long as I am tall with a quick-release fastener for my PFD; at the other end, a carabiner clips to a jackline or piece of standing rigging. If we have to leave the cockpit, we’ll clip onto the backlines with tethers. The idea is that even if crew goes overboard, they’ll be attached to the boat, not drifting in the water.

Our life raft silently reminds me of the latter outcome. Its hi-tech outer suitcase is within an arm’s reach of the cockpit. If the boat sinks, a hydrostatic release will deploy it automatically. One less thing to worry about.

I scan the horizon with binoculars, not knowing what I expect to see. The uniformed man in a chase boat taking more photos? A commandeered Navy gunboat? There’s no sign of military gray, only the silhouettes of trawlers.

The tasks of passage preparation anchor me, make me feel like I've come home. I’ve got this.

My plan is plausible deniability. I’ve rehearsed what I’ll say if we’re stopped. We're bound for Isla de la Plata for a few days.

Those jacklines and tethers?

We’re practicing for the circus.

The Route

When night falls I’ll bear to port, twelve miles west of the Isla. Once we're in international waters, we'll keep going to Panama.

Conditions

There’s no wind yet–just what you'd expect at the equator. When it does fill in, the forecast is for light southerlies.

Estimated Days at Sea

The passage will be five days downwind, pleasant and slow.

Slow is hardly what I had in mind.

Escape Velocity

I’m thinking escape velocity. A clean getaway.

I doubt that Customs or the Navy will chase us down over a probably-bogus $50,000 misunderstanding. My position is that if the fine were legit, Customs would've made more of an effort to collect.

Or so I tell myself on my umpteenth backward glance.

I’m getting a grip. Quite a grip. My fingers ache, locked by nervous tension onto the wheel.

I’m not entirely on my own evading authorities. We have electronic spies, too, equipment meant for navigation, collision avoidance and communication. James turns on the Automatic Identifying System (AIS), a device that signals a vessel’s name, course, size and speed. He puts it in stealth mode–like an Invisibility Cloak–so we can see others without being seen. It’s an option not available to larger vessels. Targets appear behind us. No one’s in hot pursuit, just trawlers dawdling along.

Now we can get out of here.

I shove the throttle forward.

Me: Go go go go go gogogo!

Propeller (shaking violently): No no no no no nonono!

Me: Wha—?

The sat phone rings. Stephan and I got the Iridium Go! for weather forecasts, texts and emergency calls. Apparently our departure counts as an emergency. My husband wants our latitude and longitude so he can plot our position. How can he play along at home when the Go! only transmits once every four hours?

It’s hard enough under normal circumstances to follow a train of thought without derailment. My mind skitters from topic to topic like a stone across a lake. Sometimes anxiety knocks me flat, makes it impossible to move. I’ve been told both symptoms come free with my ADHD.

James checks our Navionics chart on the iPad, adjusts the Go! and talks his father down.

I push the throttle up to 2000 rpm. We’re only making four knots.

Now Stephan's texting thoughts about where we should go. I already regret the sat phone. Thanks to a glitch that truncates his messages, they all read like a cut-rate getaway consultant.

Stephan: …international waters yet…

Me: What’s happening? Why are we only making four and-a-half knots at 2200?

Me (to prop): Hmm. Let’s turn to starboard.

Propeller: Ouch! Not so fast. Careful, my arthritis!

Stephan: … AIS off?…

Me (silently screaming): Panic. Panic. Turn around.

Stephan:… Go! position…

Me (muttering): I cannot track ten messages an hour. I need to think.

Stephan: …West. Due west…

Me: I'm NOT going west yet, not with a southerly swell abeam.

At least not until the seasick meds kick in. I’m already surfing waves of adrenaline. I need the noise to stop.

Me (to Stephan): Stop texting. (Directness being preferable to spousicide) You’re stressing me out.

Now it’s clear what’s wrong with the prop. Barnacles. The whole time SV Hanalei was at anchor, those uninvited hard-shelled intruder were growing. Now they’re squatting exactly where the prop spins.

Me (to prop): Fine. Be like that.

There’s nothing we can do but accept it, zen like. I’m competent again, the captain. This plan is going to work.

“Fear means only that I haven’t done it yet.”

International waters.

Captain?

Let's get one thing straight. I am not brave. I’m headstrong and stubborn. I’m not a natural sailor, never took a sailing class until I was 40. I struggle with mechanical concepts. The only knot I’m proud of is my half-hitch.

But fourteen years ago our boat, SV Delos, needed to come home to Washington from New Zealand. Nobody else volunteered. The thought of captaining made me physically sick. I imagined thousands of bad endings. The thought of abandoning our boat made me even sicker.

That’s when, after a lifetime of anxiety, I discovered my super power.

Adrenaline is like a magic potion for ADHD. It opens blood flow to my brain and gives me clarity. As soon as we set sail from New Zealand the anxiety evaporated. I unerringly charted the course and saw it through.

It's no different this time.

Only now do I allow myself to think how many ways this trip might have gone wrong. I acted out of fierce love, more like a mom whose child was threatened than a reasonable captain. It was reckless of me to cut and run, risk our freedom–maybe my life–for a boat. I claimed the moral high ground not because I was sure, but because I was scared. Scared of losing our boat, our way of life, my sense of competence.

When the moment came I knew exactly what to do.

The lesson is the same.

I can do the right thing, even scared. Fear means only that I haven’t done it yet.

I'm on my first night watch when we reach international waters.

We're safe.

My grip on the helm loosens and I break into wrenching, uncontrolled sobs.

To be continued….

Fair winds,

Christine

Do Tell!

How have you harnessed doubt to do the right thing?