If You Thought The Last Post Was Bad...Try This One
1/02/2018Just after sunrise, trying to look un-traumatized. I know what you must be thinking, because I’m thinking it too: how is it POSSIBL...
1/02/2018
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| Just after sunrise, trying to look un-traumatized. |
I know what you must be thinking, because I’m thinking it
too: how is it POSSIBLE that in less than three weeks after their terrifying,
hair-raising, nightmarish passage to Samana, the Moxie crew experiences
ANOTHER, even MORE terrifying and life-altering passage to Puerto Rico?!?! I feel sheepish telling you this story,
heaping more of our drama onto your laps.
But for the same reasons I felt I should tell you my last awful tale, I
need to tell you this one, too. EVERYONE
HEAR THIS: The sailing life is beautiful but it is REALLY HARD. That is the reality.
The passage from Samana, Dominican Republic to Mayaguez,
Puerto Rico, is 135 nautical miles and takes 24 hours or more to complete. This passage is named the Mona Passage, and
it is notoriously dangerous, with trade winds on your nose, great variation in
depths that cause huge waves, a rocky shoreline, and shoals to avoid because of
the rough water. It is essential to make
this trip with a good, solid weather window, with favorable winds. We had this good window and were given the
green light by Chris Parker, our go-to weather guru. We left the marina at
Samana at 5:20 pm on December 30. Our
friends stood on the jetty and cheered us on as we departed. My friend Cheryl took these photos of our
exit:
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| Here is me screaming out at our friends, "Hey cool kids! Did you hear? Puerto Rico is the new DR!!" |
The first few hours of the trip were peaceful and calm, the sunset stunning. The kids went to bed at 7:30 pm, Trav took
the first solo watch from 8:30 to 11:45, and I took a nap. My solo watch began at midnight. The seas had kicked up by then, the winds
too. We were at 18 knots of wind at that
point, right on the nose, which was more than had been predicted, but still
ok. The waves were increasing in height
and Moxie was pitching UP and DOWWWWN. UP and DOWWWWWN. Pretty uncomfortable but not awful.
Not yet.
I had an weird feeling at the beginning of my
watch. I couldn’t relax. To be honest, I never really “relax” while
underway, especially on a watch, but this feeling was different. It was like I was waiting for the other shoe
to drop. I had an audio book to listen
to, but I couldn’t bring myself to put my headphones on. Something inside me told me to pay close attention,
to stay on guard. At 1 am, it happened.
KA-KLUNK-KLUNK-KLUNK.
I heard the most awful noise from below my feet in the cockpit. I immediately killed the motor and Trav leapt
up from the cabin. “That sounded like we
collided with something, didn’t it?” he asked.
I shone our spotlight into the water and Trav could see what we had
hit. My heart sunk when he told me: it
was a line to a fishing trap. We had run
into it, part of it was trailing behind us, and the rest of it was tangled around
our prop. We had been motoring along at
6 knots and this line had stopped our 24,000 pound boat in her tracks.
We had been told that fishing nets and traps are not set in waters
deeper than 100 feet. We were in over
250 feet of water. What the hell???!?? Trav grabbed the boathook and hooked the line
to cut it. I shone the light and handed
him his knife. As he grabbed it, the
plastic grip slid off the hook, and he lost it in the water. “SHIT!”
He used our other boat hook to grab it again and cut the line. But the line had been holding us to the
bottom, and now we were drifting.
I knew what was going to happen next. I couldn’t look at Trav when I feebly said, “Please
don’t go in that water.” To which he replied, “Jen, I have to. I have to cut the line from the prop.”
“Can’t we just drift and wait until morning?”
“No, that’s too dangerous.
We will drift to shore.”
Captain’s Note
from Trav: Everything is freakier at night.
Tenfold. If we had hit the fishing
line in the daytime, it would still have been dangerous, but not nearly as
scary. When I first looked down at the
rudder assembly, it was cocked to one side and I thought in my sleepy haze that
we might have damaged the rudder and may have lost our steering. I said, “Oh God.” Jen said, “What?” I took
back my words and said, “Nothing.” My
mind started racing- what would we do if the rudder was damaged and we couldn’t
steer. We were a mile and a half from a
rocky shore that the wind and seas were pushing us towards. When day broke, the winds would only
increase. We were offshore from a country
where there was no coast guard and limited help options. It was a fix it yourself situation, and that’s
why I had to jump in. I had complained
in the DR about having to get permission from the government to sail from one
port to the next- I wanted more autonomy, and now I had it. Careful what you wish for.
Trav put the boat
ladder out, I retrieved his snorkel, mask, fins, and his diving flashlight. He took off his t-shirt, put his gear on, and
jumped into the pitch black, rolling seas.
This was the very worst moment of my entire life. I shone
the spotlight into the water where he had gone down. Moxie was pitching up and down on a
rollercoaster of continuous, large swells, and I had to hold on tightly as I
leaned over the side with the light. I knew that if any part of the boat hit Trav
on the head while he was under it and knocked him unconscious, he could be
trapped under the boat and would drown.
I knew that if he didn’t come up, I couldn’t go in after him, because I
couldn’t risk putting myself in danger and leaving our kids alone on the boat. I knew that there was a chance that I could lose
him forever, right then, at that moment.
He came up. “I’m
studying it to see how I should cut it.”
He went down again. My stomach
churned. He came up again and took a big
breath. “You’re doing great, Trav.” He
went down again. Time inched forward. After an eternity, he came up clutching a
tangle of nylon line and a makeshift soda-bottle float. “I got it off! Get the
camera!” My hands were shaking so badly
I could barely snap the photos. Here’s
what I took:
I was terrified that the prop or the shaft were
damaged. We started the motor. It seemed ok.
Trav went below and checked the shaft- also ok. We slowly resumed our course, still not 100%
confidant that nothing had been damaged. We did not discuss what had just
happened- I knew that if I did I would lose it.
My teeth began chattering. I knew
that if I let them chatter I would cry.
I set my jaw and clenched my fists. I put the snorkel gear away.
By now, the seas had really picked up. We needed to raise the mainsail to steady the
boat and to do so, Trav had to go to midship and haul the halyard while I kept
the boat pointed into the wind. The
problem with this was that Trav was already nauseous from his rolly,
saltwater-gulping swim. Standing midship
to raise the main with the boat rocking back and forth was absolutely sickening
for him. After he got the main up, he vomited
several times over the side. I was
worried that real seasickness, the debilitating kind that doesn’t go away,
would set in and Trav would be out of commission. We still had 15 hours or more to sail.
We sailed ahead in the increasingly rough ocean. Seawater splashed us relentlessly, we were
soaked to the skin, even with our raingear on. After an hour or so, we felt the first drops
of rain. The clouds ahead were huge and
black. We were headed into a squall.
The skies looked clearer to our port side, offshore. We headed that way to try to skirt the
squall, but the problem with that was the further offshore we went, the rougher
the seas were. The first squall seemed
to hit us fairly lightly, rain and wind, slightly bigger waves. But an hour after that, the second squall
hit. The seas were the roughest
then. The waves were 10-12 feet high
with a heavy wind chop on them. They crashed into us, again and again and
again. I had to keep reminding myself
that Moxie is a tough, bluewater boat and she is made for this kind of
movement. The minutes crawled by. Trav tried his best to fight the seasickness. My heart raced and I told myself again and
again to take deep, calming breaths. I wished
and wished for the sun to rise, but we had two hours of darkness left to get
through. I was so relieved and grateful
when squall subsided and the sun edged it’s way into the sky at 6:20 am.
The kids woke up around 7:30 am. The seas were super rough,
and the cockpit was soaked. Hud and Viv tried
to stay below but it was too rolly and they joined us topside. When you are in rough seas, all you can do is
sit quietly and wait. It’s hard to move,
going below to get something you need takes a fair amount of effort. When it’s rough, we usually don’t even
talk. There’s no other way to describe
it: it’s miserable.
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| You can see the strap where I am clipped in to the boat. |
As the day went on, the seas eventually calmed. We listed to podcasts of “Story Pirates.” I had made a ton of food for the trip (30
quesadillas!!- my friends had teased me that I had made enough quesadillas to
get us to Columbia) but we were all pretty queasy and no one could really eat. The fishing line Trav had cut from the prop
was still on our deck. Hud asked what it
was and I told him we would tell him later.
I still wasn’t ready to talk about it.
Uncannily, at EXACTLY 5:20 pm, EXACTLY 24 hours from our
departure, we dropped our anchor in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. We went about our usual anchoring chores, I
wiped the salt from the stainless steel and woodwork. Hud made us a New Year’s
Eve dinner of salsa, guacamole, bean dip and cheese dip. We gratefully ate it.
To say that these sailing experiences have humbled us is an enormous
understatement. I feel changed in a way I
can’t really describe. This is all I
know:
1.
My husband is truly, truly amazing. He is my hero.
2.
My kids are tough as nails.
3.
I am stronger than I knew I could ever be.
4.
Moxie is a badass boat.
5.
We will never sail at night again. Ever.
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It’s a new year, and we’re on a new island. Happy New Year, dear readers. Stay present, live in the moment, stay calm,
be positive, keep paying attention, and most of all, be grateful. xo
