by Liz Alden
While Eik showed no signs of damage, the crew was not so lucky. Tensions were higher, and Eivind and I were crankier than normal.
Unfortunately, first thing in the morning Eivind had to get out on the deck and wash off presents from overnight visitors: birds had landed on the lifelines and shit on the deck.
After cleanup, Eivind sat on watch in the bright daytime, and we curled up together in the corner of the cockpit, reading. We hadn’t seen a boat in weeks, so we just did regular checks on the horizon every fifteen minutes, and with the autopilot, Eik took care of herself.
Elayna popped up, asking if we wanted any coffee. We both declined, and she began pulling out supplies, muttering to herself. Cabinet doors slammed, and Eivind and I exchanged concerned looks.
“Eivind, have you seen the Nutella?”
He shifted to lean down and look through the companionway toward Elayna. “No, I have not.”
He paused for a moment, listening. Marcella’s loaves of bread, fresh from the oven only hours earlier, sat on the counter. When they’d first come out, the smell had been torture, and when the loaves were cool enough, we’d all had a slice or two. Now, though, I was thinking about a warm Nutella toastie.
“Oh crap, that sounds good.”
Eivind threw me a smirk, but then a shriek came from the galley.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Marcella yelled.
Eivind and I scrambled down the companionway. Marcella stared in horror at the mayhem of the galley in the wake of Elayna’s search party. Foodstuff was everywhere: she’d pulled everything out and stacked it all on the table, the counters, the floor. Eik swayed a bit more than usual on a wave and a few items toppled over and spilled onto the couch.
“Everything was organized, Elayna, by meals and categories. You can’t just undo all of my work!”
“If it is so organized, then where is the Nutella?”
“I don’t know. Have something else—don’t tear my galley apart.”
“It’s not your galley.”
“I do all the work in here.”
Jonas stumbled out of his room. “What the hell is happening?”
“Someone ate all the Nutella,” Elayna whined.
“I ate the Nutella.” Jonas looked at her, bewildered. “It is for everyone.”
Elayna groaned. “It is my favorite, and that was our last jar.”
“You will have to have something else.”
“You can have some Vegemite,” I offered.
“Shut up!” Elayna snapped.
“Hey, watch it,” Eivind said. “She is trying to help.”
“How is that helpful?”
“It’s an alternative!” Eivind threw up his hands. “The Nutella is gone, so move on.”
“There is no alternative to Nutella.”
Suddenly I didn’t think we were talking about Nutella anymore.
“Okay, calm down, ja?” Jonas held his hands out imploringly. “This is only so bad because we are all feeling a little cabin fever right now. It is not a big deal.”
Elayna crumpled, tears springing to her eyes. “Of course you do not think it is a big deal.”
She stalked off to the cabin—the crew bunk she shared with Marcella—and slammed the door. Jonas shook his head, returning to his cabin and back to his nap. Eivind and I said nothing as he returned to his watch and I helped Marcella right the galley.
Hours later Marcella worked on dinner, and the tension had not improved. Even though everything had been put away again, she was opening cabinets and huffing and muttering and slamming. Just watching her made me tense, like there would be an explosion.
I tried to help as best I could. Despite the boat’s rocking, I was trusted with a sharp knife and was prepping some of our last vegetables. While I chopped, Marcella stirred, simmered, and baked circles around me.
“Take care of these.” She handed me two cans that had held the marinara sauce now bubbling on the stove. I took them and, without thinking, pulled open the trash receptacle and threw them in.
The minute I closed the lid, I gasped. Marcella stared at me.
“Did you just do that?”
“Oh my gosh. I forgot I was supposed to wash them first. Marcella, I’m so sorry.”
She tapped the spoon against the rim of the pot aggressively. “I am so careful in my galley. No food goes in the trash. Everything is washed and dried and condensed into as small of a shape as possible. I take care of these things, Lila!”
“I know, I am so sorry.”
“You made a mistake, yes, but I will suffer. The trash will smell, and we only have so much space for trash,” Marcella huffed.
“What is going on?” Eivind came down the stairs.
“I spilled tomato sauce in the trash bin.”
Eivind leaned down and peeked into the trash. “I will help you clean it.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” I wrinkled my nose. Even clean trash was still trash.
“Lila can do it herself,” Marcella snapped. “We have to be responsible for our own messes.”
Eivind held up his hands. “Calm down, Marcella. We also are a team and help each other out.”
“I just . . .” Marcella pinched the bridge of her nose. The room was quiet for a moment, save for the water rushing past Eik’s hull and the creaking of her lines. “Can you please finish dinner?”
“Of course,” I murmured, and Marcella climbed the stairs into the cockpit.
Elayna waited until the last minute to creep out of her room for dinner. I had been picking through every last piece of trash that had gotten tomato sauce on it, washing it and putting it in the sink drain. Eivind got dinner on the table. A few times I’d peeked outside to find Marcella looking small and a little lost, curled up in the corner of the cockpit and staring out to sea.
We called her down, and the five of us sat around the table. For a few minutes we were noisy with the clatter of tableware and dishes, asking for things and making yummy noises.
“Sleeping with other crew members is a bad idea. I was a little worried about Lila joining us on this trip, and I didn’t say anything. I am sorry,” Marcella said.
Eivind looked at me and cleared his throat. “Lila and I are fine, Marcella.”
“You are fine, sure, but it still changes the dynamic, even if you are happy. It’s not a good idea.” She paused. “Do you remember when we met in Antigua? And I had been kicked off Odyssey?”
“Ja,” Jonas said.
“It was because I slept with Seb. And my captain found out.”
Jonas put his fork down. “Marcella . . . you did not tell us that.”
“I was embarrassed.”
Jonas touched her shoulder, and she waved his concern away.
“I knew it could happen,” she went on, “and I did it anyway. So I had to leave. It was unprofessional of me, and while I am glad to be on board this boat, I miss the dynamic of professional crew.”
We were silent for a moment.
“And maybe,” she said with a slight smile, “I miss land a lot.”
Neither Eivind nor I were sleeping. Eivind tossed and turned, kicking and stretching. I had an itch that would not go away.
“Eivind! Jesus!” I huffed as he flipped over again. “What is going on over there?”
“I was too busy cleaning bird shit off the boat to exercise this morning, and then it got hot, and I feel . . . just uncomfortable.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got something going on with my bum. Seriously, it’s so itchy!”
“Really?” Eivind switched on the light and sat up in bed. “Let me see.”
I turned over, throwing a leg over his lap and burying my face in the mattress. Eivind’s hand smoothed my skin, and he clucked his tongue.
“You have a rash here. Did you shower today?”
“Just before bed. It’s so hot, there’s no point in showering during the day. I’m just going to get sweaty again.”
“Lila,” he chided, “we are lucky enough to have a watermaker, an
d you can do a quick rinse twice a day, especially with the cockpit as wet as it has been lately. If you are sitting on damp cushions or shorts, you will get a rash.”
I whimpered into the sheets. “The shower’s just so small, and when the boat rolls a lot . . . I’m not seasick, but it’s still uncomfortable.”
“I know.” He patted my butt. “Hold on, I have some cream.” Eivind threw on shorts and grabbed his headlamp before disappearing into the hallway. He was back a few minutes later, and he sat on the bed and pulled me into his lap.
“This is not too bad. I have seen worse.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Do I want to know how bad it gets?”
“Well, we had a friend who crossed the Atlantic without a watermaker, and he got becalmed for a few days. If you do not have fresh water, you rinse off in salt water more often, and when he arrived in the Caribbean, he had a rash all over his entire body.”
“Ew.”
“An even worse one . . . we watched a documentary at a film festival about these two guys who rowed across the Atlantic. They ended up having to, ah . . . drain the boils on each other’s butts.”
“Eivind! Gross!” I swatted at him, and he laughed.
“It did look painful.”
“I bet. Well, no boils on my bum, right?”
“Hmm . . . I may have to do a big inspection,” he teased, running his hands over me. “No boils. But you might want to think about doing your watches downstairs during the day now. You can check the horizon from the windows and use the downstairs electronics. And there is a fan we can blow onto the desk. You will not be wet from the waves, and you might sweat less.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“You are welcome, darling.” He kissed me quickly on the lips and rolled over onto his back.
I followed him, resting on my side, and swung a leg over Eivind’s. “I know you missed your workout this morning, but you could do a different workout . . .”
Thirty-Four
I had a lazy morning. Eivind was up on watch, but, having nothing better to do, I stayed in bed and read.
My phone alarm went off at 11:45—it was time for my shift. I dressed and opened the door to the main salon where Marcella prepped lunch. Most of our meals nowadays were some variation of bread and canned meat. Yesterday had been tuna; today was pâté. As bland as eating out of cans seemed, Marcella always managed to pull out a treat to go with it: spicy mustard or capers. Add in the homemade bread, and lunches were shockingly amazing.
I made my plate from the smorgasbord platter on the table and climbed up to the cockpit. Eivind sat in the sun, one headphone in his ear, arms stretched out on either side, staring up at the sky.
When I sat next to him, he didn’t move except for his head, watching me with a small smile on his face. I offered him a bite of my lunch and he growled, biting ferociously into the bread. I giggled.
His alarm went off at noon and he stood up and stretched. Leaning over, he pressed a kiss to my lips.
“Ready for your watch?”
I nodded, swallowing my last bite of food.
Setting the plate down on the cushion, I sat up and we both turned our attention to the electronics.
“Since we are so close now”—Eivind zoomed the chartplotter out so we could see our final destination—“we have the autopilot set to take us to this waypoint.” Eivind pointed at a red X on the chart. “That means instead of the boat moving with the wind, we have to adjust the sails and the boat stays on course.”
“Okay, so what do I need to watch for?”
“No numbers this time. You need to listen to the sails. If you hear the sails flapping or the boat starts to heel over too much, get Jonas.”
“No numbers?” I frowned. “How will I know if the boat is heeling too much?”
He just kissed my forehead. “You will know.”
I harrumphed. I didn’t like the sound of subjective sailing.
Eivind chuckled and went downstairs.
I kept an eye on everything like I always did. Not long after I was left alone at the helm, the sails started to flap.
Poking my head down into the main salon, I called out, “Jonas, the sails are flapping.”
“On my way.”
A few moments later Jonas stood beside me at the helm.
“So, what do we need to do?” he asked.
“What? You are supposed to tell me that.”
Jonas grinned. “You have read the sailing book—many times, I think. Tell me what you think we need to do and I will tell you if you are right.”
“Okay, the sail is luffing, which means the wind has come too far forward. So . . . we have to tighten up the sails a little bit, right?”
“Ja.”
“And the genoa is . . .” I put my hand on a winch with a line around it. “This one?”
He nodded. I grabbed the winch handle from its holder and fit it to the winch. I pushed the handle one way—nope, too hard—I pushed it the other way for the higher gear, then cranked with one hand, then two, breaking into a sweat.
“Is that enough?”
Jonas leaned out of the cockpit to look at the sail. “Not yet.”
I took a deep breath and cranked a few more turns.
“That is good.”
I wiped the sweat off my brow.
“What will you do next?”
Looking over my shoulder, I spotted the traveler. “The mainsail.”
Unsnapping the handle, I moved it to the aft winch. I went to run the line around the barrel, and remembered that the handle gets in the way—I had to run the line around first without the handle on.
With the line secured around the winch, I started cranking again. Above me, the main sheet tightened, bringing the sail in closer to the centerline of the boat. This time I could see the sail better, and watched as the angle of the sail changed and it stopped luffing.
I glanced at Jonas. “Now?”
“Now. Great job, Lila!”
He offered me a high five and I laughed.
“I can’t believe I could get all that by myself—mostly.”
“You would have done it all by yourself. It is easier to see the genoa from here, but you would have gotten it.”
I sat back down at the helm, smiling to myself. For the first time on this voyage, I felt like a sailor. Could I give all this up?
Later that afternoon, I puttered around inside the cabin. The seas were unusually calm, so we’d opened some of the hatches that were less likely to get splashed by a wave. I ran around the cabin, shaking out our linens, clothes, even our towels, trying to freshen everything up.
Jonas, Elayna, and Eivind talked in the cockpit, their conversation coming in through the open hatch, but I wasn’t paying attention until I heard my name.
“Lila must be looking forward to being on land?” That was Elayna. I paused and listened while folding a shirt that was slightly damp but still wearable.
“I think she is. I know she is not really a sailor, and it has been tough on her,” Eivind responded.
My heart thudded in my chest. Not really a sailor? I knew so much more than when I’d started. Sure, I still didn’t know how to read a tell-tail and I got confused by the compass, but I knew how to reef a sail, and I’d been on watch for over forty-eight hours by myself. How could he not think of me as a sailor?
“It will be nice when things go back to normal,” Jonas said.
“What do you mean? Not at sea?” Eivind asked.
“Well, that too, but it will be better when it is just the four of us again. Lila has learned a lot, but it is harder to have to teach someone new. It is too hard when I have to teach someone how to sail, too.”
“Marcella is right,” Elayna said. “Crew dynamics are tough. Maybe we shouldn’t have had her on in the first place.”
“Well, she is going back to South America anyway,” Eivind said. “She made it clear it was never long-term.”
I bit my lip to stop myself from crying. Yes, the plan had a
lways been for me to fly back once we reached land, but part of me had hoped that Eivind liked having me around and that maybe they’d invite me to stay again. Jonas and Eivind had made me feel so welcome in the beginning. To hear that maybe they regretted it?
Maybe everyone back home was right. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for adventures.
Eivind and I had a quiet night watch, both of us trapped in our own thoughts. I tried not to let myself spiral, but perhaps these past few weeks had been a waste.
And then I looked out at the night sky, spotting the band of the Milky Way overhead. The light mist of Eik plowing through the waves dusted my skin. Even if some people didn’t consider me to be a true sailor, I had still crossed an ocean. I had sailed thousands of miles, and not many people could say that.
We had gone to bed knowing that when we woke up, we would likely see land. When Eivind’s shift was over in the early hours of the morning, we were seventy miles from Fatu Hiva, the closest island in the chain of the Marquesas. While we couldn’t legally enter the country there, we would stop for a day, visit the island reputed to be one of the most beautiful in the world, and then move on to Hiva Oa.
Fatu Hiva had minimal facilities, but Jonas and Eivind talked about it with such reverence. After crossing the Pacific—what would be most sailors’ longest passage—Fatu Hiva provided a welcome sight.
When I woke up to voices above my head, I gently pushed Eivind’s arm off me and dressed. He didn’t stir, his face pressed into the pillow.
I kissed his shoulder and snuck out. I was too excited at the possibility of seeing land to stay down.
Giggles carried from the main salon and I found Jonas and Elayna inside. Jonas sat at the desk working on his laptop, and Elayna washed dishes in the galley.
“Papayas,” said Jonas.
“Oohhh, oui, with some lime on them. I want a real baguette.” Elayna closed her eyes and sniffed the air. “Fresh out of the oven.”
“What about you, Lila?” Jonas asked. “What are you looking forward to?”
