Seven at Sea

by Erik Orton

  “It was a hundred bucks to get the seven of us ten miles across the island,” Erik said. “I’ve already arranged for him to take us back to the other side of the island for church tomorrow. That’s another hundred for eight miles. We need a better plan.” We’d eat, sleep, and figure it out in the morning.

  Gwen was our point of contact at Sunsail. Since the office was closed when we arrived, she left instructions on where Fezywig was docked. All the other sailors were settled in for the night, so all the dock carts, parked next to the main office, were at our disposal. I filled one with duffle bags and Rubbermaid bins and followed Erik and his cart across a narrow plank bridge onto the maze of permanent wooden docks. SJ kept a firm grasp on Lily, who wanted to swim—in the dark. Almost home.

  “Welcome aboard,” Erik said, coming to a stop. He hopped across the starboard steps into the cockpit, opened the sliding glass door, and found the light switch. That night our housewarming party involved getting our gear from the dock to the deck. There was a gap I navigated carefully. I didn’t want to drop anything or anyone into the water in the dark. Lily sat at the oval table in the salon while the rest of us, even eight-year-old Eli, hefted our carefully selected belongings onboard. I’d planned a quick, salty, high-carb meal of spaghetti and marinara, something simple before dropping off to sleep. Bare cushions waited with clean folded sheets. The kids made their beds. No towels. No pillows. No blankets. It didn’t take long to spread their sheets and pull on their pajamas, T-shirts and shorts. By the time they were ready for dinner, I still hadn’t coaxed a flame from the stovetop. I checked the propane tank and connections and flipped the propane switch several times, but I couldn’t get a flicker. Erik checked as well. It was one more thing that would have to wait until tomorrow.

  “Hey, Mom,” Sarah Jane called from her cabin, “Will you come take a picture of me?” I stepped down to find her eyes red with giant tears rolling down her cheeks. “I want to remember how sad I am about missing my friends and my bed at home.” I took the picture, gave her a hug and a kiss on the forehead, and hopped back up to the galley. I slapped together seven peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and we said our prayers. We had a lot to be grateful for. Mostly, we were grateful we could finally go to sleep.

  The next morning was our first chance to really see Fezywig. She was thirty-eight feet long and twenty-two feet, ten inches wide. The keel sunk four and a half feet into the water, and the mast extended fifty-six feet into the sky. There was no mainsail. Surely, Gwen would explain later. Fezywig was all washable white fiberglass—perfect for a passel of kids. The stern included a helm station and a cockpit with built-in L-shaped benches and a stationary white plastic table. Above that, faded blue canvas covered a metal frame. That was the bimini. Its purpose was to shade the helm and cockpit. I considered it a jungle gym. A wide side deck ran up both sides of the boat to the front deck. There, divided by a rigid walkway, was a net trampoline. That was the feature most anticipated by our children. In their Sunday dresses, the girls were face down on the netting watching the water roll by. Inside were four double-berth cabins and two heads—double the number of bedrooms and bathrooms in our apartment. The galley, salon, and navigation desk all shared an elevated space between the two pontoons inside. Nobody wanted to be inside that morning.

  Our Sunday ride to church was also our first chance to see Saint Martin. We took a good look because we knew we’d be leaving in a week or two. From our taxi the island felt like an amusement park, a roller coaster ride of steep hills and hairpin turns. One moment the road hugged a lush green mountain; the next it swung us out overlooking turquoise waters lapping tan beachfronts filled with boats. Classic.

  “I love the pinkish-purplish flowers everywhere,” Sarah Jane said.

  “Fuschia,” Karina said.

  “What are those islands?” Alison asked from the back seat.

  “That one is St. Barts, and the one way off is Saba,” the taxi driver said.

  We knew three people on the island—the two missionaries we had met at the airport and our hundred-dollar taxi driver. By the end of church, we’d made several new friends.

  “I had a good time,” Eli said after Sunday school. “Can we go back to the boat?”

  “Not New York?” I asked.

  “Living on a boat is fun,” Eli said. Morale was up. I wondered if it would last.

  “It was so great to have Ocean with us today,” a dark-haired woman smiled when I picked up Lily from class.

  “Ocean?” I asked as the teacher handed me a scribbled drawing with the name ‘Ocean’ on it. “You mean Lily? Her middle name is Ocean.”

  “Well, she introduced herself as Ocean to us, so that’s what we called her.”

  “Come on, Ocean,” I said, taking Lily’s hand. SJ had stayed with me for class, so I gathered Karina and Alison. They had met a handful of other teenagers.

  “Why didn’t you come to class?” Alison asked SJ. “The kids were nice.” SJ shrugged.

  “Hey, I want you to meet Mitch and Arielle,” Erik said, joining us. “I asked them about the local buses and they offered to give us a ride home. It’s going to take two cars to fit all of us, so another guy, Monte, is taking his family home first.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said, shaking hands with the tall, slim, attractive pair of Canadians. Lily shook their hands too.

  It sounded like she said “Enchanté,” but she had really said, “I’m Ocean Orton.” Erik’s eyes narrowed.

  “She’s calling herself Ocean these days,” I said. I held up the picture. He smiled. He had always wanted her first name to be Ocean.

  Monte returned with fruit and homemade brownies from his wife, Claire. You may not know you’re homesick until somebody shows up with brownies. Bless Claire! We gave our new friends the nickel tour of Fezywig. Arielle volunteered to come back the next day and take us provisioning (grocery shopping for two to eight weeks) for our imminent trip to the British Virgin Islands. Before they left, we sang for them. Singing helped us feel like ourselves in this new place.

  That afternoon we met our Sunsail team: Gwen, who facilitated the sale, and Joachim, who supervised repairs for the sale. Gwen was the first to stop by. Her white polo and broad smile stood out against her olive skin and mass of black curls.

  “Welcome aboard!” she said in her French accent. “How is everything?”

  “It’s great! We love it. Everything is good,” Erik said. “We were wondering about the mainsail?”

  “Oh, yes. You are getting a new one. It will be installed in a couple of days. Not a problem.”

  “Great!” Erik agreed. “That’s fine. We have errands to run, so we won’t be ready to leave for a couple of days anyway.”

  “Good. Good,” said Gwen. “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes,” Erik admitted. “We’re having trouble getting our oven and stovetop turned on.”

  “Okay. Yes, very good,” Gwen smiled. “Joachim will be by shortly and answer any questions you have about the boat. Have a good day!” We shook her hand and waved goodbye even though she was only going to the office a few hundred yards away.

  Joachim arrived. He was a transplant from Germany, but his English was clear.

  “Hello,” he said. “You have a problem with the oven?”

  “Yes,” Erik explained. “My wife couldn’t get the oven started last night.” Together they looked at the propane tanks inside the cockpit benches. Then Joachim came inside the galley and flipped open the fuel line. So far, so good. Finally, he pushed in the knob for the stove before turning it.

  “Oh! That’s it. We have to push the button in first and then turn it,” Erik noted.

  “Yes. Push in,” Joachim confirmed. I needed to get comfortable feeling foolish. We were rookies. The advantage of being a rookie was that people expected us to be ignorant. But we had to humbly acknowledge our ignorance and focus our energy
on learning. We couldn’t let pride get in the way if we wanted to succeed.

  Joachim reviewed the switches and dials above the navigation desk with Erik. Then he advised, “I will tell you about the heads. When you flush, you must keep the switch on wet and pump fifteen times. Every flush. Fifteen times. Not ten times. Then you dry pump. You will have no troubles.” Just to be on the safe side, we told the kids to pump the head twenty times.

  Monday morning, while the kids unpacked, Erik and I went provisioning. We met Arielle and her tiny car in the marina parking lot. She was prepared with designer jeans, a mustard-colored cardigan, and a Diet Coke.

  “Aren’t you hot?” I asked.

  “No,” she replied. “I’m used to it now.” I was prepared with Tevas, a backpack, and a massive grocery list including everything from pickles to pillows. Arielle knew where to go: Cost-U-Less. I liked the sound of that.

  Think Caribbean Costco. You could buy “Iguana Gone” by the gallon. Two hours later, Erik and I walked out, each pushing a heaping grocery cart. Our receipt was four feet long, and it had nearly given Erik a heart attack. All the prices on the shelf were listed in three different currencies. He had tried to keep a general tally but was completely unprepared for the massive total. What could we return? Pillows, beans, or flip-flops? I had kept the list lean. We needed everything. The cashier saw Erik’s flushed face and the beads of sweat on his brow. Better than a paramedic, she said, “That’s in guilders.” It was about half that number in dollars. We survived our first provisioning trip.

  “Mom and Dad are back!” Sarah Jane called out. “And they have a lot of food!” By the time we reached our slip with two dock carts piled high, all the kids had gathered.

  We survived our first provisioning trip.

  “There’s more in front of the office,” Erik said. “Karina, Alison, after we unload, I want you two to take these carts back and get the rest of it.” Then he looked at me. “Emily, where do you want this stuff?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Let’s start by getting it into the cockpit, and I’ll figure it out from there.”

  Since October, this adventure had been a series of sorting, shopping, packing, unpacking, cleaning, and reorganizing. I donated bags of books, clothing, toys, and home goods. I drove hundreds of miles back and forth storing irreplaceable journals, photo albums, and the kids’ old schoolwork in my in-laws’ basement. I weighed and packed everything for the flight to Sint Maarten. I painted our apartment. I scrubbed every surface and washed every pillowcase. I wanted preparing for boat life to end and the living to start. We began the loading process again.

  I got really efficient at this over time, but that first day was slow as I decided where to stow everything. Every. Thing. A bag of onions split, and two rolled into the water. Erik grabbed our net, leaped onto the dock, and snagged them just as they floated past the other side of the dock. This was my new normal.

  Valentine’s Day marked the end of our first week. I walked with all of the children to the small local market to buy frozen raspberries and heavy cream to go on our celebratory pancakes. I was still learning how to cook in the stainless steel pans that had come with Fezywig, so I knew our pancakes would need some special help. I don’t speak French, and I accidentally bought sour cherries. C’est la vié.

  I got the right cream, but I’d never whipped it by hand. I’d seen enough British period dramas to know people ate whipped cream before electricity was invented. I wondered how long it would take to whip cream by hand, so I did an experiment.

  “I can take a turn,” Karina said. She noticed I had switched arms three times in two minutes. I passed the bowl to Karina. Rather than stirring normally, she held the whisk handle between both hands and rolled it. Her method was more effective. “Hey, Ali, you wanna take a turn?” she asked when her muscles burned. Alison eventually passed it to Jane. We went around and around again until the drippy cream held a peak. It took us thirty minutes. That may seem like a lot of life to trade for some whipped cream, but we talked and laughed working side by side. I believe in labor-saving devices, but those were the most precious thirty minutes of my week. We stuck to it and created something delicious together. Good memories are the best investment because their value always goes up over time. And the pancakes were good, too.

  After the mainsail was installed and before we sailed to the British Virgin Islands, Erik wanted to make some other improvements. Sint Maarten has all the shops and experts a cruiser could ever need, but not where we were, on the French side. This tiny island is jointly owned by France and the Netherlands. The folk story is that the dividing line was decided by two speedwalkers. The French walker and the Dutch walker started back to back. That was one end of the border line. They walked the perimeter of the island in opposite directions. Where they met up marked the other end of the border dividing their two nations. The French claimed their walker was faster because he carried lightweight wine for refreshment rather than heavy Dutch gin. The Dutch accused the Frenchman of running. Either way, the two sides are different. As Erik says, “The French side is where you go if you want a baguette. The Dutch side is where you go to get things done.” I put homeschool on hold to shop for solar panels, wind generators, and water makers. We also needed a dinghy, an outboard motor, and a Wi-Fi booster. If confidence came in packages, Erik and I would have stocked up. We were fresh out.

  A film montage of this period would include an establishing shot of all the kids sleeping in their berths. It would show one of their tiny fans running and zoom in on their sleeping faces, sweet but sweaty. Then the focus would shift to Erik and me in our berth with both lights on. We’d be leaning against the back wall of our cabin, a legal pad in Erik’s hand, our brows furrowed. Closing in on the legal pad, you’d see the words “solar panels” across the top and then a long list of pros and cons running down from there. Some words would be scratched out and other notes scribbled in.

  You’d see the kids in their pajamas around the breakfast table waving goodbye to us. We’d be fully dressed with VHF radios in hand and backpacks on. The focus would zoom in on Lily crying at the closed glass door because we were leaving—again. It would show us in our tiny rental car with that legal pad and our furrowed brows. You’d see us crossing the island up and down hills to the Dutch side. You’d see us in various chandleries looking at oddly shaped items, our brow furrows deepening as the prices were revealed. You’d see us speaking with various tanned salesmen in polo shirts, all gesticulating for clarity. The camera would show Erik’s eyes concentrating as he took more notes on the legal pad. You would see my eyes glaze over as I wandered into the life vest section of the store—something I understood. The camera would show me in a shop loft smiling next to a giant spool of safety netting as a shop assistant measured our many, many yards of it.

  To indicate a passage of time, you would notice our hair getting lighter and lighter. You would notice the legal pad running out of pages. The focus would turn to Erik, in another shop, showing pictures of Fezywig to a man holding steel tubing. Then it would cut to Erik in the driver’s seat of our rental car, cupping his forehead in one hand, legal pad on his lap. The camera would zoom in on the legal pad where three giant Sharpie dollar signs were underlined. You would see no solar panels on Fezywig. You would see no wind generator on Fezywig. You would see no water maker on Fezywig. Sometimes the result of all our effort and research is the decision not to change anything. The montage would close with Karina saying, “We miss you guys. Didn’t we come out here to be together? You’re gone all day, every day.”

  “Why don’t we sail out to Tintamarre?” Erik suggested. Ile Tintamarre was part of the Saint Martin Nature Reserve, about three miles east from our protected marina in Oyster Pond. There would be no shops, no restaurants, and no garbage cans. Just lizards and fish. It sounded perfect.

  This was gonna be good. Finally a chance to relax and do what we had come for. We all went to t
he deck to enjoy the ride and help raise the sails. To be on the safe side, we tethered Eli and Lily in to the jacklines. Erik sat at the helm with his big straw hat and sunglasses. The engines grumbled and sputtered as we made our way to the channel opening. What a relief to part ways with the dock, even for just a few hours. We would be back before dark.

  We rounded the steep rock outcropping that stood between us and the ocean. To our left a jagged hill climbed high and pinched the water into a narrow cut. The ocean swell started to bounce the boat. Erik revved the engines, and their sound rose into a rapid, loud clacking. The whole boat pitched forward steeply, and everyone’s feet came up off the trampoline.

  “Holy crap!” Erik said from the helm. Everything not strapped down inside the boat started to crash. Books slid across and off the table. Dishes clanged to the floor. The iMac we’d brought for school tipped over onto its face and threatened to tumble to the floor. The printer slid sideways across the shelf.

  “Emily, can you pin all that stuff down?” Erik shouted over the engine noise, his voice pitched higher than usual.

  “Eli and Lily, let’s get inside,” I said. The boat angled backward as it rode the next wave, throwing Alison and Karina tight against the mast where they waited to raise the mainsail. I cautiously shuffled sideways back toward the cockpit, keeping both hands on the chrome bars in front of me and Lily trapped between me and the boat so she didn’t go flying. Jane did the same on the other side with Eli. Once inside, I sent Eli and Lily below deck so nothing would accidentally fall on them.

  “You okay?” I heard Erik call out.

  I looked through the salon windows to see Alison and Karina bear-hugging the mast. At least they were wearing life jackets. This was supposed to be a quick, peaceful jaunt.

  “Hold on and be careful,” Erik told them as they made their way back into the cockpit, the mainsail successfully aloft.