by Erik Orton
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “I’ll set it up.”
We returned the borrowed dinghy, moved to a mooring ball, and started rigging our own dinghy to the stern. It was immediately clear our new spot on the mooring ball was a hot and stuffy with no breeze.
“Shall we get out of here?” I asked Emily. I was fed up. “We can spend the night at Tintamarre, sail around to the lagoon tomorrow, go to church the next day, and leave for the BVI right after that. We have to leave from that side of the island anyway.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
We’d figure this all out in the BVI.
I pointed Fezywig out of the channel. This was our third time sailing out this channel. I officially hated it. But we knew what we were doing: music cranked, jacklines clipped, tables and counters cleared. “Hang on,” I called out as I revved our one engine and headed into the oncoming waves. Nausea crept in. I didn’t care. I wanted out of that stuffy marina, I wanted off this island, and I wanted to get our trip started.
We motored to Tintamarre. No sails this time. When we arrived we saw several boats already moored off the beach. There was one mooring ball close to shore, so we headed straight at it.
We inched up to the mooring ball, Karina and Alison on the bow, ready to grab the line and tie us off. But they missed it.
“Ali, take the helm!” I shouted to the bow. As she came to the helm, I stepped down to the stern and—as we floated past—grabbed the mooring ball line with my hands. Our boat weighed twenty-eight tons and was being pushed by fifteen-knot trade winds. The mooring line was cemented to the ocean floor. I was trying to hold the two together and was clearly the weak link.
“Bring me a docking line!” I shouted to everyone. One appeared. I laced it through the mooring line and tied it off to one side of the stern.
“Bring me another one!” Another one appeared. I laced it through the mooring line, tied it down to the other side of the stern, and balanced out the two docking lines into an even Y. We were now anchored, but backward. I proceeded to shout and bark orders until we had pivoted the boat 180 degrees and it was pointing into the wind. I didn’t know if I was mad at my family or myself. Probably both. Why was everything going wrong? Why couldn’t Karina and Alison get the line on the first try? Why didn’t the engine work? Why did I have to be seasick? Why, why, why?
We all slumped around the salon table, each of us looking off at nothing in particular.
“Whose dumb idea was this?” I asked out loud.
A couple heads lifted up from the table. All eyes turned to me.
“It was your idea!” they all said, and they busted up laughing.
I held my grumpy face as long as I could, and then I a let a smile slip through.
“Hey, that’s not entirely true,” Emily said. “We’ve all been planning this for years. We decided together.”
The kids knew she was right. I knew the kids were right. It had been my idea in the beginning, but now we all owned it. We sipped our broth and chuckled quietly. Nobody had the energy for any big moves.
I stumbled below deck to sleep in my cabin. Alison made it to her cabin. Karina and SJ wrapped up in beach towels and slept on the trampoline until they got too cold. Emily “slept” on the salon floor with Eli and Lily curled up on either side.
The next morning I was happy to get up early. I couldn’t wait to get to land and hold still. Emily and each of the kids all had the same idea. We piled in the dinghy and motored to shore. We were the only ones there. I was strung out. This was not what I’d bargained for. I wanted quality time with my family in a beautiful setting, not an emotional, physical, and financial suffer-fest. We needed this quiet place where the only sounds were crashing waves and wind rustling the tall grass. Lizards silently warmed in the sun. They didn’t judge us. Emily and I sat at a shaded picnic table and decided not to feel sorry for ourselves. I know that sounds ridiculous. We were in the Caribbean living the dream we’d been planning for the previous six years. If there was such a thing as dreamer’s remorse, we were feeling it, but we knew the cure: gratitude.
I pulled out my smartphone to record this low moment. I went around the circle asking everyone, “What was awesome about today?” Sarah Jane liked the breeze. Emily liked Karina’s cheery board shorts and the patterns that lizards left in the soft dirt with their tails. Lily liked the water and being together. Karina and Alison liked having pancakes for breakfast and keeping them down. Eli liked the bandage Emily had made for his newly scraped toe. I was grateful for the breeze, the shade, and that no one had vomited so far that day.
Mostly, we liked being together experiencing this journey. We spent the whole day doing things that couldn’t be undone. We looked in each other’s eyes, rested in a hammock, stared at the sky, picked up shells, marched through the brush, watched birds nesting, held hands, and smiled.
The sun got low in the sky. We wanted to be at anchor in the lagoon before dark.
I tried to start our good engine. I turned the key and got nothing. I stopped smiling. I was able to get our smoky port engine going, but that didn’t fill me with confidence. I hailed the catamaran next to us, and the gents sitting down to dinner with their wives agreed to put their meal on hold to help us troubleshoot. One of the more experienced sailors explained Yanmar engines sometimes have a “dead spot” on the starter motor. He showed me how to manually rotate past it. I turned the key and the engine started right up. I thanked them both, cast off from the mooring ball, and headed to Simpson Bay Lagoon.
“Maybe that’s what was wrong with the other engine,” I said to Emily as we motored along.
“Maybe,” she said. But neither of us sounded convinced.
By nightfall we were anchored back in the lagoon. The next day we’d finally leave for the BVI.
At church, we hugged our friends goodbye. I happened to mention our little engine situation to Yuanita. Yuanita was from the Netherlands and had lived on this Dutch island for decades. “My husband, Robert, will come take a look,” she said. “I insist.” Yuanita was a formidable woman, not to be trifled with. “He ran a boat yard for years.” I wasn’t opposed to getting a final signoff before making my first ocean crossing with my wife and five kids.
Robert came to check the engine. Like a surgeon preparing to deliver bad news, he said, “Come with me.” He drove me straight to the diesel engine shop on shore and walked me in. Within minutes I had a referral for a follow-up appointment. At eight the next morning a guy named Nick showed up at our boat with a cigarette and a toolbox. He checked the compression. All good there. He removed the fuel injectors and took them back to his shop for tests. I wish he’d taken my blood pressure. The fuel injectors all failed their bench test. I was starting to feel dizzy. Couldn’t someone get me some juice and cookies? I wanted to get out of here. I wanted to get to the BVI. Was that so much to ask?
I emailed Gwen and Sunsail with the update. It appeared they had not gotten to the root of the engine’s problem. Her response: if I could pick him up, Joachim—the Head Physician of Boat Phase-Outs—would come to look at our boat in person. I liked Joachim. He had given us our first tour of Fezywig and showed us how to turn on our stove that first day aboard. Even so, our whole trip was unraveling. We’d already been on Saint Martin a month. Were we doomed to remain stuck on this gorgeous, Caribbean island forever? Oh, how I suffered! I agreed to pick him up, rested my head on the cockpit table, and the Fezywigs settled in for yet another night in the lagoon.
Chapter 6
The Essentials
Dutch Side, Simpson Bay Lagoon, Sint Maarten
30 Days aboard Fezywig
EMILY
“We can’t live in crisis mode,” I told Erik. “I feel like we’ve been running since Halloween. I’m exhausted.”
“I’m exhausted too,” Erik said. “But we still need solar panels and a water maker. I want to get a m
onitor for the batteries so we know if they’re charging. We might need a bigger inverter.”
That first month felt all new every day. Our rhythm was to wake up sweating and run all day through a thick jungle of new information and then fall asleep bone-tired with our clothes sticking to our bodies at night. We were running on emotional fumes. It was unsustainable.
“You’re right. It’s all important,” I agreed. “We knew it would be like this. Everyone says the boat list is endless. They’re right. But that means it’s always going to be there. Maybe we could spend some hours every day working on the boat and then put a cap on it and do other things. I’d love a routine, so we have time for the boat, school, and fun.”
“And sex?” Erik suggested.
“Yes,” I laughed. “If we weren’t dead tired.” I went on, “What needs to happen for you to consider your day a success?”
“I like food three times a day,” Erik said. “I like to write in my journal or work on my novel. I like to take care of business for the boat or our apartment. I like to spend time as a family. I like to play music and maybe read. I like to get seven to eight hours of sleep.”
“That sounds like a good day,” I said.
“How about you?” he asked.
“I feel good about my day if I practice yoga, journal, and read my scriptures. And just read in general. Those are the things I need for me, so I don’t feel like I’m completely out of control,” I said. “For school, I make sure each kid does reading, writing, and math, but I really like reading aloud to the kids. Food is important . . . and I would definitely feel more adventurous if I got enough sleep every day.”
“Wait—you like reading aloud to the kids?” Erik teased.
“The point is . . . ” I said, “we came out here to be together. I don’t know how long we have to wait for our engine to be fixed, but we don’t have to wait to be together.” The British Virgin Islands were our destination, but our goal was making memories as a family. The question was whether our goal could override our destination. Finally, our destination fever broke.
Thanks to Joachim, Nick paid us a visit. Nick traveled the lagoon on his pontoon boat fixing the boats assigned to him by Gordy, who ran the Yanmar diesel engine shop. Nick cleated his boat off our stern and inspected our portside engine. He was young but leathery and didn’t talk much. He said we needed a new part and ordered it. A few days later he returned to install the part and test the engine. It didn’t work. He smoked a cigarette, packed up the useless part, and dinghied back to the island. The ritual started over again. And again. Each attempted fix added three to seven days to our wait. Thank goodness we’d let go of our timeline. Nick became another friendly face in our routine instead of a nagging reminder that we were stuck in Sint Maarten.
I practiced yoga before the Cruiser’s Net. I listened to the Net while setting out breakfast. Most days, I served dry rolled oats with lukewarm boxed UHT milk, walnuts, craisins, and honey. What I prepared is irrelevant. The point was, I didn’t have to decide what we would eat every day. Making it routine conserved decision-making energy for more important things. After breakfast, I didn’t have to assign dishes because I had made a chore chart. Karina, Alison, and Sarah Jane were trained in water conservation techniques: rinse everything in saltwater, scrub everything, rinse everything in freshwater. After breakfast, I read scriptures and wrote in my journal. Then I supervised the older kids and did school with the younger kids. Lunch marked the end of our academic work.
I supervised the older kids and
did school with the younger kids.
In the afternoons, meal preparation was a shared event. The kids used their leisure time to accompany Dad on errands, read, play on deck, or help with chores. Karina tied flat sheets to the rope trampolines and they filled like windsocks, making shady tents for playing, reading, or napping. The marinas had trading shelves where we found interesting books. Eli tried setting up rows of game tiles one day, but they fell down every few seconds when Fezywig shifted. Dang Caribbean breezes.
Once a week, I did laundry in a large plastic garbage bin with a plunger set apart for washing. I filled the bin with laundry, covered it with water and added a little soap. All the kids helped. Even Lily took a turn agitating the wash with the plunger. After several rinses and twisting out as much water as possible, we each got a handful of wooden clothes pins to help hang the laundry to dry, including Lily. Her occupational therapist would have been proud. The laundry didn’t always look cleaner, but it smelled cleaner. Hanging laundry to dry in the sun felt satisfyingly wholesome.
We ate dinner together every night. We told each other about our days—the highs and the lows. Just because you share a thirty-eight by twenty-two-foot space doesn’t mean you know what is going on in each other’s lives. We looked in each other’s eyes. We cleaned up together afterwards. Many nights Erik read aloud, in various accents, from Kon Tiki, about a group of scientists sailing their re-creation of an ancient raft from Peru to Polynesia. The kids loved it. We shared favorite passages from books. One of our favorites was from Robert K. Massie’s Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman: “Gradually, guided by her own curiosity, she was acquiring a superior education.” We don’t want our kids to grow to be despots, even enlightened ones, but we loved this sentiment and still quote it to each other from memory. Whatever we shared became a common point of reference connecting us as a family.
Maybe we were a little too connected on the boat. One afternoon, the girls and I were doing schoolwork at the salon table when we heard Eli in the portside head counting slowly and with great effort, “Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.” A moment later he appeared.
“Did you flush?” Sarah Jane asked.
“I pumped it twenty times,” Eli said.
“That’s not the same thing,” Alison said. She went to check and shouted, “Eli, you’re not done in here!”
“Look, it wasn’t my idea to live on this stupid boat,” Eli said. He stomped away—as far as he could get on a sailboat. Hopefully, away enough that he didn’t hear us laughing.
I shouldn’t laugh. I wasn’t a savvy sailor either. One night, the Tidmarshes, a family from church, invited us to dinner. We were lucky to have friends on land. It was always a treat when one of them invited us over and a little bit of a trick to get there. All five kids were already in the dinghy with their life vests buckled on. I stood on Fezywig’s bottom starboard step, checking with my hands to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.
“I pumped it twenty times,” Eli said.
“Backpack, purse with iPhone and local phone, VHF clipped on, Tevas. Okay, I’m ready,” I said to myself and I stepped toward the dinghy where all the kids were already waiting. Erik was in the salon grabbing the outboard key off the navigation desk. As I stepped my right foot to the dinghy, I heard a splash. The VHF had fallen into the water. It was waterproof, and I could still see it. If I didn’t dive after it now, we might never find it again. Fezywig was always shifting directions with the wind, and the bottom of this lagoon was murky and covered with plants. I knew Erik would be upset if I lost the VHF. I was fully dressed, but I dove for it. I could almost reach it. I pulled myself down into the water with both arms, but I wasn’t making much progress. I’m not a great diver, so I knew I had to grab it before it got deep. I kept struggling to get down as the VHF easily sank out of reach and out of sight.
I resurfaced disappointed but certain I had made my best effort and that Erik would understand. I sat on the lower steps of Fezywig to catch my breath and wonder how the VHF had dropped. The clip was still on my purse. Maybe my knee bumped it out of the clip when I stepped toward the dinghy. Oh, no. My purse. I had dived in with everything on. I unzipped my tiny black polyester purse to find two wet phones—mine and the local one I had borrowed from the Claire Sala.
Erik was on deck now, and I immediately owned my mistake.
“The VHF fe
ll in, so I dove after it, but I was still wearing my purse and backpack, so both phones are wet now.”
Erik was stony. “Of course you couldn’t get it. Your backpack was like a flotation device. Why would you jump into saltwater with phones?! Now we’ve lost two phones and the VHF.” He grabbed two snorkel masks and threw one to me. We slipped into the lagoon to hunt for the VHF. It was essential for communication.
After fifteen minutes, we gave up. Fezywig had already shifted, and now we were late for dinner, too.
“I wish we could call our friends to let them know we’ll be late,” Erik said. “But we don’t have a VHF, or a local phone, or your iPhone.” Erik rolled his eyes my way before revving the motor. In trying to be a hero, I had effectively broken all forms of communication in one dramatic swoop.
The kids were smart enough not to complain about saltwater spray on our way to our friends’. Of course we were all smiles, even though we were late and Erik and I were still damp. He explained our delay as if it were already a joke to him. I was relieved to have someone to talk to. We ate delicious food made in a full-size oven. We swam in their freshwater pool. I playfully tossed Lily into the shallow end where Erik was waiting. I expected her to surface with confidence in her personal buoyancy. That’s how Erik was taught to swim. She surfaced, but stopped trusting me in the water and clung to the pool sides and stairs after that. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. I wanted her to trust me. I also didn’t want her jumping off Fezywig when nobody was looking. That’s why we had netting, tethers, and a life vest for her. That’s why she slept in the room right across from me.
