Seven at Sea

by Erik Orton

  While we were grateful to have slept, everyone wanted to move on the next morning. The seas had stayed choppy all night, even in the anchorage. Ile Fourchue was no place to look at a faulty engine. We were off to St. Barts.

  EMILY

  I imagined St. Barts as upscale and manicured. Colombier was nothing like that. We were almost completely encircled by the craggy island reaching out into the ocean. The crescent beach was a full mile walk from anywhere else on the island, making it too remote for crowds. There was plenty of room for all three boats among the half dozen already anchored. Rugged terrain; calm, clear waters; and friends surrounded us. A ribbon of steep mountainside trail laced through dramatic pitted rock formations. I couldn’t wait to hike it.

  First we wanted to check in and buy some Wi-Fi access. John volunteered to host a check-in party to the main town of Gustavia. It was a group date for the parents. Erik and I brought spoons.

  Gustavia was more like I had expected St. Barts to be—a lush, green, hilly island with stunning views; quaint, colorful homes; and luxury boutiques. But it was unexpectedly quiet.

  “French holiday,” Erik said.

  “What holiday?” I asked.

  “Who knows?” he said. He was guessing, but he was right. Fortunately, the check-in office was open. It boasted vaulted ceilings, multiple digital check-in screens, and lots of glossy pamphlets touting local attractions. The concierges sat behind a polished counter in matching navy polos tucked into ironed shorts and fastened with shiny belts. Erik bought a week’s worth of Wi-Fi. After seeing Colombier, we definitely wanted to stay a few days.

  We walked up and down the quiet streets of Gustavia, peeking in closed shop windows. Erik had started a photo collection of Caribbean doors. He added a few brightly painted hand-carved doors. He liked the craftsmanship, the unknown story behind each one, and the metaphor of possibilities.

  “Who wants gelato?” Michelle asked, spotting the only open shop we’d seen.

  “Peter brought spoons,” Lisa said.

  “We have spoons too,” Erik said. Having spoons meant we were prepared for things to go right.

  I was as eager as everyone else to explore remote and rugged Colombier. Nobody wanted to hear about this secondhand, so we launched our own mini-invasion of Colombier beach. This was an all-ashore affair. Everyone came. All the dads. All the moms. All the kids. Nobody was left behind. We were an army of rash guards, sunhats, and sturdy rubber sandals. We pulled the dinghies ashore. Where did that ribbon of trail lead? What was on the other side of those craggy hills?

  The trail started narrow, so we walked single file. The Bigs and Middles got ahead. Jack stayed with Michelle, and Erik stayed close to Eli. I couldn’t see the girls, but I heard them talking and laughing ahead. I stayed with Lily, which meant I was the end of the line. Ahead, a sharp right turn took everyone past my field of view. Lily and I were alone. Again. I pressed on slowly.

  “Look at these leaves,” I said.

  “Let’s go smell that flower.”

  “Oh! Lily, do you see the butterfly?” We passed under a canopy of tall bushes where butterflies darted in and out. How did this wild, arid, steep, volcanic island also have this shady, cool, green butterfly haven? We didn’t get much past the butterflies when Lily lost interest. Her eyebrows knit together over rosy red cheeks. She tugged at the chinstrap on her hat.

  “Get this off. Off,” she said pulling through the Velcro and tossing the hat aside. She sat down on the path, her legs extended out like a V. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I’m hungry,” Lily said.

  “We just ate,” I said. “We’ll have lunch when we get back to the boat.” She noticed little stones on the path. She picked one up and threw it down the steep hillside. It bounced along until I couldn’t see it anymore. The ocean constantly foamed and crashed into the island beneath us, too far away to hear. Lily picked up another stone and threw it.

  I coaxed, “Come on, Lily. Get up. We’re walking. Do you want to be with Jenna and Jack?” She picked up another stone and threw it down the mountain. I tried again.

  “Let’s stay together with our group. Can you see Daddy?” Lily picked up another stone and threw it down the mountain. She was completely covered in dust now. Her sweaty face was dusty. Her pink and white rash guard was dusty. I stood behind her, hooked my elbows under her arms, and heaved upward. Lily didn’t help. She let her dead weight hang and took advantage of her freakishly flexible shoulders. She started to slip from my grasp. I caught her butt with the top of my foot and clasped my fingers together in front of her chest. I heaved her up again.

  “Put your feet down, Lily. Stand up! Stand up!” She stood up.

  I couldn’t see anyone from our group ahead on the twisting trail. Why am I always the one who stays behind with Lily? Why am I risking my spine lifting her and carrying her? Why aren’t Karina and Alison helping me? Why doesn’t SJ care? I understood why the kids walked ahead. They helped a lot at home. Why did Erik skip ahead as if he hadn’t a responsibility in the world, without a moment’s concern for me? I had a lot of time to ruminate while I coaxed Lily down the trail.

  Eventually I met up with the Bigs and Middles under a shady overhang.

  “Hey guys,” I said. “How was it?”

  “Awesome,” SJ said, climbing the overhang wall. “There’s a really cool lagoon down there, so we all went swimming. It was really fun. You should’ve been there.”

  “Is it all right if Lily sits here with you so I can check it out?” I asked. The Middles looked at each other sideways. They didn’t want to be responsible.

  “Of course,” Alison said.

  I marched ahead to see what I had missed as Erik and the rest of the parents and Littles approached the overhang. Erik had the gall to smile.

  “Hi,” he kept smiling. I did not smile.

  “Lily decided she didn’t want to hike.”

  “Oh,” he said, noticing I was not smiling. “Do you want to see the lagoon?”

  “I’m on my way,” I said still walking.

  “I’ll come with you,” he offered. He walked the remainder of the trail again—with me in tow. I’m sure it was a lot less pleasant for him the second time.

  “You guys left me back there all by myself with Lily,” I complained once we were out of earshot. “She wouldn’t move. Why do I always have to stay behind?” Erik mostly listened. He tried to point out the beautiful features of the island, but I was too bitter to enjoy it. It all sounded like descriptions of a party I didn’t get to attend. I took one look at the shallow turquoise lagoon and marched back up the trail to the beach. But I saw it, damn it.

  Back on the beach, Karina’s face was completely flushed.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. My maternal instincts overrode my personal frustration.

  “I’m nauseous,” she said. “My head aches. I don’t want to move.”

  “Did you drink any water today?” I asked, quickly diagnosing her with heatstroke. I’d read so many medical books and articles on basic illnesses, as a mom, not just for this trip.

  “Yes. I’ve been drinking water all morning,” she said. “I threw up on my way to the beach.”

  “Let’s get you into the shade,” I said.

  I put her arm over my shoulder and helped her step around the puddles full of black, spiny sea urchins to the dinghy.

  Once back in her cabin, I closed all the blinds and put a towel over her face. The first aid guide recommended visiting a hospital, but also suggested sips of saltwater over time. For a nauseous cruiser who lived in saltwater full-time, the remedy was almost worse than the sickness. Every few minutes I checked in and gave her another small sip of saltwater. I could get to Gustavia if she needed a doctor, but I wanted to give the home remedy a chance. After an hour of horizontal rest and small servings of saltwater, Karina felt better. As a mother, my biggest conc
ern was that my family might get sick or injured. That was true no matter where we lived. On Fezywig, I knew how little it would take to break an ankle, crush a thumb, or get jacked up in the ropes. I loved being on this journey, but the trade-off was constant vulnerability. I was grateful for every day that ended with my family whole and healthy.

  “How’s she doing?” Erik asked when I came to bed.

  “Karina’s fine.”

  “How are you doing?” He’s a brave man. I was still upset about the hike.

  “I feel really stupid, but I’m still angry,” I said. “I feel like I always get stuck with Lily. I love her, but I feel like I miss out on a lot of things because of her.”

  “Maybe the kids could pitch in more.”

  “She’s our kid. We are the ones responsible for her. The bulk of the burden should not be on them. I don’t want it to always be me. We’re out here in these beautiful places and I want to see them too. I don’t always want to go at Lily’s speed or be held hostage by her mood. She is getting too big for me to carry. And I’m stuck. I don’t want to resent her, but sometimes I do.” I went on and Erik listened. This was not his first rodeo. He let me spew the poison first. He heard me. That helped me let go a little more. Once I was all cried out and heard, we started seeking solutions.

  “I know you love Lily,” Erik said, opening his arms to me. Exhausted, I fell in and let him hold me.

  “You are with Lily a lot,” Erik said. “I want to be aware of that and take turns. I want you to be able to enjoy this trip too.”

  “I can do better at recognizing when I’m losing it,” I said. “I could give you some warning and ask for help.” Those conversations are never fun, and I always feel like a ridiculous baby afterwards. But our communication does improve.

  I needn’t have worried about missing the hike. Lisa, Michelle, and I hiked it every morning that week. The world over, women meet in the mornings to get some endorphins and some emotional support from their friends. I was doing it in Tevas on a volcanic island overlooking the Caribbean Sea. Same idea. Same structure. Same sanity. A little bit of morning time spent taking care of myself made me a much better wife and mother all day long. Erik didn’t mind the quiet early morning writing session. We were both getting what we needed.

  ERIK

  The definition of cruising is repairing your boat in exotic locations. We’d done our check-in trip and hiked Colombier, so we three dads were ready to tackle the sputtering port engine. Peter, John, and I had all seen the completely rebuilt engine installed days earlier. With our own eyes and ears we’d witnessed its beauty and sublimity. Unless there was some dark voodoo magic at work, we figured the trouble was elsewhere. Emily returned from her morning hike to two dinghies attached to our stern but didn’t see anyone aboard.

  “Hello?” she called out.

  “Down here,” I said from the aft port cabin. That was usually where she found us when there was a problem. She craned her head around the staircase to see what was going on. John, Peter, and I were crammed into a space the size of a doormat. The mattresses and floor panels were pulled up to reveal the battery bank and fuel tank below. Peter leaned over the fuel tank. John and I shared the remaining space and looked over Peter’s shoulder. We all had a sheen of sweat and grease on our faces to prove we’d been working. I smiled up at Emily, “It seems to be a fuel issue.”

  “Okay,” she said a bit blankly.

  I expounded: “The boat had been sitting still for so long at the dock that some kind of fuel algae had grown inside our tank—not unusual in a tropical climate—but it all settled to the bottom. As long as it stayed on the bottom, the engine pulled in clean fuel. That’s why the engine ran smooth for hours while we were testing it on the dock. But as soon as we went out into open water, the fuel tank got stirred up. The algae mixed into the fuel and clogged up the fuel line. When the engine ran out of fuel, it just died.” All three of us dads smiled up at Emily.

  “That’s great. How did you figure that out?”

  “Funny you should ask,” I said, clearly giddy about the fact that this problem had been solved. “John and Peter both suspected it was a fuel supply issue, so we tested the fuel line to make sure gas was flowing. When John sucked on the fuel line, nothing came through. Then we went to the tank, found the clog, and cleaned it up. When John sucked the fuel line again, he got a mouth full of diesel.”

  “Gross. Thanks, John,” Emily said.

  “No problem,” John said, bobbing his head like it was no big deal.

  Emily and I later decided “sucking diesel” was the new high bar for true friendship. Our port engine ran perfectly again.

  It was a sweet moment in Colombier when we made our first batch of at-anchor water. I was nervous about turning it on properly. I didn’t want to break it. There were a lot of steps that had to be done in the right sequence, but it worked beautifully. The water maker gave us a sense of competence and confidence. With enough provisions, we could travel anywhere. Once again we found ourselves around the dinner table.

  “What do you think about the Mediterranean?” I asked Emily.

  “Could be fun. Or if we cross the Atlantic in summer, we could visit your family in Finland,” she said.

  “I like that.”

  Karina rolled her eyes. She’d heard us talk big before. We’d successfully sailed our boat fourteen miles, and all of a sudden we thought we were Jacques Cousteau. She didn’t have to say it. All the kids knew: don’t get emotionally involved until it’s real. It was a game for the older kids. They liked to guess what step we might take next.

  “Are we going to Grenada with Discovery and Day Dreamer?” Sarah Jane asked. We wanted to live with the possibilities for a while. Now our own kids were asking for a plan. Didn’t they already know we didn’t know?

  “What’s your preference, SJ?” I asked.

  “Grenada. I want to stay with our friends. There are lots of other cruisers there, too.” SJ knew what she wanted.

  Alison said, “Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun. They have group game nights and the teenagers all get together.”

  Then Karina said, “Yeah, and there will probably be more boys in Grenada.” The three young PR reps from Day Dreamer were doing their job.

  As much as we wanted to dream about Scandinavia and the Mediterranean, staying with friends and meeting more cruisers sounded awesome.

  “I’m really interested in Dominica,” Emily said. “I’ve heard it has so many waterfalls and the most delicious water.”

  If we were going to have this conversation about reality, then I was going to ground it in reality: “How would we make money?” I asked. I’d hoped to trade stocks online to extend our savings, but we hadn’t had enough Wi-Fi before now to make that work, plus I was completely new to it. I knew we only had a certain amount of time before our money ran out. We had a water maker, but money was a kind of water too. I hadn’t figured out how to make money from the boat. So we couldn’t sail forever. Our route would have to factor in getting us home while we had money enough to get us there. We’d sublet our apartment, rented out our van, and done everything we could think of to cut costs, but it was still not enough.

  “We could go to Grenada and try to get jobs on the island,” I said. “Living on this boat costs less than living in our apartment. So we can afford to earn less.”

  “We wouldn’t need winter clothes,” Jane said.

  “We could write and record songs here on the boat and sell them online,” Karina said.

  “We could bake for other sailors and clean the barnacles off their boats,” Alison suggested.

  “It could pay pretty well except most cruisers are hardcore DIY people,” Emily said. “It’s hard to be an entrepreneur when everyone wants to do it themselves.”

  Eli and Lily stayed out of this one.

  We filled numerous legal pads with the pros and cons
of north vs. south. This conversation was getting old. A decision would be a relief.

  * * *

  1.Tacking: sailing the hard way. The easy way is to have the wind behind you. Sailing toward the wind is tricky. You can’t sail straight at it, so you zig and zag (tack) across it to make headway. Peter liked to do things the hard way whenever possible, just for fun.

  Chapter 10

  Farewell Flotilla

  Sint Eustatius, Dutch Antilles

  4 Months, 9 Days aboard Fezywig

  ERIK

  Our next island was Sint Eustatius, affectionately called Statia. Since it was a short hop, Emily and I decided to motor sail. We were halfway to Statia when the sound of the port engine changed. I couldn’t believe it. This was becoming a running gag. I opened the engine compartment and looked inside.

  “The alternator has literally fallen off,” I said to Emily. I was proud of myself. I didn’t growl or curse. I didn’t even break a sweat. We laughed and continued on to our anchorage, where I confirmed what I had seen previously. With all the jostling of being at sea, the bolt had simply snapped and the alternator had fallen off. The engine ran fine. It didn’t charge our batteries, which was important but not crucial. This was, after all, a shakedown cruise. After conferring with my fellow captains, Emily and I decided to get replacement hardware in Saint Martin and fix it there. But first, Statia.

  “The alternator has literally fallen off,” I said to Emily.

  I was surprised to learn Sint Eustasius was the first country to acknowledge the United States of America as a sovereign nation. During the Revolutionary War, it was a hub of trading activity. A naval vessel pulled into port flying a U.S. flag. That boat received the proper salute from the Statian cannons, and the rest is history. That day is still celebrated every year on Statia, and I’d never heard of this place before. I realized I had a lot to learn.