Seven at Sea

by Erik Orton

  Alison and I lay down on the cockpit bench, head to head, our feet at opposite ends. We shared a set of headphones and listened to tunes from my iPhone. I’m grateful my fifteen-year-old daughter and I can enjoy the same music. I finally got over my nausea and checked our course. We were headed in the right direction.

  Moving made me feel sick again, so I went to the rail. All the spaghetti dinner was gone from my previous watch, so this time it was just bile. The ocean hissed and the water teemed in the white glow of our stern light. We were moving fast, about seven or eight knots. I lay back down. I felt the wind pick up and the temperature drop. I went to the helm and looked at the wind indicator. I lay back down and said, “Alison, this is what thirty-one knots of wind feels like.”

  Then the wind shifted to the south and the boom threw over from port to starboard, pulling the preventer taut. The boom creaked. I moved quickly to the helm. The wind built and the rigging groaned. Then the rain started. Torrents, all in blackness. Wind at thirty knots, thirty-five knots, then forty knots. I turned on the engines. “Alison, I’m going to point us into the wind to take the strain off the sails.” The rain was inundating. I couldn’t see anything. I was soaked. I took off my glasses and held them in my left hand while I gripped the wheel with both hands. The iPad we used to navigate fell into the cockpit. After the second fall I handed it to Alison. “I’m not going to use this,” I said. I was going straight into the wind, pure and simple. Alison prayed out loud. We are a praying family. We know God doesn’t always calm the storm, but He can calm us in the storm. We needed some inner calm.

  The rigging and sails rattled like pent-up prisoners. I kept my eyes fixed on the wind indicator and the sails. No pressure on the sails. Keep them slack. That was the plan.

  The rain kept coming. I was cold and started to shake. There was no time to put on more layers, so I was in track pants and a T-shirt, no socks. Motoring upwind took the strain off the sails but also moved us toward the back of the squall.

  “What time is it?” I asked Alison.

  “Almost 4:30.”

  The sky would lighten eventually and we could take the sails down, but I wasn’t about to do that in the dark. Not in these seas. I was now heading east back toward Saint Martin. I saw its lights glowing over the horizon, but the light continued to widen. I was seeing the divide between the sea and the clouds overhead. Like a narrow strip of torn paper, a band of light started to open.

  The winds gradually settled down. Once we were into a steady seventeen to eighteen knots, I started to trust the wind wasn’t going to gust up and change directions again. I eased us north and let the sails fill again. The waves were now coming at the boat from behind instead of dead on. The waves carried us forward instead of us bucking against them head-on. With that one turn, the whole world seemed to calm down. The rain came with cold slabs of air, but now the air blew warm again. The squall passed.

  My teeth chattered and my right leg shook as I propped it against the bulkhead. “Alison, I’m cold,” I said. “Can you hand me the blanket?”

  “It’s wet,” she said.

  “That’s okay, so am I.” She handed me a pale blue blanket and I wrapped myself in it. My teeth chattered less. I wiped the saltwater off my glasses and put them back on. My nausea returned. My leg shook less. I prayed a little too—a prayer of gratitude.

  The wind moved back to its original direction. I eased the boat west again, but needed to reset the sails before we could get fully back on course.

  “Alison, we need to jibe,4 and I’m feeling awful. Can you do the deck work?” She was wet and a little rattled, but she nodded her head. I talked her through all the steps to make sure we were on the same page. “Sound good?” I asked. She nodded. We went to work.

  5:30 a.m. The sky was bright enough to see. Back on course, we slumped into the cockpit. At 6:00 a.m, I knocked on Karina’s hatch and called her up for her watch. The sky was fully bright. We could see Virgin Gorda in the distance. We were going to make it. We’d made it through the night. Emily woke up to join Karina as I flopped into bed.

  9:00 a.m. I woke up. The whole boat was full of laughter and happy shouting. I still felt nauseous but made my way to the bow and lay down on the trampoline. I watched as seven dolphins swam along below our hull, darting forward and up, playing with us and each other, racing ahead and jumping into a flip that landed them on their back. Eli and Lily squealed. The dolphins swam with us for almost an hour and then disappeared as quickly as the squall had.

  By midday we’d reached Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands. For better or for worse, it was done.

  Our first crossing. Eighty miles down. Only 2,420 to go.

  It felt good to be somewhere familiar. A year and a half earlier, Emily and I had been here trying a catamaran for the first time. Two and a half years before that, we’d done our sailing class with Matt. Now we were here with our kids. We took SJ, Eli, and Lily in the dinghy and headed for shore. We pulled up, tied off the dinghy, and stepped onto solid ground. It felt so good. We walked around to a grassy spot with shade, lay down on our backs, and felt the beautiful sensation of stability. Nothing moved beneath us. In our heads we continued to roll back and forth with the rhythm of the sea, but we knew it was an illusion. We were safe.

  We got an email off to Day Dreamer and Discovery. They had been worried about us. A fifty-foot catamaran heading the opposite direction was hit by the same squall that hit us. It had ripped off their mast. They’d had to cut it loose and drop it into the sea to save the boat. They showed up in Saint Martin rattled and worn, but safe. We hugged our kids extra tight that night.

  EMILY

  “You guys are going to love the Baths!” I said. “It’s this massive playground of boulders with hidden caves and tide pools and . . .”

  “It’s cool to finally be here,” Karina said. “This is the one place we said we would go that we’ve actually gone to.”

  “We’re doing it,” I said.

  “Are we going to have to swim in?” Jane asked.

  “We’ll take the dinghy in part way and swim in from there,” Erik said. “Mom and I will tow Eli and Lily in the inner tubes.” We woke up super early that morning to get one of the few daytime mooring balls. We would make good on our promise.

  “Wear your rash guards and hats,” I said. “Does everyone have sunglasses?” We made quite the water parade swimming to shore from Fezywig with our team of seven, including two inner tubes. This was one of my favorite places on the planet. By the time I got Lily ashore and stowed our flippers and tubes, the older kids were dying to race off into the maze of boulders. We arranged a meet-up and persuaded them to hold still long enough for a photo. Then they were off. That’s exactly how I had felt the first time I’d come to the Baths.

  Erik and I both stayed with Lily. We wanted the older kids to feel completely untethered. I held Lily’s hand and remembered the little boy with Down syndrome I had met in that same spot years earlier. As I waded into the famous cove of water, Lily said, “Hold me,” and wrapped around me like a koala. She was still learning to swim. Is it better to be scared and safe or fearless and reckless? We each have to decide for ourselves. I passed her to Erik, and he spun her around in the light streaming through the granite boulders. I was so in love with Erik in that moment.

  We all made our own way toward Devil’s Bay on the other side of the rocks.

  “I can see why you like it here,” Alison said, letting the coming tide spin her around in a tiny cove. “Thanks for bringing us.” Even Eli climbed, jumped, and swam. This had to be better than a video game. My children’s eyes sparkled with increased alertness and curiosity. They were fully engaged.

  Of course we can all live and die and have a meaningful life without ever visiting the Baths, but it was special to Erik and me. It was a luxurious privilege to share this pristine natural landscape with our children. It was one
more thing in their lives that could not be undone.

  We had been hustling since Saba, survived an unexpected squall, and kept our promise in the Baths. Those memories were made. Now on the other side of the island, Fezywig bobbed at anchor in Virgin Gorda Sound. The next day was Sunday, a day of rest. It was the first day of the week, but the last day we had planned. I felt the refreshing calm of an empty calendar like a blank canvas. Erik once said the seven of us on a boat would be enough universe for him. It was enough for me, too. With full holds, a water maker, and sails, we could go anywhere. Sunday afternoon we gathered the kids in the cockpit.

  “Okay. We’ve made it this far,” Erik said.

  “I never thought we’d make it this far,” Karina and I quoted Erik together.

  “The Baths were really cool and beautiful,” Karina said.

  “Yeah, thanks for taking us,” Alison said.

  “I liked it,” SJ added. Eli and Lily waited for the talking to be over. They didn’t yet appreciate how informative these family chats could be.

  “We’ve been planning to bring you here for a long time,“ Erik said.

  “Funny how this was our main destination goal when we started, and it’s cool,” Karina said. “But not as cool as the stuff we had not planned on doing, like Colombier, Statia, and Saba,” Karina said.

  “And the people we met,” I said. Everyone nodded their heads. We were all thinking of Discovery and Day Dreamer and so many others, but left their names unsaid.

  “Tomorrow we can head out to Anegada or start west to Puerto Rico. What do you want to do?” Erik asked.

  “What’s in Anegada?” Alison asked.

  “It’s a super flat island with beautiful white sandy beaches, and we hear the lobster is amazing,” Erik answered. “But we’re not going out for lobster.” The Fezywig crew are not big into seafood. We hadn’t eaten any on the entire trip. Plus we were sure it was pricey.

  “So it’s nothing we haven’t seen before,” Karina said.

  “Sure, but you never know,” Erik said.

  “How far is it?” SJ asked.

  “About twelve miles.”

  We batted things around for a few minutes and the kids weighed the pros and cons. I was outwardly neutral, but after the storm I was looking toward the comfort of home. Well, our land home. We were always home, as Erik had promised, because we were always together.

  “I know we’re not going back to Discovery and Day Dreamer, so I want to go home,” Jane voted.

  “Me too,” Alison said.

  “I’m fine either way,” Karina said.

  “I want to go home,” Eli was firm. He continued, “Lily? Do you want to go home and sit on a couch and watch movies and have your own bed?” That trumped sailing the Caribbean.

  “Yes,” Lily said, “I want to go to New York City.”

  “We could still go to Anegada,” I told Erik. “This is not a democracy.” Erik and I always aimed for unanimity. That made all our lives easier. But in the end, we were the parents and had the final say. Erik had missed Anegada twice already. The first time we didn’t go to Anegada was with our sailing instructor, Matt. We’d told him we’d rather go to the Baths. The second time was when trying out a catamaran with friends. We’d sailed out far enough to see Anegada but had turned back to Virgin Gorda. This was the third time Erik might leave Anegada over the horizon.

  “Some things can wait,” he said.

  No more shakedown cruises. No more circling islands to explore a new anchorage. No more detours. I didn’t know how we would keep our girls’ camp promise to Karina, Alison, and SJ. There was no possibility we’d be in New York by August. Fezywig only moves about five miles per hour on a good day. We would drop anchor and take our time, but from that day forward, our destination was home. Erik committed our plan to a clean sheet of paper and taped it next to the navigation desk.

  A few hours later we tucked into Trellis Bay on the capital island of Tortola. Erik and I wanted to say hello to our sailing instructor, Matt, from our first visit to the BVI. Just like Matt had taught us, Erik sailed straight up to a mooring ball without motoring, something he was proud of. I knew we were in trouble at the bow. Ali, Jane, and I were struggling with the lines. We weren’t ready, so Erik released the line on the front sail to keep the wind from pulling the nose of the boat away from the mooring ball. He was trying to make it easier for us. Unfortunately, when he released the line, the wind took the front sail and thrashed it around the deck. The line whipped and tangled around Alison’s shoulders, neck, and head. She screamed.

  Jane and I grabbed the lines and freed her. Alison covered her neck with her hand and steadied herself on the lifelines while we tied off. Erik came to the bow.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  “Sorry,” I said, “we were having trouble with the ropes. We weren’t fast enough.” I could see he was frustrated. “Ali, show Dad your neck.” She moved her hand, revealing a bright red rope burn. She whimpered and Erik’s shoulders sagged.

  “Come here,” he said hugging her. She buried her head in his chest and cried. Erik had come to blame us for fumbling the ropes, but Alison’s injury sobered him. It wasn’t hard to imagine how quickly that could have gone from bad to worse. He apologized and hugged our crying daughter. His tenderness stabilized morale generally, and we prepared to go ashore. Trial and error, works every time.

  Pulling into Trellis Bay was like a homecoming. The airport where we had first landed in the BVI was accessible by flip-flop. We showed the kids the bay.

  “Eli, this is the ‘biggest hammock in the world.’ Remember the picture of me and Dad sitting in this?” I asked.

  “That’s gigantic,” Eli said. “We could all fit in there.” So we did, and we took a new picture.

  “That’s the art studio where Matt’s wife, Deb, makes pottery,” Erik pointed from the hammock.

  “I want to go there,” Karina said, getting up.

  “Let’s go see if Deb is in,” I said. She was. She showed the kids the studio and took a photo with us.

  “Where’s Matt?” Erik asked. “We were hoping to catch him while we’re here.”

  “I think he was in Virgin Gorda Sound last night,” Deb said.

  “No way. We were there last night too,” Erik said.

  “Do you want to go back to see Matt?” I asked as the kids browsed the shop.

  “We’re not going back. It’s okay,” Erik said. “Come on, Eli. I want to show you the airport. It has roosters and chickens everywhere.”

  “Real ones?” Eli asked.

  “Real ones,” I said, hefting Lily onto my back. She held on around my neck. The older girls would catch up with us.

  “You should see what SJ bought,” Karina said.

  “You bought some art?” Erik asked. “With what money?”

  “I brought my own money,” she said. She fished into her brown paper bag and pulled out a glazed ceramic snail with its mouth open and its eyes going in two different directions.

  “Like us,” I said. “We take our home wherever we go, too.”

  We pulled anchor and headed west. We slipped through the cut between Tortola and Guana Island and turned south, running along the back edge of Tortola. The wind was at our stern, so we spread the sails out to a full wing-on-wing and enjoyed the slow, gentle sail toward Jost Van Dyke, our destination for the day.

  “This is like a playground after Saint Martin,” Erik said. “We can always see where we’re going. But it’s weird because everyone here is on vacation. There aren’t any cruisers.”

  “I still like it,” I said. “Especially with the kids.”

  We listened to music and gathered in the cockpit, as we often did during short sails; nothing major happening. No big deal. Just gathered around, talking a little bit, taking in the view, feeling the wind, singing songs, the little kids cli
mbing and dangling off the bimini. This no-big-deal time is a big deal. We were aboard Fezywig for this agenda-free time as much as were out here for adventure. Maybe this time simply being together was even more important.

  That afternoon we pulled into Long Bay, right between Jost Van Dyke and Little Jost Van Dyke, and set the hook in an empty anchorage. There was a restaurant onshore called Taboo with an elevated patio. By evening the place would fill with the happy noise of relaxing tourists. Now it was empty, and we chatted with the manager, Marylin. SJ and Ali piled into a hammock hanging between two trees by the shore for a few minutes and then wandered off.

  Talking with Marylin, I hadn’t noticed someone lie down in the hammock. I knew it wasn’t one of my kids, because one dark leg hung out as it swayed. Lily held her arms up to surprise the stranger with a big push. I jumped to stop her, but a bright, smiling face lifted slightly from the hammock.

  “Hello. What’s your name?” said a young man with long black cornrows tucked under his black cap.

  “I’m Ocean Orton,” she said, still calling herself Ocean. “What’s your name?” Amir. He worked at Taboo with his mother, Marilyn. He was in the hammock awaiting the dinner crowd. Before long Lily was done pushing, and the tables turned. Amir pushed Lily “to the stars” and told her a story.

  “Once upon a time,” he said, “Queen Ocean swung up to the stars, where she saw a purple moon. All of her brothers and sisters were there. They had a picnic. Then Queen Ocean returned to her hammock.”

  “Who is your favorite superhero?” Amir asked.

  “I’m Batman,” Lily quoted the movie. “Who is your superhero?”

  “I’m Thor. I have to be really strong to push Queen Ocean so high.” Lily rolled out of the hammock when it was time to go, and Amir helped her to her feet. “Don’t forget me,” he said.

  “I won’t,” she said. “I’ll miss you. I’ll call you tomorrow on the radio.” Lily had once again worked her magic.

  ERIK