by Erik Orton
I put my hand on her back to let her know that I was there and that I was there for her. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what was wrong. At my touch, she sat up and looked at me. Her face paled under a mask of freckles, her puffy eyes bloodshot. She sounded slightly congested as she asked, “Are you happy?”
I didn’t move. I needed more information. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone was asleep when I woke up, so I thought I would have a turn with the laptop, do some writing. I didn’t mean to see it, but when I turned it on, your journal was open. I wasn’t trying to read it, but the words were already in my head before I had a chance to close out your document,” she continued.
I believed her. What little privacy we each had, we respected. My last journal entry was from the night before. It had been a good day in Staniel Cay, with the pigs, the grotto jump, and the notes from SJ. My favorite part of the day had been helping SJ with her toe injury because it was unselfish. In my private writing I struggled with selfishness. Not only was I the only one who really understood how to navigate, sail, and maintain Fezywig; I’d been reading two books, one about a dutiful politician, Harry S. Truman. The other book was about a celebrity’s, Rob Lowe’s, wild lost years before he discovered the joy of family life. I didn’t like how much I felt like Harry, always dutiful, compromising to meet everyone else’s needs. I already had five kids and a great wife, but I’d never been wild and lost.
“You wrote you wished you were ‘happier,’ ‘more in love’ with me. What? You say you want to go ‘off the rails,’ sow your ‘wild oats’? How am I supposed to respond to that?” Emily asked.
I wasn’t sure how to respond to her. I didn’t know. I was still sorting through my feelings. That’s why I keep a journal. Emily didn’t pause for a reply. Understandably, she had a lot to say. Her words were quick and pointed, but low enough that she wouldn’t wake the kids. “I know I’m not a great sailor. I know I talk about school and church a lot and that can be tedious. But I’m here, in the middle of the Bahamas, living on a sailboat with you. How many wives are up for that? I listen. I encourage. I’m affectionate and responsive. I’m inquisitive. I love learning. I’m frugal. I’m a good team player. I’m funny. I can make a meal out of almost nothing. I’ve had five kids and I’ll never be twenty-one again, but I’m healthy and probably stronger and tanner than I’ll ever be again.” She paused, looking for words. “I mean, if you’re not happy with me now, you’ll never be satisfied. If you’re not happy with this, it’s a you problem. If you want something else, I won’t stop you. I’ve never stopped you. I want you to be happy. But if you walk away from this, you can’t come back.”
That escalated quickly. I kept my mouth shut. Emily had been my best friend for twenty-two years and my wife for nineteen years. She’d always believed in me, encouraged me. I could trust her with my dreams and hopes. She would never laugh at me and tell me I was foolish. There were seasons of greater satisfaction, when communication was clear and we were in harmony. Other times were dissonant, distant, or even lonely. Normally, I sorted my feelings in writing. Once I knew what I was feeling, I discussed it with Emily. She was similar. She tends to talk through her undrafted emotions, and then sorts through them in writing and discussion. It can be a bumpy ride.
She was sharing her raw response. I was still sorting myself out. I knew she hadn’t meant to read my journal, but I’d been caught in the stall with my pants down. My natural response was to slam the door. I needed privacy. I didn’t have any more answers than when I had fallen asleep the night before.
“If you don’t have anything to say, I don’t have anything else to say,” Emily said. “I’m going to get dressed and eat breakfast.” We had an early departure and an all-day crossing to Nassau. In our city life I would have gone to work, Emily might have taken a long walk. Instead, we pulled anchor and headed north.
Our pattern was to work side by side with an easy flow of ideas, insights, and observations. We normally joked and flirted, but that morning, our exchanges were strictly functional, limited to raising the anchor and setting sail. The kids were still sleeping. Emily sat next to me at the helm, her usual habit, but it wasn’t usual because the silence was the uncomfortable silence of two people trying not to hurt each other. We sailed up the chain quietly until the islands veered northeast. I reached out to hold Emily’s hand. She didn’t pull away.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked, looking at her salty face—a mixture of sea breeze and tears—for clues.
“I’m thinking about how I can provide for myself and the kids,” Emily kept looking ahead. “I could recertify as a teacher, but maybe it would be better if I became an orthodontist assistant, like your mom. Then I could leave work at work.” She was making plans for her life without me in it.
“If you want to get a job, I’ll support you in that. But I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
“We’ll see. I know you’re still figuring out how you feel. I don’t know how long this has been building. I don’t know how serious it is. You aren’t giving me any information.” I didn’t have any new information. I’d been sitting at the helm, trying to keep us on course, all morning. The water deepened, there were no more rocks, and the wind carried us forward.
After lunch, Alison took over the helm. Karina read in her cabin with the hatch open. Eli and Lily watched a movie at the salon table, and Sarah Jane was using the bimini as a jungle gym. Emily was sitting on the portside deck, her arms wrapped around her knees, looking out at the ocean. I sat next to her. She looked at me and smiled. I thought it was a good sign.
Emily said, “This is actually really good for me. When things are off between us, I usually try to improve something about myself. Obviously, the only person I can change is me. I certainly can’t change you. But I’m realizing that it’s not always about me being a better person. I’m far from perfect, and I want to improve because that’s my nature. But it’s liberating to realize that I am enough right now. I don’t have to be all things to you. I can’t be. And you can’t be all things to me. You are my favorite person. I admire you. But you don’t hold my happiness in your hands. It’s my happiness. If you don’t want me, if you don’t choose happiness with me, it’s really not my responsibility to make you happy. If you want to be more ‘in love’ with me, that’s your choice.”
“That reminds me of a cartoon I saw. Two stick figures stood side by side,” I said. “One held a jar that said, ‘HAPPINESS.’ The other asked, ‘Where did you get it?’ The first replied, ‘I made it myself.’”
“Yeah, that’s true.” Emily said.
I wanted to make my own happiness with Emily. I said, “When I said I’m not as happy as I’d like to be in our marriage, what I meant was I’d like to work on being happier.”
“If that’s what you meant when you wrote it, you could’ve told me this morning. Maybe it’s what you mean now that I’m upset. Right now you’re stuck with me,” she leaned her head on my shoulder. “We’ll see how you feel when we get to the States.”
“We’re a great team. I think we’re going to figure this out.”
Chapter 17
Squalls
Open Water Northwest of the Exuma Chain, Bahamas
5 Months, 25 Days aboard Fezywig
EMILY
Erik and I were having a marriage squall. I was blindsided by the unexpected storm. We kept sailing. What else could we do? We made our way up the island chain. The tide continued to rise and fall. We ran into lots of squalls, violent gusting winds and driving rain.
I didn’t think we would need foul-weather gear in the Caribbean. All the blogs included it on their prep lists, but I’d thought, “It’s the Caribbean. How cold can it get? A little warm freshwater sounds nice.” And, stupidly, I’d packed only dollar-store ponchos in case we got caught in a sprinkle. As it turns out, the Caribbean can get cold enough to make your lips turn blue and
your teeth chatter. It can be more like being thrown in an industrial washing machine than skipping through a sprinkler. The bimini only shaded us from the sun if it was directly overhead. In wind and rain we might as well have been driving a convertible with the top down. Obviously, we tried to avoid storms, but when we couldn’t, we were totally exposed and it was my fault.
With Staniel Cay to our stern, I watched tall thunderheads rising up in the distance all morning. Everyone noticed. We lived close to the weather and registered changes in wind or temperature. The sky was full of information. We were also tracking a tropical wave as it moved north from Barbados, clipping Martinique, up through the Mona Passage and into the lower Bahamas. It was on our tail and spinning off lots of nasty weather. We knew enough now that if it got really bad, we would point into the wind, drop the sails, and keep motoring.
Erik was the one who captained us through every unusual or uncomfortable situation.
Around noon we hit the squall at full sail. The rain was warm and the winds picked up, pushing us farther north quicker. We blazed across the emerald water setting a new speed record for Fezywig, eleven knots. The sails got a freshwater rinse, and it was good for the deck, and us. A few hours later we hit a second squall, and then a third. The rain was getting colder. It wasn’t fun anymore. Erik pulled out a yellow poncho and I had that recurring pang of guilt. I had let my family down. Really, I let Erik down—the kids stayed dry inside. Erik was the one who captained us through every unusual or uncomfortable situation. He always took care of us. Now, he was essentially wearing a plastic bag, a life jacket, and a snorkel mask as his sole defense in a blustering cold rainstorm. I was dressed the same—minus the snorkel mask. Maybe I wasn’t such a great partner. I stood next to the helm holding the iPad. The cold and wet were my deserved penance.
The rain stopped. Erik got us to anchor in Nassau. The girls baked soft gingersnap cookies. Erik picked up some internet and connected with our life back home. We were on track to get the girls to Fort Lauderdale on time for their flights in mid-August. Our close friend, Ros, agreed to pick them up at JFK airport, house them, feed them, and take them to camp. Karina and Alison wrote a song for her that included the line, “We were kind of homeless and you took us in. Ros. Ros. Rosalyn. Dr. Ros Ord for the win.” Erik ordered bus tickets to carry them from New York City to his parents in DC afterwards. Their trip was emerging. We’d sort out the next step as it got closer. We were living life in increments, not trying to figure out everything at once.
We wouldn’t figure out everything in our marriage at once, either. Erik and I talked on the bow while the kids watched a movie inside. We figured out enough to know we both wanted to figure out the rest. We made love and the sky literally filled with fireworks from the towering Atlantis Resort.
“Fireworks?” I laughed.
“Only the best for my woman,” Erik said. We left Nassau at dawn and continued north. It was a forty-mile crossing to Chub Cay, and the weather was clear with lots of sunshine. The tropical wave had a name now, Hurricane Bertha, and she was heading north too. We decided to tuck into the lee of Chub Cay, where a rocky peninsula on the southwest corner could provide protection against the coming storm. We had a head start, but the spawn of Bertha was gaining on us.
“You see that beacon?” Erik asked. “That’s our exit. It’s gonna be tight.” I looked back—for the one thousandth time—at the charcoal clouds. We were a snail racing a turtle. The sky darkened, the water lost its color, and the wind grew cold and fast. The squall boosted the wind, so we moved faster and faster, but the squall was gaining on us. Without breaking stride, we lowered the sails. We were only minutes away when the squall overtook us. That’s when it got nasty.
We turned the corner at the peninsula, but the seas weren’t calm enough for anchoring. Erik turned the boat 180 degrees to put the wind behind us, which cut its apparent speed in half. This calmed things down considerably, but it almost put us on a course to run directly into a basin of one-foot-deep water. He turned 90 degrees off the wind, cheating away from Chub Cay and the shallow pool. There was a small basin created by a low, long, flat rock that kept much of the ocean swell on the other side.
“I’m going to get behind that rock and do laps until this passes,” Erik shouted.
“I see it. Good idea,” I said. I didn’t have any ideas.
“Oh, great,” Erik said once we were doing short laps behind the rock. “The charts show sunken boats everywhere. Let’s get out of here. I want to find the back of this thing.” He pointed the boat out into open water and straight into the waves. His pathetic storm uniform of a flimsy poncho and a snorkel mask didn’t inhibit his resolve. We rode out the squall and broke through to the backside. The rain stopped as quickly as it had started, and the wind faded back to its normal, steady pace. With clear visibility and calm seas, Erik pointed us back to the peninsula and pulled into the channel and we anchored in the lee. The kids started dinner while Erik and I dinghied to shore to scout things out. We were getting better at clearing squalls.
Chub Cay felt abandoned. There was a large protected marina, but only a few boats docked. There was a big hotel, but it was empty. Maybe it was still under construction, but there was a pool full of water lined with lawn chairs. Most of them had blown over in the squall, but you wouldn’t put out beach chairs before you finished building the hotel, would you? Two teenagers played tag in the pool, and a man and a woman sat at the bar sipping cocktails. There was no bartender and no sign there had ever been a bartender. We introduced ourselves and learned that Mary and Jay, a friendly couple from Boulder, had brought their own drinks. They called their kids out of the pool to make introductions and told us they were on a fishing trawler called Merry Yacht. We were all headed to Fort Lauderdale, but Mary and Jay wanted a few more days on this private island first.
“Maybe we’ll see you in Cat Cay,” Erik said. Cat Cay was our last stop before crossing the Gulf Stream back to Florida.
“Maybe,” they said, and we wished each other well.
Erik and I were up at 3:45 a.m. We wanted to be anchored before sundown and would need the whole day to cross to Cat Cay. We pulled anchor in the predawn darkness and sat side by side at the helm while the kids slept. Eli appeared shortly after sunrise.
“What’s for breakfast?” Eli asked, even though we always ate oatmeal.
“What are you making?” Erik replied.
“Can we have pancakes?” Eli asked.
“We can if you make them,” Erik said.
“I’ll help you,” I said, stepping down from Erik’s side at the helm. I pulled out the giant metal bowl from Silverheels and set the ingredients on the salon table. I measured and Eli poured and mixed. I set the table and Eli flipped the pancakes.
“I want to have really good food when Karina and Alison and SJ are at girls’ camp,” Eli said.
“I mean, we always want to have good food, but what’s the big deal?” I asked.
“They keep saying they’re going to take hot showers and have all this good food like hot dogs and hamburgers and treats.”
“Are you getting jealous?” I asked.
“A little,” he said.
“Let’s make a meal plan. What do you want to eat while your sisters are at camp?” I asked. I pulled out a sheet of paper and grabbed a colored pencil. Eli dreamt up meals while he flipped pancakes.
“We could have a taco night, and hamburgers, and macaroni and cheese . . .” he continued. The list grew. He even agreed to help cook everything on his eight-year-old fantasy menu. When he called his sisters up for breakfast he assured them they were going to be jealous of all the good food we would be eating while they were away at camp.
As the morning progressed, more and more boats came into view. We were all converging on the little chute of water that led from the deep Tongue of the Ocean back up onto the shelf. We all successfully squeezed back up onto the Ba
hama Shelf and the deep water widened out again. The boats scattered in all directions, heading for different islands and ports. We’d enjoyed nice fifteen to twenty knots of wind and lots of speed.
“We might get in early,” Erik said. Then the squalls crawled up over the horizon.
“Spawn of Bertha,” I said. I liked how it sounded. Erik didn’t care about dramatizing the situation. He was the one at the helm in a storm. He wanted to get through it as quickly as possible. We missed the first few simply because we were traveling on different vectors.
“Dead ahead,” Erik said. It was a big one. A power yacht ahead of us wanted to avoid the same storm. “See how that guy went perpendicular to go around it? That’s what I want to do.” We followed its lead and turned south. After forever in the pitching cold rain, Erik said, “It keeps going. There is no back.”
“I guess we’ll have to go through it,” I said. We lowered the sails. Erik started up the engines and turned the boat west, directly into the squall.
With a strong headwind, our progress slowed, even with both engines running. Now it was a race to get in before sunset. We soldiered on for hours, the rain continuing in torrents. I stepped out periodically to check in with Erik or offer him a mug of warm beef broth. Our main job was to fend off seasickness. Eli and Lily always fell asleep in a long storm. The rest of us sat around the salon listening to music and VHF chatter about the storm.
We heard a sputtering sound, and then the starboard engine shut down.
“Crap,” Erik said. “I think I know what it is. I’ll deal with it later.” Our speed dropped in half. The tension went up. Visibility dropped to a hundred yards and the seas got heavy. What had started out so beautiful in the morning was now a slog. Without proper foul-weather gear, Erik simply put the boat on autopilot, pointed Fezywig toward Cat Cay, and came inside the cabin. We closed the hatches, which made the cabin stuffy and nausea-inducing. We took turns watching through the windows for any ships to avoid.
