The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey

by Diane Stuemer

  We had arrived.

  Unfortunately, we had arrived at a dump. The port of Colón was the epitome of all that is bad about port towns around the globe. It was the ugliest place we saw on our entire trip. Filthy, unsafe, strewn with garbage, it had absolutely nothing to recommend it. At the bus stop, where big busses disgorged their streams of passengers, we saw the drivers simply dump out their large bins of collected garbage – plastic pop bottles, potato chip bags, scraps of food, cigarette packs – right onto a mound in the street, where they began blowing around in the wind and collecting in gutters already clogged with stinking refuse. Even the big grocery store was disgusting – the odour of putrefying meat seemed to follow me around, up and down the aisles, everywhere I went. Only after I got back to the boat did I discover the source of the disgusting smell: it was my own package of ground beef, reeking and turning green only an hour after I had purchased it.

  Anxious to leave as quickly as we could, we set about preparing to transit the Panama Canal, forty-three miles from end to end. After having the boat measured to determine our fee, which amounted to just under five hundred dollars U.S., and making various trips to government offices to do all the necessary paperwork, our two priorities were to enlist sufficient crew and to prepare the boat for the transit.

  The former task involved recruiting line handlers from other sailboats, to help us handle the ropes while going through the locks. The latter included scrounging up old car tires to protect our hull and assembling four heavy forty-metre ropes with which to secure us. As we, along with all the other boats, went through these rites of passage, it reminded me of the rituals young men in various cultures go through when preparing to become men. After a period of preparation, they are taken away from the rest of the tribe to go through a mysterious initiation, often a test of their bravery. None of the other boys knows exactly what is involved until he, in turn, is called away. Only then will he know what secrets the passage holds for him.

  The most difficult task of our own rite of passage was finding the three additional handlers to hold the lines securing the boat to the sides of the locks. Herbert’s adventures trying to round up helpers from other cruising boats ended up being unexpectedly stressful, including a swim across a crocodile-infested lake when our entire crew, including Herbert, got stuck in the middle of the canal on another boat. But by nine on the morning of our transit, the Panama Canal pilot and our three yawning, newly enlisted crew had arrived, and we were given permission to head for the first lock.

  We entered the first giant, three-hundred-metre long chamber with four other vessels: a two-hundred-metre long freighter from China, a huge tugboat, and two other sailboats. Before entering the lock, we three sailboats were tied together side by side, forming a large, unwieldy raft. It was like being in a three-legged race.

  As we ascended the twenty-six metres of the first three locks (there are six on the canal in all), the atmosphere aboard Northern Magic was festive. I ended up playing stewardess, running up and down the companionway ladder, serving an endless series of refreshments to our crew, who were dripping sweat in the fierce Panamanian sun. Meanwhile, at the salon table, our three boys happily painted Easter eggs, not finding it strange in the least to be doing this while progressing through one of the engineering marvels of the world.

  That night, we anchored at jungle-rimmed Gatun Lake, in the interior of the narrow isthmus of Panama. We didn’t see any of the indigenous crocodiles, but we did spot many black buzzards and a long-tailed howler monkey scavenging for food along the nearby shore, as well as thatched huts on stilts used by native tribes. Since the crocs weren’t in evidence, we all jumped at the chance for a refreshing freshwater swim.

  I will always remember that night as one of the finest of our trip. Once the kids were in bed, we adults talked by candlelight in the cool breezes of the cockpit until the early hours of the morning, the low words of our shared experiences and dreams blending in with the nearby sounds of the jungle. Sometime in the magical darkness of that night – it must have been after we adults finally went to sleep – Northern Magic received one more visitor. In fact, it might have been the first time ever this particular visitor was called upon to perform his duties in quite this way. But braving howler monkeys, crocodiles, and buzzards, the Easter Bunny actually managed to find us halfway through the Panama Canal. The next morning the boat was awash in Hershey’s Kisses, and the boys hunted for them all over the boat.

  Our descent down the three last locks went smoothly, in tandem again with another two sailboats and sharing space with a leviathan-sized ship or two. Finally, the last gate opened and revealed to us the majestic beauty of the Pacific Ocean, azure blue and dotted with lovely green cone-shaped islands. Then we bade a fond farewell to our newfound cruising friends, with promises to keep in touch as we all began to make our way into the South Pacific.

  After exploring two wonderful islands in the Las Perlas group, and being surprised by large lizards that leapt down at us from the trees, we headed out into the Pacific Ocean. Herbert remarked nostalgically, as the hills of Panama receded in the distance, that this was the last mainland we would see for a very long time.

  Imagine, now, a few days later: it is midnight, in the Pacific Ocean. We have put four hundred miles between us and the mysterious island of jungles and leaping lizards. Northern Magic is ploughing through the long, dark swells of the Pacific, half way to the Galápagos Islands, which straddle the equator. Inside the cabin, it is almost unbearably hot and humid, the holdover of another stifling day of tropical heat.

  Outside, in the cockpit, the breeze is at last blessedly cool, actually fresh enough to raise goosebumps on skin that is still damp from the day’s perspiration.

  The night sky is dark. Clouds obscure almost all the stars except a few directly overhead. Earlier, the moon briefly grinned a slender smile at us, but now it, too, is gone, leaving the ocean unlit by its benevolent presence. It is impossible to see where the ocean ends and the sky begins. The night sky is an inky black cloak that wraps thickly around us.

  As our boat slices through the water, the bow wave shines an eerie white against the dark sea. If you look closely in that wave, little bits of phosphorescent plankton twinkle, sending out tiny plankton alarms at having been disturbed by our passage. Some nights, these phosphorescent sparkles look like mirror images of the Milky Way, which arches across the sky in a magnificent array only visible far from the lights of civilization. But tonight there is no Milky Way, just a few stars bravely showing their faces from between the suffocating layers of cloud.

  Hovering in the air there seem to be two spirits: white-winged shapes eerily flitting around our mast, swooping, fluttering, never clearly visible but casting shadows as they swing past our masthead navigation light and are briefly illuminated by it. They stay with us all night every night until we arrive at the Galápagos Islands, but we never see them in the day. We call these mysterious glowing figures our angel birds.

  Watching out for any glimmer of light that may signal an approaching ship (a faint possibility, as it has been days since we have seen a sign that we are anything other than the only humans in the universe), we can easily mistake an occasional star peeking through low on the horizon for the running light of another sailboat. A few days ago we spotted such a light, a lone spark on the distant horizon. It must have been very far off, because it was hidden every few seconds behind the ocean swell. It was probably another sailboat, making, just as we were, for the fabled Galápagos Islands. But when daylight came it was gone.

  We started the journey with nice twenty-knot winds and, with the aid of a southbound current, flew along at a speed of nine knots, sails crisply filled. On this night, we’re still making a good six knots of speed, but now our sails lie useless, flaked against the boom. Our progress is only possible thanks to our good diesel engine and a thousand litres of fuel stored in our tanks. Our sails have been hanging slack for two days now. We sniff the breeze hopefully every few hours, hop
ing some wind has arisen, but so far no such luck.

  For the first three days we wanted to do nothing but lie down, but today this lassitude has left us and we have been able to resume a more normal schedule. The children have now returned, although reluctantly, to their schoolwork, and the familiar routines of cooking and laundry have been re-established, modified only slightly by the constant rocking and swaying of the long Pacific Ocean swells.

  After our work is done and Herbert has retired to bed to store up on sleep for his graveyard shift, the kids and I spend hours in the coolness of the cockpit reading Charlotte’s Web. The children keep begging for yet one more chapter until it is long past dark and the smallest one’s eyes begin shutting, the sweet half-smile of sleep on his lips.

  I know the kids have gained their sea legs when they stop complaining that the waves make it too hard to brush their teeth. This night they go to bed without complaint. The purr of the motor and the rocking of the ocean make sleep come very easily to them. In just one more hour, when my watch is over, it will come easily to me as well.

  But the passage didn’t continue as blissfully as that. First we began taking on water through the stuffing box on our propeller shaft. Then our headsail ripped. Finally, we found ourselves in mounting winds, our first gale at sea. Rain pelted down on us, forcing us to close all the windows and hatches and turning the inside of Northern Magic into a sauna. For the first time in our experience, waves began crashing right over our bow, forcing water all the way back into our cockpit.

  The waves were close together and steep, and the unsettled weather caused them to come from several sides. As our powerful engine forced our bow through them, we were violently slapped around from many directions in a sharp bucking and rolling motion I found intolerable. Even our captain, whose innards were usually steel-lined, succumbed. After three days of seasickness and two days of peace, I felt badly betrayed by my body as the nausea and vomiting started up all over again.

  It was a long night. Mercifully for me, my shift ended at 1:00 a.m. Herbert endured the worst of the gale on his watch. The winds reached forty knots during the night. I huddled in bed and tried to sleep despite the violent motion, but I felt surprisingly secure inside Northern Magic, with Herbert at the helm. Even after we motored out of the storm, the weather was grim and squally with almost constant rain. But our nightly angel birds never deserted us.

  We didn’t even get to mark properly our crossing of the equator, for which I had prepared certain frivolous and messy celebrations and set aside a bottle of champagne. We couldn’t do the traditional crossing-the-equator-by-spraying-things-on-each-other celebration in the cockpit, because it was pouring rain. The best I could do, when Herbert announced we were at that very moment straddling the centre of the earth, was feebly lift my head from the bed and flash what I knew to be a pathetic imitation of a smile. No one had any appetite for nacho chips or champagne, so we simply let it be. Later in the day, I took an orange and drew a world map on it in felt pen to explain to Christopher exactly what the word “equator” meant. But that, sadly, was all we did to celebrate this milestone in our journey around the world.

  On our seventh day at sea, we spotted San Cristóbal Island. The day was grey and sombre, as had been so many of the days before, and the island was shrouded in a strange mist that seemed to come and go. At one moment we could clearly see its sharp green volcanic outline, and the next moment it would almost disappear into a low-lying cloud.

  The Spaniards used to call the Galápagos Las Islas Encantadas, “The Enchanted Islands.” As we approached them, we could well understand why, as they took turns coming into view and then evaporating. Once, in a channel between two islands, the compass went crazy and the autopilot caused Northern Magic to turn in a 360-degree circle before resuming her route. We noticed on the chart the notation “magnetic anomalies,” some kind of geological glitch that must have played this little trick on us. Once we had finally satisfied ourselves that we had gotten the boat moving in the right direction again, we looked up, and instead of the two islands we had been between the last time we looked, we were now back in the middle of the open ocean, with no land in sight. Both Herbert and I blinked, confused and disoriented. Then, as quickly as they had disappeared, the islands returned in their proper spots, the mist lifting and returning them to our grateful gaze once more.

  4

  Galápagos: Wonder and Despair

  We set anchor in Academy Bay at Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. As I had promised the kids, I did actually kiss solid land as we alighted from our dinghy.

  The Galápagos Islands were everything we had hoped they would be. The small town of Puerto Ayora was clean and picturesque, its prices reasonable and its people friendly. But we had come for the animal life, and we were not disappointed.

  Our favourites, by far, were the sea lions. As soon as we entered Academy Bay the first friendly, whiskered face peeped up at us from out of the waves. After that, we saw so many that their visits became hardly worthy of comment. Two of them in particular developed a fondness for us and spent most of their time around Northern Magic. The larger one we christened White Bum because of a patch of white on her flank. White Bum was gregarious and would be drawn to the sound of Jonathan doing cannonballs off the boat.

  She announced her arrival with a series of huffy snorts. By following the noise of her exhalations you could spot her gently humping out of the water or swimming lazily on her side, flippers in the air. White Bum circled our boat for hours on end, and after taking ten or so good breaths, would perform a graceful backward dive deep into the water, often returning with a flapping silver fish in her mouth. Sometimes, she would make a special effort to show off her prize by swimming on her side so we could admire it before she gulped it down. She would let the children swim up quite close to her, even egging them on before disappearing under their feet, only to reappear a little farther off to start the game again.

  Our second resident sea lion was a little smaller than White Bum, and took a liking to Flipper, our inflatable dinghy. Every night she hoisted her sleek, well-padded body over Flipper’s side and spent the rest of the dark hours lounging in it, her whiskered nose lolling over the edge. When she was in this pose we could get quite close and watch her from deck. Sometimes, returning our inspection, she looped her long neck over her back and gazed at us upside down in the most comical fashion, her large, liquid eyes dominating her face.

  Although we looked forward to her nightly visits, we would have been more pleased if our sea lion friend had bothered to learn some basics of hygiene. Every morning, Herbert was faced with the unenviable task of cleaning up after her, for she used the dinghy not only for eating fish, but also for certain other bodily functions, all of which left a mighty strong impression on the nose. It took a good half hour of hosing down each morning before Flipper was fit for human use. Still, it was a good trade-off and we felt lucky she had chosen our dinghy for her temporary home.

  We had never seen such a profusion of birds as we found in Galápagos – blue-footed boobies, pelicans, great circling frigatebirds. We spent days hiking through forests dripping with vegetation and marvelling at giant tortoises, thousands of lizards, and large black marine iguanas.

  Our week of wonder in the Galápagos, however, was also one of despair. The mixture of these two contradictory emotions will forever colour our memories of these islands. Some weeks earlier, my grandmother had suffered a stroke. Each succeeding week brought with it ever grimmer reports about her condition. Our new satellite e-mail receiver (a gift from my father) had a little light that came on when mail arrived, and we had always been excited to see it light up, because it meant a message from home. In the Galápagos, however, that light seemed to shed a more ominous glow, and often I was scared to find out what news it signalled.

  I couldn’t help remembering how, for the year before we left, Nana had cried almost every time I talked to her about our plans to sail around the world. She had never stopped p
raying we would change our minds. Many times she told me she was sure she would die while we were gone. Now, as she hovered in a coma, ever nearer her own final passage, it seemed as if her morbid prediction might come true.

  Years before, when I had written the biography of my grandfather, I had spent countless hours with my grandmother as she shared her life story with me. Somehow, I felt as though I had lived through the good times and the bad alongside her. Because of this, we had a special and close relationship. I was torn between the desire to remain in the Galápagos Islands, ready to fly home at short notice, and the knowledge that we were already eight days past our three-day visa limit and could stay only a few extra days before having to take to the ocean once more.

  And then the e-mail light brought with it news of yet another calamity – my sister Linda’s three-year-old daughter had fractured her leg at mid-thigh. Beautiful little Jenna, whom we had last seen dancing in a home video shipped to us in Panama, had been rushed into two hours of surgery and now was on heavy sedation to handle the pain. She was immobilized from the tip of her toes to her chest in a double leg and body cast, her legs secured together by an immovable bar. When my mind ventured into the realm of pain this must be causing to those I loved, my own tears flowed and the urge to rush home gathered even more force.

  Yet life was not that simple. Apart from our expired visas, there was the forthcoming hurricane season in the South Pacific to be considered. Thanks to our extended stay in Grand Cayman, we were already more than a month behind schedule. We would pay for any further delays with an increased risk of hitting a tropical cyclone later on.