The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey

by Diane Stuemer

  Our homage thus paid to the fickle and jealous wind gods, we waited for the gales to ease so we could at last begin our final voyage home.

  On our final night before facing the ocean once more, yet another gale swept through. This time we slept more securely, figuring that if our web of lines had protected us from the last two storms, we would be safe this time. We shouldn’t have been so complacent. Morning’s light revealed that the main rope holding us in place on the breakwater, a thick anchor rode, had parted. One of our brand new fenders had also chafed through its line and was now on its way to Ireland.

  At least, we said, our spare anchor rode was still holding us in place. Herbert stood at the bow and raised the anchor while I prepared to pilot us out of the narrow rock opening to the harbour. With that windward shoreline having parted in the night, all our safety had been resting on that anchor. But when he pulled it up, he blanched in horror: only a single strand of its heavy rope was still intact. The rest had chafed away overnight. The next big blow would have snapped the line entirely. Heaving sighs of relief at having survived this close call, we were at last on our way.

  Duly placated by our wall art, the wind gods rewarded us by providing the nicest weather we’d seen in a month. We travelled southwest under the benevolent protection of a lovely high-pressure system that obliged us by mirroring our path. With our thousand-litre fuel tank and extra jerry cans of fuel, we happily motored along for four days in mostly calm seas. Our strategy was working. Each easy mile west was a gift.

  On our fifth day at sea, the high was beginning to depart. Now the southwesterlies began to set in. It was getting to be tougher slogging.

  On our sixth day at sea, we passed the halfway point of our journey. We were motor-sailing closehauled into the wind, bucking into increasingly nasty waves. The motion on the boat was beginning to clench up in our guts, making eating and sleeping difficult. My legs were feeling trembly and weak. The halfway point had seemed to take forever to come, and Canada was still seven hundred long miles away. We couldn’t help but consider that things were only likely to get worse from here.

  We had been sailing southwest, and were now more than a hundred miles south of the latitude at which we had started. Although Canada was six hundred miles to the north and west of us, we didn’t want to head north too soon. That was where the fierce weather usually was, and we also wanted to save our northing in case the southwesterly winds became too strong to allow us to continue straight west. This took a lot of faith and self-discipline that our strategy was correct, because it increased the distance we had to travel by many hundreds of miles.

  Dad began warning about a front coming, high winds and rain that we’d have to force our way though. Then he sent a strange e-mail. It looked as if the front was splitting in two, he said, and we just might squeak through between the two parts. Sure enough, just an hour or two later, I saw a big dark arc in the sky – rain and bad weather ahead of us on both sides, with a little bit of clear sky in the middle. Somehow we were able to sail through that arc, right into the patch of sunny blue sky ahead. My mom had established a praying circle among her friends, and it seemed then as if we really were the beneficiaries of divine intervention.

  By July 8, Michael’s fifteenth birthday, Dad’s e-mailed weather forecasts were again making us nervous. A front was on its way, bringing strong winds of twenty-seven knots and twelve-foot seas. I had only enough time to bake a batch of Aunt Linda’s Excellent Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies and stick a candle in one of them for a rather pitiful celebration before the waves picked up and made our lives miserable. It was the best we could do.

  As the day went on, the waves became steeper and closer together, slapping us from two angles. Those chocolate chip cookies were virtually all we ate that day. Overnight the wind picked up more, until we were getting the howling winds Dad had predicted. “Well, at least we’ll have a nice fast sail,” I consoled myself.

  The morning of July 9 broke, and the grey ocean stretching endlessly around us was fierce and ugly. The night before, Herbert had double-reefed the mainsail in expectation of the strong winds to come. It was good that he did. The wind was now hitting us at close to thirty knots, with steep waves rearing up and smacking us around, making the boat shudder and veer. Our stalwart TMQ autopilot, which had served us so faithfully since Australia, muscled us back on course, even though our steering wheel was groaning with each swing. Waves were breaking over the boat, drenching the decks and the cockpit. The windows on the lee side were submerged each time an especially large wave tipped us sharply and then overran us. The wooden grates on the floor of the cockpit floated up as the cockpit filled with deluge after deluge. The lashings and grommets holding our weathercloths gave way under the vicious onslaught of rushing waves, leaving the lee side cloth flapping.

  The three- to four-metre seas were not only unusually steep and close, they were also coming from two different directions. Every now and then two opposing waves would meet to form one large triangular wave that would violently bash into us. We were living inside a piñata, swinging wildly around in the branches of a wind-whipped tree. Every now and then a cruel and malicious boy would come by with a baseball bat and take a whack at us. Mostly we just braced ourselves lying in our beds. But when we managed to move our nauseated bodies around, it was a pathetic little shuffle – three baby steps forward, using two handholds all the time, pausing while the next wave reared up under us and tipped us sharply to the side, then three more little baby steps before the next wave hit. And if we got bashed by that giant baseball bat in the meantime – well, we just clung on for dear life.

  But what was worse than everything else – the shrieking of the wind, the deluge of waves, the slamming and jarring – was the fact that for all our suffering, and with all that wind, we were still getting nowhere. As the morning progressed, our speed was inexplicably but steadily declining. From six to five, to four, to three, finally to two, and even, sometimes, to one and a half nautical miles per hour. What was going on? From inside the boat, Northern Magic was vibrating with speed. Her sails were taut. It felt and sounded like we were on a freight train racing out of control. Yet the GPS proved we had slowed down to a crawl. Why were we not ticking down the miles?

  I clambered outside and discovered that our knotmeter showed that we were indeed speeding along at between seven and eight knots through the water. We had entered the Gulf Stream, that powerful current of warm water that speeds along the eastern coast of North America and then veers eastward towards Europe. The current was stopping us dead.

  Now our engine began overheating. Every time we tried to turn it on to charge our batteries, we’d have to turn it off after only a few minutes. The breaking waves were forcing air into our seawater intake and stopping the flow of cooling water. When Herbert had to descend into the engine room, he came up vomiting. Trying to make the motion easier while Herbert worked to solve the problem, I tried temporarily turning the boat north so that we would have a following wind and take the waves and swell on our stern. The motion was much better, and we instantly doubled our speed over the ground to a hardly impressive, but much improved, three knots.

  Up until then, we’d been heading for the Nova Scotia town of Canso. It was farther than Newfoundland, but the weather promised to be more reliable there. But as we turned north, with Newfoundland almost directly over us, Herbert and I had a serious discussion about whether we should abandon Canso and head for Newfoundland instead. That way we’d be able to stay on this more comfortable course.

  I e-mailed Dad, hopefully asking what the weather was like in that notorious stretch ahead of us, towards the Grand Banks. I was praying he’d say that this was a great idea. But his return e-mail destroyed all my hopes. No, he said, if we sailed north we’d just sail along the front that was causing the unsettled weather and strong winds rather than cutting across it. Better to stick to our original plan. The wind was forecast to be even worse the next morning; we had to stay strong for two mo
re days.

  Two more days of this? At that moment it seemed hopeless. I lost it. I stuck my head out of the hatch, turned my salty face into that terrible wind, and wept tears of misery. I didn’t want the boys to see me cry. The wind whipped the tears across my cheeks, and the spray added some briny splashes of its own. I just couldn’t keep my spirits up any longer. It felt like we’d been at sea forever and were doomed never to arrive.

  The instant I came down from that hatch, I vomited. I hadn’t been sick before, although my empty stomach had been tightly knotted. I realized then that the cramping in my stomach was simply my self-control willing the seasickness away. The instant I had lost it, even for a moment, the nausea took over. After I finished, I promised myself I would not – could not – lose my composure again.

  Night fell and the wind howled even louder. We had gone eighteen hours now without a meal. We continued screaming along at high speed through the water and going almost nowhere. At that speed, you feel tense and frantic, as if something is about to break. We ought to have been covering 170 miles a day, which would have made up for all our suffering. Instead, we were only twenty or so miles ahead of our position in the morning. Our bodies felt bruised and tender from too much lying down. Our ears ached from being whammed into the pillow with each downward thump.

  Then another e-mail came from Dad. “Good news! They just updated the forecast, and if you head straight north, the wind will drop to ten knots tomorrow. And then, the day after, east winds. Yes! EAST WINDS! Then you can turn the corner and head straight for Canso.”

  I didn’t even wake Herbert up to consult with him; I just headed starboard forty degrees. Instantly, the motion improved. An indication of how powerful the current was, however, was the fact that although we were trying to head straight north, I had to point our bow northwest in order not to go east. That east-bound current was sweeping us along so strongly our bow was pointed a full forty-five degrees to the west of our actual course. We were basically sailing sideways.

  By mid-morning, just as Dad had promised, the wind began to drop. The knots in our stomachs loosened at bit. By noon, our appetites had returned. We even began to smile again. And just as suddenly as it had come, as if by magic, the current disappeared as well. Three knots, four, five, soon we were sailing happily along at a wonderful seven knots of speed. We were going home!

  We kept our bow pointed northwest, heading once again for Canso, Nova Scotia. “I think I Canso, I think I Canso,” e-mailed Dad. “Yes we Canso!” I e-mailed back. On July 10, our tenth day at sea, we were sailing fast and true on our correct course. But nature had more tricks in store.

  “I think the wind’s going to take one last kick at you,” said Dad’s next e-mail. We took out a blank map of the North Atlantic and began pencilling in the lows and fronts described on our Inmarsat weather forecast. As I graphed it onto the page, my jaw dropped with horror.

  There were two new lows ahead of us, one slightly to the north, one to the south, both moving in our direction. I sketched out the position of the two lows and the jaggedy evil cold front ahead of them, spanning a full two thousand miles of ocean and kicking up a froth of wind and waves. The front was just ahead. To the north: twenty to thirty knots of wind, eight- to thirteen-foot seas. To the south: thirty to thirty-five knots of wind, eleven- to nineteen-foot seas. We were right in the middle, where my sketched semi-circles collided. By all rights, we should have had at least twenty-five knots of wind.

  Instead we had – dead calm.

  “How could it be?” we asked ourselves. According to the coordinates, we should be in a near gale. All we could figure was that we were behind the front and right between the two lows. If Dad hadn’t told us to turn north, we would have been in the middle of a North Atlantic gale. Instead, we seemed to be sneaking through the goalposts.

  “This isn’t a window we’re sailing through,” Herbert muttered uneasily, “this is a crack.”

  Our stomachs contorted again with anxiety. Herbert turned up the motor, thrusting us forward at seven knots. We were now only three hundred miles from Nova Scotia. That we’d outraced the bad weather was just too good to be true. We didn’t dare count on it. That front might still hit us any time.

  July 11 dawned, but we never saw the sun. Where the sun should have been, there was only an indistinct glow. A thick grey fog draped the ocean like a fuzzy blanket. It was so dense you could see it wafting through the cockpit a few metres away. When you stuck your head out into it, the fog left droplets of condensation, like a gentle rain, on your face. The entire boat began sweating humidity. All our clothing and bedding felt damp. Outside, we couldn’t see a thing. We navigated solely by radar.

  That day’s weather forecast was even more frightening than that of the day before. A brand-new front was right ahead of us. A new, deeper low was coming fast. The “x” showing our present position was plotted within a big rectangle containing thirty to forty knots of wind – a full gale – and seas of eleven to sixteen feet. For hundreds of miles north and east, thirty knots. For hundreds of miles south and east, twenty-five to thirty-five knots. The North Atlantic around us for a thousand miles was a maelstrom.

  Astonishingly, unbelievably, impossibly, we were still motoring through a dead calm.

  We were riding up and down a glassy, oily swell that increased rapidly in size as the morning went on. The three- and four-metre swell was ample proof that there were strong winds raging behind us not far away. But we continued motoring along in the fog, up and down, up and down those glossy hills of rolling water, with not a breath of wind. “I think all those people who are praying for us really are making a difference,” said Herbert reverently. “How else can you explain this?”

  We didn’t know whether this ominous, oily, fog-shrouded calm was a sign of our deliverance or simply the calm before the storm. It was unnerving. We were now heading over the shallow banks off Nova Scotia only 150 miles from land, practically close enough to smell it. According to the weather chart, the front was still ahead of us. We held our breaths, awaiting any sign of stormy weather, waiting for the shoe to drop.

  But the wind we dreaded and feared and fretted over and prayed about never came.

  The next morning, the fog lifted briefly, just long enough for us to catch a glimpse of the Nova Scotia shore, now only five miles away. After that enticing glimpse, the fog returned to smother us again just as quickly as it had lifted.

  The last few miles were the most dangerous part of our approach. The shoreline around Canso was littered with small islands and rocky reefs. Plenty of ships had foundered there within sight of shore. We didn’t want to be one of them, but just when we needed maximum visibility, there we were, once again blundering sightlessly in the middle of a thick, claustrophobic cloud.

  We’d been told by radio that there was a boat containing an Ottawa Citizen reporter and photographer waiting for us near the lighthouse. But the closer we got to shore, the deeper the fog became, until there was nothing – no lighthouse, no boat, absolutely nothing – to be seen. We were unnerved first to hear, and then finally to see, a breaking reef just off our starboard side.

  “I see a dot on the radar three-quarters of a mile ahead of us,” called out Herbert in a voice of alarm. He was sitting in the navigation station, plotting our position on the computer screen, watching the GPS and the radar. “I don’t know whether it’s the lighthouse, a rock, or that boat. We’d better slow down.”

  We all got into battle stations. I moved to the bow of the boat, armed with a horn, trying to see ahead. Herbert stayed down below at the all-important radar. Michael stood at the wheel. Jonathan ran back and forth amidships to help me watch and to relay instructions.

  I peered myopically into the fog. “Whatever it is, it’s now half a mile away,” yelled Herbert. Jonathan stood beside me and cocked his ears like an attentive German Shepherd. There was a roaring sound like a train, or a helicopter. “I think it’s waves,” he said. He was right.

  Jon ran b
ack to relay the troubling news. Breaking waves was bad news: another reef close enough to hear. Too close. The fog thinned a bit, and in a minute we could see it: a disturbing line of foamy white water, this time to port. Reefs on either side of us. Our bodies were tense. We were only a mile away from shore, but between us and safety it was an invisible rocky obstacle course.

  Suddenly Jon shouted, “There’s the boat!” We had almost passed each other in the fog. Soon the familiar face of Wayne Cuddington, the same photographer who had been there for our departure, was smiling up at us. A few minutes later the fog cleared. And there before us was Canada.

  It was July 12, 2001: twenty-five years to the day since Herbert and I had met each other at the Calgary Stampede. It was twelve days since we had left the Azores. And it was three years and ten months since we had set out from Ottawa in a boat we had never sailed, filled with hopes and dreams. My throat grew tight while tears rolled down my cheeks. We were home.

  27

  The Best Maple Doughnut Ever

  Hands waving. People smiling. Cameras pointing. Joy. Relief Tears. A beautiful little church and steeple beckon from the crown of a grassy hill. Nova Scotia! Canada! Home! A second boat is arriving to escort us in. We’ve done it! We have really done it! Kleenex - need more Kleenex. All the boys out on deck, eating cheesies and chips. Fenders in place! Lines ready! We follow the boats in.

  Competent hands take our lines, secure us to the dock. Northern Magic gently comes to rest, in Canada again at last. Michael springs off the boat, running to kiss the ground. Jon and I follow, doing the same. A small stone, a piece of Canada, actually sticks briefly to my lips. Then I notice: grass! The smell of freshly cut grass! It’s the smell of summer, summer in Canada.