Green Ghost, Blue Ocean
Page 1
Copyright © Jennifer Smith 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used or stored in any form or by any means – graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying – or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any requests for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems shall be directed in writing to the publisher or to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (www.AccessCopyright.ca). This also applies to classroom use.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Green Ghost, blue ocean: no fixed address / Jennifer M. Smith.
Names: Smith, Jennifer M. (Adventurer), author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200171798 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200171836 | ISBN 9781989725054
(softcover) | ISBN 9781989725061 (HTML)
Subjects: LCSH: Smith, Jennifer M. (Adventurer)—Travel. | LCSH: Adventure and
adventurers—Canada—Biography. | LCSH: Voyages around the world. | LCSH: Sailing.
Classification: LCC G540 .S57 2020 | DDC 910.4/5—dc23
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Front cover credit: Alex Nikolajevich
Cover design: Jennifer M. Smith
Pottersfield Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada for our publishing activities. We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of Nova Scotia which has assisted us to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.
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Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter 1 – Departure
Chapter 2 – Gale Force
Chapter 3 – A Steamer Trunk with a Mast
Chapter 4 – First Steps in San Francisco
Chapter 5 – California Cruising
Chapter 6 – Mexico
Chapter 7 – Crew
Chapter 8 – The Long Crossing
Chapter 9 – Two Percent Sheer Terror
Chapter 10 – French Polynesia
Chapter 11 – West and South
Chapter 12 – New Zealand
Chapter 13 – The Gouda Cruise to Fiji
Chapter 14 – Tanna and New Caledonia
Chapter 15 – Vanuatu, The Northern Islands
Chapter 16 – Toronto
Chapter 17 – Queensland Coast, Australia
Chapter 18 – Across the Top
Chapter 19 – Indonesia
Chapter 20 – Kalimantan, Singapore, and Malacca
Chapter 21 – A Year in Asia
Chapter 22 – Crossing the Indian
Chapter 23 – Wait and Hope
Chapter 24 – Madagascar
Chapter 25 – Africa
Chapter 26 – St. Helena
Chapter 27 – Ascension
Chapter 28 – Fernando de Noronha
Chapter 29 – One Hundred and One Atlantic Nights
Chapter 30 – From the Caribbean, Home
Glossary
Acknowledgements
FIGURES
Figure 1. Pacific Ocean Route Map
Figure 2. Asia Route Map
Figure 3. Indian Ocean Route Map
Figure 4. Atlantic Ocean Route Map
Figure 5. Caribbean Route Map
Figure 6. East Coast North America Route Map
Author’s Note
Green Ghost, Blue Ocean is a true story told from my point of view. From scribbled journals, salt-stained logbooks, ragged calendars, and the hundreds of e-mails I sent home, I have reconstructed the story of our sailing adventure. Naturally, many stories from the seventeen-year period have been left out as have many of the wonderful people we met along the way. To fellow sailors not included in this book, we remain deeply thankful for your camaraderie, cold beer, and spare parts, and for your comforting voices over the long-distance radio. Nobody sails the world completely alone.
Also missing from my story are tales of the family members and friends who flew to far-flung corners of the earth to support us with their company and their enthusiasm for sampling a small part of our adventure. We are thankful for the privilege of visiting foreign countries and for the gracious hospitality of the local people. Warm and friendly interactions far outweighed any difficult exchanges we had. Of course, more dramatic stories arise from the more challenging situations and some of these stories are told here.
I have tried to recreate our conversations and experiences to the best of my imperfect memory. Others’ memories of the situations I describe will, no doubt, be different from my own. While the people in my story are real, some character identities are composites and, in some cases, I have changed the name and/or the identity of individuals.
I hope you enjoy going to sea with Green Ghost on the blue ocean.
Figure 1. Pacific Ocean Route Map
CHAPTER 1
Departure
(late August – early September 2000)
We sold the car. We couldn’t go back. We couldn’t go back because we sold the car. These weren’t reasonable thoughts for a sensible, analytical person like me. But in that deafening dark moment I wasn’t making sense. I was certain it was the sale of our car that had done it. That immutable act had changed everything. The car was the last connection to our Vancouver land life and we’d willfully, recklessly severed it. We sold the car, we couldn’t go back, and I didn’t know the way forward from here.
But we were moving forward even as I lay there fretting in my berth. We were hurtling forward in fact. We were pitching and rolling and yawing. We were violently thrown around. As each wave took us up, up, up, it felt as though an unseen hand had grabbed Green Ghost by her transom, tossing her onward without a thought to her well-being. Then, that giant roller would pass under us, lowering us into a trough so deep our horizon line became the back of that passing wave and the crest of the next one to come. Big weather – it wasn’t in the forecast.
None of what was happening had been in my forecast. So much had gone into this, so much education, preparation, and planning. Nine years earlier the plan to change our lives had been a dream. But now, I lay worrying in my bunk, listening to the dark noise of wind and the rush of water hurtling past the hull. Just three days in and our dream felt more like a nightmare. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I thought it was going to be fun.
I lay on a cushioned bench seat in the main salon. Six feet away, my husband Nik lay on the port-side bench incapacitated by seasickness. He was a huddled mass, dressed in fleece, and covered in a blanket. He’d wedged a large stainless steel stockpot between his body and the lee cloth that held him in his bunk. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t stand up.
My mind was reeling and helpless. I was unable to contemplate solutions, to see a way out. I stopped thinking about the car for a moment and focused on a single word: undo. I wanted to undo all of this. I wanted to reverse the hundreds of decisions we’d made that had brought us here, to this heaving patch of ocean, to these towering seas, to the forty-knot winds rushing us south. I wanted daylight. I wanted land. I wanted us to jump in our car and drive away. But we couldn’t do that. We couldn’t go back because we’d sold the car – forward was the only way
from here.
I should have known we were doomed, we’d had such an inelegant departure. I’d imagined Nik and me, poised and nautical in Breton stripes, gliding out of our slip shipshape and unruffled. Instead, with short tempers and long faces we were furiously addressing our to-do lists. With only hours left before a tide-imposed sailing time, gear lay everywhere waiting to be stowed. Nik needed a haircut. I needed to go to the bank. Our landline and garden hose were still connected to the dock. A knock on the hull drew our attention. Neighbouring sailors who’d lived their offshore dream years earlier recognized that our harried expressions and frenzied pace could mean only one thing: Departure Day.
Handing us a bottle of champagne, they assured us, “It won’t always be like this. Eventually you’ll relax. You’ll love Mexico! And the Pacific is fantastic! You’ll have a wonderful time!”
A bottle of bubbly and a couple of goodbyes at the dock were all we had. There was no other fanfare, no tearful crowd waving handkerchiefs, no band playing. Midday, midweek, there were no witnesses as we backed out of our Coal Harbour berth. In the late August sun, we slowly motored into the view I’d had from my Vancouver office a month earlier. It was a big moment, but if I told you it was the consummation of years of dreaming, I’d be lying. Dreaming only gets you started. That day was the outcome of deciding, followed by a decade of doing.
Two people, a cat, and a sailboat were leaving the big city behind. Unacknowledged, I felt small and alone in the face of what lay ahead. I thought that this massive undertaking deserved some sort of inauguration. Just then, my thoughts were startled by three blasts from a nearby boat. It was the tourist vessel, Constitution, out on a harbour cruise. Captain Jim, our neighbour for four and a half years at Harbour Ferries Marina, was at the helm. As we rounded the navigation marker beyond the fuel barges, he gave us a proper send-off. Those three cheerful blasts lifted my spirits. Our departure was not so anonymous after all. With that one proper farewell salute, we were on our way.
It was a two-day trip to Victoria, where we would pick up crew. A strong westerly wind made for an exhilarating sail down Haro Strait. With twenty-three knots blowing on our quarter, Green Ghost flew at hull speed, racing toward our starting line. I was at the helm and loving it, believing the brisk day was a good test. But Nik felt ill and apprehensive, and our long-haired calico cat, Tuzo, felt the same. She vomited on the floor below decks. Ah, the romance of offshore sailing – it had already begun.
Three friends, who were interested in going offshore in their own boats someday, joined us in Victoria. Kathleen and Tiro, friends from the mining industry, were outdoorsy types and excited to be a part of the inaugural leg. Jordan, a colleague of Nik’s, was an engineer and a keen power-boater, but not a sailor himself. Tiro was the only one of us who knew what he was getting into. Two decades earlier, at the age of thirteen, his parents had taken their family cruising through the South Pacific aboard their home-built sailboat. Of Green Ghost’s five-man crew, Tiro was the only one with any offshore experience. The rest of us were there to get it.
Over two days we made last-minute preparations and contemplated the weatherfax information received through our HF radio and PACTOR modem. Each time the radio sprang to life with the latest weather report, Captain Nik silenced our noisy, giddy excitement. When the forecast indicated that the winds would switch from southwesterly to northwesterly with no wind over twenty-five knots predicted for the following week, all systems were go for a downwind run to San Francisco. Sunday, September 3, 2000, would be our departure day.
We eased into the trip, motoring up a windless Juan de Fuca Strait and making good progress toward the cape. Everyone was feeling fine but we were hedging our bets. To combat seasickness Kathleen and Tiro were taking a drug called Stugeron, a motion-sickness medication. Nik and I were each using half of a scopolamine patch, a transdermal anti-nauseant and antiemetic. Even ship’s cat Tuzo was drugged up on a tiny dose of a children’s Gravol. Only Jordan tempted fate.
With the chaos of departure behind us, we settled into the trip, each one of us keen for the adventure. We passed around the binoculars when orcas arced off the port side. Camera shutters clicked when a U.S. Navy submarine passed us heading out to sea.
When Dall’s porpoises leaped from the water and crisscrossed our bow, I held on tightly to the bow pulpit, beaming. No matter how often we saw them, I always marvelled at their antics. Their playful nature, their leaps of delight, filled me with joy. I believed their visit was a happy send-off and the best possible kind of omen.
For dinner on that first night, we warmed frozen beef stew and the five of us ate like children, with spoons from bowls, as we rounded Cape Flattery and headed south. A ten- to fifteen-knot northwest wind filled in behind us exactly as the forecast predicted. In a light swell, the engine went off, the sails were set, and our mechanical self-steering gear was engaged. Nik poured a tot of rum into the sea in a toast to Neptune, the sun sank in the western sky, and the first night was upon us. We planned to sail eighty nautical miles (NM) offshore to stay out of the shipping traffic. With 750 NM to go, we anticipated a week at sea to reach San Francisco.
Nik and I had both plenty of experience and no experience at all. We knew our boat inside out. We’d lived aboard and had sailed locally for four and a half years before our departure. Every piece of equipment we’d added had been painstakingly installed ourselves. We’d done cruises on the inside passage up to Desolation Sound; we’d crossed open water on a trip to Bella Bella. We’d done a month-long circumnavigation of Vancouver Island. We’d crossed Georgia Strait in the dark. We had over 1,300 NM under our belts. Courses in basic and intermediate sailing, celestial navigation, and coastal navigation had been completed. We’d read many offshore sailing books, even the disaster-at-sea stories, thinking we might learn something from them. We’d passed government exams in Safe Boating, Maritime Radio, HAM Radio, and Morse Code. More coursework was completed in diesel engine repair (Nik), sail repair (me), spinnaker sailing, weather for sailors and heavy-weather sailing tactics. Yes, we had experience – we had day-tripping coastal sailing experience. But when it came to multi-day, non-stop offshore voyaging, we had no experience at all. The conundrum of a blue-water sailing experience is that you may not want to go offshore without it, but you can’t get any of it until you go offshore.
Prior to departing Victoria, I’d wondered how it would feel to spend nights at sea. I had a vague notion that we might stay up late in the cockpit discussing the meaning of life over steaming cups of hot chocolate. Or perhaps a game of cribbage would be played by the red glow of the night-lights below decks. My ideas were more romantic than fearful. I pictured a cozy scenario akin to a gathering around a cottage campfire. In reality, at nightfall on that first night at sea, grabbing a bunk was like a game of musical chairs. When the sun went down, the music stopped and anyone who wasn’t required on deck dashed below to grab a berth. The off-watch crew was in bed, lights out, by eight p.m. So much for deep thoughts over hot chocolate.
We had five berths, but only three of them were comfortable at sea. No one wanted to sleep in the V-berth because there was too much motion in the bow. We planned a two-man watch at all times, which meant there was a berth for each person on the off-watch crew – just not a fresh one. We were hot-bunking.
We agreed that no formal watch was required by day. We simply took turns. If you were up and you felt like it, you were on watch. This pleased the captain and his laid-back ways. For the nights, we agreed on a schedule. This pleased me, as I am more punctilious than the captain when it comes to, well, when it comes to just about everything.
Things went well for the first few days. We had clear skies, smooth seas, and a remarkably constant fifteen-knot northwesterly on our quarter. We sailed with the mainsail up and the large foresail, the genoa, poled out. At night, to be conservative, we put one reef in the main and retired the downwind pole. Our Cape Horn mechanical self-steering gear, which we had nicknamed Digger, was performing fl
awlessly. The five of us were happy to let Digger steer.
Nik found the night shifts challenging. To keep nausea at bay it was best to focus on the distance, but it was difficult to see one another in the cockpit, let alone see the far-off horizon line. The darkness was disorienting and through his moonless shifts, Nik was in a perpetual state of nausea. We’d been foolish to cut the scopolamine patch in half. It wasn’t a proper dosage and it was not working. He soon switched to Stugeron.
When the winds began to build midweek, we were not concerned. The forecast called for a fifteen- to twenty-knot northwesterly, peaking at twenty-five knots in the night, then easing back the following day. As the conditions became more boisterous in the late afternoon, we enjoyed our increased speed. Before sundown we put two reefs in the main, and furled the genoa in favour of using the smaller staysail. We thought ourselves quite smart – but we were not smart enough. It was on this night that it all went to hell in a handbasket.
Nik and I stood watch on the early shift. Despite a sliver of moon now lighting the horizon, neither one of us felt well. It was cold. Our body temperatures were falling as the wind speed steadily rose. We sat huddled and braced in the cockpit, hanging on for the ride.
At the end of our watch at two a.m. we were chilled through and shivering. The winds were thirty knots and we were beginning to consider reducing sail further but we were too cold and too tired to take action. Kathleen and Tiro were on watch next and, as pathetic as it may sound, although we were the boat owners, we decided to let the fresh crew, our guests, assess the situation. We wanted to believe that it was only our fatigue overriding our ability to cope with the elements.
Below deck we tried to get some sleep. I tried the mantra I’d used when we’d been in uncomfortable conditions in B.C. This won’t last, this won’t last, this won’t last, I repeated to myself, hoping to slide into sleep. But I couldn’t settle and I got up to pee. I didn’t see the open hatch in the dark. As I sat on the toilet, a wave hit the boat and five gallons of freezing cold seawater poured in over my head, then sloshed back and forth on the floor before swirling down the drain hole into the bilge. Swearing bitterly, I changed out of my wet clothes in the wild motion of the V-berth. With damp hair, I collapsed into my bunk. It was then that I began to fret about the car, about everything. Every thought I had ended in go back, go home, undo. But we couldn’t go back – because we’d sold the car.