50 Shades Of Green
19 May 2012 | THE PACIFIC OCEAN
Lisa Anderson
5/17/2012
Day fifteen on the high seas – and high seas they have been. Today is the first day in the last eight or nine that we have not been in 18 – 20 knot winds with 2-3 meter seas, and then all the wind chop and cross seas that go with the squalls that have 30 knot winds – and you get the picture – or so I thought. I kept thinking, what is wrong with me? Why am I so nauseous? Why is my head pounding? Why are my legs shaking and I feel so weak? Yeesh, what good am I if I can’t cook and take care of my boys? I’m not cut out for this at all…But then, by day three of this nonsense I realized – I’m sick you dummy! So, after four days I am back to my somewhat perky self (it’s hard to be perky when you are in perpetual motion ALL the time, and really are only getting an average of 6 hours of sleep per day and that is broken up in 2 or 3 attempts).
With 700 miles to go we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have to say though that with the calmer seas, wind, and weather today, if the whole trip had been like this it would be a breeze. But alas, one never knows for sure what the ocean might cook up. This truly is not for the faint of heart. Now that I’ve finished reading my 50 Shades of Grey trilogy I’ve started on a book called Swept: Love With A Chance Of Drowning, by Torre DeRoche. It is a true story and it really is hysterical. Larry says I remind him of the author, because of the way she tells her story of taking off on a sailboat with her boyfriend. Anyway, I had to laugh when I read her line in the book about doing night watches; “I’m learning that night watch is a blend of deep meditative relaxation, punctuated by surprise defibrillator zaps.”
Yesterday we began to experience a “rudder failure” warning on our autopilot. Hmmm…I know people used to actually steer their ship 24/7 but somehow that just doesn’t sound appealing to me at all. “Is it the large waves overpowering the autopilot,” Larry and I silently ask each other with our eyes? Trying not to show fear, what we’re really saying in the backs of our minds is, “Oh shit!” (Yes, I’m starting to talk like a sailor again only this time I’ve earned it!) So, with two hours of daylight left (go figure) and Larry thinking he’d really like to get a good look at the steering system we drop the sails and start up our trusty motor thinking that would be a kinder and gentler on our steering system. Larry has now affectionately named our autopilot Dory, because it sounds like the way Dory was trying to communicate with the whales in the movie Nemo, if you remember. Okay, then we had to pull everything out of our aft lazarette – which basically is our garage –and try to place the items on deck so they wouldn’t roll off as the boat swayed back and forth side to side in the huge swell (that was my job). Are ‘ya with me so far? Now that Larry has pulled the floor out of the compartment, in order to get to the steering unit, he has contorted himself through a 25X25 inch hatch and is precariously balancing between the constantly moving hydraulic steering quadrant and cables. Ei-yi-yi! He pretty quickly figures out what the problem is, the pin on one of the wheel units is working itself out allowing the wheel to tweek and probably freeze up when the boat is trying to turn. In English this means, really bad. “You mean we could totally lose our steering?” I really try to not sound too panicked. So, while Larry lays down in this compartment on his right side, knees pulled practically up to his chest (ah yes, the fetal position because THAT IS WHERE YOU WISH YOU WERE AGAIN!), twisting and bending forward down into this small hole with a flashlight in his mouth, a mirror in his left hand and a hammer in his right, he patiently beats away on this pin – trying to not get a finger, or hand, or arm cut off by the moving hydraulic unit – while the boat goes heave ho, heave ho. I pray, and pray, and pray, as the foreboding blackness of night envelops us. “Okay,” says Larry, “this is not working so tomorrow morning – Plan B.” We patiently re-stuff the lazarette, exhausted. We nurture the steering through the night and miraculously we don’t have one failure. Thank you Lord! Gazing at the amazing plethora of stars that night during my watch I see the biggest, brightest falling star ever! And I make a wish…
The next morning we feel refreshed. The wind and seas have calmed down considerably – ahhh. Hear that..? Exactly! We unpack the lazarette again. Larry’s new plan is to remove the steering cable off the quadrant (he says theoretically, we should be able to steer the boat just with the control dial on the autopilot but I don’t get it but I don’t question him either), then remove the problem wheelie thingy, take off another good wheelie thingy that is easier to get at and replace that where the bad one is, fix the bad one then replace it where he removed the good one. “Sounds like a plan, dear”, says I. A few minutes later he pops his head out of the hole and says, “You’re never gonna believe this but I fixed it! There is no logical reason as to how I just did that.” Thank you Lord I say again, only I shout it this time!
Now in the meantime, I have forgotten to mention that we suddenly had a flood of water in our engine room, right around the time the steering was going to shit (oops, there’s that word again). Hmmm…tastes like salt water (yes, this is what you do on a boat to determine the nature of your problem sometimes, you taste them). So, now in the Bikram type setting, meaning the steamy, 120 degree engine room (remember we were running our engine the whole night in order to take it easy on our steering) MacGyver/Larry patiently gets to work on figuring out where in the world is all this water coming from. You guessed it – it’s our generator AGAIN, only this time the heat exchanger actually has a hole in it. Ba dum! This translates in English to no water maker, no air conditioning, and no wii. I think we’ll live this time. Our still very sweet 11 year old says, “Mom, I think there’s a reason why God doesn’t want our generator to not work right now and we’ll be just fine.” And in that moment I thought, you know what kid – you’re gonna be just fine in life. Sometimes things just are what they are in life and if you can figure that out by eleven…wow. But!!! Hold on folks!!! Larry/MacGyver comes up with a fix and so far it’s holding…well sort of…we’ll see.
5/18/2012
625 miles to go! Ben asks each one of us everyday at least ten times (I’m gonna kill him) are you excited? He really has been great – not complaining – well maybe just little yesterday when he couldn’t play his wii! He has faithfully been doing his night watches, usually the 3 – 6 AM shift, which has helped us old folks out immensely. It has been the hardest thing in the world for me to wake him up at 3. A mother just doesn’t wake up a sleeping baby! But I do, and then I crawl into bed with my adoring, talented, oh so capable husband and we blissfully snooze together for a few hours.