The sea voyage is more than an adventure;
it is a rite of passage, as decisive as a wedding.
It marks the end of the old self and the birth of the new.
- Jonathan Raban -
1/4 of Pacific...
...and a broken promise
It was 0600 local time and dawn. We had come home sometime around 0100 AM and I think I got about 4 hours of sleep. Aliisa was supposedly ready to go but the Pisco Sour, the good company and perhaps a little nervousness of the 2030 Nm ahead was making me feel a wee-bit shaky. As promised, I left Annina in bed. There was no need to fuss. She had cooked three days worth of food which was now sitting in plastic containers in the fridge. I stepped on deck, bowed deeply and thankfully to the security guard watching me from his floating watch-tower next to us, hoping that my gesture would somehow filter trough to all the people we had met and all the people who had smiled to us, greeted us and in their own little ways made us feel at home and welcomed in Lima. I hoisted the main and dropped the mooring line. No wind yet.
On the scale from "perfect" to "tolerable" this is very near perfect.
I realised that I was going to break a promise I made in late 2008 while sailing south along the east Atlantic toward Cape Verde islands. As we crossed the latitude 23'26 North I announced that Aliisa would never again leave the tropics. Little did I know then about our extra year and fututure plans. Easter Island lies firmly outside the tropics, near 27 degrees south.
I had little interest in the weather forecast when leaving Peru. I expected the wind to be southerly to start with, bending more SE as we head out west to the trades. The forecast hadn't changed much in the last 3 weeks and there seemed to be no real danger of anything severe.
And that's pretty much what happened. Nothing dangerous. We motored out into the calm at 0600. Annina was keeping a good eye on the pillows in the aft cabin. I was feeling fine to start with. In the afternoon the wind woke up and we started sailing. I started feeling seriously ill. A mixture of hangover and sea sickness, I suppose. I missed Lima and the quiet little suburb of La Punta. The smiling faces and chaotic energy of the city, our adoptive "parents" Edi and Ani, our friends Jorge, Marisa and Frano. Departing Peru was a hard reminder of the dark side of traveling: getting into the groove and then being "forced to" (because you've chosen the life style) grind your way out of the groove. It's like a young man with a fear of commitment - just when the place starts to love you back, you pull out and run away. You save yourself from the love that might hurt you, but still feel the pain from leaving.
Fortunately - as all politians know too well - human memory is very short. Usually for a cruiser the lenght of memory is about 4 hours, 15 nautical miles or the local VHF range, whichever comes first. In this case it lasted 3 days. Despite the seas being quite moderate, I vomited. First time on this entire voyage from Australia. Eventually I recovered and as the ocean around me and the place under the horizon in front of us filled my mind, the past evaporated, the pain vanished and there was nothing but excitement of heading into yet another new and wonderful experience. You don't forget, but you look forward. (In trains I never sit on the seats that face back, making you travel with your face toward your past.)
I always put a "cheese surprise" in my meat balls. No not that kind of cheese and not that kind of balls. Unfortunately I put waaaaaay too much breadcrumbs and my attempt to pay back some of Annina's efforts in the galley was wasted. I will try again, as this used to be one of my bravuras.
As soon as we left, Aliisa started to remind us that little problems are always lurking behind the corner. The windex was buggered, at least for now. Seems that one of the many pelicans of Lima had made a landing on the top of the mast and managed to bend our only wind indicator. (Apart from the Aerogen, which instead was swaying too much in the growing swell.) Not a big problem, Aliisa had sailed most of her lif without a windex but with the wind bending behind us the arrow up top would have been nice to have.
Much better luck with the pancakes. Perhaps some would call them "crepes", made very thin and crispy, eaten with jam, butter, whipped cream, sugar, syrup etc. Leftovers (lower pic) can be filled with real food, covered in cheese and cooked in the oven. Yum.
The next problem was bigger. A small rip in the mainsail quickly advanced across the entire panel, leaving a meter-long gap above the third reef. It turned out that the sail was as brittle as an autumn leaf, opening new parallel rips if not handled carefully. We handled it very carefully with the last 50 cm of our sail tape and a few meters of duct tape. Yeah, I know, pretty desperate. Sowing it on the road was too hard due to the swell. Luckily the wind kept backing further E and ENE, allowing us to run with two headsails only.
Yeah, I know. I'm growing a beer belly. Peru was not the only place where soft-drinks were more expensive than local beer. I'm not in a good shape. I will have to work on that when we arrive in Australia. Not before.
The seas were kind to us and the bad days weren't bad enough for me to remember them at the time of this writing. (As far as voyages go, my memory has been failing me lately, hasn't it.) Perhaps there was a week or less with rain, light winds and light "squalls" up to 20kn, making it a bit of a pain in the ass to figure out the right amount of sail to carry. The mainsail was often reefed in light winds to stop or reduce its flogging in the swells but taking it down was out of question because the next rain area with its promised push of 20kn was already on its way. There was a day or two of stonger winds but they came from behind and our magic machine - the big Simrad DD15 direct drive autopilot did not take much notice, just quietly continuing its endless arm-wrestling with the rudder. (By the way, this unit is amazing. It draws usually 2 Amps or less, makes no sound at all and is strong as a bull. Well, that's 1500 kg torque)
It's good to keep up-to-date with important events of the world. Like how horrible Angelina is to Brad and all the other news that "the source" and the friend "from the inside" has reported to the so-called "journalists" working for quality publications.
Not much else to report from this passage. As any real sailor since time began, I too was very happy to see land. That's a curious feature of sailors. I mean true long-distance sailors, including the real tough guys of the past sailing ships. Always happy to see land. I'm going to contradict myself straight away. As I was pondering on the joy of seeing land I remembered how happy I was at sea. It had been a long time since Aliisa was in the trade winds. Now we were in the deep blue Pacific with a nice breeze, engine quiet, the sloshing sound of water rushing past the hull, nothing to do but to watch the horizon, sleep, eat and relax. As the world with all its noise and commotion, all its obligations, appointments and temptations was gone, I felt the peace and calm creep into my heart again. Yes, I was truly happy at sea. I didn't care about the lenght of our leg, as long as the conditions would remain between perfect and tolerable.
Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I'm always happy to see land but lets not over-emphasise that. When trades are blowing, skies are blue and progress is good, there is no place like my place, at sea.
Our last bit of sail tape did not stick. Nor did the duct tape. Aliisa's mainsail is dying.
There it is. A row of Moai statues (Ahu Tongariki) are confirming that we have indeed come to the correct lump of volcanic rock sticking out of the ocean. If Pacific rocks, Easter Island rolls. But more about that in the next page...
