Hello All! Happy Friday!
Just a quick post for your weekend reading: a look back at the journey so far. I have this mini-essay posted over at my Kickstarter project, but thought I'd post it here as well. Without a doubt, this journey would have been impossible without the support and encouragement you countless folks around the globe have offered me. It's truly a fantastic world we live in . . .
Thanks again to everyone to who's pledged so far - we've already raised over $800! 48 more days left on the campaign to reach the goal or none of the pledges become real money. If you have a spare moment this weekend, please please help spread the link - the more people we can bring in now, the better our odds! Without further ado, read on, my friends! :
11,000 MILES IN OUR WAKE, A LOOK BACK
We do not ask for our dreams: those images and ideas that haunt our thoughts, that push us on. They come to us of their own accord and their own tenacity - they are journeymen in their own right, fated to find us somehow.
Just over two years ago (July 2009) I launched one of the earlier projects on Kickstarter; it was an admitted shot in the dark, an effort to rally support around some wild dream I'd been having: to sail one tiny boat right round the world. Alone.
And then a sort of unbelievable thing happened: it worked. Support poured in, during the campaign, after the campaign and even now two years later; (incredibly, 11,000 miles down this wild blue road, I still regularly get emails from people somehow inspired by this idea of a little boat floating silently through the night.)
In August 2009 when the project closed, the boat was immediately hauled from the water to a nearby shipyard in Los Angeles. Together, with a small group of friends, we raced against the clock to ready S/Y BOBBIE for her big trip. The season for heading south was upon us, we did what we could, packed her with what we could afford; we hugged necks, tried not to think of what our parting would mean (because surely we'll be stronger than the distance, won't we?). And then it was time.
I headed south down the Baja coast of Mexico, in and out of ports I'd learned as a kid. Those Mexican hideaways were my refuge - faraway enough to know I was on my way, close enough to still reach for home. In Cabo San Lucas, I'd rowed ashore to find media-darling Abby Sunderland in port as well. For two young women setting out on solo circumnavigations our worlds couldn't have been further apart: she had a team flown in on private planes, a budget one talks about in quarters of millions of dollars. "Good Morning America" was there, never further than an arms length away. We slept in side by side twin beds, I ate their posh foods.
In total I'd spend over 5 months in Mexico, weening myself off of my American life, the things I was leaving behind, completing prep work and acquiring gear while marine chandleries were still within reach. My boyfriend would make his last visit in Puerto Vallarta (before the distance and shitty cell coverage would all become too much). We sought the highlands to learn about the Huichol Indians (those fantastically outfitted Peyoteros) and to roam the desert on horseback.
By July I was heading up the mouth of the Lempa River in El Salvador. I kid you not, one of the first people I'd run into was one of only a handful of people I'd known in the country: an old acquaintance named Santos Torres. He and his family were living off an island called Cordoncillo there in the middle of the swampy, tropical Mayan ruins. He took me in, we became the best of mates and spent our days racing up and down rivers and inlets, looking for crocodiles, visiting villages, eating sugar cane straight from the stalk, laughing, shouting, drinking up that wild air.
In Costa Rica, I sought the quiet corners. Tranquil bays snugged up to dense forests. I'd swim ashore and follow howler monkeys, sit for hours trying to make sense of their series of calls. With machete in hand I'd press through thick mud and vegetation, searching for pumas and cougars and pretty much just living dangerously ( /stupidly). I'd swim the little rock islands, and scamper about the shore taunting the thousands of tiny hermit crabs moving en masse across the banks. In the evenings I'd tune the shortwave radio to BBC or Radio Havana, scanning for world news or wacky music stations. I felt like I lived in a different time; I wrote alot of letters in those days.
Panama was a refuge from the rain, the constant, at times unbearable, wetness of living. By the time we'd tucked up into the Gulf of Panama, sitting at the mouth of that grand canal, it was November and fall was upon us. Fate, that most enduring companion, would reunite me with some of my dearest ocean-going pals for a season of Thanksgiving and abundance. Christmas- time brought me new friends for the new year in the form of two young Belgian boys wrapping their own circumnavigation (which amazingly included a jaunt to the Antarctic). They'd lend hands to my repairs and we'd share meals and stories, injecting me with more inspiration than they could ever know. I transited the canal with them aboard their yacht and bade them a teary farewell (alas, the bane of this lifestyle - so nice to meet you, so sad to leave you) as they continued east-about and I prepared myself at long last for the The West.
A glassy afternoon in early February, two local boys, Marcos and Juan, helped me weigh anchor, gave me kisses, shouted silly "I think I love you!"s while clenching their chests and offering some final encouragement. Weaving my way through a myriad of anchored container ships and heavy canal traffic, I pointed my bow towards Isla Santa Cruz in the Galapagos Islands, 890 nautical miles distant. 14 days later I'd make my first truly offshore landfall.
After dropping hook in the bay of Puerto Ayora I made my way ashore to meet a friend of a friend who's family lived on the island and who'd offered to show me around. The dock behind their house was covered in sleeping sea lions which I learned to negotiate a pass through by extending my hands over head and clapping wildly. The rocky soil just outside their house was teeming with iguanas. Down the street was a reserve of giant land tortoises whose size can really only be described as prehistoric. We'd bike the island and he'd help me round up supplies and spare parts I'd need as I would press on 2,000 miles southwest to a tiny dot in the middle of the south pacific - that most mysterious of destinations, Easter Island.
It would take me eight days to find the proper tradewinds, and then we'd be off like lightening. Twice daily I'd chat via the SSB radio with a couple other boats trailing behind on the same course. We'd compare notes on weather, share positions, chat about issues we were having. On Day 19 of my crossing with 600 nautical miles still between me and the island, I experienced my worst gear failure to date, a parting of the forestay that tensions the front of the mast. With it's snapping a series of chain-events would disable the entire top of the mast, rendering it impossible to raise sails to the proper height without risking even further damage to the rig. With canvas reduced to a size not much larger than a couple of handkerchiefs, I'd inch my way through that last stretch of ocean at less than a quarter speed. I'd be lucky to make 25 miles in 24 hours. 16 more days would pass before I'd reach the harbor of Hanga Roa.
They say that good things come to those who wait, and when what had originally been slated as only a week long stop over turned into a 3 month and 4 day long occupation for repair making, never had this old adage been more true. Friends on other yachts that had breezed through only for photographs of statues and new provisions for their next legs had simply missed it all; they missed fishing with broad shouldered boys with names like Poike and Honu, they missed walking barefoot to secret lookouts, they missed a population of dudes who even in the middle of the ocean still love their leather jackets and long hair. They missed stalking the streets late at night while teenagers blaze by on horseback with ghettoblasters at full volume. They missed plowing taro fields and island wide koranto feasting. They missed having boyfriends named after creatures of the sea, they missed the revolution in the streets. They really missed it all.
By the time July came, the mast was ready to be put back in the boat and I knew it was time to go. Or I simply never would. I borrowed an old motorcycle, kept my head down, finished the work. On July 12, the boat had been packed to the brim with two months of vegetables, some wood carvings for good luck, and a new puppy to keep me company. At sunset my friend Ese towed me out of the harbor while a crowd of friends looked on. I shouted "Iorana!" for the last time and like I wasn't scared at all. There would be 3500 miles between me and my next safe anchorage.
They call them the Horse Latitudes, that band of variable winds punctuated with mind-dullingly long calms. And July and August are famously the worst months for them. The 1000 mile run between Easter and Pitcairn Islands would take me a full 30 days to complete. August 12th, right as I was just sighting the island the onset of a gale set in and would blow for over 4 days. With no safe harbor on the island, there was no choice but to just heave-to off the lee shore and let it rage. August 16th, I raised the islanders on VHF radio and at long last organized my arrival.
It seemed like half the island loaded up in the longboat that came out to meet me and direct us to a secure anchorage in the famed Bounty Bay. The next morning the immigration official and island police officer came to fetch me in a small home built skiff. Both were shoeless - my kinda people. Amazingly efficient, they kindly shuttled me up the hill on the back of a couple four-wheelers, directly to the island's old radio station where we dug through their old store of galvanized wires and turnbuckles until we found the perfect rigging fix that I'd come looking for. I stayed on for four days to spend as much time with these famed inhabitants as possible before the next front was due to blow. Four giant boxes filled with the most lovely spread of fruits and vegetables you could possibly imagine were loaded up for the voyage. The old workhorse MOSS gave me another tow back out, as a couple islanders rode along for a bit to have a nice view of a mother and calf humpback playing in the water just ahead. Then the all too familiar scene: hugs and well wishes, alone again.
2500 miles of ocean later, I'm writing you from Pago Pago on Tutuila Island in American Samoa. I'm getting my mail for the fist time in eight months, restocking my boat with a bounty of goods only an American supermarket can offer, and then I'll be off again. By the time most of you are reading this I'll likely be pushing towards the coast of Papua New Guinea, a cyclone season on my heels. Always, further, further, further - onwards and westward, wherever this dream may lead.
Friday, November 11, 2011 at 10:10AM 
