10 May: Gliding through Outer Space
Regina seemed to have been transformed into a space ship. No horizon was visible in the total darkness as she was flying along with the Polar Star ahead and the Southern Cross to our stern. Stars were twinkling all around us, not only above, but also to our sides, to our port and starboard and especially far down deep below us as if we were hanging in the centre of the universe.
The only evidence that we were still on the Atlantic and not had been lifted into cosmos was the ongoing sea-fire in Regina’s wash just around her hull. The millions of phosphorus plankton, that created the beauty, totally coalesced with the stars, which by the same number were reflected in the totally calm Atlantic Ocean. The optical illusion to hang freely in universe as we were motoring along by night was a scene I would never forget.
I stood night watch on my favorite place, comfortably leaning back against the pedestal overlooking the sprayhood enjoying this extraordinary sight with a big smile on my face. We had been motoring for days by now as we slowly made progress on our way to Bermuda from the British Virgin Islands (BVI). The engine was humming along in 1450 revs and pushed us gently northbound in 6 knots.
I thought of the incredible fuel economy we were experiencing, allowing us to motor for days and days. We had been gently pushed by our engine for four days and still had almost half of our 460 liters of diesel fuel left, since she only drew some 2.6 liters/hour under these conditions. I imagined Regina’s beautifully designed virtually friction-free underwater body and how she was plowing through the black ocean and thanked both her designer Germán Frers, her builder Hallberg-Rassy as well as our two-geared propeller and the Centaflex vibration damper for a good co-operation. Jointly, they worked as a unified team and I was just the passenger.
What a fool I was, standing in the hub of this beauty and thinking of technical issues! But it was my way to feel content and totally happy. When all pieces of a complex system work together flawlessly, as if they lived in harmony, depending and relying on each other, I feel happiness and freedom. To my surprise, I could feel this seamless harmony even while motoring, something that I until then only had experienced under sail.
I looked around me again. The entire universe looked like a huge fine-working mechanical clock, surpassing our mechanical propulsion by far, where each planet knew its orbit and followed it with great exactitude and predictability.
And we were part of it all.
Was our acting also predestinated like the planets? Had we always known that we would go cruising one day? During this night, it almost felt so. It seemed so natural, so obvious, that our lives had been leading us to glide among these stars on just this ocean passage on this very day.
The leg to Bermuda would take a week, which felt like a time-frame just right for a passage. How different to our previous sailing lives! Not long ago, a week at sea seemed as astronomic as the stars and planets around me, but after one year’s cruise, one week was suddenly considered to give enough time to find a rhythm onboard, getting rid of the sea-sickness of the first day and the tiredness of the second. Not until the third day at sea, we start to really appreciate a passage and one week gives enough time to find ourselves in harmony until it quickly becomes time for a landfall. At the same time, a week is short enough to carry plenty of tasty food to prepare meals with fresh vegetables and fresh fruit.
The leg to Bermuda, however, had also a second, more sad component, namely the fact that we were leaving the Caribbean and the tropics. Had it only been Karolina and me, we would certainly have continued for quite some more time. Also both our children wanted to continue, but, nevertheless, we felt that one year was just right for us as a mid-life cruise. We also felt that Jessica and Jonathan would appreciate a “real” school as a variety to home schooling, despite their protests.
Would we still feel the same, when we got back? Would we regret our decision to sail home? I knew we would, but sometimes a regret is the proof of love, like temporarily parting from a good friend.
We were already longing back to the tropics, since however beautiful the current night was, it had become chilly and for the first time in half a year, I was wearing a sweater, which felt uncomfortable and heavy. Soon, also long pants and even socks and shoes would follow as we made our progress back to the higher latitudes.
Slowly dawn made its progress and looking to the east one could already foretell the sun rising, while to the west stars were still visible.
The contrast to our warm and pleasant island hoppings in the Caribbean, with all the people we met and all the boats we encountered, could not be more obvious when regarding this empty and open ocean.
First of all, we would break up our trip back to Europe into three legs with stops in Bermuda and the Azores and hence, this first leg did not feel like a real crossing, but rather a six to seven-day leg up north from the Caribbean. Secondly, it made such a difference that we already had an ocean crossing behind us.
In other words, we knew what to do this time, how to prepare Regina and what to bunker. With our check-list from our last Atlantic crossing in her hand, Karolina had gone to the grocery shop she had picked for the purpose and in just a couple of visits she had filled our boat again with fresh, frozen, tinned and dried food for weeks at sea. With a good updated Excel-file that Karolina methodically kept, she had always full control over what was stowed onboard and what had to be stocked up. Picking the right supermarket seemed almost more difficult than the actual shopping, once you had done an ocean crossing before.
With another checklist in our hands, we had gone through Regina, like climbing the mast, which had become Joanthan’s job nowadays, checking every piece of the rigging. I had changed the oil in the gearbox and the main engine, as well as exchanged fuel filters, watermaker filters and had rigged the cutter stay with its staysail hanked on ready to go, when it becomes time to encounter heavy weather.
Compared to the Canaries, this had been so less stressful, possibly also thanks to the fact that we had not been hundreds of boats doing the same thing at the same time in the same marina. Getting ready for an ocean passage all by yourself in your own pace following common sense is so much less painful than having all these neighbors forcing one another to look at yet more things to do, to buy or to fix.
This time, the challenge did thus not lie in preparing the boat, bunkering or fearing the loneliness and boundlessness of the ocean, but rather in the weather we might meet when sailing on higher latitudes. Statistically, at least one gale was to be expected and the leg from the Azores to Ireland is characterized by Jimmy Cornell in our guide book as a “cold, wet and grey experience”.
We would eventually see how right he would be.
Despite the beauty of the empty universe on an equally deserted ocean, it is nevertheless good to have friends that you can talk to on the SSB.
Gliding through eternity is, after all, so much more pleasant if you share it with others around you doing the same!
