Anchor watch: Poseidon's folly, sailor's sleepless nights

Imagine an erratic stream of 3 foot nautical bucking broncos under your floor. The deep, angry howling sound of their leader Poseidon above, below, permeating everything.

The boat is at their mercy. Our anchor, a muddy claw, reaching deep into the mysteries below us, chain for muscly arm, holds us against the onslaught. All night. 

And we sit in the darkness peering around in our floating capsule, the hopeful against the futile – perhaps by our well wishes and generous doses of worry – that we, and all the other boats, will have strong anchors too.

We employ technology to confirm what we know – the chartplotter, on and ready for duty at the helm reports 33 knots - the wind is pumping. The digital display at once comforting and terrifying. The wind is definitely pumping and no one but us is here to deal with whatever emergency might ensue. And it’s 2am. It’s always 2 am.

This is a relatively common practice called ‘anchor watch’. It always happens in the dead of night, when, by Sod’s Law, all the storms happen. Poseidon loves to taunt the sailors. But tonight he is particularly the bully. The wind begins as forecast about 11pm. It’s now 7am and the seas are still agitated. The wind is still pumping. There is a massive system off the east coast of America and we are feeling it’s wrath.

Weather dictates our life. Weather is our life in many ways. Our plans and destinations and timing – weather. We are sitting in Nassau at this very minute because we calculated the potential for this storm and figured this would be the safest place to ride it out. Hemmed in on all sides by Atlantis Resort, cruise ship docks, marinas and massive bridges.

“We’ll be protected by the buildings” we said.

“And by the cruise ships!” we also surmised.

Well it all came to nothing as the wind and the waves bypassed our imaginary security measures and hammered us all night.

It’s not like we didn’t know this was coming. But we’ve learned there’s nothing much to do but carry on as normal until the wind hits the boat! Or the shit hits the fan. Sometimes those are two in the same.

But yesterday in the calm before, we feigned regular tourists for the day. Hid ourselves in the plain sight world of overfed cruise ship visitors.

We are even sporting our version of the farmer’s tan with it being the beginning of the season and all…

We literally joined the ranks of people who are in the festive holiday mood. Sampled the free rum, walked the town, perused the art galleries and marveled at the beach bodies of every shape and size. 

We pretended we would also be heading back to a secure cabin or hotel room for a hot shower and a prepared meal and maybe take in a show or hit the casino.

We looked just like those who would be hitting their pillows without worry of their homes dragging through an anchorage into a concrete wall or another boat while they slept.

But what is sleep to a cruiser on anchor watch? Something he’s not getting tonight.

Later today – if the weather permits - we will sit at the pub just over there on solid ground, amongst the fans and party folk, watching the Superbowl adverts and the halftime show.

Nothing to give away our secret, except maybe a few dark circles under the eyes or an extra grey hair. Nothing but a twinkle in our eyes to hint that we are living at the edge of society’s safety illusion. Living with the wind as our master. Living a life unknown, where the highs are higher than the highest skyscrapers and the lows involve anchors dragging through the mud.

About the abyss: escaping by sea

4000 meters of ocean below, it hosts us, holds us above it’s deep indigo mystery. It is majestic, omnipotent.

4000 meters of deadly abyss, it would swallow us, carry us lifeless to it’s depths without a boat, without this floating mass of fiberglass and wood and metal we call home.

These are the random thoughts that capture my mind and soul as we are pulled along by rumbling motors and the breath of wind in our sails. It will take approximately 14 hours, out here in these deep ocean waters, to cover the 80 miles between Nassau and the Abacos islands.

It’s always a humbling experience, which is why whenever we arrive at a new destination after a day long sail, we sit quietly, usually with a whisky in the sunset, marveling, celebrating, appreciating our successful passage. 

It is literally a freedom one cannot feel on a day to day basis when we are surrounded by land and it’s inherent anchors – trees and buildings and people and society. It is none of those things. It has only sky above and ocean below. Seems a simple obvious, but on a day at sea it is profound.

If you choose, then there is music as well. And it is one of societies’ offerings that is at home on the sea. Music can put you at one with the universe. It can help you transcend the fiberglass vessel and all the things that could go wrong, and just how vulnerable you are. It carries you right out there into the freedom that is travelling by sea. 

So here I am, the sea surface is as calm as glass, while the sky wakes up for the day in the most magnificent way. Black gives way to muted purples, that give way to candy pinks and citrus orange as the sun peeks up into view. I am dancing like no one is watching – which thankfully no one is! I’m out in the cockpit at sunrise, with my music, my freedom, my bliss. 

A day ago, we awoke anchored in the middle of it all - Atlantis to one side, city bridges crawling with cars and massive tanker ships lined up on the other. 

Hemmed in to the west by the rotating monstrosities called cruise liners. 

We left our rocking boat, pushed around by all the boat wakes and headed to shore. We trudged through the sweltering wind-less, sidewalk-free perilous streets of Nassau, in search of groceries. Dust swirled and clung to our sweat as cars flew past. We held our breath in the litter covered few inches of grassy gutter that kept us from becoming casualties of fuel and metal.

We made our way through the artificially bright aisles of the big store, choosing overpriced produce and tempting ourselves with American offerings. All the while anticipating the hot, fast cab ride back to the jetty, followed by the transferring of bags into the dinghy, zipping across the wild Nassau Harbour, criss crossed by hundreds of tour boats, fishing boats, tankers etc., up into the boat, and ultimately the quest to find enough space to stuff it all. Sweat and dirt featured high yesterday. Car horns, sirens, industrial cranes, litter… all of that surrounded us. Held us in the fist of society.

Today we escaped. Snuck out before dawn, watched the decadent lights of Atlantis shrink into the distance as freedom took over and the day unfolded like a new life.  

Funny how I discovered that having no ground at all in sight, makes me feel more grounded than ever before.

 But today is another day. Another side of cruising life. We've met up with three other boats we last saw in Georgetown. Reunions. Adventures. We've arrived in the Abacos at Regatta time, so the parties begin... 

When your home is your boat

Rainbow coloured bottles of nail polish lie on their sides in the cabin, rolling around like bright felled soldiers in anguish.

Elsewhere in the front cabin, onion skins cover the surfaces like a vegetable confetti from a wild party. The onions themselves lie around the floor and bed like drunkards on the morning after. Plastic wine glasses line the hallway.

Across in the other hull the carnage is also evident.  In the tiny head (washroom), bottles of shampoo, hurled from their high shelf perch, lie bleeding sticky bubbly pink into the drain.

It’s been a rough day at sea. Everything has been tossed and slammed and kicked around by some grudge filled side-on waves. But Shiloh has survived. Despite the casualties around the cabins, Shiloh has excelled. Despite the all consuming groans of wood on fiberglass inside, she showed a brave face. She sailed today, all day, fast and furious. Like a dance with the wind, she came up to meet each wave, each gust of wind, and she pushed forward, she sailed. Beautifully.

Unlike her inhabitants, the awkward bulls in the china shop, grasping each surface as we passed, trying to keep our composure, our balance against the wishes of the forces around us.

It was our first sail after my trip to Canada, and it was a baptism by fire in many ways. It reacquainted me with all the good and the bad that is sailing life. Once we reached the lee of Great Abaco Island, nine long hours after leaving the shores of Nassau, the waves were tamed, the wind eased off and the conditions were much more pleasant for us ‘inhabitants’. Shiloh on the other hand, preferred the challenge of a big sea and a beam reach.

A day before our little journey, we’d played host to some ladies from Canada. A day on a boat. It was a detour for them, from a short holiday to Atlantis. For us it was a chance to imagine what it might be like to charter the boat. It was exhilarating, it was fun to be host. Champagne and OJ with snacks, a short trip to a pretty little island out of the hectic Nassau port for snorkeling and swimming. 

It was so different from the reality of our day to day life on the boat. I’ve got a lot of respect for our friends who charter for weeks at a time. Mike and Muffy on Extasea and Mike and Rebecca who did the same on One Love for two years. When your maritime home, with all it’s inherent problems (engine issues, limited water supply, incessant mold growth, limited power etc etc), becomes the hotel for 6 or 8 people for a week full time, that must be intense. Meals, snacks, drinks, towels, entertainment. Full time! Hats off to the charterers.

For us the sacrifices are far more abstract. When you’ve made the choice to ‘live the dream’ you make some other choices by default. When your first grand baby is born, you are thousands of miles away. Maybe without phone or internet. Maybe you are facing storms or just big waves. You are preoccupied. Your life is moving along on a very different path.

When your boy graduates from the relative security of college and his last faction of childhood, you can fly across a continent for only a short time to see him through, to watch him take off. But then you must return to the sea, because you know that he has his own life to live and you still have yours. Your sails are still full and they are blowing you once again, somewhere else.

But us cruisers are still parents. We still ache and worry for them. We still look at a photo of them with baby fat and glistening innocent eyes, and tears well in our salty eyes. We might be on a thousand mile journey to an uninhabited island in a vast ocean, or fighting a rusty washing machine in some city in the developing world, but we will never leave the first path we travelled. The path of never ending love for our children.

We are just different. We crave adventure to a fault. We don’t mind hand pumping our toilets. We conserve water so we can go for an extra week without visiting a city. And we get excited when our boat sails. No engines. All sails up. That feeling when the wind works with you and the power in the silence. Even if it means cleaning the aftermath in the cabins later.