Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir (13 page)

I turned around and went back down the staircase, since I was closest. People followed me — Tom, I think, and Stephen and Andy. I went back into our cabin and grabbed my little knapsack. I opened the top drawer of the bedside table and took out the passports, the envelope of cash, and my reading glasses, and stuffed them into the pack. If I’d opened the next drawer down, I would have taken my journal, too, the loss of which I’ve rued ever since. And if I’d stopped for ten seconds to rifle through what I’d grabbed, I’d have realized I had only Ben and Yeats’s passports, not my own.

The whole time, the boat was pitching back and forth, the wind was howling, and the waves were crashing against both the boat and the reef. Back upstairs I tossed a life jacket to Ben, who was still on the other side of the room. I didn’t see Yeats — he’d gone down with Thomas to fetch their life jackets along with those of the little girls. I put mine on and tried to figure out what we were all to do.

Someone called out, “Into the Zodiacs! We’re getting in the Zodiacs! Everyone on the back deck!”

I stepped out the starboard door onto the narrow walkway that went from bow to stern. We lurched violently to starboard, then to port. There were people all around but in that moment, the only person I saw was Monica, one of the crew members. In the same instant that I noticed she wasn’t wearing a life jacket, I saw, beyond her, huge waves rolling in towards the boat. The waves were illuminated in the ship’s lights, faint and ghostly against the black sky.

I groaned aloud and said, “Oh. My. God.” I was frozen.

Monica put a hand on my arm and said, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

That one second of fear stretched for an eternity, turned me inside out, unbuckled me from my life. Then Tom was pushing past me with seven-year-old Fiona in front and Barb right behind. His uncharacteristic aggression snapped me back into myself. I followed them, but that one split second was lodged inside me now. It was an instant that I would flash back to again and again in the weeks to come.

People were shouting instructions and one another’s names and it was all action. We had to time our individual exits from the boat perfectly. We had to let go of the starboard railing and slide down the sea-drenched deck, one at a time, to the other side, where two crew members hoisted us onto the railing and helped us time our jump into the Zodiacs.

Carlos, who was driving one of the Zodiacs, timed it so that the waves and the tipping boat were aligned and we all made the jump safely. We were grabbed by someone and made to sit down anywhere there was room, preferably on the bottom of the boat to keep from falling out.

Jorge, who was driving the second Zodiac, motored in to collect the remaining passengers and crew. Ben was among them, and I watched as he slipped on the deck and crashed into the railing. I was relieved when he jumped successfully into the waiting
panga
. Jorge collected Andy and Ron, too, and brought them over to our boat. As Ben, Andy, and Ron scrambled into our Zodiac, Ron’s biggest worry was that his shorts were falling off (which they were). This supplied the two little girls with hours of amusement over the next few days. All of us except Stephen and most of the crew were now in one little rubber boat.

Ben told me later that after I’d left the lounge to go outside, the boat had made a particularly bad pitch (my scary wave) and Meredith ended up on the floor, clinging to the table. She couldn’t get up because every time she tried, the boat pitched again and the table slid. Ben tried to help her up but fell and became stuck, both arms stretched in opposite directions. (When he fell, he broke his baby toe, but he didn’t say anything about it until hours later, when we were alone in our hotel room and he was telling me all of this.) Meredith was on the edge of panic, and it was all Ben could do to try to calm her down while extricating himself from the furniture.

Yeats would tell me about it later, too. As soon as he walked into the lounge, he said, he saw Ben and Meredith sitting on the floor, unable to get up. So Yeats stepped over to Ben, stuck out his hand, and said, “Come on, Dad, it’s time to get out of here.” That must have been the only time that Yeats had ever called Ben “Dad.” Yeats hauled Ben up, who then hauled Meredith up and then they left the lounge for the boats.

We needed to keep the
panga
away from the reef, which could puncture the boat’s rubber hull, but the waves kept pushing us back. I was sitting near the stern, facing forwards. We were all crammed in together — fifteen of us plus Carlos — in an eight-person boat. Some people had to sit up on the rounded sides and brace themselves every time a wave came.

Then the motor conked out. Tom and Andy grabbed paddles and started paddling furiously to keep us off the reef. Carlos tried to restart the engine but it flooded. People were shouting instructions. Someone scrambled to the back of the boat to lend a hand. We’d all flooded outboard motors in Muskoka and got them going again, but never under such stressful circumstances. Still, it helped that all of us had spent our lives in and around boats. We had a second sense about boats and water and no one panicked.

I wasn’t ready, though, for the sight of the final wave. It was as though the wind had been building up and up and up until finally it created what it had been striving toward the whole time. This wave must have been fifteen feet high. It was a wall of water coming right for us, and the
Alta
beyond. I saw it coming, but didn’t say a word. There was no time.

Our little boat rode it out. We didn’t tip. We just went up and over the other side, like in a ride at an amusement park. Everyone gasped, though, and turned to watch it hit the
Alta.
The wave crashed against the ship, flooding its uppermost deck and tipping it further over onto the reef. This time it stayed tipped.

After that the ocean was calm. The wind was gone. No more storm, just like that: from one moment to the next.

We could see lights from shore and lots of anchored yachts, but we were still a ways out there and unsure about any rescue. We still didn’t know why this had happened and whether we’d get any of our stuff off the
Alta
. We also couldn’t see the other
panga
, so we didn’t know where Jorge was with the crew, or even whether Stephen was safely off the ship. Jane was frantic and blew incessantly on the whistle attached to her life jacket.

Once the engine was fixed we motored slowly in to shore. We were bedraggled and mystified, wet, tired, and worried. We went past yachts where people were eating their dinners. They sat at tables lit with candles, drinking wine and laughing. They had no idea that this little
panga
filled with stunned tourists was moving among them. Evidently, no mayday message had been sent out.

It turned out that Jorge had deposited Stephen and some of the crew on an isthmus and then gone back to look for the other crew members. Jorge had his cell phone with him and called his friend, Julian, who ran the Hotel Solymar, telling him to pick us up at the wharf and to find us clothes and give us anything we wanted. The owners of the
Alta
would pay.

Julian, his wife, and all his staff were wonderful. They picked us up and brought us back to a lovely hotel with a terrace overlooking the water. We were all at least slightly in shock and most of the adults wanted a drink.

Andy said, “Do you have a good Scotch?”

Julian said, “I do. Do you want that on the rocks?”

“On the what?” Laurie said, and after a second or two, we all laughed. It was a relief to laugh. Julian laughed, too, and fetched a bottle of his best Scotch. No one had it on ice.

They brought pizza but few of us could eat. I think the kids ate. All I’d had since lunch was some popcorn, a gin and tonic, two Gravol, and a couple of ounces of Scotch. I forced down a few bites.

Stephen and Jorge appeared on the terrace and Jane gave a shriek.

Eventually, we learned that the captain hadn’t been driving the boat as we approached Puerto Ayora. The second mate was driving and the captain was attending to accounts. The reef was supposed to have two lighthouses on it, but only one was working. Plus, the waves had definitely been getting bigger and bigger. All of these factors combined to cause the accident. Once the second mate realized the boat was on the reef, he put the engine in reverse and tried to back it up, but it was too late.

Ecuador takes Galapagos’
UNESCO
designation very seriously. Visitors are not allowed to bring animals or plants or even foodstuffs that might contaminate the ecosystem. People are supposed to decontaminate their shoes after walking on one island and before they walk on another, because each island represents a different ecological microcosm. There are pages and pages of rules. But here was a boat, full of fuel, stuck on a precious, sensitive reef, causing who knows how much damage. We were all sick at heart.

Jorge went back out to the boat late that night. He scaled it like a monkey, according to David — who went along but didn’t try to enter the
Alta
himself. Jorge’s goal was to retrieve Ron’s medications, which he needed for his blood pressure and his heart. The Coast Guard had ordered everyone off the boat, including the captain, who’d been planning to stay at least overnight to guard against looters. But he’d obeyed the order and the Coast Guard had posted no one on guard duty, so Jorge took a calculated risk and went into the boat on his own.

He gave us a full report when they returned. The ship was full of water, especially the rooms on the downward side. It felt stable on the reef, but he suspected that was only because the sea was calm and there was no wind. He’d found Ron’s travel case, but not his and Barb’s passports. We’d given him a list of things to retrieve if possible, including my passport and those of Tom, Ron, Barb, and Fiona. But there was too much water, and he knew that if he stayed too long, the Coast Guard would catch him.

But he had Ron’s medications and Jorge was now truly our hero. He had lost everything himself. His passport, all his camera gear — including videos of an underwater shoot he’d just completed in the Arctic — his computer. Everything was under water and he would have to start over again.

The next day Jorge said to Yeats, “This morning I couldn’t figure out why my arms were so sore. It wasn’t that much work scaling the boat. But then I remembered our game of Monkey in the Middle with that heavy ball!”

They had a good laugh together over that, and it turned out to be one of Yeats’s favourite memories of the trip.

BEN AND I WERE
lying in bed on our second morning in the Hotel Solymar on Santa Cruz, our final morning in the Galapagos. I’d been crying a bit but he held me and I stopped.

He said, “The Sufis say that all you really have in life is what you can take with you from a shipwreck.” I looked into his eyes. We had one another. He said, “I’m not too good with the emotional stuff,” meaning that he wasn’t going to cry. I knew Ben well enough to realize that any toughness he showed on the outside masked a deeply caring and loving heart inside. He held me closer and whispered, “I love you, Lynn. Let’s go home now.”

The airport was on Baltra, just off the coast of Santa Cruz. We took a bus across Santa Cruz to a small marina where we boarded one last boat. This boat was flat-bottomed and way overloaded with passengers, none of whom wore a life jacket. We were crammed in there like sardines. It was a really short trip — maybe ten minutes — and the day was calm. But we stole glances at each other as we were waiting to leave the pier, most of us holding onto straps from the ceiling, like in the subway.

Thomas said, “This is fun! Another boat!”

Fiona said, “What if we shipwreck?”

“We aren’t going to shipwreck,” four or five of us said at once. Other passengers looked at us but didn’t say anything.

Ben said, “You’ll have some stories for your friends.”

Fiona nodded and looked up at him with her huge green eyes. She whispered, “But what if we
do
shipwreck?”

Ben shook his head and said, “We won’t. Look. We’re here already.”

The boat pulled up to the wharf and we jostled our way off.

The flight was to Guayaquil, from where we were supposed to fly home in a couple of days. But those of us without passports had to stay on the plane and fly to Quito, where the Canadian embassy was located. We’d been in touch by phone, giving them our names and other pertinent information, and they were ready to issue us letters of transit. We had to be there in person to receive the documents.

Ben and I sat next to one another on the flight to Guayaquil. He and Yeats would disembark when we arrived there, while I went on with the others to Quito. I said, “If it takes too long in Quito, you and Yeats are going straight home anyway, right?”

“No. We’ll wait for you. Are you crazy?”

“No, you need to get home. Yeats has to go to school. You have that big event. You have to go.”

“No, we don’t. We can’t just leave you here.”

“I won’t be alone.” I gestured to the others who had to get travel documents too. Tom, Fiona, Ron, and both Barbs were all coming to Quito, along with Andy, who had his passport but wanted to accompany his parents.

“Nuh-uh, no way. We’re not flying home without you.”

I stopped arguing but I was frustrated. I’d travelled all over the world and knew how to get home on my own. But when the plane landed in Guayaquil and everyone stood up to say goodbye, the fact of the separation, even one so brief, hit me. Ben and Yeats gave me a hug and started moving down the aisle. As I watched them disappear off the plane, it felt like someone was cutting off a part of me; it was a physical wrenching.

I lost my senses. I sat back down and cried. I gulped for air and sobbed, and within fifteen seconds my face was soaking wet. We’d just been through this traumatic experience together and now I had to say goodbye to them? I didn’t know how I was ever going to pull myself together.

Tom moved over and sat beside me. He was an emergency room doctor and knew how to deal with people who were in shock. He calmed me down. He talked to me the entire flight to Quito and helped restore me to my right mind without once referring to my emotional reaction. I knew what he was doing as he was doing it, but it worked anyway and I am eternally grateful.