Rowboat in a Hurricane (29 page)

Only one irregular object obstructed fish flight path over our boat: Colin or me at the oars. Colin had been hit twice and I’d been smacked once, but we never managed to capture the culprits before they slipped back to the sea through the scuppers. The collisions always happened at night, when our imaginations worked overtime and the ocean already seemed alive with unknown monsters. Colin was hit first, and he screamed like a B-grade actress in a horror movie, thinking the meaty hand of Davy Jones had whacked him on the back of the neck. Soon after, Colin had his turn to laugh at me. It’s rather surprising how much punch a trout-sized fish can pack when it’s hurtling through the air at sixty kilometres an hour.

“I THINK WE
should have gotten more cans of beans and fruit salad, and less dried bread,” I said, looking into the bow storage compartment with dismay. It was the morning of day
112
; we still had dozens of packages of Melba-toast-like bread, but little else. We had grown sick of the dry bread, especially without butter or cheese to liven it up.

“Have no worries. I’ve dreamed up a recipe that’ll transform those wretched biscuits into something fit for a princess,” Colin said.

“Mmm, I can’t wait.”

We had been trying innovative recipes to make use of the dried toast, but with limited success. So far we’d discovered pan-fried stuffing (dried bread moistened in water, mixed with a can of beans, and fried in oil), bread pudding (milk boiled with bread), and croquettes (moistened bread mixed with canned tuna and sculpted into patties that we pan-fried). Since we had to ration our flour, we also crushed bread and used it to coat our fish before pan-frying.

I looked away while Colin prepared breakfast so that I didn’t ruin the surprise. Finally Colin rang the breakfast bell, vigorously banging a pot with a spoon. He handed me a towering plate of pancakes.

“Can you guess what’s special about these?” he asked.

I chewed thoughtfully. “Mmmm, these taste even better than usual—they’re lighter and fluffier.”

Colin looked pleased with himself. “They’re
80
per cent crushed bread! I mixed a little bit of flour with milk powder, water, baking powder, sugar, and a lot of crushed bread. And the syrup, of course, is the usual caramelized sugar with a bit of water.”

“I think you’ve got something here! They’re much lighter than normal, and the bread adds a rich flavour, but you’d never know what it is. If people knew how good these were, upscale restaurants around the world would start serving ‘rowboat pancakes.’ ”

Necessity is the mother of invention, and between dried bread and fish from the ocean, we could feasibly make it all the way to Costa Rica. I hoped, however, that conditions would be right for a Caribbean landing, and that we would spend our final month at sea eating a more varied diet. We were now
160
kilometres from the island of St. Lucia, and my excitement at seeing land in a couple of days—and possibly even stepping onto it—was overwhelming. We had been on the water for almost four months, and I longed to be anywhere but this rowboat.

15
A CARIBBEAN PARADISE
        
IN ST. LUCIA

“W
AKE UP,” COLIN
yelled from outside.

It was still dark, and a glance at the luminous dial on my watch informed me it was only
5
:
00 AM
. We had been rowing non-stop throughout the night in order to stay on course and make landfall on St. Lucia later that day.

“I’m coming,” I said.

I pulled on my windbreaker and rowing gloves and peered through the hatch into the dark sea. Although I could barely make out the waves, a cacophony told me the wind was strong and the waves big. Colin’s body gyrated on the rowing seat as he struggled to control the boat.

As I opened the hatch to climb out of the cabin, Colin screamed, “Hatch!”

I instinctively pulled it closed and secured it. The roar of an enormous wave reverberated through the cabin, and the boat rolled onto its side. I lost my balance and slammed against the wall. Pencils, books, and cookie packages tumbled on top of me. The boat teetered on its side, on the verge of capsizing, before it righted itself.

I looked outside to where Colin should have been, but he was gone.

“Colin!”
I screamed as I yanked open the hatch and scrambled outside.

Please be okay, please still be on the boat,
I prayed. My mind conjured a horrific scene: a bare boat and an empty, black, pitching sea. This couldn’t happen now. We’d been through so much, and land was only hours away.

I couldn’t see him. But I heard him yell: “I’m fine.”

I followed his voice to see him lying on the deck. The wave had thrown him off the rowing seat; he had not gone overboard.

“Holy shit . . . that was one mother of a wave! It just reared up out of nowhere. I grabbed onto the safety line to keep from going overboard. Unfortunately, the boat rolled into the oar and snapped it.”

I shook with relief. “Thank God you’re all right. I didn’t see you right away, and I thought maybe . . . ”

“It’s okay,” Colin said, wrapping his arms around me. I hugged him tightly and held back the hot tears that welled in my eyes. The malevolent black sea crashed around us, and suddenly I felt we had landed on the set of a Harlequin Romance movie directed by Stephen King. The broken oar hung from the oarlock like a severed limb. Its lower half, still attached by a few strands of carbon fibre, knocked against the hull.

After a long minute, I reluctantly released Colin from my grip.

“I can’t believe we broke an oar,” I said.

“I know. We’ve been through two hurricanes and two tropical storms without incident, and now, as we get near land, it finally snaps.”

There was actually a simple reason why the oars had never broken up until now. Normally we stopped rowing when the winds rose above forty knots, securely lashing the oars inboard, where they were protected. At this point the wind was blowing at about forty-five knots, and the waves were very powerful, but we couldn’t afford to stop rowing. The elements drove us towards the eastern side of St. Lucia, where the swell crashed into the cliffs and sent plumes of foaming water hundreds of feet into the air. We would probably not survive being wrecked against the cliffs.

We had to row non-stop to fight our way northward so that we could clear the top end of the island before slipping into the lee of St. Lucia. I quickly unlashed one of our spare oars to replace the broken one.

“Good luck,” Colin said, just before he retreated into the cabin. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you: take a look over there.”

He pointed westward, and suddenly I noticed the twinkle of lights.

“Oh my God, it’s land!” I screamed.

It was surreal. We’d been on the boat for what seemed an eternity, and finally I was looking at solid land again. I couldn’t wait to get off this stormy ocean and finally set my toes on solid ground.

“Happy rowing,” Colin said.

He closed the hatch firmly in case we capsized, and I felt all alone on the rough sea. Twilight set in, and I watched in awe as the shadowy folds of St. Lucia became discernable. The jagged island was composed of several towering volcanic peaks, their summits obscured within clouds. Lush green slopes cascaded down to the ocean’s edge, hinting at the abundant rainfall in this region. We were still twenty kilometres away, but I could already see plumes of white foam against the sheer cliffs that ran along the western flanks of the island. I had barely slept in the past thirty-six hours; I felt like I was dreaming. As huge waves buffeted and twisted our vessel, I felt terrified; at the same time, I couldn’t believe that thatched huts, sandy beaches, and gourmet restaurants were so close by. But the ocean’s ferocity prevented me from feeling relief. I struggled at the oars, and the imposing cliffs in the distance seemed all too close.

Colin emerged at
7
:
0 0 AM
and spent several minutes studying the outline of St. Lucia and glancing at the
GPS
plotter.

“If we want to reach land, we’ll have to stay very close to the tip of the island,” he said. “Otherwise the current will carry us past the islands, and we won’t be able to row back against the winds. We have almost no margin of error. If we’re too far south, we’ll be driven into the cliffs; too far north, and we’ll be blown right past St. Lucia. The current and winds are pushing us forward at almost two knots, so we want to be careful.”

The conditions gave us very little control of our direction. We were on a giant westward-moving conveyer belt and could only alter our heading by about twenty degrees north or south. We had to row almost due north to achieve a
WNW
heading, which meant we were rowing sideways to the waves, placing the boat in a very vulnerable position.

As the island drew nearer, Colin suddenly reversed direction and began rowing towards the cliffs. I shivered as I watched nine-metre swells release the energy they’d gathered across the Atlantic in one final, explosive display.

Pensive, I watched the cliffs become nearer and nearer. “Don’t you think it’s time we changed our course?” I finally said.

But Colin was distracted by something in the distance, and didn’t respond. Then I saw what held his attention: a boat! An open fibreglass fishing boat powered by an outboard motor headed towards us.

“Bonjour!”
yelled one of the three men onboard.

“Bonjour!”
I yelled back. I guessed they were from Martinique, a neighbouring French island north of St. Lucia.

“Habitez-vous Martinique?”
I yelled in my rusty high-school French.

“
Oui
!” the man replied.

I felt thrilled to talk to other humans face to face, but these fishermen had little interest in us.

One of the men pointed beneath our boat.
“Poisson?”

I nodded my head. They dropped their baited lines into the water and made a wide circle around our boat, moving at about six knots.

I peered into the water. Ted, Fred, and crew had followed us all the way here. Thankfully the fishermen wouldn’t be interested in such small fish. They wanted dorado. As these men surely knew, schools of dorado gather under flotsam and other slow-moving objects. I searched the waters beneath us, but couldn’t see any of our golden friends. Perhaps they were off hunting or had been scared away by the noise of the motor.

But then it began. The lines jerked, and the men pulled fish after flapping fish over the sides of their boat with long gaffs. I’d like to say we defended our fish and yelled at the fishermen to leave us alone, or tried to row away from their nets, but we didn’t. Caught up in the shock of seeing other people, by the time we thought of doing something, it was too late. Content with their day’s catch, the men pulled in their lines and headed back to Martinique.

I peered into the waters under our boat. I didn’t see one dorado.

“They didn’t get Legend,” Colin said.

“How do you know?” I asked, feeling my eyes grow moist.

“I was watching them the entire time. Legend wasn’t one of the ones caught,” Colin said.

I wasn’t convinced. We had last seen Legend the previous day, his giant, sleek body cruising the depths beneath us. And it had been difficult to observe the fishing boat through the waves. They could easily have hauled in Legend without our noticing it.

Suddenly Legend’s unmistakable form appeared in the water off my starboard oar. He was the only dorado we saw return after the fishermen left; he stayed with our boat for about an hour. When we came within five kilometres of land, the giant fish descended out of sight. We never saw Legend again.

We could now see the island’s palm trees distinctly, but the wind still blew at thirty knots. Colin joined me at the oars and sat in the second rowing station, and we rowed in tandem for the first time since leaving Portugal. It had been more efficient for us to spend longer hours rowing individually. But now, hearing the thunder of exploding waves on shore, we needed to maximize our power in order to navigate the final tricky stretch into the sheltered harbour.

Our speed climbed as the current channelled through the passage between St. Lucia and Martinique. We were rowing due south, at a ninety-degree angle to the current, to create the vector to angle us directly past St. Lucia’s northern tip. With tension running high and waves thundering onto volcanic rocks only one hundred metres away from us, we finally rounded the point and slipped into the lee of St. Lucia. The reduced wind and current still pushed against us, and we had to turn suddenly and row with all our strength just to hold our ground. I was thirsty and exhausted, but we couldn’t stop for a second. If we lost any distance whatsoever, the force of the currents would increase, and we would be swept away from St. Lucia with no chance of making it back. I looked at the
GPS
. We were moving at zero knots.

“Harder, harder!” I screamed.

Colin’s brown skin was soaked with sweat. We pumped in unison to break the stalemate. Suddenly the digital display flashed
0
.
1
knots east. Perfect. We struggled and pulled, and finally it moved to
0
.
2
knots. I felt like I was going to throw up, but we couldn’t give up, or our next stop would be Costa Rica. I wanted my margarita. In the distance I could see tourists relaxing on a sandy, golden beach. Our speed began to rise quickly—
0
.
4
knots, and then a few seconds later,
1
knot. We had broken free of the currents! A strong wind still blasted against us, but now we moved steadily forward.