Ten Degrees of Reckoning (7 page)

“We have two small children who are not able to sleep because of the many disturbances. Is it possible to ask you not to board us? Over.”

“Ma’am, we are heading toward your position, and we will deploy one of our inflatables and come alongside. Over.”

“Sir, we really are not carrying contraband of any kind. Over.”

“Ma’am, we do not plan to interrupt your voyage for any length of time. Do not reduce speed. Stand by on radio. Over.”

Ben was ecstatic; the warship was immense, and the inflatable it sent over was almost as big as the
Melinda Lee.
The navy crew on the inflatable pulled up beside them, saluted, and told them to remain calm.

“Sir, ma’am, youngsters. Our admiral asked us to come by to give his regards. He has the utmost respect for a family on a sailing vessel out to see the world. We will not be boarding, but we would like to ask your permission to leave behind some presents from the admiral and his staff.”

The crew handed over a bag filled with a month’s worth of candy bars, more than five hundred pieces of Legos, comic books, and a signed nine-by-twelve glossy color photograph of the naval ship that read, “Proud to share the seas with the
Melinda Lee,
enjoy your Haitian vacation.”

After two weeks in the Dominican Republic, the Sleavins headed toward the island groups in the Caribbean that reflected the historical colonial dependencies and their cultural diversity. Judy and the children were ready to slow the pace a bit, although Mike viewed the upcoming myriad anchorages as ideal pit stops on a race course.

Bonjour de Guadeloupe! Comment ça va? I’m writing this letter from Les Saintes, a small group of islands just south of Guadeloupe. We’ re flying our French courtesy flag after muddling through Spanish for the last eighteen months.
—The Sleavins 

The Sleavins sailed on to other French islands, as well British and Dutch territories, and had almost completed their circumnavigation of the Caribbean Sea. It was time to get to countries such as Trinidad and Venezuela, where supplies were more accessible and where they could do the necessary major boat projects prior to their long passage across the equator to the Southern Hemisphere. And there were basic requirements, as Judy noted, “We did finally make it through the 186 rolls of toilet paper that I stowed in San Diego.”

In Trinidad a group of sailors made a bulk purchase of antifouling paint, commonly called bottom paint. Any boat left in the water for an extended period accumulates a growth of marine organisms. This has an impact on the performance of the propellers and rudders, as well as on the integrity of the hull. Soon, too, there is the question of safety, as the boat slows down, dragging the colony on its underside. One powerboating magazine describes it as having an underbelly of shag carpeting. If standard antifouling paint isn’t available, resourceful fishermen find substitutes. For example, in May 2006, while marine scientists were puzzling over the deaths of hundreds of bottle-nose dolphins that had washed up on the beaches of Zanzibar, the fishermen there were cutting out the dolphins’ livers to use as antifouling paint. Usually their bottom paint came from the livers of sharks, not so easily attainable.

Mike and Judy hauled
Melinda Lee
out of the water in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, for all the necessary boat maintenance projects. They also decided to buy a new inflatable dinghy. The dealer would accept only cash. Judy went to the bank. She needed $1,100 for the purchase, and the largest Venezuelan denomination was a four-dollar bill. Perhaps it was because of the recent devaluation, but crime was rampant, and Venezuela seemed lawless to the Sleavins. All their shoes were stolen the first night. They knew a cruiser who had a necklace pulled from her neck, and they saw a robber take a leather jacket off someone’s back on the street at gunpoint. Guns seemed to be a common part of life there; they were visible everywhere, sticking out of pockets, dangling from the handlebars of bicycles. In fact, the Sleavins were the only family in McDonald’s who didn’t lay their guns down on the table before picking up their
hamburguesas.

Although the dinghy dealership was in line of sight of the bank, it seemed a long way to go carrying hundreds of bills. The man behind her in the teller line asked if she was from
Melinda Lee,
and told her that he was also a cruiser. Did she need an escort? he wondered. They stuffed all the bills down their shirts and pants and in their underwear, and made it safely back to the shop to complete the transaction.

Mike’s mother, Catherine, and brother, John, came to visit in Venezuela. They all visited the world’s highest waterfall, Angel Falls, hiked through the area, and then drove to the Andes.

When they returned to the
Melinda Lee,
it was particularly difficult for Judy to say goodbye to one couple who were heading back to the United States, Peter and Glenda Couch, on the sailboat
Lamorna.
They had shared adventures for eight months and become like family. As sad as it was to bid farewell, it was also one of the great things about the cruising community: the closeness and the willingness to fill a surrogate role. Glenda ran the radio net and cut everyone’s hair, but she and Peter had a more important role in the Sleavins’ lives: they were Ben and Annie’s offshore grandparents. Glenda was impressed by the determination with which Mike and Judy were raising the children. They wanted their children to have social interactions and adventure, but school always came first, the Couches observed. In the environment of anchorages, where everything was fascinating and spontaneous, the Sleavins insisted that the children understand their responsibility to schoolwork before play and gratification.

The Sleavins sailed west, reaching Colombia in time for Christmas. From Colombia they sailed to the San Blas archipelago, and then to Panama. They sailed over to the yacht club in Cristóbal, where they planned to do all the paperwork required to transit the canal. Also, Mike had made arrangements to have an updated version of the emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB) shipped to the yacht club. He wanted to replace their 121.5 MHz model, whose range and accuracy were limited, with a 406 MHz EPIRB, which provided global coverage for search-and-rescue purposes. 

COSPAS-SARSAT is an international organization, sponsored by Russia, the United States, Canada, and France, that oversees a system that detects and locates transmissions from emergency beacons carried by aviators and mariners, and recently climbers and other individuals, anywhere in the world. From its inception in 1982, it is credited with providing assistance that has saved more than twenty thousand lives. When an EPIRB (an ELT-emergency locator transmitter on aircraft) is activated in a distress situation, its signal is received by one of a network of low-earth-orbiting satellites and high-altitude geostationary weather satellites. The satellite downlink signal is then relayed to the nearest available ground receiving station, where it is processed to find the location from which the signal originated. The Mission Control Center organizes the remaining data. All EPIRBs must be registered, and once the unique identification code of the beacon’s owner and relevant information is known, the location is verified. The center notifies all the appropriate rescue centers based in the geographic location. Mike hoped they would never have to activate their new 406 EPIRB, but it gave him peace of mind for the upcoming month-long passage. Even in the middle of the ocean, with its worldwide coverage, the COSPAS-SARSAT system would be able to determine the signal’s position within three miles. With the new EPIRB on-board the
Melinda Lee,
the Sleavins were ready to re-transit the Panama Canal and cross the Pacific Ocean to the legendary South Seas.

They found line handlers at the yacht club in Cristóbal and paid their toll, which included the service of a professional pilot. At Limón Bay, the start of the transit on the Atlantic side, the
Melinda Lee
was directed alongside a large ship, and when everyone’s lines were secured the massive lock gates swung shut. Millions of gallons of water filled the lock, allowing all the vessels to float upward. They were in and out of three locks that lifted
Melinda Lee
eighty-five feet before they motored over to Gatun Lake. They had an easy sail across the twenty-three miles of the lake, but Ben and Annie were surprised to see alligators lounging in the water. On their first transit, going the other way, they had gone swimming in the same lake, unaware that the tropical jungle held creatures who might be interested in them. They anchored for the night and in the morning continued on, through the Galliard Cut and over to the Pedro Miguel Locks. They were lowered to Miraflores Lake and the Miraflores Locks, where they went down farther to sea level. The lock gates were opened and whoosh, they were in the Pacific Ocean.

We hit the two-year mark. Can’t believe it’s been that long and this much fun . So now the real excitement begins; the biggest and longest passage of our trip is about to happen, 3,800 miles to the Marquesas. A boat our size should average 100 miles a day, taking into account the lighter winds near the equator. The doldrums. Thirty-eight days and nights is a looooong time with two kids in 47 feet. I’ve had the kids memorize parts of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a ritual for the equator crossing.

—
The Sleavins, March 1995 

The average person who previously took no notice of longitude and latitude is now familiar with expressing locality in degrees and minutes and seconds because of the popularity of the global positioning satellite system for the car and even personal wristbands. When you reach your destination with the aid of your GPS, you don’t really care how far you are from the equator or Greenwich, England, but in fact, that is just what those numbers denote. The latitude is the angular distance of a point north or south of the equator (zero degrees latitude), and the longitude is the angular distance of a point east or west of Greenwich, which is referred to as the Prime Meridian (zero degrees longitude). All the lines of latitude running from the equator to the North and South poles are parallel to one another and equal in distance. One degree of latitude is equal to sixty nautical miles. The lines of longitude run perpendicular to the lines of latitude and are referred to as meridians. They are not equal in distance, but get closer together toward the poles, where they converge.

At sea, the accuracy of those coordinates can mean survival or not, especially in the South Pacific Ocean, with hundreds and even thousands of square miles of water between land-masses. The early sailors developed navigation skills by observing the patterns of the waves and the blueprints of the skies during their voyaging adventures. Later came the active use of celestial navigation in exploration; ships could determine their latitude by tracking the sun’s position throughout the day, and the North Star or the Southern Cross by night.

With instruments that were the precursors to the sextant, the sailors’ knowledge of their location in a north or south direction became even more accurate. Nevertheless, until well into the eighteenth century there were shipwrecks and lost crews by the multitude, because there was no reliable way to determine longitude. After John Harrison, an English watch-maker, solved the problem with his marine chronometer, Britannia ruled the waves, and the rest, as they say, is history. With the current satellite-dependent technology, such as GPS, it is almost impossible to miss an island completely or, conversely, to run smack onto a coral reef or into a rocky coastline.

Notwithstanding the ease of knowing just where you are in a vast ocean these days, reaching the latitude of 00 degrees, 00 minutes, 00 seconds is still as celebrated as it was in the old seafaring tradition. 

Those who have never crossed the equator at sea are termed “pollywogs,” and must undergo initiation rituals in order to enter the domain of Neptunus Rex. Any crew members who have made the transition are termed trusty “shellbacks,” and can ask the ’wogs to perform whatever elaborate ceremonial rites suit them. Judy was the only shellback as the
Melinda Lee
crossed the equator; years before, when she had completed high school, she spent a Semester at Sea set up by the Institute for Shipboard Education.

Judy insisted that her three pollywogs dye their hair red, paste on temporary tattoos, make brownies for her, and perform several sea chanteys. They belted out parts of “Popeye the Sailor Man” and “Jamaica Farewell,” and Mike even managed to sing “The Wreck of the
Edmund Fitzgerald.
” Then one last thing, the recitation of a small portion of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
:

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,

’Twas sad as sad could be;

And we did speak only to break

The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,

The bloody Sun, at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand,

No bigger than the Moon.
 

Day after day, day after day,