Carina: An Alaskan Family's Three Year Sailing Adventure in the South Seas

Prayer.

1

The Big Storm

ISAT ON THE STEERING BOX, HOLDING THE SMOOTH WOODEN WHEEL tightly in both hands. The pegs on the wheel were crusty with dried salt. I inspected my hands; the nails were all either torn off or chewed down to the nubbin. Some dried blood clung to my knuckle where I had banged the back of my hand against the winch. I brushed my hands on my shorts; trying to get the small particles of dried salt water and blood off. I hated the feeling of dry hands.

I was thrown off balance and quickly grabbed the wheel again. The boat was not only rocking up and down with each swell, but was also slamming into the bottom of each trough with a jarring thud. Sometimes there was a rhythm to the sea and you could ride the waves like a galloping horse. Today, it felt more like a bucking bronco.

My dad had instructed me to keep the compass heading at seventy-five degrees. The compass was directly in front of me on a wooden post mounted in the cockpit. The movement of the boat caused the gimbaled compass dial to dance around inside its glass globe, making it all the harder for me to keep the heading accurate. I glanced down and saw that the heading was on eighty-five, so I quickly pulled the wheel to the left to adjust it.

The wind still blew strong, though not as hard as the previous night. Dad kept watch the entire night, so each of the kids was now taking a two-hour shift to give him some much-needed rest. The huge mainsail was reefed in to a third its size, the mizzen was down and tied to the boom, and the headsail was stowed to make it a little easier for us to control the boat without Dad's help.

We were heading downwind and back toward the coast of Florida. Occasionally, as I got off course, the mainsail flapped loudly and alerted everyone below deck that I was not following the heading as instructed.

In spite of the wind whistling through the rigging, I heard Dad stirring below. He appeared in the doorway to the cabin, lifted the hinged stairs and attached them to the ceiling with the small hook located at the base. Through the rungs of the upside-down stairs, I could see him opening the bilge compartment located under the floor. He knelt down and disappeared from sight, but I could hear the steady whoosh, whoosh, whoosh as he briskly pumped the handle that sucked the bilge water from the hull and dumped it back into the sea where it belonged.

I heard the mainsail start to luff and glanced up at the main mast; just then Dad called up from below, What heading are you on?

I quickly glanced down at the compass and realized that I was back on eighty-five degrees. I stalled a moment, pulling on the wheel for what seemed like an eternity, and then called back, I'm on eighty, wait, now it's on seventy-five.

Well, you got to keep it on seventy-five or we'll never get back to the dock! Dad sounded a little cranky, so I lowered my eyes to the elusive compass and vowed to keep better track of where we were heading. The dancing dial of the compass seemed to taunt me as it jumped back to eighty degrees as soon as Dad turned around.

Through the rungs in the stairs, I could see Dad moving toward me, farther back to the stern of the boat to the engine compartment. I felt a small surge of hope. Maybe he would turn the engine on and we could head directly back to land instead of zigzagging back and forth at the mercy of the wind.

I glanced again at the compass. Good, it was still on seventy-five degrees like it was supposed to be. Dad placed the stairs back in position and then he asked Mom what she was planning to fix for lunch. Mom could occasionally be viewed through the round porthole that faced the back deck. She said something but the sound was carried away by a sudden gust of wind.

I didn't feel hungry at all, having been sick all day yesterday and the day before and hadn't slept well for at least two nights. I had already thrown up two times this morning and didn't feel like giving my stomach any more ammunition.

My parents were engaged in conversation. I could see their lips moving, but crashing waves and howling wind drowned out the words. Standing up with my bare legs straddling the steering box, I looked around at my world. By carefully watching each wave as it rolled into Carina, I could somewhat judge which ones would hit hard and so keep my balance.

Through my salt-encrusted glasses, I saw nothing but ocean swells all around. The swells peaked at ten feet, which was better than last night. Dad had estimated the swells at twelve to fifteen feet the night before. Even now, some of the swells still crested. The wind caught the salty water from the tops and blew it across the decks.

I felt crusty from the dried salt that was left clinging to my face, legs, feet, hands and hair. I was suddenly glad that I had braided my hair this morning because it would be impossible to brush it out again without washing it first. I focused on the compass again and quickly sat down on the box and had to adjust the wheel to get us back on the correct heading. Whew! Dad hadn't caught that one!

I began to feel queasy. Dad! I called, I'm getting sick again. There was a muffled argument from below. I guessed that my sisters were arguing about who would have to come up to relieve me. Kris, one of the twins, finally appeared in the doorway.

Move off, she said, I've got the wheel. I slid off the steering box and plopped down on the wet deck next to the port railing. I hugged my knees close to my chest and propped my feet against the steering box to keep from sliding into it. Ducking my head to rest on my knees, I tried to find some rhythm in the rolling waves. The constant lurching made me feel ill, but a steady rhythm could sometimes lull me out of it.

The boat was a little heeled over and I couldn't sit comfortably on the deck without sliding down to the other side. I pushed back so that the small of my back was pressed into the railing and my feet pushed hard against the steering box. I tried to concentrate on something, anything, to get my mind off the relentless up-and-down and side-to-side motion of the boat and my heaving stomach.

I looked up at Kris; her blond hair was blowing wildly in the wind. What heading are you on? I asked.

Her response was immediate, Shut up, Patty, I got it where it's supposed to be.

Just then Dad called up from below deck, Hey, what heading are you on?

Kris gave the wheel a quick tug and called back, It's on seventy-five!

From my vantage point, I could see the compass heading still at eighty degrees. Liar, I whispered, just loud enough for her to hear me. Kris reached back with her bare foot and delivered a swift kick.

I edged sideways to miss the blow, but her foot still connected with my leg. We both knew how hard it was to keep the boat exactly on a heading as directed, especially when the seas were rough and the boat was traveling downwind. Steering was always sloppier with a tailwind than a crosswind.

Dad's head appeared in the doorway and he looked over at me, You're looking a little bit pukey, are you going to be okay? I nodded at him, and then the urge hit. I scrambled over the steering box, past Kris, to the downwind side of the boat. Quickly wrapping my arms around the wooden rail I leaned over. The dry heave rose from my stomach, my back arched, and then, gagging and coughing, I spit bile into the ocean. My stomach continued to convulse for a few moments more even though there was nothing left to throw up. I felt much better when I was through. I stayed in that position for a moment, one arm hooked around the railing, too weak to pull myself back. Leaning over the rail, my face was a mere foot from the sea as we hit the bottom of a swell. The sea was a dark greenish-gray color. I looked up; the sky was muddy gray too.

Why don't you go down and try to sleep? I turned to see Dad looking at me with a smile.

I don't think I could handle the smell of the bilge and the engine right now, I said, I'd rather be up here in the fresh air.

Well, I can steer now, Dad said. Kris slid off the box and picked up the paperback book she had been sitting on. She seated herself on the deck with her feet in the cockpit. Flipping to the page she'd been reading prior to coming up to relieve me, she scrunched her nose to move her glasses back into position, and picked up where she left off. Kris could read regardless of what was going on around her. We had been out to sea for only three days and she had already read two books and was now working on her third.

Dad looked at me and said, Do you think you could help me jibe? I nodded and moved into position at the mizzenmast and untied the line holding the mainsail in position. When I had uncleated it, Dad said, Okay, I'm jibing! He turned the bow sharply to port. I rapidly pulled the mainsail in as the line became slack and then, as the boat turned and caught wind on the other side, I slowly let the sail back out. I cleated it off and coiled the remaining line.

Then he said, Let's put the small headsail up. I think the wind has died down enough and the waves aren't so big anymore. I knew, as he did, that putting up the headsail would actually help to steady the boat a little. I nodded and moved to the sheet lead. I loosened the headsail and flipped the remaining line out on the back deck so it wouldn't get a kink in it.

Then I carefully walked to the front of the boat; holding onto the rail with one hand at all times. We had a saying that was repeated often, One hand for the boat! which means that you should be holding onto the boat in some way at all times with at least one hand.

I untied the thin ropes that secured the headsail to the railing and tucked the ties into the belt loops on my shorts. I then uncleated the headsail halyard on the main mast. I pulled quickly, hand-over-hand, and the sail went zinging up the rigging. Dad turned the boat more to starboard and that took the pressure off the headsail as I pulled it up. It flapped lightly with little wind to fill it. When it was fully raised, I cleated the line off and looped the remainder, hanging the loops back on the cleat. Before going to the back deck, I took the little ties from my belt loops and returned them to the railing once again.

I moved to the back deck and sat down by the winch. Dad turned back to port and the sail abruptly filled with air. I pulled in the sheet lead until I could pull no more. I would need a winch to get it any tighter. Dad looked at the sail, full with wind, and then glanced out over the ocean. He looked back at me and then said to go ahead and tie it off. We wouldn't bother with the winch this time.

I intentionally bumped into Kris on my way back across the deck. She mumbled something inaudible. Apparently I had not bumped into her hard enough so I let myself slide into her on the next big wave. This got the reaction I was looking for! Cut it out, Patty! She shrieked.

Nice of you to help with the sails, I responded sarcastically. Putting the book down she lifted her head and looked around.

Oh, I didn't know you were putting sails up, she said innocently, glancing forward to the full headsail.

I snorted in disgust, but decided not to push it any further. I had faked being too busy to help with the sailing of the boat myself once or twice. I was irritable and out of sorts. My hands and feet still felt dry, my head was itchy and I wanted to pick a fight with someone but thought better of it. A fight on the back deck, at the feet of my father, the captain of this ship, was probably not in my best interest.

Instead, I leaned against the side railing and looked out over the miles of open dark-green ocean. I could smell an aroma coming from the kitchen and guessed that Mom was making soup. I hoped so, because that was about all my stomach was going to be able to handle. As I waited for the food, I thought back to what had happened to place me on a sailboat in the middle of this endless sea of murky green.

2

Carina

ITHINK IT ALL BEGAN WHEN MY FATHER TURNED FORTY YEARS OLD IN 1975. It was during that year that he started talking about sailing around the world. Dad had always been an adventurous man. He came from Minnesota with the U.S. Air Force and stayed when his tour of duty was over because he loved the Alaskan wilderness.

My mother was just seventeen when they married. She dropped out of high school (later getting her GED) and moved with him to Alaska. She was eighteen when they had their first child. They had four more children in rapid succession, all girls. I am the middle one. My oldest sister, Jenny, had already left home by the time my parents decided to take our family sailing around the world. Kathy is next oldest and was sixteen when we left Anchorage. I was fourteen and in the ninth grade. Kris and Alicia, the twins, were eleven years old.

We lived in Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska. Dad finished building our house just prior to my birth, so it was the only home I had every known. We lived on the east edge of town, near the mountains, and often saw moose in our yard during the winter months. Once we even witnessed a black bear with two cubs playing below our hilltop home.

Dad first thought about starting an air taxi business. He owned an airplane and enjoyed flying. He flew for an air taxi operation out of Galena, a small village on the Yukon River, a few years before. He and Mom were both tired of the cold Alaskan winters and wanted to go someplace warm.

The original plan, although vague, was to start an air taxi somewhere in the South Pacific where people would need transportation from island to island. They requested brochures and magazines from travel agencies and then his adventurous mind moved on to the idea of sailing around the world.

It all sounded very exciting to us kids. We had been out of the state of Alaska on only a couple of occasions to visit relatives in Minnesota and one long-forgotten trip to the East Coast when I was a toddler. I was especially looking forward to getting out of school, because of course you can't go to school if you live on a boat. Or so I thought.

As serious plans were made to sell our home, our parents enrolled us kids in swimming classes at a local high school. None of us knew how to swim and our parents thought it best for us to have some basic understanding of the water before we ventured out onto the big ocean and possibly drowned.

The swimming class was a humiliating experience for all of us. Unbeknownst to me, many kids my age already knew how to swim, and most non-swimmers were little children. My sisters and I were put into a beginning swimming class with a group of mostly five and six year olds. I felt stupid, at the age of fourteen, to be included in a class with such young kids. Their moms and dads smiled at them and called out words of encouragement. That's great, Sammy! Kick hard! You're doing a great job!

Our mom just dropped us off. Learn to swim! she'd say, driving away to do errands. I took comfort in knowing that at least I wasn't the oldest one in class. There was Kathy and she was probably more embarrassed than I. After all she was sixteen.

I must confess that I never really learned to swim properly, but I can doggy-paddle or float on my back or stomach for hours on end.

My dad began taking sailing lessons from a friend of his and soon was able to navigate around Westchester Lagoon. He learned to jibe and come about and dipped the sail into the water only a few times.

He also took a boating safety course from the Coast Guard. From them he learned about navigating through marked waters and what the different buoys, lights, flags, and foghorns meant.

He then purchased a sextant; an instrument used to measure the angle of the sun, moon and stars in relation to the horizon, and taught himself celestial navigation. His first effort at calculating our position was a little disconcerting as he calculated we lived about five miles from where our house was actually located! My dad is an intelligent man though, and soon we lived exactly where he thought we should.

Our house sold in December 1975 and much to my dismay, my parents planned our move during the Christmas break so we would miss as little school as possible. We were not able to keep any of our personal belongings, except clothes, since there would not be much room on a boat.

I split up my collection of twenty Breyer model horses and gave three of them to my friend, Karen Hanson. She received the original Palomino colt I had received for my eighth birthday. It was my most cherished possession. I also gave her my white Arabian stallion and my little speckled Appaloosa foal.

I said my good byes to her and my other friends, Patty Standley from church and Karen Wanke, whose family was planning a move to Wisconsin. It was the first time I had to say good-bye to friends. I had mixed emotions, feeling sad and yet excited about our upcoming adventure at the same time.

After a long trip down the Alaska Highway, at times reaching temperatures of sixty-five degrees below zero, we arrived in Brainerd, Minnesota in time for Christmas. We spent Christmas with Dad's family and were reacquainted with our cousins.

My maternal grandparents owned Smith Diving in Minneapolis, a dive shop and school. They outfitted the entire family with snorkels, facemasks and flippers. They had an indoor swimming pool behind their home for training people to dive. We practiced our newfound swimming skills and I quickly became spoiled by the flippers. We visited more relatives for a few days and then pushed on.

When we arrived in Florida, we settled in the town of Punta Gorda. It was centrally located on the Gulf Coast and appeared from the map to be an ideal location to base our search for the perfect boat. We were enrolled in school and I hated every minute of it. I was extremely shy and felt out of place; I had never been the new kid before and didn't like how it felt.

The school I had attended in Alaska had the seventh through the twelfth grades in one building, and I had taken several of my classes with upperclassmen. The school in Florida was a junior high only and didn't even offer the level of math I was already taking.

I felt like a fat ugly duckling in a pool of beautiful, tanned swans. My pasty white skin and slightly chubby body was hidden in bulky clothing almost year round in Alaska. But in Florida many students wore shorts and tank tops to school. I was used to sweatshirts and jeans! I hoped each day would be the day that our parents would find a boat and we could leave.

Each weekend was spent making long drives up and down the coast looking at boats. Every Saturday morning we piled into the hot, stuffy, car and then had the usual fight for a window seat. In the extreme heat of Florida (at least it felt hot to us!); it was much better to sit by a window, even if a warm breeze was blowing in, than to suffocate between two sisters.

Mom always brought along some lunchmeat and bread. Around noon she made sandwiches for us. If we were really lucky, Dad stopped at a grocery store and bought a watermelon or a carton of ice cream. Mom kept a knife and spoons and bowls in the glove compartment for just such a treat! She sliced the ice cream into six sections and distributed one portion to each of us. It was the perfect treat