This voyage from Hout Bay to St Helena was supposed to take 7 to 10 days, or so we were told. A few people told us the day before we left that we would be lucky to do it in 2 weeks. Well, it is now day 14 and we are still 300 miles from the island. I am at last ready to put some words down. The easiest way I think I can do this is by explaining my concerns and fears before we set off and then the actual realities of life on the high seas…

Fear - Saoirse.
The biggest fear I had was actually about Saoirse. Not so much of her falling over board, but rather the boredom factor. In Hout Bay she was attending the kindergarten pretty much full time and was surrounded by other children and activities all day. Great for her social development but hard on me at the weekends when we were stuck on the boat from Friday to Monday morning. At least on the marina we had a rented car, so simple things like going to the shops became a way off the boat for she and I. What on earth would I do with her 24 hours on a boat where there was nowhere to go and only JC and I for company? She has also proven to be quite an active child, so I was really worried about entertaining her and bought loads of, what I hoped, were educational yet stimulating toys and books.

Reality - Saoirse.
Saoirse has ended up being the biggest and nicest surprise on the boat. She has never given us any bother and for the first few days while I was on bed rest (see below!), she happily played with her toy animals and lego sitting beside me on the bed. She reads incessantly and even in the early morning I hear and see her sitting Teddy and Teddy-Jo (her 2 teddies) up and reading to them in the same voices I do to her! Very cute. Her vocab has really expanded and she is able to convey her feelings very well to us in crude short sentences. She often talks about her friends Kiara, Axel-boy, Jocelyn-boy and all the kids at the kindergarten, her favourite name being “Nicki”. She welcomes bed at 8ish and sleeps through to about 7am. Even the more violent rocking motion does not seem to phase her. Once she is dressed in a long sleeved top in the morning, we put her harness on and clip her to the cockpit area allowing her reasonable movement but not so much that she could fall off the boat. Only once has she been further on deck that the cockpit and that was the one very calm day we had when we decided to do clothes washing on the deck and we simply clipped her on again and she was delighted to be sitting with us while we scrubbed and rinsed the clothes. Strangely she has not wanted to venture out of the cockpit again despite her curtailed movements. She rapidly found her sea legs and now walks, holding onto various things or crawls as the occasion demands! Her stomach muscles must be 6 packs by now as she competently sits upright and balanced through all types of rocking motions!

Fear - Boredom and loneliness.
JC had told me not to worry about being bored, that there was lots to do and see on board. I was afraid that a longer passage with just 1 and a half others to talk to would do my head in.

Reality - Boredom and loneliness.
There is nothing to see except sea. Even JC is surprised - his other voyages seem to have consisted of endless schools of fish and dolphins frolicking around his boat, but not one dolphin or shoals of fish have we seen. In fact I could count the birds on one hand too. I guess they hang out in the warmer Carribean waters or something! Although I am over the bad sea sickness that kept me to my bed for so long, I can not shake the lethargy that seems to have me in its deepest grasp and simply things like tidying are just beyond me. I have only read one book and even that was an effort. JC and I often reminisce about our friends and experiences in Hout Bay, especially our friends Camilla and Nici and their families who we sadly got to know too late in our stay. I know my family must be franticly waiting to hear from us and due to a stupid man in Hout Bay who screwed up on “ferrite chokes” we can not communicate with them till we reach St Helena. I think about them often and hope they don’t fret too much. As much as I would love other people to chat with, there is no space for more than us and we have designed the boat in a very open way so crew would not have worked. I have to admit, I really enjoy the time with Saoirse and despite reading the same fairytale book up to 30 times a day, I enjoy her company!

(Note - the day I wrote this, day 14, we were very becalmed, ie not going anywhere as no wind and I was totally down in the dumps, when suddenly for the first (and last) time a pod of dolphins swam around us. We also saw a number of “nemos” i.e. fish around the boat. It was like the ocean was telling me it was NOT boring!

Fear - Sea sickness.
Anyone who knows me knows I get sea sick. Even JC reckoned with me being down for the first day or two.

Reality - Sea sickness.
What neither of us knew was that I would be out of action for a week, with the first 5 days bed bound. I can’t even remember the first few days. Poor JC was reduced to doing everything on the boat. It did not help that Saoirse was also sea sick for the first day, so between trimming sails and cooking, he was mopping up sick from both of us. He deserves a medal. I only managed to eat a meal on day 5. At that stage JC suggested changing the medication I was taking as it was giving me mad dreams, unfortunately the new pills stopped the nausea but not the dizziness so I was back on the flat of my back for the next few days and throughout the whole trip I have had to lie down for longer periods. Smells especially make me ill. JC has cooked every single night and only on day 10 was I able to change the first nappy!

Fear - JC and my relationship.
I was very worried about the strain this passage would have on our relationship. JC was not, but me being me and knowing me was worried about days on end with no where to escape to for privacy or time out from each other.

Reality - JC and my relationship.
JC has been amazing during this trip. He literally had to do the night shifts, all the cooking and looking after us both, change nappies and wash dishes, as well every hour or less for the first few days trim or completely change sails. His poor body is covered in bruises. He has been so loving and patient with me, allowing me sleep for days on end and even now towards the end of our long trip, he still lets me lie down for hours at a time and still does the dishes and cooks. A shining star in my hours of darkness!

Fear - sharks.
I was quite paranoid about sharks. Especially around South Arica the Great Whites are notorious, so the thought of only a few inches of metal between me and their big sharp teeth was quite terrifying.

Reality - sharks.
I am really surprised at myself with this one as I have not once been afraid or thought about them. Well, once I did. We decided to have a nappy-washing system which consisted of throwing the dirty nappies into a net and trawling them behind us till the sea washed them clean then drying the on a special netting/line we had rigged before binning them (otherwise the boat would very quickly stink us out!). Seeing the nappy surfing the waves behind us, scenting the water for miles around, I was nervous about attracting sharks and had visions of Jaws bursting through the water to chomp at the netting. It never happened - I guess Saoirse’s poo is even too gross for the sharks!
Fear - mental state. I was sure I would have a complete melt down a few days into the trip (I have delayed reaction to situations so knew it would not be beforehand).

Reality - mental state.
The imminent melt down never happened*. I suppose for the first few days I was too weak anyway to have any kind of reaction other than throwing up. After that I slipped into a type of lethargy, I guess it was a mild form of depression. It might have been a reaction to the sea sickness. I found mornings really hard to cope with, especially as I had always believed that the trip would take between 7 to 10 days and now it looks like it will be about 16 days. I have probably found this the hardest part of the trip - I am a person that loves time keeping and a countdown on a trip like this is just not possible. Even now, the clock reads 300 miles left and we had been doing 150 miles a day so in my head I could calculate exactly when we would arrive and I could mentally get myself ready, but now there is zero wind again and all of that is gone out the window. We could be bobbing along for another week. Others might find that exciting, I just want it to end. I want to be there already. I want to feel St Helena under my feet. See green grass and talk with other people. It is hard to explain to someone like JC who simply accepts the unpredictability of sailing as he accepts most things in his life, but for someone as structured and ordered as me, I am really struggling. My birthday was on 18th and I woke up really depressed. JC made an apple pie and the dinner I asked him (although was not able to eat any of it as I felt sick again). Saoirse even sang me a Happy Birthday, but the only thing that lifted my spirits was listening to my Isaac’s CD of the Malawian choir. That brought a smile to my face as I reminisced of sitting in the back of the church in Hout Bay after mass listening to the choir practise for the following Sunday.

(*The Melt down did in fact happen on Day 14, we were completely becalmed and over 48 hours only managed a pathetic 20 miles. We had no more fresh fruit and I was so stressed out. I still felt ill was worried that at this slow rate it could take literally weeks more. I just wanted off the boat so badly but there was no end in sight. I had a massive scream and cry and felt a bit better. That was the day we saw the dolphins, as if the ocean was feeling sorry for me!)

Fear - food.
When I shopped for our food, JC had told me to provision for 3 months at sea (in case of extreme emergency). We have enough tinned beans and pulses to feed a small country. I was worried we would have bean stew ever night.

Reality - food.
We have eaten like kings, or rather JC has cooked to feed kings as I have often not been able to eat this delicious food. We are newly converted to pressure cooking - I even managed a yummy cheese cake in it before we left. JC was convinced when he did a Mexican dish called Carnitas, which normally take 6 hours to cook, in only 1 hour and it tasted superb. The food is cooked at a fraction of the time thus saving on precious gas and the food is more nutritious as all the goodness is let in the dish itself. Flavours are sealed in magnificently and one pot meals in a boat are ideal. We have eaten Beef Curry, Chicken Cacciatore, Shepherd’s Pie, Fajitas and much much more. As we have a no drinking policy while sailing I have saved the day with my newly discovered love of Ginger Beer! In terms of fresh fruit and vegetables, everything is now eaten except onions, carrots, potatoes and cabbage - the ones that last the longest. We have only apples left now as the last of the tangerines have just been eaten. We have reinforced fruit drinks and tinned fruit so as we are near enough to land, I am not overly worried that we will catch scurvy just yet!

Well, I wrote the above at sea and we landed last Tuesday on the island of St Helena - 17 days after setting off from South Africa. Ugh! It is good to feel terra firma and eat food. Fresh products are very hard to come by as everything is imported and the boat with supplies only comes every 2 or 3 weeks so all the shops have are apples and dried up tangerines. More on St Helena another time, just wanted to let everyone know we arrived safe and soundly. We hope to leave for Brazil in about 2 or 3 days and that passage will also take 15 to 20 days.

The 2 major things I learned from the passage:

The universe has its own time and it is very different to my concept of time. No matter what I do, I can not change Time.

I understand both senses of the saying “in the doldrums”!