Ten Degrees of Reckoning (8 page)

We stuck, nor breath, nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.
 

Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

Ah, the doldrums. Many folks think of it as a state of mind rather than an actual area. If you’re at home and you’re in the doldrums, you might be down in low spirits or listless. However, if you’re at sea, near the equator, you might be trapped in the doldrums, where the prevailing northeasterly trade winds of the Northern Hemisphere meet the southeasterly trade winds of the Southern Hemisphere and they neutralize each other. Most cruising sailors try to prepare for these windless days by storing additional provisions and water, bringing interesting books to distract them from the anxiety of the lack of any progress, and attempting to sail a course close to a longitude where the band of the doldrums is somewhat narrower.

If you ever want to feel entirely alone, sitting on a boat in the midst of a becalmed sea is the way to do it. As the narrator in
Moby-Dick
remarked, “The horizon floats,” and it is an apt description. You feel as though you can see to the ends of the world, and you’re the only ones in it. Everything shimmers in the heat and stillness. The days can multiply without a breath of wind.

In 1988, when John and I were becalmed for some days near the equator, I was absolutely mesmerized by the silence, enthralled by the beauty, and peaceful—not anxious—in the tranquillity of it all. At my suggestion, to abate his restlessness, John was wrapped up in one of the only mystery novels he ever read, one in which, unfortunately, the detective passionately describes another cold beer or ale every few pages.

I was making lunch and threw the onion waste overboard. In less than a minute a shark, with two remoras attached, shot up from the deep. The shark got bored with us fairly quickly, but not before quelling our desire to cool down with a swim. We hung a line over the side to measure the depth of its reflection in the water as it appeared smaller and smaller, and we were sure we could still see its diminished form at seventy-five feet.

Several hours later, John threw our dinner overboard, for simple entertainment value, and the same shark torpedoed back up, the remoras still attached. At the time I didn’t realize I would soon become accustomed to swimming among sharks in the many anchorages we visited. They would hang around, uninterested, until they smelled the blood of a fish on the end of our speargun.

The doldrums are more properly called the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. The convergence of the prevailing winds of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, as well as the intense heat in this area, can result in totally unpredictable weather, from the calms to confused seas and countercurrents. On that crossing in 1988, John and I, both pollywogs, dressed up in our two lightweight, colorful spinnakers and beseeched King Neptune to let us enter his domain. We were swept into a wind tunnel before we could properly stow our initiation garb. On a second crossing in 2001, we encountered only thunder-storms and lightning, with skies black day and night, and no chance to celebrate the equator’s charisma. 

Fortunately for Mike and Judy and the children, their crossing was uneventful, with light winds throughout the equatorial belt. Ben and Annie, hair dyed red, tattooed, and tethered, went forward on deck with Mike to make sure there really was no line in the ocean.

The Sleavins had a great passage to French Polynesia. It took a total of thirty days of sailing, and Ben and Annie became completely accustomed to the routines. They visited the Marquesas for one month, and then went on to the Tuamotu Archipelago.

When we left the Marquesas we started getting into very squally weather with high winds of about 40 knots and 8-foot seas. We had to slow the boat down so that we would arrive at the coral pass of Manihi in the Tuamotus in daylight. To do this we had to deploy a Galerider, a huge net type drogue that slowed us down by 3 knots. The Galerider made it more comfortable, but that’s our version of comfortable.
—Judy Sleavin

Most of the islands and atolls they visited were much more isolated than their Caribbean stops, and they had exceptional experiences.

Hello from Tonga. Today I realized how different it is cruising in the South Pacific compared to the Caribbean. I was watching my beautiful little girl have a long discussion with an older Tongan man. In the Caribbean there were more distractions. It was easier to mail Ben’s schoolwork for evaluations. There were airports to bring in and take out visiting friends and relatives. There were many more boats and anchorages and tourist activities. In the South Pacific, we have interacted as a family even more, if that’s possible, and we have definitely had more association with the people who live in the various places we have visited.

That is apparent by Annie Rose’s easy familiarity with this man. He paddled by in a canoe, and he had just the shell that Annie wanted to get for Ben’s birthday coming up in November. Can you believe it? Annie just turned seven and Ben will be nine in a few weeks. So, back to the shell. The Tongan man was warmly welcomed aboard the
Melinda Lee
and offered juice by Annie. She began the negotiations by asking all about his family, and then produced gifts for him that were just right: shoes and clothing for his family, proper fish hooks for him, a board that might be a hindrance to the pigs that routed out his small dirt garden, and some cans of food with an opener. He produced the most gorgeous horned shell, and she had the most incredible smile on her face. She has carefully wrapped it in several towels to disguise the shape and has hidden it away for the big day.

Also, Mike has gotten much more involved in teaching the kids. He is painstaking in his reading and writing with Annie. I love to watch Mike and the kids when he takes them out in the little sailing dinghy in a protected anchorage. I can hear them laughing as he teaches them the intricacies of tacking and jibing.

—Judy Sleavin, October 1995 

Two weeks after Ben’s ninth birthday the Sleavins prepared to leave. They had to wait several more days for favorable weather conditions, and on November 16, 1995, they departed from Nuku’alofa. They expected that the thousand-mile passage to New Zealand would take about a week.

 
Five

The Littlest Captain

JUDY OPENED HER EYES. PAIN. WATER EVERYWHERE. IT could only have been a few seconds since she’d been hit by some flying object, so why was there so much water in the watertight cabin? She saw floating debris, diesel fuel, a large piece of teak. It took several minutes before she understood that something must have collided with them, tearing a gaping hole in the hull and letting all this seawater in.

She was completely alert now, capable of quickly assessing the damage. The sailboat was equipped with starboard and port diesel tanks located under the settees. It was getting murkier and more difficult to see, but as diesel fuel continued to spill into the cabin, it appeared to come from the tanks on the port side. Her stomach churned. They had taken this massive hit forward. Below the settees was where Ben slept. She fought to keep her panic down, but she knew, she
knew,
that it would have been impossible for him to survive.

Judy screamed, “Michael!” There was no reply.

“Michael!” she screamed again. Nothing. Her head was still slightly above water, but she was aware that she had little time before she would be entirely submerged.

The deck hatch, which had been closed and latched, was missing, and she managed to swim up through the opening to the deck, looking for her family. When she got topside, she found Mike and Annie, completely dazed and holding hands, shivering. The deck was awash, already up to Annie’s knees and rising fast. Wreckage was everywhere; Ben was nowhere.

Mike and Judy looked at each other, terror in their eyes. Annie was frantic with worry over her brother. Mike decided to get her safely into the life raft and then attempt to find Ben. He went forward to the mast, where he expected to find the life raft. He was stunned; there was nothing to deploy. There was little left on the deck. The mast was sheared off to a jagged six inches; the rigging, the stanchions, the shrouds, the navigation antennae, the solar panels, all were gone. The life raft had been securely installed in a custom-made teak base bolted through into the cabin top with stainless steel backing plates, and somehow it, too, was gone.

Forward on the deck, a partially deflated dinghy was the only thing remaining, its fifty-foot painter clipped to a U-bolt. Under normal conditions, the dinghy was used to transport the family a short distance from an anchorage to land. Fully inflated, it measured eleven feet by five feet, and it was comfortable and sturdy. However, whenever Mike secured it on deck for a passage, he took some of the air out of the tubes in order to fold it. It was made of a very durable rubber, and he hoped, even partly deflated, it would be buoyant enough to help them until they were rescued. At least it would provide some fortification against the icy waters. As Mike pushed the dinghy over the damaged rail, Judy thought she saw a large dark hull turning away from them, but she couldn’t be sure. Ships were always brightly lit with their multiple navigation lights, but she didn’t see any evidence of even reflected light on the seas near this hull, if that’s what it was.

“Michael, look. Is that a ship?” she asked.

Mike replied that he couldn’t see any lights, and he instructed Annie and Judy to get in the dinghy.

Annie was screaming, “Don’t leave him. We can’t leave without Ben.”

Mike told Judy to get in the dinghy; he intended to swim below and get Ben.

Judy became hysterical. She begged, “Please, Michael, please. Don’t. You’ll never be able to find him. I can’t bear to lose both of you. There is no cabin. There’s nothing but seawater and diesel and rubbish below. Please! We’re sinking fast!”

Most of the hull of their sailboat was now submerged, and the deck was level with the seas, which made it easy for the three of them to scramble into the dinghy. The painter was still attached to the yacht. Almost immediately the
Melinda Lee
sank, pulling them underwater as well. They were screaming for Ben and for themselves, and then the painter broke free, and Mike, Judy, and Annie surfaced in the dinghy.

They could not believe how quickly the seaworthy
Melinda Lee
disappeared. But their own survival was far from triumphant with the horrible, incomprehensible, sickening awareness that the Littlest Captain had gone down with his ship.

Six
 

Abandoned by Grace

FOR A FEW MINUTES THE THREE WERE UTTERLY SILENT, in a state of shock. They sat in the bottom of the dinghy, completely still, and the dinghy, too, was almost motionless, silently bobbing in a pool of diesel fuel.

Judy completely understood Mike’s desire to make every desperate effort to search for Ben, but she had been the last to swim up from what was left of the cabin. It had been so full of water; she had to follow some tiny air bubbles to find her way up to the deck. Mike had been awakened abruptly and hadn’t yet fully absorbed the extent of the damage. She knew he would have ended up trapped. And she simply couldn’t bear to lose her husband as well.

The dinghy flipped and tossed them out. Mike and Judy righted it, and Mike helped everyone get back in. They were all thoroughly soaked. In spite of the wild seas beyond them, the dinghy was still in a zone of calm water, surrounded by diesel fuel, so it didn’t make sense when they flipped again, and then again. Each time it was more difficult to climb into the dinghy, with their bodies heavy with salt and diesel, and limbs less agile from the cold.

Judy became aware of an excruciating pain in her back and needed Mike’s assistance. She knew something had hit her on the side of her head when she was still down in the cabin, but she couldn’t understand what had happened to her back.

She was glad they were close to land; she was less worried about her injuries than about Mike and Annie’s well-being. They had no physical injuries, but their scant nightclothes were already sodden with salty seawater and they were soaked to the skin.

Mike put his arms around Judy and Annie, although he was really the one most in need of tenderness right then. Judy’s mind raced back to all the teasing she had taken from Mike’s siblings at their wedding, about making babies immediately. They had told her that as soon as he was old enough, Mike became a camp counselor, that he had always loved children. He had babysat willingly; he had helped teach Little League Baseball; he simply loved being involved with children. When Ben and Annie were born, he was overjoyed, and he never felt beset by the responsibility. Leaving a child behind was against his very nature.

Mike and Judy had established special bedtime rituals for the kids whenever they were at anchor. They would each spend time with one child and then switch after lengthy discussions or prolonged reading sessions. Judy once asked Annie what were the happiest and saddest times she could remember.