Rowboat in a Hurricane (6 page)

I tried to distract myself by watching the fishing boats in the distance. I saw close to a dozen, all of them moderate in size and weathered in appearance. I knew that these were small-scale fishing operations, one or two men (I hadn’t seen a fisherwoman yet) who went out six days a week—never on Sunday—and sold their catch fresh each day at the local fish markets. They caught mostly sardines, mackerel, and hake, although local octopus, sea bass, tuna, prawns, squid, and swordfish were also for sale at the markets. Most of Portugal’s fishermen work in small boats, catching just enough fish to subsist, but they struggle to make a living amid dwindling fish stocks. Today only the bigger and better-equipped boats, which can travel farther in search of fish and stay longer on the water, can prosper (and even their margins are shrinking).

The Portuguese eat more fish per person than any other nationality except for Icelanders, but their fishing industry is in distress as stocks of cod, hake, and whiting are near collapse. They can now no longer meet their own fish needs, relying on imports of dried cod from Norway, sardines from Russia, and stockfish from Iceland.

Sadly, Portugal is not alone in facing this crisis. When I returned to civilization, I heard news reports that this could be the last century of wild seafood. The story was based on the research of an international team of scientists who published their findings in the November
3
,
2006
issue of
Science.
They looked at fish catch reports since
1950
in almost all ocean regions, and found that, if the present trend continues, all fish species will decline
90
per cent from their peak numbers by mid-century. Once a population’s numbers drop this low, recovery is very difficult, and the species is considered collapsed. If we don’t change our approach to managing the oceans, say the scientists, all the world’s fish stocks will collapse by
2048
.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. This is not a prediction set in stone, but a warning of what will happen if our approach to the ocean doesn’t change. “We can turn this around,” said the lead author of the study, Dalhousie University professor Boris Worm. “But less than
1
per cent of the global ocean is effectively protected right now. We won’t see complete recovery [in these protected zones] in one year, but in many cases, species will come back more quickly than anticipated—in three to five to ten years. And where this has been done, we see immediate economic benefits.” In other words, the costs of managing the oceans responsibly will be infinitely lower for humankind than the cost of continuing our race to catch every last fish.

As I continued rowing, the small fishing boats disappeared from sight. With this last connection to civilization broken, I felt the magnitude of our isolation even more. I looked at Colin sitting inside the cabin and wondered if he, too, worried how we would handle being in this rowboat for months with only each other for company.

IT WAS HARD
to decide what was worse: rowing, or lying in the cabin waiting to row. When I was at the oars, all I could think about was how much my body ached and how I wanted the pain to end. But now that I was in the cabin, the pain shifted to other areas. I felt like a teenager who had just discovered the downfall of drinking lemon gin like it was lemonade. I clutched my stomach and closed my eyes, willing myself to ignore the nausea.

Not only was
Ondine
a small boat in big seas, but she lacked many of the stabilizing features of other seagoing vessels. Sailboats, for example, are steadied below the water by a large keel that resists lateral movement, and above the water by the pressure of the wind on the sails. Fishing boats and cruise ships usually have stabilizing fins to counter their natural rolling movement. Our boat, however, had only a tiny keel and no sails. The smallest wave sent it rocking and pitching.

As I lay in the cabin, waiting for my rowing shift to begin, I examined the foam-padded ceiling and read the pen scribbles barely an arm’s length above me. The previous owners had left phone numbers, short checklists, and, right in the middle, a jailhouse calendar composed of fifty-six dashes—one for each day of
Ondine
’s previous voyage from the Canaries to the Caribbean islands. Our journey, from mainland to mainland, would be double the distance and would likely take twice as long. It still seemed incomprehensible that we were spending a single night in this rowboat, let alone any number of months. I prematurely started our own countdown and marked off day one with a permanent marker. Then I nodded off, escaping to a dream world that didn’t include rowboats and waves.

“Five minutes!” Colin yelled.

The world came spinning and rocking back into focus. I slipped my cycling gloves onto my already-blistered hands.

“How are things coming along out there?” I asked.

“Lots of shipping,” Colin replied. “We’ve had several freighters pass quite close to us. You can still see land, but it’s getting low.”

“How about Miami?”

“What about Miami?”

“Can you see it yet?”

“Almost. I think it’s just over the horizon.” Colin looked over his left shoulder, brow furrowed. It almost looked like he really was searching for the sandy shores of Florida.

“Ex-lax!” he suddenly exclaimed.

“Huh?”

“Ex-lax,” Colin repeated. “We forgot to get
laxatives!
”

“Oops!” I said.

I remembered all too clearly our bid to purchase laxatives. The clerk in the pharmacy spoke no English (which is rare in Portugal). He didn’t understand what we were asking for, and finally Colin was forced to mime what the product was used for. It was funny and embarrassing at the same time. Unfortunately the pharmacy had none in stock, and we had to try elsewhere. But we forgot.

Our diet would be devoid of fresh fruits and vegetables, and very high in low-fibre carbohydrates. I shuddered at the thought of having problems thousands of kilometres away from any medical facilities or pharmacies.

“I remember reading the book
Lost
by Thomas Thompson,” Colin said. “Their trimaran flipped and they were living in the overturned hull. The woman was suffering from extreme constipation, and it reached the point where her husband had to reach in and remove a stool the size of a baseball.”

This conversation wasn’t helping me reach peace with our new lifestyle.

“How the hell do you just
reach in
and grab a turd the size of softball?” I snapped.

“
Baseball,
” Colin corrected. “I don’t know—that’s just what it said.”

I made a mental note of where we stored the prunes and slid out the hatch to begin my shift. Miami seemed a long way away.

BACK AT THE
oars, I felt uncoordinated and exhausted. The waves seemed to be even larger from this vantage point, and far too often an oar would get caught on a wave and slam into my leg. Normally, both oars would be balanced when I pulled them through the water during my stroke, but now I found it easier to put one slightly ahead of the other. This allowed me to get the oars a little higher out of the water, and prevented unnecessary damage to my thighs. I was sure this was a big no-no in terms of rowing technique and would dash my dreams of arriving home a rowing champion. My dreams were quickly fading.

From my outside vantage, I looked directly at the cabin. Colin’s long, sun-bleached hair poked out the partially open Plexiglas hatch as he lay on his side, munching on crackers. Although his hair was blond, his beard was mostly red, and now that it was thick and bushy, he looked like a savage Viking. And, indeed, the blood of the Norse warriors possibly did flow through his veins. His mother and father are both Scottish—their families came from Caithness, an area once settled by Scandinavians.

I couldn’t help but wonder if a seafaring heritage makes a difference to one’s level of comfort on the ocean. Colin’s father was a sea captain, and many of his relatives worked in the fishing industry. I, however, come from a family devoid of any Captain High Liners. My mother comes from a farming region in a landlocked part of Germany, my father from a large city in Syria, and, as far I knew, the closest anyone in their families got to a water-based job was when the farm fields were irrigated.

Even if nature took a back seat to nurture, I was no further ahead. Although Colin did not meet his seafaring father until he was an adult, his mother is equally adventurous, and she instilled him with a love of the outdoors through hikes in the mountains and along Vancouver Island’s coast. Even today, in her seventies, she is a very active member of the Comox chapter of the B.C. Mountaineering Club. She consistently places near the top of her age group in running races. In comparison, my family was both sedentary and interior. My father equated the outdoors with discomfort; he had spent too much time in military arctic survival courses. My mother worried that outdoor activity was unhealthy and would make me sick, or that some other unforeseen danger would befall me. Now they both shake their heads and wonder where in the child-raising process they erred.

A LARGE WAVE
crashed over the boat, wrenching me off the rowing seat and away from my thoughts. I grabbed the lifelines for balance and struggled back onto the rowing seat. I glanced quickly at the navigational equipment to ensure we were still on the correct course.

We relied on a brand new chartplotter/
GPS
(Global Positioning System) that we’d affixed outside, alongside the compass. The
GPS
was undoubtedly the most important navigational tool we had, indicating our coordinates, speed, and direction using satellite technology. Because of the one- or two-second delay in the
GPS
output, it was easier to keep the boat on course by looking at the magnetic compass, which reacted instantly as the boat moved.

“What do you want for dinner?” Colin asked, propping the hatch door open so he could access the single-burner alcohol stove that sat between the cabin hatch and the sliding seat.

I questioned the feasibility of cooking in these rough conditions, but Colin seemed optimistic, and he was the one with the extensive seafaring experience.

“We’re going to be eating pretty limited fare until it gets a little calmer,” he said. “Most of our food is stored under the deck hatches, and there’s no way we’re going to get to it until things calm down.”

I surveyed the constant flow of water sluicing over the decks, ebbing and flowing as the waves passed by. Our boat felt unnervingly like a submarine sitting at the surface: barely buoyant, and ready to go down at any time.

“I didn’t realize having this much weight in our boat would be such a problem,” I said.

“We’ll be eating forty pounds of food a week. We’ll be sitting higher out of the water in no time.”

Colin decided on a menu of stew and rice. The rice simmered in a pot of water. Just before the grains were fully tender, he added a can of stew, which would be hot by the time the rice was completely cooked. The appealing scent of garlic and gravy wafted across the boat. Then, just as I was savouring the prospect of our first hot meal of the voyage, a sinister snarl announced a larger-than-average wave bearing down on us. It hit the side of the boat with a surly
thwack,
and buckets of salty water cascaded over me and the open cooking pot.

With delusional optimism, Colin stuck his spoon into the stew-turned-soup and brought it to his lips. His face scrunched up in disgust and he spit the contents of his mouth over the side. Sputtering more words of disdain, he tossed the stew overboard, and we postponed our hot meal to another day.

The ocean’s mineral concentration includes
3
.
5
per cent salt, which offends more than our taste buds. In large quantities, salt becomes a toxin; twelve grams is enough to kill a human being. The daily recommended limit is five hundred milligrams, which means a single teaspoon of seawater contains enough salt for the whole day.

Salt toxicity is not a problem in civilization, where even the most ardent enthusiast of pretzels and bar nuts could not come close to consuming a lethal amount. On the ocean, however, sodium chloride has claimed countless souls. Lost sailors on a desert of brine often give in to temptation and greedily gulp at the sea beneath them. These fleeting moments of pleasure—filling their bellies with cool water—are soon replaced with their final wretched moments of agony and despair. When salt enters the body, it is absorbed quickly into the bloodstream. If there’s too much sodium chloride, our cells and organs give up their water to dilute it, becoming dehydrated and eventually dying. Meanwhile, the kidneys try to filter out the salt, but they shut down when the accumulated salt levels are too high. Finally, the salt-poisoned become delusional as their brains swell, and they are racked with seizures until death from kidney failure or multiple organ collapse.

Instead of salty stew, we dined on peanut butter sandwiches made with heavily processed white bread. The expiration date for the bread was still three weeks away, and it contained enough preservatives to sink a small rowboat.

“If we eat any more of this bread, we’re going to have multiple organ failure anyway,” I said. But unless the weather improved, we would not be cooking anything; really, we were lucky to have brought such a large supply of bread to see us through.