Rowboat in a Hurricane (7 page)

SHORTLY BEFORE 9:00 PM
, darkness enveloped the boat. Colin was rowing, and I peered outside through the hatch door, grateful to be inside and wrapped in a blanket. The overcast sky shed little light, and the moon had not yet risen. I could still see the surface of the water, but barely.

“Can you turn the boat lights on?” Colin asked. I flipped the switch for the compass light, and a faint glow illuminated the dial. The button for the strobe light was in our electrical panel, and I searched before locating the right one. Bright, pulsating light washed over the boat and into the darkness. It would be hard for other boats not to spot us; I just hoped they wouldn’t misinterpret our flashing light for a distress signal.

“How is it out there?” I asked.

“The waves are building, but we’re making good speed. We’re doing between
2
.
8
and
3
knots.”

“I’ll plot our position if you can tell me what our coordinates are,” I said.

I turned on the cabin light and unclipped the rolled-up chart from its hold on the ceiling. We had several charts with us, including those of Portugal, Lisbon Harbour, the Canary Islands, and Miami Harbour. I unrolled a large-scale depiction of Portugal’s coastal waters. The chart took up most of the room in the cabin, so I balanced awkwardly above it and used the straight edge of a book to find the intersection point of our latitude and longitude coordinates. I marked it with a tiny X.

“Our direction is perfect. We’ve travelled forty-six kilometres southwest of Lisbon,” I announced.

“That’s great. Let’s hope these winds keep coming from this direction.”

We were angling our boat so that we could get away from the Portuguese coastline as quickly as possible. As long as we were near land, we were in danger. Since we had no motor or sails, we relied on the relatively feeble power of our oars. The winds could switch at any time and, if sufficiently strong, they could push us into the rocky coast to be shipwrecked.

Sustained strong winds from the west, northwest, or southwest within the next two days would spell trouble.

By the time it was my shift again, the darkness was complete, broken only by the glow of Lisbon in the distance and the navigation lights of several far-away freighters. These ghostly reminders of civilization served only to make me feel more alone in the inky blackness. The roar of waves filled my ears, but I could no longer see the features of the water. In the darkness the ocean felt wilder, and cold tendrils of fear enveloped me. I would not spend my first night ensconced in a warm secure bed; instead, I would bump along in a wave-tossed rowboat, thousands of kilometres from land.

I wondered why humans seem to have a primal fear of the dark. Was it an evolutionary adaptation to help keep us from harm’s way while sabre-toothed tigers and other nocturnal predators hunted? Even though we no longer need to worry about prowling cats, there’s no denying that things get a little creepier at night—whether on a walk alone in the woods or during a night house-sitting in a lonely farmhouse. Darkness makes you feel alone, vulnerable, impotent. Unidentifiable sounds tease the imagination and set the heart racing. On land, darkness is bearable. But on the ocean, where the very act of being suspended by liquid thousands of metres above the sea floor feels unnatural, the mind truly struggles with the absence of light.

I listened to the waves, trying to decide which one would be big enough to soak me.
Phoooshhh.
It was loud, and I cringed with anticipation. Nothing. Another
whoooshhh.
Then an odd, sudden silence preceded a thunderous crack, and churning water foamed over the boat. Cold water soaked my hair and dribbled down my shirt. I shivered in the cool night air and picked up my speed to warm up. I knew the waning gibbous moon would be rising now, but its radiance was obscured behind a thick curtain of clouds. I stared out at the waves, trying in vain to discern their size. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something in the water, but I couldn’t be sure. It looked large and had a different motion from the waves.
Was it a shark?
I knew the chances of a shark attacking a person—let alone a boat—were minuscule, but suddenly, in the darkness, it seemed all too likely.
What would I do if a shark attacked the boat?
I tried to calm myself thinking about statistics I had read earlier.

According to the International Shark Attack File, between fifty and eighty shark attacks occur annually around the world, resulting in an average of five deaths per year since
1990
. In other words, only one person out of a billion dies from a shark attack annually. You are at a higher risk of being killed by lightning, bee stings, dogs, toasters, and farmyard pigs. Of course, one might argue that you can’t compare terrestrial and marine injury statistics. R. Aidan Martin from the ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research found that even in the water, shark attack is among the least likely of perils—
140
,
000
people die from drowning each year, and surfers are more likely to injure themselves on their boards than to be injured by a shark. Yet in the darkness I found little reassurance in risk assessment statistics. Instead, my mind replayed scenes from the horror movie
Jaws
as vividly as an
IMAX
screen.

Ironically, from a logical standpoint, sharks have more reason to fear us than we have to fear them. Each year, humans kill
100
million sharks. In a single century, we have had a much more dramatic impact on the shark population than millions of years of natural challenges. Oceanic white-tip sharks that used to be commonly sighted in these waters are now increasingly scarce. The
IUCN
lists these sharks as vulnerable and reports tremendous declines—
99
.
3
per cent since the
1950
s in certain regions. However, the exact number is under debate because changing fishing practices complicate the analysis. Sadly, many species of sharks have suffered a similar fate. All species of large coastal sharks—nurse, bull, lemon, blacktip, sandbar, hammerhead, and great white—have declined between
50
and
90
per cent since the
1970
s, according to a study that appeared in the March
30
,
2007
edition of the journal
Science.

The impact of losing this great predator of the sea should be more frightening than the remote possibility of actually encountering a hungry shark. Large sharks are at the top of the ocean food chain, which means they play a key role in regulating the populations of other species. But their numbers are now too low to fulfill that obligation. As a result, populations of creatures they feed on—rays, skates, smaller sharks, and others—have exploded.

Nothing leapt out of the water at me, and I tried to subdue my hyperactive imagination by focussing on rowing. I maintained my course by keeping Lisbon’s glow at a forty-five-degree angle to my stern, and occasionally squinted to calibrate the compass heading. Tomorrow, we would be too far from shore to see those lights. Instead, we would be surrounded by a horizon of uninterrupted black. For navigation, we would rely completely on our compass or
GPS
. I practised using our
GPS
now, but found it much more difficult than using a distant reference point. It was a little like driving blindfolded while your passenger relays instructions.

It took all my energy to keep rowing until the end of my shift. I couldn’t remember ever anticipating bedtime with such enthusiasm. I woke Colin, slipped into the warm spot he vacated, and passed out. Two hours later, at
2
:
00 AM
, Colin joined me in the cabin. He had lashed the oars to the deck and tightened the rudder. We would free-drift for a few hours while we both caught some shut-eye. Since we were moving with the prevailing winds and currents, we hoped we wouldn’t lose too much ground. We still wouldn’t sleep soundly, as we would have to take watches for ships every half-hour. Colin would be on watch duty tonight. He set the stopwatch to thirty minutes. I closed the ceiling hatch and locked the main hatch in the vent position. The vent position gave us just enough air circulation to breathe and, if a big wave hit, it would prevent the cabin from being flooded. We had already turned on our bright strobe light, which would keep other boats at a safe distance as long as no one was tempted to investigate.

“Congratulations on your first day—you’re doing amazing,” Colin said as he struggled out of his damp shirt.

“You, too, babe.”

I lay my head on Colin’s chest, wrapped my arm around him, and murmured, “I love you.” It felt strange and familiar at the same time: just another night sleeping in our usual positions. I was surprised at how safe and comfortable I suddenly felt. The boat rocked at a rate somewhere between cradle and carnival ride, but we were held in position by the encroaching gear and barely moved. Colin’s heart beat reassuringly against my ear; his breathing deepened with sleep’s arrival, and I soon joined him.

5
        
A NEAR MISS
IN BUSY WATERS
    

I
FUMBLED FOR THE
off button on my beeping wristwatch alarm, relieved at the return to silence. Just as if I were on holiday, waking up in a strange bed, I felt momentarily puzzled:
Where am I?
It didn’t take long to realize that I wasn’t dreaming anymore, that I was finally on the ocean. My grogginess vanished in a heartbeat, replaced with enormous satisfaction. Now, instead of tedious preparation and worrying that we’d never leave in time, I looked forward to an incredible adventure.

But my euphoria was short-lived. I soon realized I was to take first shift on the oars. It was
6
:
00 AM
and still dark. The waves outside rumbled threateningly. I yearned to pull the blankets over my head and sleep for another hour. I enviously eyed Colin’s sleeping form as I rummaged for my windbreaker, pants, baseball cap, and cycling gloves. I ate a handful of crackers before reluctantly crawling out of the cabin. A shrill wind whipped through the cables while the waves slurped and gurgled like a hungry monster. I gripped the safety line as I moved about the deck to unfasten the oars. The open-cell foam rubber padding on the rowing seat had absorbed water like a sponge. As it compressed under my weight, water squirted out, soaking my pants. The shoes, too, were wet and cold, and I cringed as I slid my bare, blistered feet into them. There was no point in wearing socks, as they would be soaked in minutes. I leaned back, gripped the oar handles, and slid them outboard until the collar hit the oarlock with a satisfying
thunk.

I wrestled with the oars, slowly pointed the bow southeast, and fell into the rhythm of the row. Exertion pumped heat into my body and cleared the dread that had set in with the night. My monochrome world gradually transformed, and a pink glow hinted at the coming sun. I watched, mesmerized, as the sun slowly rose, alighting the clouds and casting a lone beam of light across the sea.

Colin slept soundly in the cabin, wrapped up in the blankets, with the hatch firmly shut. His long blond hair poked out from beneath the blankets, but that was the only part of him I could see. I loved watching Colin sleep. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I imagined his relaxed face, his partially open mouth and deep breaths, his chest gently rising and lowering. I don’t know why, but it made me think about how much I loved him.

Before leaving, I had been filled with worry about what this journey would do to our relationship. Some of my friends’ relationships have disintegrated on vacation. When I told my father my plans, he said, “Don’t do it. You will never get married if you go on this expedition together. Stay home and wait for him.”

Colin and I first met three years before, when we both lived in Vancouver. On a drizzly Friday night in September, I was bored and half-heartedly perused the guide from our local second-run cinema. The show that night read, “Special Event. Raft the Amazon with Colin Angus—tickets $
10
(advance)/$
12
(door). Show:
8
:
00 PM
.” I looked at my watch; it was
7
:
40 PM
. I had never heard of Colin Angus, but it sounded more fun than sitting at home.

I arrived just as the show was beginning and took a spot near the front of the Ridge Theatre’s seven hundred seats. The theatre was full and my prime real estate was courtesy of being a party of one. The lights dimmed and a young guy stepped on stage.
He must be the introducer,
I thought.

“Thank you for coming out tonight. My name is Colin Angus . . . ”

I was surprised. He seemed too young . . . and too small. When I thought of adventurers, I pictured Grizzly Adams or maybe Indiana Jones. At least he (or she) had to have wrinkles and look capable of fighting off a grizzly bear, barehanded at that.

As Colin’s tale unfolded, I became entranced, and not only by his descriptions of the Amazon Basin. When Colin was eleven years old, he decided to sail around the world. He was inspired by a library book—
Dove
—written by a young man, Robin Lee Graham, who did just that as a teenager. But Colin lived in a blue-collar mill town in British Columbia, with a single working mom who was raising four kids; there was little to drive his dream except his own will. At fifteen he bought a small sailboat with his paper-route earnings, and four years later he bought a slightly larger boat with his tree-planting money. When he left Vancouver Island in his decrepit boat, almost everyone thought he was foolish, stupid, or both. People told him he would die, and when that didn’t dissuade him, they told his mother he was suicidal. The mantra “
100
per cent demise, guaranteed” played in the minds of his farewell party. Colin spent five years sailing, meandering south along America’s west coast to Mexico, across the Pacific Ocean, around Australia, and amid tropical islands.