Ten Degrees of Reckoning (25 page)

In September 2000, John and I sailed to Hawaii. I wasn’t particularly happy on that passage. We had bought a bigger, but older, fiberglass sailboat that needed a lot of modification, and it had been out of the water more than in. I wasn’t accustomed to the systems on the boat. We, too, were older and more vulnerable to fatigue in all those hours of vigilant watchkeeping. And we had terrible weather. The wind blew, and the seas got larger and larger, big rollers practically swamping us from behind.

Sailing downwind in high winds, surfing big waves, it is difficult to steer a straight course. This leaves you vulnerable to the danger of an accidental jibe, because any small shift in course can result in the wind getting behind the mainsail and pushing the sail to the other side of the boat. The danger comes from the main boom, because there is the risk of someone being injured or even knocked overboard as it swings across the center of the boat uncontrollably. We had a huge wooden boom, and I knew that someday, if I wasn’t careful, an accidental jibe would knock me right across the International Dateline. I studied those big seas and checked the jibe preventer, windvane, and the helm constantly, and I kept an anxious eye on that boom.

I hadn’t considered that I might also be more fearful because of what had happened to the Sleavins, and I was let down and shaken that John was so impatient with me; it was the first time in our twenty years together that I felt we didn’t mesh on a seagoing passage. When we reached Molokai and I finally got out of my foul-weather gear, I expressed my misgivings. John told me we would work together until I felt more comfortable, and he assured me that I would get acclimatized to our sea life again. As we sailed farther and farther west on our circumnavigation route, by and large I did find my pace and rhythm. We regained that easy togetherness of our long-distance sailing experiences. We even held hands underwater as we explored new reefs. I looked forward to the time when we would begin to plan our passages to Thailand and South Africa and Europe.

I recall Judy telling me how unsettled she felt for the first six months of their circumnavigation. She and Mike knew it would be necessary for them to travel the routes most frequented, because of the children. Judy wanted them to interact as often as possible with other cruising families. But Mike liked to move from spot to spot quickly and was more impatient than she to discover the next anchorage.

Schooling proved to be much more time-consuming and labor-intensive than they had expected. Ben was easily distracted, and Annie wanted to do whatever her big brother was doing. And the laundry. Everyone was sticky from the heat and gritty from saltwater showers, and there was always laundry. Forget the glossy magazines with sailors in pristine outfits clinking their frosty glasses together in a toast to the good life. At every anchorage, Judy sat on the deck with a huge bucket and an old-fashioned wringer-type washer, cleaning the salt and sweat from her family’s T-shirts.

When they reached Panama, they decided on a new approach. In each country, they would secure the boat and get on the bus for land excursions and explorations. It contributed to everyone’s geographical awareness, enriched the children’s education, added balance to the family’s cruising life, and slowed Mike down. He took over Annie’s schooling, and Ben thrived on the one-on-one attention Judy was able to bring to his instruction. Mike relished the idea that the children were gaining an awareness of the simplicity with which other people lived, and both parents admired the flourishing generosity of Ben and Annie as they gave away their toys and clothes. As their travels continued, the wringer rusted out, and even doing the laundry became a family affair. They found their pace and their rhythm.

In September 2001, I was away from the boat for a month and in the United States. I had been invited to Washington, D.C., to participate on behalf of the Sleavin Family Foundation in a workshop on recreational boating engagement strategy for harbor safety, sponsored by the United States Coast Guard. I had never been to Washington, but this was going to be a quick trip, with no sightseeing involved. The meeting was to last most of the day: September 11, and I was scheduled to leave for Seattle early the following morning.

When the first plane hit the World Trade Center tower in New York at 8:46 a.m., I was in the security line at the U.S. Department of Transportation building, waiting to put my briefcase on the belt. There was a small television mounted above us, and looking at the news, we all assumed we were watching an accident. I rode the elevator up to the meeting and took my place with the other attendees. There was a facilitator, and each of us gave a short speech about our respective interest in maritime safety. I was impressed with the group, which included some high-ranking Coast Guard officials, an admiral from the Pentagon, a representative from the National Safe Boating Council, one from the U.S. Department of State, a well-known advocate for harbor safety from San Francisco, and two colleagues from the BoatU.S. Foundation. When the second plane hit the other tower at 9:03 a.m., we were unaware.

We were in the process of going around the table with introductions when the third plane slammed into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., and we were still unaware. But soon after, there was a knock on the door. The admiral was called out, a cell phone rang, there was some discussion in an undertone, and we were asked to go down to the underground Metro and leave the building. Someone whispered to me that something terrible must have happened. Most of the attendees lived and worked in the surrounding area and made a hasty exit; I didn’t even know where I was in relation to my hotel.

I went down to the Metro; it was total chaos. People were yelling “Turn off your cell phones” and “Get going” and “Get out of here!” The whole building was evacuated; apparently they knew a fourth airplane was missing on radar, possibly headed for the White House. Someone near me shouted, “The White House is too low to be a good target. Why not a tall federal building like this one? That’s why we’re being evacuated!”

It was possibly around then that United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field, thanks to the remarkable heroics of the passengers. We weren’t aware of this occurrence in the Metro station. I was pushed onto a train going in the wrong direction. By the time I got myself sorted out and back to my hotel, there were boards covering the entrance, with one door available to get in. A guard with a clipboard permitted registered guests to enter.

The Washington, D.C., area wasn’t as harrowing or heartbreaking as the New York scene, because the Pentagon isn’t in the middle of the city, and there were many fewer deaths. But it was extremely sad and surreal. And it would get more so. The District of Columbia declared a state of emergency, and everyone was asked to remain inside.

I looked out the window of my hotel room, which was on the top floor, to neighboring rooftops. National Guardsmen were on those roofs, standing vigilant, with rifles. A small fighter jet flew low. The streets were bare within two hours, and would remain so. I ran between my window and the television all day. I didn’t know it then, but I would be stuck there for eight more days.

At some point, I went to Dulles International Airport to make arrangements to get home. I was at the ticket counter for more than an hour, although I was the only customer. I was fortunate that my driver had waited; the airport was empty, with the exception of more National Guardsmen, and it was a long way back to the city. He asked me what had happened in there.

“Twelve hundred dollars?” He was amazed when he heard how much I had been charged for my one-way ticket. “For that amount I would have happily driven you to Seattle, and we could have left right now,” he said.

His name was Alex Yamoah, and his usual customers were business executives and government personnel. With a state of emergency in effect, he had no customers, and it would have been the perfect way for me to make the cross-country trip.

When we arrived back in the city, I asked him if we could make one stop. “I’d like to see the Lincoln Memorial. Do you have time?” When we got there, he opened the car door and told me he would accompany me. It was nighttime, and there were floodlights illuminating the white monuments and young people sitting on the steps with lit candles as we walked up to the Lincoln Memorial. Alex looked very distinguished in his suit, with his hands clasped behind his back, and I’m sure many of the people holding vigil thought he was some kind of dignitary as he read parts of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to me.

Alex was born in Ghana, I in Canada, but we both shared the horror and sorrow of the 9/11 tragedy. We couldn’t embrace the enormity of what had happened only days ago, but that evening we were in the right place to contemplate hopefulness in the history here.

Much of my anxiety over those nine long days was related to Judy. I knew she was supposed to be nearby, for a bicycling trip along the Potomac River. I hadn’t expected to be in Washington for the meeting, so we hadn’t made any arrangements to meet. She was staying with Mike’s sister Sharon, but I didn’t know Sharon’s married name. The only thing that stuck in my mind was that Sharon and Bill’s home in Virginia was only five miles from the Pentagon. Was there some horrendous chance that Judy had actually witnessed the plane flying into the Pentagon? If so, it would have been traumatic for her beyond measure.

I found out much later that she and some of the Sleavin siblings had started out early on the morning of September 11. They had been cycling along a trail, and stopped at a café around 9:30 a.m. As they waited for their coffee, Judy saw some of the television footage of the World Trade Center. She became hysterical. She called her mother, but Caryl had no idea what she was talking about; it was 6:30 a.m. on the West Coast, and her mother hadn’t yet heard the news. Judy was too panic-stricken to make herself understood. She called and woke up a psychiatrist in California. He told her to leave immediately, to go somewhere she could feel safe. Her PTSD triggers had fired, and she was having trouble relating to the new trauma. Her old trauma came flooding back, and she was completely disoriented. The Sleavins took care of her, made all the arrangements, and in short order she was whisked away.

Judy is, or was, geopolitically well informed, but we—her family and friends—never discuss with her September 11; the tsunamis in Thailand and Sri Lanka; the flooding in Burma; the bombings in Bali, Madrid, and London; the earthquakes in Pakistan and China; or the horror of Darfur. We don’t talk about the war in Iraq or Afghanistan with Judy. And we shield her from the pictures on CNN of any disasters, especially the ones with little children laid out in rows.

In September 2002, John and I were in Batnapi Village, Vanuatu. We lay in the forward berth in misery and pain. After hundreds of hours of spearfishing expeditions, and hundreds of wonderful meals from the bounty of the sea, here we had dined on a red snapper laden with ciguatera toxin. The toxin has no effect on the fish itself; nor is the toxin destroyed upon cooking. So you can’t detect that a fish is full of ill will toward you until it affects almost every organ system in your body, one way or another.

Two other sailboats arrived in the anchorage on the day John speared the fish, so we were all invited to a potluck on the boat
Manati.
We shared the snapper and, unknowingly, the toxin. Terri, the only other woman in our group of six, suffered the same excruciating leg pains as I did; otherwise the toxin affected the six of us equally and considerably. Each day the chief would visit our three boats in an outrigger canoe, to make sure we were still alive. There are fatalities attributed to this toxin, but fortunately none of us succumbed.

After a month, I was able to write a group letter and let our fans know that we were still around. We received appreciative replies in response to my detailed description of the follies, and some of our friends wondered how we found such absurdity in the situation.

I got a frantic reply from Judy. She, with her great sense of humor, didn’t see the humor in it at all. I called her when we arrived in New Caledonia to assure her that we were going to be fine.

“Tell me you’re okay,” she kept repeating. She was crying.

This was the crack in her armor; this was where her bravery ended. She knew that the absolute worst had already happened to her, but she was fearful for the rest of us in her life. And not just the ones at sea. She insists that everyone around her be healthy, safe, and happy.

I remember once expressing my concern when she headed out to meet an unknown man from the Internet, but she brushed me off. I thought it might be dangerous, but Judy told me I didn’t understand. Sometime later I asked, “Were you hoping to get hurt? Were you testing yourself?”

“No, no, I wasn’t trying to live on the edge; I really felt that nothing would happen to me. For a very long time after I was rescued, I felt invincible. I had never kept up with any of those athletic Sleavins before, despite my best efforts, but when I joined John and Kathi and Sharon in France for the bike trip, I took every curve at their speed,” Judy said.

She told me she had promised Ben and Annie they could learn to ski their first winter in New Zealand. After the collision Judy didn’t really want to go skiing because of the cold and her flashbacks, but she went anyway. Just for Ben and Annie. “I pointed my skis straight downhill for the first time in my life. I felt indestructible.” She paused, reflective. “Later the cold got to me, and I was an emotional mess.”

Mike and Judy were never oblivious to the way their dream would affect Ben and Annie. Every action they took reflected their concern for the children. They constantly evaluated their well-being and were prepared at any time to change course or even curtail the journey if the children didn’t thrive. Everyone who visited the
Melinda Lee
remarked on how assured and confident the children were, and how astonishing it was for the four of them to be so positively engaged in one another’s lives. However, a question I am asked over and over is how anyone could take children out on the high seas. I really don’t want to be glib when I answer, but I point out that no one thinks twice about putting a child in an automobile. Yet statistics from the nonprofit organization Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety reveal that approximately five hundred children between the ages of five and nine die each year in the United States in auto accidents.