We got the dinghy loaded aboard, everything stowed, and made big batches of tuna salad and egg salad for easy sandwiches underway. We went to bed feeling fine but when we got up, I (Dena) didn’t feel so well. I thought it might pass, but I felt worse and worse. Finally, terrible stomach cramps turned into puking.
Meanwhile, we ran out of prepaid data on the sim card we’d been using. As foreigners, we have no way to top it up without going into a store but the dinghy was already stowed and getting it in the water is no one-person job. It looked like we weren’t going to be leaving right away and we weren’t going to be able to check the weather once we could. I do a phone screen-record of the full forecast before we get out of internet range because, even though it’s swiftly out of date, it’s better than nothing. I just hoped I’d get well fast.
I didn’t. I couldn’t rinse my mouth without setting off another round of retching yellow bile from somewhere deep in my torso. Finally well after dark, the stomach cramps started easing and I tried to go to sleep. James came up to kiss me better and was startled by my temperature. I had a fever that raged through the night and broke with the dawn, but I was weak and dehydrated.
So we sat in Mindelo, incommunicado, until I was strong enough to take my turn raising the anchor. Not, of course, because James wouldn’t take an extra turn but because I wasn’t strong enough for the sailing if I wasn’t strong enough for anchor duty. We finally got underway on Sunday, October 20th, at 9:22am.
James took us out under sail alone. The electric motor was on and ready, but he didn’t need it.
We passed some familiar sights, the hazy day mimicking the other times we’d traversed that coast.
Before noon, we were on a port tack, which we suspected might take us all the way to Brazil, and under full sail.
I (still Dena) was in a euphoria of better. Better than sick, better than still, better than thinking about what we needed at the grocery store and whether or not to pay someone else to cook for us.
James, on the other hand, was worse.
We worked our way down to a double-reefed main and full yankee as we lost the protection of Sao Vicente and entered the gulf between the Sotovente and Barlavente groups of the Cabo Verde island. We would pass about 20 NM west of the southwesternmost island, Brava, some time the next day.
The sun went down around 6:30pm and I had the 7:00 to 8:00 watch. I was looking around in the dark, like ya do, trying to look at the things in my field of view that aren’t exactly in the middle of my vision, and I realized there was a long smear above where the sun had gone down. I got the binoculars out and, yes! Sure enough, it was the comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas. When I called to James that he had five minutes left, I also told him that the comet was in view. When he took over, it was still clear in the sky above the horizon.
I (James) took the helm with the powerful shakes and a great trepidation that I was careful not to relate to Dena. We have always taken great pride in the fact that we stand our watches for each other. I wanted Dena to be able to get as much rest as possible before her first 3 hour dog-watch so even though I was feeling shitty it was more important to me that she rest up for the overnight.
I found the comet to be a delightful distraction and the sailing was intense with a fresh breeze in the 18 to 20 knot range. The seas were stacking up with that all too familiar inter-island acceleration chop and an ocean roller that was modulating in the 10 to 12 foot range every eight seconds or so, speeding up as it got later and darker. The moon was a little less than halfway through its waning cycle so it was black-dark with an awesome milky way across the sky for my own personal entertainment. When I say my own personal entertainment, I mean there wasn’t another boat within at least 50 nautical miles of us. On any other night this would have been my happy place. Right before Dena went below I told her that I really hoped that I wouldn’t have to do anything because I just wasn’t feeling all-in, and I was very happy that I actually didn’t have to touch anything on the helm, the trim, or the rig. All I had to do on that dreadful watch was choke down mouthfuls of saliva and stay aboard the boat. Dena had set me up perfectly to just sit back and enjoy my shakes and the universe for the next hour before we saw each other again… and I almost made it!
I gave her the five-minute call and she was in the galley brushing her teeth in three. And that was when my entire face exploded. The thought of putting a toothbrush in my mouth sent me over the top and for the next ten minutes I barfed my insides totally out of my pie-hole and snout. I thought it was never going to stop. It seemed like everything I had eaten within the past 48 hours had just hung out in my stomach for the sheer thrill of torturing me.
Dena and I have always been squicked by the whole concept of somebody holding your hair or rubbing your back while you’re in the throws of a technicolor-yawn over the lifelines so she knew that all she could do was enjoy the show. And what a show it was.
You see, I’m kind of a loud puke’r. With every hurl I do a Seattle grunge vocal from the depths of Mordor that would’ve surely gotten me an Emmy in ’91. And this went on for the first ten minutes of Dena’s first dog watch of that fateful night. I got most of it overboard and didn’t go over myself but Dena, gato bless her soul, did a miraculous clean up after I went below that left nary a chunk on the side-deck-aft.
I (Dena) did rinse the aft deck, but we were broad to the waves and getting shoved into them occasionally. That meant we were taking waves over the toerail on that downwind side. The One Big Ocean did its part cleaning up poor James’ mess.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that, whether James was going to puke for 12 hours like I did or not, he was going to need some rest and recuperation time. I set a new course for Brava, grateful that we were still pretty far north of that island. It meant beating closer to the wind and, if you read the post about getting to Sao Vicente, you know neither of us loves a beat.
While James’ health was failing, our marine-head had totally stopped pulling sea water in for rinsing. Taking that system apart underway surely sounds like hell so we added that to the good reasons to stop. Also, LoveBot had developed a new, odd slop in the system where the tipping of the air vane is transmitted to the steering gears. And after eight weeks at anchor in Mindelo all the life that had come up with the chain was making a gato-awful stink in the chain locker thus eeking into the forepeak. All in all, we could treat this overnight trip as a shakedown, let James get better, and set off again when it was good.
When I went below, I asked James, “So am I doing a double?” His response was to haul his sick ass out of the chain-rot-smelling bed and get ready for his first night watch.
I (James) had stopped shaking after two and a half hours of dream-filled, body-healing sleep. When I got up from the v-berth I noticed I was drenched in sweat but oddly feeling much better. We moved the tools from their usual stowage spot at the foot of the starboard settee to make that a more comfortable bunk so we wouldn’t have to smell the chain any longer. I donned my clothes and safety gear and headed for the cockpit. It was such a beautiful night! Cool and breezy with Cetacea clipping along at a trotting pace. I clipped in and got as comfortable as I could.
Three hours later, I (Dena) took over. There wasn’t much to do except look at the sky, where the moon and Jupiter were obscuring the Orionids. Those three hours were a sleepy, hypnotic pleasure.
Before too long in my (James’) second dog-watch we were getting tossed to the occasional 25 to 30 degree heel and doing 7 knots through the water. For me, on a 30ft sailboat in the middle of the night, that was just too fucking fast!
Now, our yankee roller-fouling rig is getting real old and it’s a little hard to singlehand in but I wanted to trade that sail for the staysail, meaning furl the yankee and then un-furl the staysail. As much as I hated to disturb Dena on her down watch I felt it was time to make that call. I looked down below and I noticed that the red light in the head was on and the hatch was open. I decided to give it another minute or so before calling down to her. Feeling the way I did earlier, it wouldn’t have surprised me a bit if it was her turn to kneel at the porcelain god. I made the call to pull the maneuver on my own. That was a bad call.
I let the sheet loose and the boat went into massive shudders, pumping hard to starboard. When I went to pull the furling line the damn thing wouldn’t budge unless I pulled with all my weight behind it…still no love! I let the sheet out all the way and it was absolute cacophony. I pulled again and the sail furled up. By that time Dena had made it out of the head and was putting on her gear to come help. Given the fact that she’d just hosed the deck of my insides, the worry that I’d taken on this big deal alone made her a little miffed…okay she was pissed and with good reason. She continued to gear up but I told her that unfurling the staysail was the easy part (it is) and that I was sorry then asked her to go back to bed. She did and the boat settled back into her 5 knot comfort zone and I spent the next two and a half hours shunting my adrenaline high. There was no doubt I was in a weakened state. I should have waited just a little while longer to furl that sail.
By the end of my watch, my buzz was gone and I was dreaming before I hit the bunk.
Between the incessant vibration of the luff (never seen a sail that makes as horrible a noise as this one does) and the wild wind and waves coming over the top of Brava, we were excited to get behind the island’s bulk and benefit from some protection. We were also loving the green after so long in a sere place called Verde.
We came in on the electric motor doing a hot 3 knots only to see that there was already a sailboat in the cove…right where we wanted to anchor, of course. A spin around the cove revealed the best place for the anchor and we made ourselves at home.
James had to pull the chain out of the locker because the pile had fallen over and made a tangle. In the still air, 30 degree heat, and massive humidity, his whole outfit got drenched.
That still air had a strange reverse southerly light breeze (everywhere else, including the top of the cliff, was getting a stiff northeasterly) and we sat in the cockpit, enjoying the cooling evening.
James made a hot meal and we wondered what relationship the lights on the cliff had to the path that the fishers take to bring their catch up to market.
And then we slept.
