underway: chapter one
The morning was calm on the water. I arched my back, stretched my arms above my head, and wiggled my toes into the deepest corner of the v-berth. My husband was still sound asleep, his long legs bent into the small triangular frame of our bow, shoulders bare above the navy blue sheets. I rolled onto my side and tucked my knees up to my chest to begin my descent out of our bed. Carefully, slowly, so as not to wake him, I scooted to the edge and hopped off.
The bathroom, the head, was half a step away. I peed and stared at myself in the mirror as I washed my hands. Today was the day.
I stepped out of the bathroom and stood flush against the far wall of drawers so I could shut the door behind me, and open our bedroom door next. The sailboat, our home, was like a jigsaw puzzle. I walked the four steps through the salon to reach the galley, switched on the gas stove, and used a long matchstick to light the burner. The kitchen sink pump hummed as I filled the gooseneck kettle with water to make my morning coffee.
As the water boiled, I turned to unlatch the two bolt locks that secured the companionway—our front door, of sorts. I reached my arms above me to slide the hatch open, pausing to feel the bright October sun on my face, and then lifted the three wooden slats out of their groove. I stored the planks in the quarter-berth, switched off the stove, and began to pour the boiling water over the coffee grounds set out in our Chemex. All of this, done with taking barely any steps.
My floating home was quite small. A thirty-five-foot full-keel sailboat named Thisldu tethered to floating docks at a marina in the San Francisco Bay. One bedroom and one bathroom tucked into the bow. A salon with a bench long enough to lie down on, across from a dinette with a collapsable table. A quarter-berth under the cockpit, which we primarily used for storage, but, on occasion, had used as a bed.
We once spent the night with seven sailors on board—one slept on the bench, two slept on the makeshift bed across from it, two stuffed themselves into the quarter-berth, and my husband, Garrett, and I in the v-berth.
In twelve hours or so, there would be three people sleeping on Thisldu: myself, my husband, and our friend Phil.
But there was much to do beforehand.
I grabbed my coffee and set out to drink it in the cockpit. I sat, face turned up to the sun, the Sausalito hills behind me, and closed my eyes. I breathed in, and out. In, and out, counting to ten, the inhalations odd and exhalations even. Anxiety already welled in my chest, and I did what I could to ground myself.
My coffee finished and morning meditation complete, I stepped back down into the cabin and began to pack my shower bag. Two towels, toiletries, a change of clothes, and a blow dryer stuffed into my gray Herschel backpack. I pulled the straps over my shoulders and crawled out of the companionway, this time hunched over to make room for the bag.
I walked up midship and placed my hand on the metal stay, lifting one foot and then the other over the lifeline and down onto the teak toe rail. The boat had drifted a bit away from the dock; I could’ve jumped to bridge the small gap, but instead I waited until the water carried the boat back close enough for me to gently step off.
A great blue heron was perched on the dock just ahead of me, its long neck and head tilted as it hunted for fish in the water below. My presence spooked it, and with an angry screech, the bird flew off. I looked down at the school of fish it was stalking, their backs flashing silver in the sunlight, and smiled. These were the moments that made living on a sailboat worth it. Waking up on the water, my mornings greeted by seabirds and barking seals and glittering fish, made me happier with this aquatic life than I’d ever thought possible. There was a peacefulness to it that anchored me.
It took about five minutes to walk down the dock from our slip, through the parking lot, and into the ladies’ bathroom. The bathroom was private to the marina—you had to have a fob to enter—and held four toilet stalls in one room, and four shower stalls in another.
This was an aspect of living on the boat that I did not like—showering in public—because it left me feeling very exposed. We didn’t have a shower stall on Thisldu. A shower head, yes, but not a designated space inside of the boat to wash. It was odd, to not have my shampoo and conditioner live on a shelf in my own bathroom. Messy to cart a bar of soap around. Not having my own shower made me feel a bit like I didn’t have my own home. Which I did, of course. It was just a different kind of home.
Now clean, I took the time to blow dry and straighten my hair. I wasn’t sure when I’d get the chance to shower next, and my hair would stay manageable for days if I styled it this way. It was silly, but if my hair felt more put together, I did too. Even on a sailboat. Even in the middle of the ocean.
I packed up my things and returned to the boat. Garrett was awake, drinking his coffee, his head tilted to the left so he could fit into the cabin that was two inches too short for his height.
“Today is the day,” I said as I looked down at him, my hands on either side of the companionway.
He nodded and kissed me on the lips. He was a ball of frantic energy, serious with the burden of all that he needed to do before the evening.
“I’m going to the store for one last round of provisioning. When I get back, I’ll empty the dock box.”
I grabbed our reusable shopping bags, hopped off of the boat, and loaded them into our dock cart. We’d sold our car months ago, hours before we boarded a plane to Greece. Now back in Sausalito, to get groceries, I walked to the small market at the end of the road and carried the food back in our cart.
My plan was to make jambalaya for dinner: something hearty and warm that would fill our bellies and stick to our bones. I shopped for the ingredients, a small amount of fresh produce, and a couple three-gallon jugs of water. We’d provisioned thoroughly at a different store the day before, so I just needed a few last-minute necessities.
I loaded the grocery bags into our cart, feeling a little silly again. It was hard for me to be different in this way: to not have a car, to not have my own shower, to pull my groceries home in a cart. I wanted to explain to people, “it’s a mean to an end!” but nobody really noticed or cared, anyway.
Tugging the cart full of food behind me, I began my walk back to the boat. Just a minute away from the marina parking lot, I looked down and stepped off of the curb with my right foot. But when I put my foot down, my ankle gave out, and I pitched forward into the road. The cart fell with me and groceries toppled everywhere. I braced myself on my hands and my knees, stunned.
A car on the far side of the road pulled over.
“Are you okay?” a man asked from his open window.
“Yes, I—I tripped,” I answered.
He got out of his car then and offered a hand to help me up. I took it and he gave me his arm to lean on as I hobbled over to an empty chair. I’d fallen right in front of the Seahorse restaurant but luckily, they weren’t open yet. Nobody else had witnessed my foolish fall.
Slowly, the stranger righted the cart and started collecting groceries.
“You don’t have to—” I started, tears welling in my eyes. I could not believe that this was happening, today of all days.
Of all days.
“It’s fine,” he responded, going about his pickup. “Do you have someone that you can call?”
I nodded and pulled my phone out of my back pocket to dial Garrett.
The man finished his work and waved goodbye.
“Thank you,” I mouthed.
I heard Garrett pick up the phone.
“Yes?” he asked.
“It’s my ankle,” I cried.
Minutes later, Garrett ran over to me with a bag of ice. My sister, Lizzie, was on already on her way to say goodbye, so we waited for her to drive by us with her car. I tried to take a few steps but couldn’t. There was no way I was going to make it across the parking lot and down the dock to our boat.
I felt so weak on one of the days that I needed to feel my strongest.
Lizzie pulled up to us, concern in her eyes. Garrett helped me into the back of her car and walked back to the docks with the cart of groceries.
In the parking lot outside of the gate, he hoisted me onto his back and gave me a piggy-back-ride to the boat.
There I was, a thirty-year-old woman getting a piggy-back-ride from her husband, unable to walk or complete the tasks of grocery shopping, putting the provisions away, or preparing dinner for our overnight journey.
Do not back down, I repeated in my head over and over again. Do not back down.
Every other cell in my body was saying, do not go.
The look in Lizzie’s eyes said, do not go.
But if we didn’t leave that night…I wasn’t sure if we’d ever leave at all.
Do. Not. Back. Down.
The thing that I couldn’t back down from was our plan to set sail, in a matter of hours, for the next one to two years. This was a plan that we’d dreamed of and worked toward for five years. Five years!
Our dream was born from one simple question, one simple answer, and a very thorough conversation when Garrett and I had just moved to San Francisco. A lover of boats, Garrett came across a Grand Banks Motor Yacht on Craigslist for $10,000, which, for that boat, was a steal. But, for us in our mid-twenties, was not an option. We lived paycheck to paycheck and certainly did not have $10,000 lying around.
“But would you ever live on a boat?” Garrett asked me.
“Only if it’s going somewhere,” I responded.
That, followed by a discussion about the five things we each cared about most in life, was the impetus for our dream to travel by boat. At first, we thought we’d go by motor yacht. But once we started to calculate the cost of diesel for the distance I wanted to cover, we quickly decided that traveling by sailboat was our only option.
The only problem was that neither of us knew how to sail.
So, over the course of five years, we learned how to sail, saved enough money to buy a sailboat, and then moved onto that sailboat to save enough money to quit our jobs and travel.
We’d worked so hard for this day. It was everything to us.
And then I sprained my ankle.
Lizzie and Garrett gathered all of the pillows from the boat and stacked them under my right foot as I laid down in the cockpit. The bottom of my leg was swelling, from my calf to the tips of my toes. A purplish black line of bruises started forming alongside my foot, wrapping up to the outside of my ankle. It throbbed and ached, physically and emotionally.
Garrett brought out a few antiseptic wipes from our first aid kid and wiped down my skinned knees. He stacked a row of bandaids over the gash on my left knee, and gently wiped the gravel from where it had burrowed in the flesh of my hands. I was a mess.
Watchful, but quiet, the two of them left me alone with my thoughts. Lizzie squeezed my arm and then went about unpacking the groceries. Garrett resumed checking items off of his to-do list. We avoided addressing the question we all needed an answer to: stay, or go?
I mulled over my choice.
There was no way I could set us back. We had to be in San Diego with our sailboat by the end of the month. A sprained ankle wouldn’t heal in that amount of time. I couldn’t—or, wouldn’t—seek medical care, because I’d given up health insurance when I quit my job in June. If we stayed, I’d just be lying around, with nothing to do. Our life in Sausalito was over. We’d said goodbye to everyone.
A sprained ankle was less than ideal, but it wasn’t enough to hold us back. And our friend Phil was going to join us for the first leg of the trip, so I would be able to rest while he and Garrett took shifts. I could give myself the space to heal and make progress toward our journey at the same time.
There was no other option.
I couldn’t quit now, on this day. I was terrified of what we were about to do, sprained ankle or not. If I delayed us…I was afraid that losing the momentum that we’d built up toward leaving would cause me to stop and give up altogether. What we were about to do was extreme. In a few hours, it would just be us, and our 35’ boat, and the big, dark ocean. I had no confidence in what we were doing, only blind hope.
I wiped the tears from my eyes as I looked over my right shoulder to the west. The smallest finger of fog was extended over the hillside, just below the sun. It filled the hills with a riot of rich colors, emerald green and mahogany brown shining in contrast against the dense white cloud. It was as if the fog was beckoning to me, daring me to see what laid on the other side of the crest. That’s what this journey was for me, after all; the chance to set my eyes on things that I’d never seen before. I couldn’t be weak and give up in this moment. It wouldn’t be fair to myself. To my husband. To my marriage. The physical pain of my ankle paled in comparison to the amount of emotional havoc I would wreak with backing down.
I had to be strong. We had to go.
Between shaky breaths, I explained my choice to Lizzie and Garrett. Garrett was relieved, but concerned. Lizzie was understanding, but flat-out worried.
But my decision was made. We’d be leaving Sausalito that night, and sailing roughly 51 miles to Santa Cruz, in what would be my first overnight sail, ever.
Beautiful writing, inspirational, and courageous. I look forward to more!
Lizzie then had dreams for months about whales eating her sweet baby sister and her brother in law paddle boarding over sharks.