"There's No Going Back Now"

“ There’s No Going Back Now”

“Why hadn’t I thought this through?” she thought to no-one else but herself. “What was I trying to prove?”

I lay in the  V-birth of our 27ft. sailboat, unable to sleep. I had just spent the first of multiple hours sailing with my husband in not such favorable conditions. This was to be the start of aour three year liveaboard cruise.

 I have to back-up a little so you get the complete picture. I am not a sailor, I can’t even swim. I’m a farm girl. My husband is Danish, born on the southern coast of Denmark. Viking blood runs through his veins. He always belonged to sail clubs , not the fancy cocktail kind of club but the kind where you really sailed. His training was in mechanics, I was an art teacher.I would  thank the Gods for his mechanical expertise in the years to come.

We had only been married three years, we were in our early thirties . He had moved to the States when he was twenty-one and had an established foreign car repair shop within a short time. I had been working as an art teacher in a public school and was making some decent money with the promise of a good pension to come of course that is  if I put in the time. The time would have been at least another fifteen years. I never thought I could do 30 years at any one job.  The most important thing to me was travel and I don’t mean teacher vacations at resorts or planned tours. For whatever reason I craved adventure. Lucky for me my husband thought the same way .

My first sailing experience was in the Caribbean; not with my husband. It was not much different than the resort my friends went on except I was on the water. Everything was included in the charter including the food and booze. We just needed someone who knew how to sail, enter my brother-in-law and his friend.. Ahh, drinking champagne and soaking up the sun under clear blue skies and floating {remember I didn’t swim} in the warm Caribbean. Yes, I could live like this and so when I returned to the States I started reading up on sailing.

I had met  Gert prior to this trip and knew he loved to sail.

Fast forward we married soon after and I started Gert thinking about the sailing life. I read him articles about liveaboards and how we could make this work, living onboard full-time and traveling the seas. It didn’t take much to convince him.

I continued reading books and magazines about liveaboards while my Gert searched for a sailboat we could afford. We did own a small home and we figured we could rent our  house and that would subsidize our travel, we were quite frugal . Well, the boat materialized, a 28ft. Herreschof abandoned in a marina on City Island. It needed work but Gert knew he was capable of fixing everything it needed. It was sound and wouldn’t sink, he said. This sounded promising to me. The next two years was spent making the boat liveable.  We christened her HASARD a Danish gambling word,meaning betting with more than you had in your hand. That was us alright.

I was still teaching and Gert’s business was doing well. Were we ready to leave this security? We had to make a decision. I could try and take a sabbatical so I had a job when and if I returned or I could quit. Against everyone’s advice I chose to quit. I was tired of teaching, not so much the kids just the daily boring routine, remember I was the one who craved adventure. Gert always knew he could make money wherever he was so he eventually closed his shop right before we left.

As I said this was at least three years or so after the Caribbean charter. Those blue skies and warm seas were calling me, every day a different port, different people. I was psyched.

The day was quick approaching for dropping our lines and taking off into the Long Island Sound towards Manhattan. Our trip was about to begin. It was a crisp autumn day and a bunch of our friends came to see us off. Amidst much laughing and drinking we were finally ready to take off.

Hasard was equipped with the bare minimum of equipment but not knowing about what was necessary or not I just laughed. We only had a compass for navigation, nothing like what offshore boats are normally equipped with. We didn’t even have a depth sounder which I was to learn  in just a few days was very important, like when you didn’t want to go aground. We did have a small radio but Gert hadn’t hooked it up yet. He is a big believer that if you get into trouble you needed to figure it out.

We set sail for Manhattan planning on going down the East River under the Verrazano Bridge and out into the Atlantic. At this point Gert said we would just sail down the Coast . He made it sound so easy. I totally trusted everything he said. What did I know?

The sail down the East River was magnificent. I love New York City and seeing it from the River made it just more exciting. By the time we entered the basin the weather seemed to be taking a turn. We had to turn on our little outboard motor and drop the sails.I would come to liken the power of that motor to my hair dryer. It was still wonderful seeing the Statue of Liberty, the Twin Towers. The harbor was loaded with big commercial boats from all over the World and just seeing where they hailed from made me excited. By the time we entered the Ocean a fog had started settling in. I could still see the Jersey shore but it  also seemed like the commercial traffic had picked up and there were huge ships on all sides of us. Gert explained I didn’t have to worry we would be out of the shipping lane.As the fog settled in thicker and thicker I started to get worried, I could no longer see land. I told Gert to get closer, he has always felt the further you were from land, the safer you were. I didn’t adhere to that principle. To appease me, remember we were not married that long he proceeded to head west through the fog. All of a sudden we heard people screaming, get back you’re going to hit land. Gert pushed the tiller to one side, I almost got knocked over by the boom and we made it back out to sea. We really didn’t know where we were other than somewhere off the coast of Jersey. I was shaking. Just than a fishing boat appeared ahead of us and looked like he was heading towards the coast. We followed. As the fishing boat approached land we realized there was a bridge and we would have to get it to open as our mast was too tall to go under like the fishing boat.

I started screaming at the bridge tender who was watching us like we were out of our minds. I hadn’t read the book about using your horn and blasting it so many times to indicate you wanted it to open. He realized what was going on and hurriedly stopped bridge traffic, opening the bridge just in time so we didn’t crash . I’m sure he was swearing away but I didn’t care.

We motored a ways into the river, mainly to get out of sight of the bridge tender. We found a town dock where you could tie up for the night.

Neither one of us spoke. I went to the V- birth . Gert did ask if I wanted something to eat and I answered sarcastically an emphatic ,”No.” We didn’t talk for the rest of the night.

The next morning I got up and put on coffee. I turned to Gert and told him I now knew how many times to blow the horn for the bridge master to open up so we had better get going. He didn’t say a thing just drank his coffee and went topsides to prepare to leave. We did all of this in silence.

After motoring out under the bridge and back into the Atlantic we headed south. I looked up at the bridge tender I think he was holding up his hand with the middle finger pointing up.

It wasn’t until years later that Gert told me he never thought I would continue the trip. In my mind I told him after all this planning there was no going back.