BLUEWATER
by William Thomas
Once again we gird for sea:
New lines roved,
Sails overhauled,
40-pound sacks of provisions
Hoisted inboard and stowed below.
The crew strangely pensive,
Standing motionless at odd times,
Lost among distant islands,
The wastes Of the open sea
This is the big jump:
Point Loma to Taiohae Bay
3,400 miles
Across Mercator’s dark meridians
Not a rhumbline course, we intend to keep our easting
As much as one can plan
Such a vast and shifting ground.
Farewell Coronado!
Dana’s port,
Refuge to fledglings on a stormbound coast,
On 8 March we taxi to the red sea buoy,
Make sail,
And offer Celerity to the wind
Two days fair
Off Guadalupe a small gale
We decline the combat lie ahull that night
Thea sights gray land In fog next evening
Last outrider of a lost continent,
The island is gone by mid-watch.
We are alone at sea
Stars wheel, comets flare,
The sun arcs from horizon to horizon without pause.
Each watch we scan the sky for signs,
Mackerel to the west
Off Baja a wild blow
Westerly,
Clear skies and strong
We scud sou’east,
The little tri Rocketing off the crests,
Slewing crazily In a welter of foam
(Piver never mentioned cross-seas much)
On deck there!
Hand the main,
Cast the tire drogue astern!
300 miles in two days
At 16 North the trades
They blow fresh, more east than north,
Whipping the crests off a steep southerly swell
The ensign crackles,
Hulls resound to pistol shots, tennis serves,
Heavier blows.
Three on, three off:
A demanding yoga.
Fatigue and bruises mount
The captain’s temper flares,
A shaky sunsight, balky halyard
Trigger storms of rage
Our only consolation:
Speed
1,000 miles
That second week.
The doldrums loom,
Stretch like some grim gauntlet
Before the promised land
Visions of squalls and breathless calms,
Windships reeling across an arid plain
It is the time of equinox
Night watch
Clouds roil, sparks fly.
The stars are blotted out.
Patter of rain, the sky upends
Wind!
Roar of a cataract!
I huddle toward
Flickering compass light,
Then stand, shouting,
Celerity planing
Like a speedboat
Over moonlit, flattened waters...
The equator must be close
Sunlines a cruel hoax
With declination zero
Dead reckoning dances,
While Poseidon brews
A more insidious plot
Deck! Randy!
The lower shroud is gone!
Crash of dreams wind hissing seas
Glimpse of wire sighing through the night
Heart and bowels contract
1,400 miles to nearest land
I bat dark thoughts away,
Clap spare line to the broken shroud,
Through a block at the chainplate,
Thence aft to a winch,
Taking up hard.
The mast stands
Fresh horror at first light:
A spreading contagion — rust
Port lower and both main shrouds,
Checked and served before sailing,
Stranding, the backstay
Appears fragile to the touch
That morning we cross the line,
Jury rigged with anchor chain,
Bulldog clamps
Birds cry, the sun booms down
The wake of our passage
Fades 20 yards astern
We might be spellbound,
‘cased in amber
The sea so blue
It seems to bleed
That color
From the sky
Why do we venture here?
Amateur argonauts, trembling
As the extent of our transgression
Grows clear
Where flying fish whir
Like shoals of silver locusts,
And the eye,
However unreasonably,
Constantly seeks the distance
For land, a ship, some sign of men,
And finds instead
Empty mocking horizon
It is the pilgrim’s lament:
That the way to paradise Is strewn with pitfalls
Would we settle for paradise less than this?
It is the alchemist’s dream:
To transform spirit Into finer essence
Whoever dreamed of a crucible such as this?
Sun, sea and salt sky
Day 24
I am resigned to a Flying Dutchman’s tour
Through endless Pacific wastes
To helming forever
Beneath an inquisitor’s sun,
Stars Like dust on the sky
The wind, though light, never fails
Celerity glides like a sorceress,
Her jibs hard-edged against Orion
Te lapa bursts to starboard in the night,
Flashing green underwater lights — a sign the Polynesians knew
We turn that way or the boat turns herself
Dawn, noon, nothing from the spreaders We are lost
Hot and disgusted I gain the deck, sluice, glance up
A gray line slants into the sea, a cloud yet not a cloud
Thea! Land! Land ho!
Ua Huka Island is a seven mile speck
In the ocean’s blue immensity
Nuku Hiva appears briefly at sunset:
Jagged spires on a smoky skyline
I heave-to at midnight,
Wake Thea to smell the fragrance of the tropics:
Tiare, copra, frangipani,
A dozen more exotic scents
Off Taiohae Bay at dawn,
We slip past the Sentinels,
The Pilot’s bold cross
Surf laps like cream on a long sand strand
Tropic birds flit like butterflies
Among impossibly green ravines
French bungalows,
Flame trees,
Jeep traffic
On the foreshore
Eight yachts at anchor
Let go!
The hook splashes, Celerity curtsies, bobs,
Furls broad wings
Bird cries
Churchbells
Silence
To cross an ocean under sail, a dream of many,
For some a fever relentlessly raging until the thing is done
Who can tell the depths of this sea-change?
Strangers to land, no longer of the sea,
We stand motionless, embraced
To seaward, one lone sail stands inshore
Photo Captions
1. Celerity close-hauled, southbound like a falcon released from the fist -"Randy" Will Thomas photo
2. Running off towing warps off the Washington-Oregon coast -Thea Mortell photo
3. Celerity hove to in heavy weather off the Oregon coast -"Randy" Will Thomas photo
4. Albatross returned to check on us daily during this five-day blow -"Randy" Will Thomas photo
5. Nothing from the spreaders -Thea Mortell photo
6. Thea eyes our approach to Nuku Hiva's Taiohae Bay -"Randy" Will Thomas photo
Note: At the time of our 8 year Pacific circumnavigation I saild and wrote under my family name. (I now go by William, my middle name, after a crone in my dream advised to change it.)