The Price of Passage
We were scheduled to make landfall in the Cook Islands at sun-up. But that was when we were averaging 6.5 knots. The wind, as usual, had her own ideas.
“Another crack of noon arrival,” I joked. My husband, Rob, and I were sitting in the cockpit on the last night of a five-day passage from Bora Bora, watching the crescent moon careen back and forth above the swaying mast. We were making 3.5 knots in the light air, the genoa flogging and the boat lurching sharply as we bobbed slowly on 4ft swells.
I had hoped this transit would fly by compared with our recent 33-day crossing from Panama to the Marquesas. But the intervening two months of short jaunts around French Polynesia had spoiled me. I forgot about the monotony of multi-day passages—the endless rocking, the constant noise, the sleeplessness.
Rob and I tried to be positive while we watched the moon overhead. We listed what we liked about passages: 1) The beauty and solitude of this wilderness ocean. 2) The self-sufficiency of using two hunks of canvas to cart us across thousands of miles. 3) Our increasing ability to manage our bodies and the boat at sea.
We didn’t bother listing our more copious dislikes, since we had exhausted that discussion the night before. Instead, Rob asked me yet again, “If we both hate passages so much, why the hell are we smack in the middle of the largest ocean on earth with more crossings still to come?”
I responded with the same answer that had sustained us through previous passages: “Because we love everything in between.”
For me, passage-making is like all longdistance travel: a means to an end. I hate sitting still in cars and planes, too, cramped in tight seats, breathing stale air, filling the hours between departure and arrival. Most people do.
But I’m completely addicted to the thrill of reaching a new destination. The anticipation of what awaits us after a long passage is what gets Rob and me through the discomfort of rolly seas and required night watches. Every time we see a new island on the horizon, it feels like Christmas Day. What will we discover on shore? What gifts await beneath the surface?
The pain of passage-making fades as soon as we see white sands and a palm-fringed shore. As soon as we arrive to a place unreachable by anything other than a boat. A place where humpback whales and sea turtles outnumber humans, where we can spear parrotfish for dinner, and dive through thickets of colorful coral.
Maybe Rob and I aren’t true sailors at heart. We are, however, water people, through and through. And to get to the best water, you have to pay the price of passage. So far, that price is a bargain for the bounty we’ve received on our voyages across the sea. s