CHAPTER TWO

First Days at Sea

F

or Michel and me, our departure was bittersweet. It was a more emotionally wrenching experience than we had anticipated, and both of us were uncharacteristically quiet the first few hours. I had imagined that we would be exuberant, high-fiving each other once we left the harbor. Instead, I avoided talking much for fear I would start crying.

I didn't quite understand my feelings initially, but the new constant of the endless horizon helped me sort out my jumble of emotions. Although we had crossed the Bay of Biscay several times in the past and had spent nights at sea on previous coastal trips, this time was different. It was a permanent change. For both of us, it took four days at sea to digest it all, and only then did we begin looking forward to what may lay ahead. We had to find our bearings and a way to recreate a sense of belonging in our new world.

We also needed to adjust to our new daily routine without a morning alarm clock. Well, to be honest, with an infant and toddler on board, we hadn't used an actual alarm clock in a while. But still, we reveled in the fact that we didn’t have to rise and shine for someone else's imperatives: appointments, business meetings, or deadlines. We also soon discovered that once we were living and sailing full time, as opposed to our most recent erratic life—splitting daily routines between land-based occupations and weekend sailing outings and boat renovation projects—our new all-boat, all-the-time routine absolutely agreed with us. No, it wasn’t always pure bliss. In fact, it was a lot of work, but we were delighted to be doing it.

When at sea, the sextant sun sights constituted the bedrock of our navigation. Several times a day, Michel and I would take secure positions on deck, he with the sextant in hand, and me with a stopwatch. Through the sextant's viewfinder, he would attempt to align the sun with the horizon, which was quite a feat since the boat was always bobbing and weaving. Once Michel decided he had a good fix on the sun and horizon, he called it out to me and ideally, at that very same instant, I clicked the stopwatch, capturing the exact time of his sight. We repeated this several times, and Michel would then calculate each fix according to his precise marine charts and tables, plotting each position on our sea chart. Then he would take the average of those recorded fixes that fell around the same spot, estimating our position. This at-sea job of navigation was juggled around the daily routine of cooking, eating, sleeping, changing diapers, bathing, etc.—just like life and chores on land.

Once we arrived at a destination, we slipped into a shore-life mode of operating, where our comfort and routines were dictated by whether we were anchored or tied up to a dock. Our first priorities were to refill our provisions and water tanks, wash clothes, and get the boys on land for some well-earned running around, boy-energy style! One of my first priorities upon arriving in a new port was to scope out the easiest access to water. It became an obsession. Like the captain of times past with his telescope, I would immediately scan the shore closest to where we were anchored or docked for a water outlet—any outlet! If Michel were to go on land first to see about port entry documents and formalities, my first instruction to him was always: "Find the water!"

With luck, there would be a nearby hose or faucet on land that we could use without restrictions. Free-and-easy access to water was a prized commodity. We needed it for cooking, washing, and bathing, and we tried to avoid using our onboard water reserves as much as possible when we knew we wouldn't have easy access to fresh water. Most of the time, we were downright miserly with it. At sea, we would wash the dishes and ourselves with salt water, followed by a quick fresh water rinse. Whether or not water was freely available and accessible on land determined the ease or difficulty of our coming days in port, and consequently our enjoyment of the place.

Above all, our children's needs and their schedules came first, and that wasn't always easy. Brendan had a full and constant infant schedule, and the two boys' moods impacted us whether we were at sea or in port. Would they play well together today? Would they hold off on a crisis while we executed a sailing maneuver? Would they have good, long naps? Would they cooperate for an outing on land? Would an easy grocery shopping trip be in the cards?

Sean and Brendan each took to the change of living and sailing on Cowabunga full time in their own stride. Sean wasn't going to preschool anymore once we left France, and he was genuinely excited by all the new places we arrived in. Within just the first few weeks of our new life on the move, he also became impassioned with fishing and tweaking ropes from the cockpit, imitating our maneuvers with the sails.

Sean was a bit sensitive, at times, to the movement of the boat upon first setting sail for a new passage. If things started out a bit rough, he would snuggle comfortably in his bed for a while, as if instinctively letting his body incorporate the new rhythm and settling in to the change. Once underway, however, Sean returned to always being busy. He tied knots, lowered and raised our naval signal flags, tweaked the line for his toy tugboat that trailed alongside us in the water, surveyed his fishing line, observed our anchoring maneuvers, obsessed over the dolphins, and built churches and lighthouses with his Lego blocks.

Sean was also beginning to notice sunrises, sunsets, and the rare moments when the moon and the sun shared the sky at dawn. He began to understand the concept of a coastline and notable promontory points, and how those figured in our course. He was intrigued by maps and charts, and how landmarks on paper translated into what he saw outside. He liked to have us pinpoint where we were on a map of the world he had in one of his children's books, and then he would sit next to Brendan indicating our position to him. Sean was becoming used to the incline of the boat under sail and understood when things just weren't right with the wind or the sea.

"La mer est méchante," he would say in French. The sea is being mean.

Brendan, at this infant stage, seemed oblivious to any new scenery or harbor changes since up to that point, the boat had been his only home. When we were at anchor, the boat always had softer rocking motion, which captivated Brendan. There was never a need to rock him to sleep since the constant rocking of the boat was ready-made for a baby. He also took a new interest in the dancing flames of the kerosene lamps.

Our days were amply filled. Nap times, the wind, the weather, our night watches, sometimes anchor watch (when the holding ground was doubtful), equipment repairs, and the very long list of our ongoing and future ambitious projects to better the boat along with cooking, eating, and sleeping kept us occupied at all times. We also had to remember to keep an eye on the battery charge which we maintained with a solar panel and a wind generator, along with running the engine. It was vital since it was our source of electricity on board for the lights, navigational electronics, and radio communication. It was also important to monitor the status of our fresh produce, yogurt, and bread for the days ahead, depending on our accessibility to land. There were no holes to fill with idleness. Our needs and wants were reduced to the very simple basics of life. We stopped the world and got off, and it made such down-to-earth sense!

In this new life and our day-to-day routine, Michel and I couldn't escape each other. We were now together constantly, all day long, every day. Yet, despite being in a very confined space for our family, it worked. There is something to be said, however, for our being "young and in love" at the time. We talked, we planned, we dreamed. We relished being around each other, and not having our time chopped up by the annoying nine-to-five workweek schedule that had plagued us in our former life. At that point, we had been married seven years, and all was quite blissful—even with a toddler and an infant.

At the same time, it was important that Michel and I both had personal alone time, and we managed to carve that out during our night watches and afternoon down time while Brendan napped and Sean busied himself with projects. Private reading time, sewing, meal planning, trying new recipes, fishing, honing navigation skills, carpentry work, and a few cat-naps were all slipped in, all aside from our ever-present parenting duties. Alone time was, and still is today, essential for me. I came to welcome my watches, and savor the early morning hours at sunrise before everyone else woke up.

We did have our occasional arguments, of course. But stomping off for a walk around the block or isolating oneself in a corner wasn't an option. Michel always knew when I was angry—at the flick of a switch, I would spew out a battery of swear words in English. Anger in French isn't fulfilling for me. It sounds too nice. Once our bilingual battle had fizzled out, we would give each other the silent treatment for a few hours. After that, the solitude of a good four-hour night watch softened our tempers and often helped us see the "lesson learned" for whatever the dispute was.

Many such families or couples didn’t last against these odds. They weren’t able to make the good times overshadow the bad. We came across several abandoned boats and others for sale, littered across various ports-of-call. Dashed dreams and adventures, all stories of their own. We were wary of this happening to us and had applied ourselves to the study of this negative, yet possible outcome of a seafaring life well before we left France. During our two years of experimental onboard living prior to our departure, we had met other families and couples as they passed through our homeport of Le Verdon, or during our brief weekend jaunts up and down the French Atlantic coast. We visited their boats, saw how they did things, talked and exchanged ideas over cocktails and dinners. We read many books about families’ experiences, their tips, their do’s and don'ts.

We reached La Coruña, Spain after four nights at sea. Our first night in there gave us a few surprises and revealed a crack or two in our practices. We arrived at night and made the decision to anchor out in the bay rather than closer to the dock or marina. However, in our brief sailing experience, we hadn't had many opportunities to anchor, so there was a good amount of angry yelling that went on between the two of us. Michel was at the bow of the boat, and I was in the cockpit, handling the wheel and the engine. There is some delicate maneuvering to do in order to get the boat in the right position so the anchor can be properly set. Michel was giving me his instructions while shouting into the wind ahead of him. I was 40 ft. behind him at the wheel, and I couldn't hear a thing that he was shouting. Finally, Michel set the anchor down, and after a prudent amount of time to verify that it held well, we called it a night and went to bed. When we got up the next morning, we were not in the same spot where we had anchored.

"Do you think we were this far from the shore last night when we anchored?" I asked Michel. "It's hard to tell in daylight from last night's shore lights."

To our surprise, we had dragged quite a bit during the night because the anchor didn't hold. We were lucky that there was a lot of room in the bay for such a mistake. As we lifted the anchor and maneuvered to reset it, it came out of the water fully hooked into an old discarded mattress! No wonder we drifted along during the night. We were never anchored into the sea floor.

"At least it made for a soft landing," Michel mused.

We needed to learn to anchor better, rethink our procedure, and implement a better system of communication between the two of us. Obviously, we hadn't mastered the art of anchoring yet, and it was proving to be a major point of contention between the two of us, as an argument would instantly flare-up.

From then on, Michel employed hand signals that I could easily see and decipher from my position at the back of the boat or the stern. He motioned his hands forward, backward, to the right and left letting me know how to position Cowabunga, as I shifted the engine to counter the wind and current. We really needed to survey the set anchor for at least a half hour before deciding whether we had good holding or not. We eventually became quite adept at this and rarely had any arguments about anchoring after that.

La Coruña proved to be a good starting point. Many sailboats came and went, and many were like us, leaving for the first time after years of preparation. We met people who had even built their own boats, and some were returning home after years of sailing around the world. We found out that we were part of the "Class of ’82"—that year’s contribution to the annual migration of new adventurers heading south for the first time. There was a whole subculture of enthusiasts of the sea, and now we were part of the wave. We came across many of these boats and families of the "Class of ’82" later in our travels, in different countries and different oceans.

Our identity was also transformed here. Our last name, Couvreux, faded away. People would, from then on, know and recognize us as the "famille Cowabunga," the "Cowabunga family." Everyone became one with the name of their boats and consequently identified as such. We developed close friendships with some families over the years, and never even knew their real last names.

Our next port-of-call after La Coruña, was the Ria de Corcubion, in the Galicia area of Spain, where there are numerous rias, or inlets. We tied up to a dock in the protected enclave of Corcubion, just around the edge of Spain that juts out into the Atlantic known as Finisterre, or "land's end." The days were warm and sunny, and I could place Brendan on the deck in his little bouncy chair. I noticed a new shift in his awareness and saw that Brendan was now beginning to enjoy the outside surroundings and the hustle and bustle of the harbor. Since we were centrally located in the port, we were somewhat of an attraction with a baby and small boy on board, especially during the traditional evening Spanish paseo hour when families leisurely walk around and relax after their day of work. Sean would implore passersby to help him pull his multi-knotted ropes wrapped around a winch, connected to a line of naval signal flags that he liked to hoist up, as he imitated our maneuvers with the sails.

Up to this point, Sean had been enveloped in a total bilingual cocoon of French and English in our family life. I only spoke English to the boys, and Michel, along with everyone else in their lives thus far, only spoke French. Being introduced to the Spanish language was a new wrinkle for him. We tried to explain to Sean that in this new country, people spoke something different from Mama and Papa and that to say "hello" in Spanish was hola. For the few days we were in Corcubion, there was a little boy of about 10 years old who came by daily to enjoy Sean's company. It was our first experience observing how Sean could make friends with children in another country. We welcomed the little boy with "hola." By the next evening, Sean was anxious to see his friend again.

"When is Hola coming?" he asked.