CHAPTER TWELVE

Heading South

W

e left Florianopolis on November first, a calm spring morning, alongside our friends Yves and Isabelle on the French sailboat, Le Geko. They had recently sailed into the harbor, and we all decided to head south together for a bit of the journey. We anticipated only being a week or so at sea, and voilà, we’d be in a whole new world: Argentina.

We bid goodbye to the Guapos. Our strong friendship would continue to be a running thread in our travels.

They went on to accomplish great things. They completed three sailing tours around the world with three different boats (Guapo, Aysso, and Kat), and created books and documentaries about their exploits. They are now celebrities in Brazil as the first Brazilian family to have accomplished a circumnavigation. They still sail today, and while they are the Familia Schurmann to the world, they are always the Guapo Family to us, embodying generosity, friendship, and an immense spirit of "can-do."

Buenos Aires has owned such a tortured history. From the political upheaval in the 1950s, wrought by the power couple Juan and Evita Peron, to the horror of the military junta of the 1970s. I remembered images from nightly TV news reports of the "Madres de Mayo"—the Mothers of May of the Plaza de Mayo—with their large banners displaying their desaparecidos, or their "disappeared" children.

December 10, 1983, was to be inauguration day, and the installation of Raoul Alfonsín, the first democratically elected president of Argentina. This would grandly mark the end of a horrific era of rampant killing and torture that had paraded nightly across our televisions back in France. We wanted to be present in the famous Plaza de Mayo for this momentous celebration. Since the event coincided with the end of our latest Brazilian visa, it was the perfect juncture and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Aside from our attraction to Buenos Aires, we were also drawn to the southern part of South America for the sailing lore and legends prompted. There are many tales of souls who braved the "Roaring 40s" latitudes and some who continued on around Cape Horn. It was daunting knowing that we were going to cross into those same latitudes, so we did a lot of good reading about the most ideal times of year to venture south while considering the weather patterns, weather histories, and Pilot Chart wind tendencies. Well, I’ll have to be honest here: it is a lot to say "we," and I must give credit where credit is due. "We" was essentially Michel, him being the navigator.

The infamous pamperos, erratic, violent evening summer thunderstorms, were a worry for us. These squalls can hit boats with an incredible tornado-like force and can last for days. For better or worse, you can see them approaching in the distance. The best you can do is "batten down the hatches": take down the sails, secure everything you can, prepare psychologically, and just wait for it to pass. We left during November, which we calculated would have the lowest possibility of our having to deal with a pampero.

Barely out of Florianopolis, we were tossed around violently—a cork on a wild sea of foam, with 50 knots of wind. As the sea grew more frenzied, I became alarmed, and I seriously wondered if Cowabunga was going to pull us through intact. This wasn’t part of the dream scenario we had sketched out for our vagabond life; this was hell. It hit me that we were also not far from the infamous Roaring 40s. Despite our determination to avoid such bad weather, there we were, confounded, and in the midst of a maelstrom.

It was petrifying. Huge waves crashed on the deck, and there were constant thumps against the hull as the boat constantly heaved against the wall of the sea. Would the boat hold up? Would we lose the mast, or worse, the stabilizing keel? What if we did a 360°, which meant Cowabunga would completely roll over? And the boys… So many "what-ifs" raged in my head. We had been in radio contact with Le Geko, and they confirmed that they were also in the storm. Having contact with them was comforting, both to not be "alone" and to know that they were all right. But then communication with them went dead. We couldn’t get a response, and our fear heightened.

It was my turn at the helm. Michel had already reduced the sail area quite a bit, having taken reefs, or folds, in the main and mizzen sails. He had also rolled up our large front-end roller furling sail, or genoa, to the size of a storm jib (a sail characterized as "handkerchief-sized") meant to act as a stabilizer in bad weather. Despite these measures, I was still having a difficult time handling the wheel, trying to resist the force of the waves while surfing through the churn. Michel was surveying the waves breaking on our stern when he suddenly said:

"That’s it. On s’arrête. Time to stop." He surprised me with his absolute firmness and certitude. It must have been bad.

Since I had my back to the scene, I didn't see what he saw: a huge breaking wave, taller than the boat and about collapse on us. It could have put us briefly under water or caused us to capsize. In such a case, we would have undoubtedly sustained a lot of damage, or even the unthinkable, had to abandon ship. "Stopping" the boat, however, didn’t mean just put on the brakes. It meant we needed to stop trying to make any meaningful headway, and just "heave to." We would simply stop fighting the elements, and attempt to stay more or less in the same geographical area. To accomplish this, we reined all the sails in except for the storm jib. The boat reacts like a cork in this configuration, flowing with the waves and current, rather than bucking the elements as it would be trying to capture the wind for propulsion.

Once all this maneuvering was done, there wasn’t much else we could do except stay down below and wait for it all to blow over. Sean and Brendan had been down below during all of this were actually having a great time. They made a fort in the main cabin and were enjoying being tossed about from one side of the cabin to the other. They thought it was great fun. Not wanting to reveal to them how scared we were, Michel played the '60s French rock song, Les Elucubrations as loudly as possible, drowning out the outside roar, and got the kids to sing along. The main refrain in the song finishes with an emphatic "oh yeah," only in French it comes out more like "oh yé." To this day, it is referred to in our family as the "Oh Yé" song. That day it kept us distracted from what was happening outside—and kept us sane.

The morning after was calm and peaceful, but the deck of Cowabunga had been wiped clean. Whatever hadn’t been tied down was long gone—washed overboard—and for what remained, much of it was damaged. One of our spinnaker poles, which had been lashed to the side of our foredeck, had been bent out of shape by the waves. It was mind boggling to see what an enraged sea can do.

We were heartbroken to see that the most significant damage was to our autopilot or wind vane, which was, importantly, the third crewmember on board. It stayed in sync with the sails, the helm, and the rudder, steering the boat by itself, simply under wind power—no batteries needed.

Michel was able to determine that a crucial part had broken, causing vital parts to fall into the sea. Michel is quite the handyman, good at jury-rigging things, but this was beyond any solution he could manage without new parts. We were 100 miles out to sea and following a coastline with no viable ports for repairs. The nearest feasible harbor was at least a week's sail away. We had no choice but to continue without our third crew member, and the unknowns of how we would do it were worrisome.

Handling the boat between the two of us wasn’t the problem. We had already been doing that for several years. But simultaneously manning the helm, maneuvering the boat, keeping watch, cooking, and caring for two small children was new. Whoever was on duty at the helm couldn’t rest once that watch was over. The boys would need their meals or snacks, or diaper changed. Dinner had to be made, or the daily bread to be kneaded and baked. We were exhausted after the storm, not having slept for over twenty-four hours, and now we were looking at least another five or six days with little sleep until landfall.

We had originally targeted our arrival in Uruguay to be the port of Montevideo, just inside the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. We scoured the map for a quick alternative solution. The nearest safe harbor we could reach would be La Paloma, still north of the Rio de la Plata, but a decent place to rest and get our wits about us. One of the many lessons we learned while sailing—or at least one that Neptune actively tried to teach us—was patience. Patience when the wind wasn't there, patience when all hell broke loose, patience when the rain wouldn't let up, patience when everything broke, patience when waiting for parts, patience with customs and immigration formalities. Another lesson in patience was certainly in store for us following that tempest.