8 September. Five Days. Not Exactly a Smooth Flight “Wanderers need no home or comfort, they need the ocean, the land”—to recharge our batteries, Andrey puts on Children of the Great Bear (have you seen our YouTube video for this song, Under Sail Among the Ice?). At the familiar chords, the tension of the past few days streams down my cheeks. “You’re my heroic woman, aren’t you?” “No. I’m a crybaby.”
We’re having a rough passage. Only on the first night did we manage to sleep and rashly decide that we were finding our sea legs pretty well. No wonder: it was calm. Then a storm blew up—gently at first, then properly. Today, for the first time, the seasick members of the crew are not calling for Ichthyander—or Aquaman, depending on their age. Though the day is still young. We’re waiting for it to end, but the forecast shows another storm. For two days, it blew 40–45 knots (1 knot = 1 nautical mile per hour), gusting up to 56 (Force 10 on the Beaufort scale). The yacht lay hove-to under a reefed mizzen (the small sail on the second mast), while the children and I lay completely flattened. Furious waves. One struck the mizzenmast and a shroud began to unravel. We had to change tack and head the wrong way so that, while hove-to, we could take the load off the damaged shroud. The windvane’s travel limiter snapped—an 8 mm steel bolt. Another wave knocked the grill onto its side and tore the solar panels out of their mounts. And it also flooded the heater exhaust pipe. The heater began pumping smoke inside. The captain spent the whole night trying to fix it, hove-to in the storm. The exhaust pipe, an ancient wreck, burst in several places when the salt water inside it boiled. We couldn’t patch the holes. Ah, the guys from the yacht Curiosity had given us a new pipe, but we reckoned the old one still had life in it. Now we’re sailing without the heater. In the morning it’s +13 in the yaranga, and +17 during the day. We decided bracing cold was better than carbon monoxide. At 7 a.m., after all that fun with the heater, the captain had just dozed off for an hour, then decided to eat before going back to sleep. But after boiling water for tea and cooking buckwheat, the stove fell off its gimbal: one of the supports had broken. He worked on it until lunchtime, cutting a new gimbal bracket out of whatever he could find. The boat keeps being knocked off course; the windvane self-steering gear, nicknamed Iron Felix, can’t cope. The girls are sprawled out, and I’m at the helm. I feel sick. We’re carrying a small reefed jib.
9 September
Since last night it’s been blowing 30–40 knots (15–20 m/s), gusting up to 48. We’ve covered God-knows-how-many miles across the Tasman Sea. It’s 620 miles to New Zealand’s southern cape. “Once we round it, things will get easier”—that’s how we’ve been comforting ourselves for five days. Allowing for our winding track, Tahiti is still more than 6,000 miles away. Current coordinates. “Do you remember your childhood dreams of the Great Armada’s campaigns?… Hurry up and become a man—which means hurry to sea and become a sailor,” Vysotsky rasps. I wipe away snot and tears. You’re my heroic woman. We’ll pull through.
Wishing everyone strength to achieve their goals. Thank you for being with us. We’re grateful for your support of the expedition via PayPal and YooMoney.
The track is still available under the Route tab, courtesy of our hard-working Iridium-360 tracker from MVS Telecom. Coordinates: 44 degrees 45 min S, 154 degrees 39 min E