Jennifer M. Smith - Green Ghost, Blue Ocean: No Fixed Address

Copyright Jennifer Smith 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used or stored in any form or by any means graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any requests for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems shall be directed in writing to the publisher or to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (www.AccessCopyright.ca). This also applies to classroom use.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Green Ghost, blue ocean: no fixed address / Jennifer M. Smith.

Names: Smith, Jennifer M. (Adventurer), author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200171798 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200171836 | ISBN 9781989725054

(softcover) | ISBN 9781989725061 (HTML)

Subjects: LCSH: Smith, Jennifer M. (Adventurer)Travel. | LCSH: Adventure and

adventurersCanadaBiography. | LCSH: Voyages around the world. | LCSH: Sailing.

Classification: LCC G540 .S57 2020 | DDC 910.4/5dc23

Front cover credit: Alex Nikolajevich

Cover design: Jennifer M. Smith

Pottersfield Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada for our publishing activities. We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of Nova Scotia which has assisted us to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.

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Authors Note

Green Ghost, Blue Ocean is a true story told from my point of view. From scribbled journals, salt-stained logbooks, ragged calendars, and the hundreds of e-mails I sent home, I have reconstructed the story of our sailing adventure. Naturally, many stories from the seventeen-year period have been left out as have many of the wonderful people we met along the way. To fellow sailors not included in this book, we remain deeply thankful for your camaraderie, cold beer, and spare parts, and for your comforting voices over the long-distance radio. Nobody sails the world completely alone.

Also missing from my story are tales of the family members and friends who flew to far-flung corners of the earth to support us with their company and their enthusiasm for sampling a small part of our adventure. We are thankful for the privilege of visiting foreign countries and for the gracious hospitality of the local people. Warm and friendly interactions far outweighed any difficult exchanges we had. Of course, more dramatic stories arise from the more challenging situations and some of these stories are told here.

I have tried to recreate our conversations and experiences to the best of my imperfect memory. Others memories of the situations I describe will, no doubt, be different from my own. While the people in my story are real, some character identities are composites and, in some cases, I have changed the name and/or the identity of individuals.

I hope you enjoy going to sea with Green Ghost on the blue ocean.

Figure 1. Pacific Ocean Route Map

CHAPTER 1

Departure

(late August early September 2000)

We sold the car. We couldnt go back. We couldnt go back because we sold the car. These werent reasonable thoughts for a sensible, analytical person like me. But in that deafening dark moment I wasnt making sense. I was certain it was the sale of our car that had done it. That immutable act had changed everything. The car was the last connection to our Vancouver land life and wed willfully, recklessly severed it. We sold the car, we couldnt go back, and I didnt know the way forward from here.

But we were moving forward even as I lay there fretting in my berth. We were hurtling forward in fact. We were pitching and rolling and yawing. We were violently thrown around. As each wave took us up, up, up, it felt as though an unseen hand had grabbed Green Ghost by her transom, tossing her onward without a thought to her well-being. Then, that giant roller would pass under us, lowering us into a trough so deep our horizon line became the back of that passing wave and the crest of the next one to come. Big weather it wasnt in the forecast.

None of what was happening had been in my forecast. So much had gone into this, so much education, preparation, and planning. Nine years earlier the plan to change our lives had been a dream. But now, I lay worrying in my bunk, listening to the dark noise of wind and the rush of water hurtling past the hull. Just three days in and our dream felt more like a nightmare. It wasnt supposed to be this way. I thought it was going to be fun.

I lay on a cushioned bench seat in the main salon. Six feet away, my husband Nik lay on the port-side bench incapacitated by seasickness. He was a huddled mass, dressed in fleece, and covered in a blanket. Hed wedged a large stainless steel stockpot between his body and the lee cloth that held him in his bunk. Even if he wanted to, he couldnt stand up.

My mind was reeling and helpless. I was unable to contemplate solutions, to see a way out. I stopped thinking about the car for a moment and focused on a single word: undo. I wanted to undo all of this. I wanted to reverse the hundreds of decisions wed made that had brought us here, to this heaving patch of ocean, to these towering seas, to the forty-knot winds rushing us south. I wanted daylight. I wanted land. I wanted us to jump in our car and drive away. But we couldnt do that. We couldnt go back because wed sold the car forward was the only way from here.

I should have known we were doomed, wed had such an inelegant departure. Id imagined Nik and me, poised and nautical in Breton stripes, gliding out of our slip shipshape and unruffled. Instead, with short tempers and long faces we were furiously addressing our to-do lists. With only hours left before a tide-imposed sailing time, gear lay everywhere waiting to be stowed. Nik needed a haircut. I needed to go to the bank. Our landline and garden hose were still connected to the dock. A knock on the hull drew our attention. Neighbouring sailors whod lived their offshore dream years earlier recognized that our harried expressions and frenzied pace could mean only one thing: Departure Day.

Handing us a bottle of champagne, they assured us, It wont always be like this. Eventually youll relax. Youll love Mexico! And the Pacific is fantastic! Youll have a wonderful time!

A bottle of bubbly and a couple of goodbyes at the dock were all we had. There was no other fanfare, no tearful crowd waving handkerchiefs, no band playing. Midday, midweek, there were no witnesses as we backed out of our Coal Harbour berth. In the late August sun, we slowly motored into the view Id had from my Vancouver office a month earlier. It was a big moment, but if I told you it was the consummation of years of dreaming, Id be lying. Dreaming only gets you started. That day was the outcome of deciding, followed by a decade of doing.