The Calm Before The Storm
Excerpts from the soon to be released book of Torgeir Higraff’s drift voyage on a balsawood raft across the South Pacific.
FIRST THEN CALM:
Another great highlight in calm seas was our extravehicular activity. Normally, the term EVA refers to an astronaut in space outside his spacecraft. But I can assure you that rowing a dinghy, a hundred yards away from our mothership raft feels almost like being an astronaut in space. I could see Tupac disappear behind big waves, but thank God it always appeared again seconds later.
I recalled what Thor Heyerdahl had written of the first time the crew of the Kon-Tiki ventured away from the raft in their dinghy:
“We had never before had an outside view of ourselves in the open sea. The logs of timber disappeared behind the smallest waves, and, when we saw anything at all, it was the low cabin with the wide doorway and the bristly roof of leaves that bobbed up from among the seas. The raft looked exactly like an old Norwegian hayloft lying helpless, drinking about in the open sea - a warped hayloft full of sunburned bearded ruffians.”
Well, I thought ruefully as I looked around at the crew of the Tupac, I guess we look like sunburned bearded ruffians, too.
In our own little dinghy, I could lean back in the small rubber boat and watch the endless sky. But I had one perspective that Heyerdahl never enjoyed. Up there, 400km above us, I knew that the astronaut Scott Kelly had stayed for almost a year with the Russian Mr. Korniyenko, aboard The International Space Station. Kelly had a long career behind him, and a total of more than 18 hours of extravehicular activity. He described it once in words eerily similar to our sea surface experience:
Floating freely in the silent expanse of space, you realize the profound beauty and fragility of our planet. It's a humbling experience that changes your perspective forever.
(From Torgeir on a calm night):
Alone in the night, I sat down on the sofa that Erik and Ola had made from spare rope, tipped Cuban rum into my coffee, switched off the headlamp, and looked up at the starry sky.
"Beneath me is 4,000 meters of sea and below that a glowing, churning furnace, far down in the interior of the Earth," I thought. "And up there are galaxies with burning gases, several million degrees hot surrounded by eternal icy cold space"
And here I floated on the Pacific. Not sure which direction. Not sure about anything. And for how long? It did not make any sense.
In the same spirit, Heyerdahl wrote in Kon-Tiki, a favorite book in my childhood:
“Coal-black seas towered up on all sides, and a glittering myriad of tropical stars drew a faint reflection from plankton in the water. The world was simple - stars in the darkness. Whether it was 1947 B.C. or A.D. suddenly became of no significance. We lived, and that we felt with alert intensity. We realized that life had been full for men before the technical age also - in fact, fuller and richer in many ways than the life of modern man. Time and evolution somehow ceased to exist; all that was real and that mattered were the same today as they had always been and would always be. We were swallowed up in the absolute common measure of history - endless unbroken darkness under a swarm of stars.”
Heyerdahl was right. It didn’t matter. “We lived, and that we felt with alert intensity.”
THEN THE STORM…
Our voyage’s final days were not another echo from the Kon-Tiki although there were some similarities. In August of 1947, they had reached Polynesia. Now, their problem was landing. Heyerdahl described at length how the Kon-Tiki approached the island of Angatau. They slowly drifted along the length of the island, outside the reef surrounding it. Heyerdahl wrote, “About three o’clock the forest of palms ashore opened, and through the wide gap we saw right into a blue glassy lagoon. But the surrounding reef lay as compact as ever, gnashing its blood-red teeth ominously in the foam. … All the time we were gliding along the island, so close that we saw every detail on shore; yet the heavenly beauty there was inaccessible to us because of the frothing moat that lay between.”
The island of Angatau was part of the vast Tuamotu reef area they had been warned about. They were unable to land at Angatau but drifted inexorably on to another island in the chain, Raroia, where they stranded, a thrilling climax to their story. It was on the reef surrounding Raroia that the Kon-Tiki’s voyage ended successfully. Although the raft was heavily damaged, all hands survived.
In mid-March, our own ending was also fraught with danger to all aboard but from a different source. The Roaring Forties takes its name as warm air near the equator rises and some of it moves toward the poles. Part of that mass of air, now cooled, descends back to the Earth’s surface at about 30 degrees latitude south of the equator. From there, the mass travels along the surface of the Earth until latitude 60 south, after which it rises again as it moves toward Antarctica. As the air moves south, however, the force named after Coriolis begins to work. The spin of the Earth creates a flow of air from west to east, the Roaring Forties. In the southern latitudes, there is no land to break that wind. So, our rafts should expect strong, stable westerly winds. This was the reason we worked so hard to sail south from Easter Island. Those westerly winds would push us back to South America.
That was the plan; however, it did not happen. Now we were almost to 42 degrees South. But because of El Niño, our rafts were surrounded by a low-pressure area. Winds blow inward toward these areas, seemingly from all directions. Short periods of smooth sailing had often been interrupted by no wind at all and then winds coming from the east and southeast, directly from the very direction we wanted to sail. We were dealing with extremely unfavorable and unusual conditions. The wind made it hard to achieve even our average of 30 km per day toward South America. The trajectory and intensity of the low-pressure systems that were passing over this area of the South Pacific Ocean were resisting our progress. Yet, despite all these obstacles, the Tupac and the Rahiti resolutely aimed their prows eastward, determined to reach South America. Then another disaster loomed; now, we were directly in the path of an Antarctic hurricane.
“Something is completely wrong here,” I mumbled, still reading the weather reports from Håkon.
“Ola, do you get the same reports as I do?”
Ola was preparing his bed for another storm. Now, I could see that the young captain had forebodings of still more rounds in the washing machine. The night before, he did not sleep much because Andrey woke him up with news about a ship on the horizon. Eagerly, we all turned out to stare at our salvation. But it turned out to be the red reflections of the planet Venus. Liv and Sergey on Rahiti were also fooled by this light phenomenon.
“Gunvor sent me a message of wind force 30 to 40 knots. We are on the edge of a storm center right now,” he said while strapping his bed to the logs using a mat made of totora reed underneath as a wave breaker.
Gunvor the young professional sailor who had crewed on Rahiti Tane on the first leg to Easter Island, was known to understand weather forecasts!
“When Gunvor says a storm is gathering, we can trust it will happen. I know from our last one!,” I replied. Even though we were inside the cabin, we were shouting, not talking. It was the only way to be heard over the howling wind outside.
Despite that dismal weather forecast, we tried to act normally. Small victories and feeble attempts at humor kept our spirits up. Outside, Erik was shouting now. He had caught another of the small fish that we called “yellow fin.” He had made his own lure out of a tin can. The shiny object attracted the small fish.
“Now dinner is secured, I got four of them!” Even in stormy weather, we still had to eat. Erik smiled, still fishing for yet another one while Jimmy cut the fish into small, delicate fillets.
More attempts at humor followed; we all sought a temporary reprieve from the new nightmare. I teased the young Russian next to me. “What about you? Are you still ‘No-Fish Andrey’? You know that Roberto is no longer ‘No-Fish Sala’; he is now ‘Two-Fish Sala’!.”
Andrey was going to say something, but I hastily went on. “Yes, I know, I have not got any fish today either. But I caught so many on other expeditions, I am still the fishing expert among us. I don't need to impress anyone!”
That last sentence was at least partly true. I was now less motivated by prestige and status than I used to be. I was trying as hard as I could to reach my single biggest goal, to complete a round-trip, starting and ending in South America. I could live with the smaller failure as a fishing expert, as “No-Fish Torgeir.”
“Maybe we should go for a swim before we are sailing too fast?,” I continued to tease Andrey. “It will maybe be our last swim from the raft!”
But his reply was serious. “I don’t think so. Do you remember the Portuguese Man o’ War I told you about the other day? There are more of them here!”
Andrey referred to the siphonophore, a strange animal that was sometimes seen floating around our raft. In the age of wind sailing, the European navies used tall warships loaded with cannons and powered by sails suspended from three masts. These ships were called a “Man of War” by the British navy. Now, colonies of Man of War jellyfish were floating on the water’s surface near us and when their gas bladder was expanded, they looked like a miniature sailing ship, hence the name.
“Yes, I know what those 30-foot-long tentacles can do to me,” I said to Andrey, and dropped the idea of swimming. I had felt their venom on my skin more than once in the past. They delivered extremely painful, neurotoxic stings.
Andrey laughed, “Yes, I remember Doctor Romanov gave you a treatment for that!.” Then we talked about the other doctor, the one we had on the first leg, Boris. We called him “Bora.”
“I miss Bora!,” I said. Andrey agreed. But, as we were talking about the Russian doctor, I noticed that my voice disappeared in the noise from outside. Dark clouds rushing up over the horizon gave a hint of what was coming.
I recalled when I naively chanted my mantra of defiance in the past, “We’re sinking but not tonight.” But now, the raft was riding dangerously low in the water. At that moment, Andrey and I were standing in the very center of the front deck, fully four meters away from the sides. Yet small waves splashed our legs. How much longer could we stay afloat?
“We start making lunch now,” Ola said, ending his shift. Except for the helmsman, we all went inside. Ola tried Roberto’s “lighter.” This was not a small pocket lighter; all our matches and lighters were used or broken. Ola carefully grasped two wooden handles holding wires which were attached to batteries that were protected in a watertight box near Andrey’s bed.
It took two men to make this fire. One shouted, “Gas started! Clear!” Then the other one created an electrical spark by touching the leads from our big batteries. The sparks flew, the gas flared, the oil in the pan was heated, and Ola made lunch from the fresh fish. We all huddled together in the shuddering cabin watching him prepare our meal.
Andrey praised Ola, “I have no idea how you do it again and again!” Andrey was resting in his bed atop the boxes, watching the ritual and writing in his diary. Some of the sun’s rays came in through the holes in reed mats that made up the cabin’s roof.
Soon, we had a nice meal in the cold, damp cabin. Sitting on our boxes, I wondered if it was to be our last meal together. Yet, we ate like wolves. We were eagerly stuffing the fish into our mouths with handmade spoons. Erik, Ola, Roberto, Andrey, Jimmy, and Pedro all managed to look confident and happy.
Nature was about to challenge us again. Suddenly, a huge wave outside destroyed the idyll. Again, our boxes jumped while we were sitting on them, eating. Ola finished his lunch and went out on deck. An hour later, he summoned “all hands” for reefing the sails. I looked at the anemometer. The wind was at 28 knots. Two months earlier, that was not a big threat. But now, since we were barely staying afloat, this much wind meant waves continually broke over the weakened raft.
The sail vibrated and made a terrible noise. Two of us held the braces, two adjusted the guaras, and two tried to hold the sail. I was on the cabin’s roof, recording the dramatic events with a video camera that had been exposed to too much salt and moist air. After many attempts, I finally got it to record our struggle to survive.
Andrey was working in the stern with water up to his knees. The waves tried to push him into the sea. With our combined efforts, we managed to turn the raft with the wind, and then we made two lines of reefs in the sail. The wind increased. But the sail was still quite large; the strong wind made it into an arc. I watched with fear as the bow plunged into the sea. There was not enough buoyancy left in the logs to immediately raise the bow up as before. White foam flew two meters up in the air as the bow disappeared down into the sea. Yet, somehow, Tupac always recovered. Bless those balsawood logs and bless the ancient raft builders whose design we had faithfully copied!
Nothing protected us, though, from being washed out to sea. Four railing pillars had been torn out, two on starboard and two on the stern port side. These were like a fence keeping us on the raft; it was something to grab if we were about to fall overboard. But the ropes that connected the remaining pillars were now rotten, composed of the same rope that held the logs together.
During Andrey’s watch, the problems got worse. He tried to hold our course to the northeast but he had a difficult time working in the increasing wind with only one functioning guara. On top of that challenge, the direction of the wind changed again.
Now, the waves came in from the starboard side, almost as if they were knocking on our cabin door. It was like the big bad wolf in a fairy tale. “I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!” threatened the big bad monster waves that weighed a ton. The waves and wind huffed and puffed, but the bamboo cabin was still standing. They could not blow it down. As in the fairy tale, this only made the big wave very angry. It came back again, bigger and stronger.
Inside, we were huddled like sheep hiding from a dangerous wolf. We had no place even to walk. Boxes, galley, bottles, dishes, gas, batteries, plus a lot of wet clothing, pillows, and sleeping bags covered every square inch. Everything was a total mess. We tried to sleep but couldn’t. Even by our usual standards, there were too many waves breaking against the cabin walls and too much water coming up between the logs. The boxes were jumping every two seconds.
My watch from 6 to 8 PM was almost a relief from being inside the bouncing cabin. The storm was building up rapidly. I had two jackets on, but was still freezing. I pulled both hoods over my head and stood with my back to the wind while adjusting the sole remaining guara. The wind shoved me against the guara. I hugged the large beam and realized that this was the safest position right now.
“Now I probably look stupid!,” I remember thinking. Then I laughed. At least I was still able to think vain thoughts.
The shifts after mine got even worse. Shaking not only vertically but also from side to side, the guys could not even use our new Mr. T, the toilet. Pedro the Mexican was miserably cold. He had borrowed more clothing, but when he came inside the cabin, he sat silently shivering on the boxes with a blanket wrapped around him.
Then it was Andrey the Russian’s turn again. He borrowed a woolen scarf from Ola. But this night, he had no tea and no pipe as company. He had performed that ritual in storms before; it was too dangerous now. A big wave smashed onto the bamboo deck and threatened to throw Andrey into the sea. He then had to leap about and rescue some bamboo poles that were flying about loose. They would be needed to repair the deck the next day. Even when he was in a very dangerous immediate situation, Andrey was still thinking about how to repair the raft.
The rest of his watch was spent sitting on the table where our stove and kitchen utensils used to be. This table was a meter above the deck and kept him above the waves that constantly washed over the deck. But those waves were spraying him mercilessly from head to toe.
During Andrey’s watch, I could not sleep. Ola was washed out of his bed again by waves surging up through the logs beneath his box. He resignedly hung his hammock under the roof. There he assumed a very uncomfortable position, bending 90 degrees. But he was above the waves. I crawled through the jumbled mess of objects as Ola was hanging from the cabin roof. Together, we looked at the anemometer, now showing a wind speed of 40 knots. Andrey ended his shift and, blue with cold, he got into his lurching bed. Shuddering, he managed to write a few lines in his diary. He was not a religious man but he was suddenly saying a prayer.
“Ocean. Let us pass through. Let us get to the land safely. Ocean… Tomorrow I will pack my emergency dry bag where I will put my diary, passport, and memory cards from the camera. It is dark so I can’t see the waves. Otherwise, it would be too scary.”
From my own impressions, the waves that night were at least five meters high but I could only guess their real height.
In his planning for the Kon-Tiki expedition, Thor Heyerdahl had speculated that perhaps entire flotillas of rafts had sailed together so, if one was sinking, those on board could be rescued by other rafts nearly. Perhaps the Incas had sailed these very waters centuries ago. Perhaps they had also encountered Antarctic hurricanes. Perhaps, like us, they had watched their raft slowly disintegrating. I was aware of this nautical kinship across the years and cultures. But there was one big difference. We had a radio to call the Chileans for a rescue. We still had the Bring-Us-Home button. I wasn’t ready to push that button yet but there was some comfort in having that option.
To the left of Andrey, I could see Erik sleeping with all his outdoor clothing on, underneath a raincoat. Then it was Pedro’s turn. He, too, was washed out of his bed by waves coming from underneath his box. They forced their way through the cotton wall on the starboard side. Like a sleepwalker, he moved towards Andrey. Then another wave hit us and Pedro fell over Andrey’s feet.
Half asleep, he muttered, “Sorry, Andrey. I just have been washed down from my bed. When Erik goes on watch I will take his place. Just continue sleeping.”
Next, Jimmy got sprayed with water coming into the cabin from the port side. It seemed like we were surrounded by a sea monster. He was knocking on all our walls. “Let me in, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff…!”
Erik went out in the dark. He reported waves at least five meters tall, and a terrible storm. It was impossible for him to stand upright on the deck. For the rest of that night, we had to climb up on the table or even on the roof for our watches. This height was not to be comfortable, but merely to survive.
Late that night, I went outside again, only to be met with the full force of the hurricane winds that had been blowing the water into our cabin. I, too, was troubled by the scary views of nothingness. From the roof, I could occasionally see the blinking light at the top of the Rahiti’s masthead. It was sometimes possible to see it between crests of the dark waves. On the previous day, we had finally sighted the Rahiti again but it was obviously impossible to approach any closer in this weather.
When I went inside to check the wind force, I could see Pedro still sitting on his boxes, shivering with cold and probably also in a kind of shock. Huddled among the sleepers, he did not even take notice of me.
But like all proper nightmares, this one ended with the new day, when light filled the sky. Now, we could see the full results of the storm. The humidity inside the cabin was 99%. All our clothes and gear were wet. Ola, Pedro, and Jimmy had no place to sleep or even sit; their boxes were a jumbled mess. Roberto and I also needed to fix our beds. Erik was totally wet, but his boxes were fine, like a miracle. Ola’s space was destroyed again but he was saved by his swaying hammock. Andrey did as Ola; he moved to his hammock, hanging from the cabin’s roof, and gave his place to Pedro. Andrey put all his valuable stuff, including his diary, into a dry bag. I followed his example. Like him, I got almost religious. I thought to myself, “Tangaroa, let us pass through. Let us get to the land safely. Please, Tangaroa!”
When I carefully peered out the cabin door at the grey, torn deck outside, I saw Portuguese Man o’ War jellyfish that had washed up on deck, dozens of them. More ominous, I also found several ropes that were keeping the logs together had snapped. Rotten. We were falling apart. All of us could see it. Ola grabbed a rope and with his bare hands; he snapped it in two pieces. I looked at the sail tied down with the same rope.
As the expedition leader, the thing that troubled me most was: How could I motivate my crew to keep on fighting? What could I do to make them hoist the sail again and go for the successful conclusion of our expedition, to reach land in the east? Or just to survive?
We had survived another storm, our biggest yet. But how much more could we take before Tupac literally came apart or quietly sank beneath the waves? Still, each day brought new possibilities and a little progress toward South America.
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