1984 (3) - Drugged

Small art quilt.  15" in diameter.

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

The amount of equipment on Tropic Moon, and our knowledge of how to handle her, had increased immeasurably over the years.  Thanks to a new autopilot, as well as an improved wind vane, during our passage across the Atlantic, we were almost never at the wheel.  If there was no wind and we were motoring, the autopilot was set to follow a compass course, and we putt-putted sedately in the correct direction.  Sailing with light winds and moderate seas, the autopilot usually still got the nod because it took a certain force of wind to make the wind vane effective.  In heavy seas the autopilot lost control, and then the wind vane, an excellent helmsman in strong winds, took over.  Sometimes the wind vane and the autopilot were used in combination.  And, while we were hove to during the gale, and the wheel was lashed off, they both took a well-deserved break.

On the three-week passage from Bermuda to the Azores, Ed did all of the sail changes, all the navigation, listened to our new single side band radio for the "high seas" weather reports, stood his watches, and even cooked some of the meals when I couldn't handle things in the galley.  I stood my watches, cooked the rest of the meals, and kept up with the dishes.  Ed told me I was a failure on the trip, and, as a sailor, I certainly felt I was.  My general mental state was one of numbness and lethargy.  Whatever I had hoped to gain from the passage was far out of my reach.  My only special moments were the few times when dolphins joined Tropic Moon and played about the boat. 

Swan.  Detail.

On watch, I kept a lookout for ships, but seemed incapable of noticing anything else.  Ed told me if the mast fell down, I probably wouldn't notice.  He was proven out on the last day of the trip when the mainsail ripped a seam near the top of the sail, leaving a section flapping in the wind.  I went off watch without seeing it.  At the end of each watch, we would take note of the log, to see how many miles we had made, and enter it in the logbook.  The log was in the middle of the knot meter, the same way a car odometer is located on the speedometer.  I would read the mileage, but not notice what speed we were doing.  As we changed watch, Ed would invariably ask me our speed, and I wouldn't know.  Several watches went by before I was able to click my mind into gear to also take note of our speed.

Looking back on that time, I put a good deal of the blame on the drugs I was using to combat seasickness.  I wore patches containing scopolamine on my neck, and changed them every three days, pumping more and more of the drug into my system.  We have since heard horror stories of what happened to people taking scopolamine.  I was dangerously drugged, and neither of us realized it at the time. 

At one point, during one of my watches, the wind had died.  Fighting my lethargy, I decided to take down the luffing mainsail.  It was a pleasant day, and I climbed onto the fore deck without attaching my safety harness.  Using the winch handle, I released the pressure on the mainsail, and the sail quickly began to fall to the deck.  I had had only one hand on the winch handle, and the force of the falling sail, pulling on the halyard, spun the winch handle out of my hand, and sent it flying across the deck.  Rather than let things take their course, I reached with my left hand and grabbed the wire halyard to slow down the speed of the falling sail.  I burned my palm on the wire, and then stood there, holding onto the halyard, unable to reach the winch handle, and at a total loss as to what I should do next.  I ended up yelling for Ed, who was pretty upset when he saw the fix I’d gotten myself into.  In essence, I simply wasn't able to think clearly, and make reasonable judgments on how to handle different situations.

On the morning of July 22^nd, I had my usual midnight to 4:00 a.m. watch.  While I was aware we would be approaching, and probably arriving at the Azores that day, all I saw ahead in the darkness were clouds on the horizon.  By that time I had little interest in our progress, and was having trouble making myself go out on deck to do the occasional checks.  When I did make my final check at 4:00 a.m., dawn had broken, some of the clouds had lifted, and the sun was rising from the sea behind the islands, highlighting them in impressive silhouettes.  Appearing directly ahead - and far closer than I had expected for our first "land ho" - it was as if some nautical magician had whipped off a magic cloth, planting majestic islands in our path.  It was an almost unbelievable, but very welcome sight.  Later that morning, after three weeks at sea, we made our port of call at Horta, in the Azores, in the middle of the big, blue Atlantic Ocean - 2500 miles, and four time zones, to the east of Washington, D.C.