Anyone who has read Moby-Dick knows that vessel captains can have their moods and April, soon to be May, was a textbook case of those swings.  Now happily perched on the helmsman's bench behind the wheel and peering into the brightening fog, she was humming a tune that took me a while to recognize.   It was Tom T. Hall's 'Faster Horses' no doubt galloping about Cape Sable Island in the haze and looking for Cowtown.  I was ready to join in the chorus until I thought she might be alright with the 'older whisky' part of the song, but the 'younger women, more money' lines might set her up for another spell.  Keeping my mouth shut was best policy for sure and I even restrained myself from applause when she launched into a mournful rendition of Barbara Mandrel's hit, 'Sleeping Single in a Double Bed.'  So much for sailors' chants, but that explained the horse blankets.  Surely the girl was from Texas old money, presently sailing out of the Gulf of Maine and en route to the Grand Banks.

     "Sam," she said, "Keep an eye out for the lighthouse and keep us on the same heading for one hour, then make a twenty-degree turn North.  That ought to take us across the Labrador current in a week or two.  And Sam, take a good look at that lighthouse, the next shore you will see will be Greenland."

     I had guessed as much, but chances were I would not see enough of the Nova Scotia shore to wave goodbye to.  A guy I read in a sailing directions book told of some twenty-plus rounding of Cape Sable with only two being not absolutely nerve wracking.  And so it was.  The fog turned thick in a few minutes, the wind dropped down to almost nothing and the water was flat, looking like a succession of slowly rotating discs like enormous paper plates on a table.  For a long while I thought we might just get sucked into some whirlpool like Eastport's Old Sow, though surely larger, but the wind picked up again and we made headway to behold an expected lighthouse sighting that was nothing at all but the bellow of a foghorn to port and the bell on a buoy quite close to starboard.  Then we were on our way to Greenland.

     Something was telling me that the buoy and the fog horn should have been on the same side of the boat, but we had not grounded on any sand bank so far and I wasn't going to take up the matter with Captain Ahab nee-April.  Of course she was aware of the boat's position, she said when she came on deck and she explained that given their modest draft most small boats took a short cut.  That restored my faith in her, more so since she was carrying two large plates of what looked like omelets and a thermos of coffee.

     "Don't get too excited, those are powdered eggs and the coffee is instant with lots of sugar. Tomorrow you cook" she said. I thought I could handle it.

     Sitting there sipping coffee I realized that I hadn't gotten a good look at my female employer, an unusual turn in my occasional contemplation of the cheery sights that brighten our valley of tears.  April was leaning back against the bulkhead in jeans and sneakers, tee shirt under flannel, sleeves rolled up to the elbows.  She was tall, well built, strong but slender with rounded shoulders, a regular, tranquil face and a pony tail.  Anything but hot in the magazine cover style, more like a gym teacher, but the queer thing about the belle was in her peaceful, relaxed way and her bare tanned arms.  In the last days of spring off the coast of Nova Scotia in a fog, most would dress adequately.  I was all set with foul weather gear over a sweater, but I wouldn't have thought to roll up my sleeves.  There wasn't even a hint of goose bumps on her skin.  She was looking at the sea, comfortable, happy, probably thinking of headings over the waters she wanted to sail; the Labrador Sea, the Denmark Straits between Greenland and Iceland, the Lofoten Basin perhaps.  Who would ever think of places like that, fishermen, submariners, oceanographers? I do.

     It was my turn on watch again, radar showing no traffic ahead, steering gear ably keeping us on course by electronic magic, wind on our back now blowing forty or more and pushing six-foot seas to roll under the stern, spray and foam sweeping the washboards.  Under storm gear over hoodie my face was whipped by icy fog and drizzly splashes born on the breaking rollers overtaking us on each side of the boat.  An able craft, I thought, easily rising and descending with the seas without the dipping and bucking of a lighter vessel.  I was watching the hypnotic procession of the waves, all slightly different but identical in their motion, and I thought of another passage off this very coast aboard another boat, lighter, nearly the same size but much more unruly.  Unruly as the fate of a disintegrating marriage.

     It had been a glorious Saturday on the Maine Coast and I knew that a certain couple would be paddling a canoe to a remote camp across a lake.  On watch amidst breaking seas I could imagine the bare, tanned back of the woman, her long, slender arms working the paddle, her dark hair tied in a bun with its ever escaping errant curls.  There would be a basket aboard with sandwiches and a bottle of wine, a guitar wrapped in a plastic sheaf from a dry-cleaning shop and they would have dispensed with night clothes on this peaceful journey.  I thought then of an easy escape from the rising pain, simply laying back on the stern and sliding overboard without a sound with the help of a rolling sea.  No one below would have had a clue, it would simply have been another unexplained lost-at-sea story.

     Despair can grow on you when running downwind with the eternal march of the seas, the ever repeating motion of the boat, the same occasional splashes on the washboards, the relatively quiet breaking of the waves.  Birds are scarce offshore and a whale or a basking shark one sighting in a hundred days.  It's worse with only sounds under a night sky.  I once heard of a big dragger running home with a guy on watch, the others asleep below.  The crew was in luck, the autopilot took them home and the boat ran at speed up a beach near their harbor entrance.  The man on watch was missing.  Did he fall in while throwing up over the side, pissing off the stern? How was his love life going?

     On watch aboard a fishing boat on a run you can walk around the wheelhouse or the work deck to keep awake.  In the cockpit of a forty-foot offshore sailboat there is hardly enough room to stand, never mind walk.  So you sit, try different positions, stand for awhile hanging on a stay, repeat.  Why do they do it, why do I do it?  Why do I dream of it, long for it when I am on dry land?  Foolishness, says the dockmaster.  No, it's a drug, more potent than any.  It rends your soul ashore.  Look at April, May tomorrow, presently hooked, living aboard and always on the move, only on dry land for stocking up on oats and powdered eggs. Lucky girl.

CAN'T YOU HANDLE SIMPLE CONCEPTS?

     Seven hundred and fifty miles Northeast to round Newfoundland's Cape Race, a further twelve hundred due North to meet the Arctic Circle where it intersects the Greenland coast near Disko Island.  That was the plan and it looked simple on the map

      We could average hundred miles in a twenty-four hour period in the very best conditions. Realistically cutting that in half meant we would be going North until mid-June at the earliest. It was insane.

     Sooner or later our forty-foot boat could be running into ice floes, icebergs.  After turning around, going South then East, it might take us until the end of October at best to clear Greenland and Iceland and land somewhere in Scotland to put me on a connecting flight to a transatlantic jet out of London.  I knew better than argue about the concept at this point.  The good thing about being aboard a sailboat on thousand miles headings on green waters is that you have plenty of time to change your mind.  I figured sensible conversation might do the trick and I thought to begin with an innocent question before April returned to her Golden Oldies repertoire.

     "How did you ever come across this boat?" I asked.  "Long story," she said.  She didn't give me the evil eye, so I figured I was on a roll and offered the obvious, we had plenty of time.

     "My father was a darkroom rat in a photo lab," she said.  "He spent fifteen years in the dark before he figured out something that cut in half some color printing process.  He licensed it to a Japanese outfit and all of a sudden we were rich."

     April, should-have-been-June-by-now, was pensive, no doubt considering if further sharing of personal trivia was advisable.  After nearly two months of butting heads we were perhaps approaching the personal confidence stage of a friendship.  She had given up on my mixing up of her monthly name changes in late May when I called her June, then back to April and finally jumped to Julie in desperation.

     "What's wrong with you, can't you handle simple concepts?  " What could I say?  I felt like a puppy in its early stage of training. "Forget it, just mark off the day on the calendar in the galley first thing every morning," she said.  I was okay with the trade-off until it dawned on me that calendar auto-correct was inbred in our schedule since we alternated cooking duties.   On my first lapse I was deprived of breakfast and, feeling vaguely grateful for her avoiding mention of the throwing overboard option, I reverted to the puppy stage.  Like the clumsy dog I could become, I might have been found worthy of not being returned to the pound and our relations had taken a slight turn for the better.

     "So you are rich." I was interested.

     "For all it's worth, I am. My father escaped from the darkroom to take up sailing and we moved to Tasmania for wilder weather.  I was twelve by then and I was skipping classes to go with him.  He would say he preferred a sailor bum for a daughter rather than a darkroom rat.  My mother hated it, and she despised Hobart.   She went back to the states and filed for divorce."

     I thought the case wasn't unusual, but wouldn't the kid be expected to be in her mother's care, be that only for schooling requirements?

     "Oh no! Our income was my father's and she chose money over custody.  It's none of your business anyhow," she said, "what about you, what got you aboard a boat?"  I guessed it was my turn to disclose family secrets I didn't have and I told the truth:  "When I was ten-year-old I built a raft out of pieces of timber tied together and poled it over a pool of standing water where a building once stood.  Twenty years later, after work, marriage, business, divorce etcetera, I moved to our vacation house on the sea and I had to figure out how to make a living."

     "Sailing?

     "Hell no, I had done a lot of that as a guest in my businessman years, but in the harbor I started at the bottom.  Digging clams at first, shoveling bait at the dock, loading trucks, you name it.  Eventually I signed up as sternman on lobsterboats and draggers in deep water."

     "How about sailing?"

     "I fixed up an old dinghy to take my kids out over summer vacations and I crewed for a friend on a coastal trip and for another friend on a round trip to Cape Breton Island.  That's about it."

     "Mmm...," she said.  I was wondering if the dockmaster perhaps had varnished my resume, but it was nearly bedtime for me and I went below for a peaceful snooze thinking that if I was back in the dog house she would have to carry me up the companionway to throw me overboard.

     It felt like it was only a few minutes later when she was banging on my door with a loud "get up here. NOW."  There seemed to be good reasons for the urgent tone, the boat was heeling and pounding hard.  I was up in two minutes, she was tying down the helm.  "Southeast blow, we have to reef the main and take down the genoa," she said, handing me a safety strap, one end to clip on my harness, the other to whatever is handy for the task at hand.  She was already at the mast loosening the main halyard enough to let the sail drop half its height and I joined her to bunch up the flapping sail and tie it to the boom in the best way we could.

     That was another one of my firsts.  My previous excursions had taken place when reefing wasn't anticipated and if such inimical event occurred we just dropped all the rags and motored home.  I had one chance to drop a jib on a deck wallowing underfoot with a lot of Dacron to stuff in a bag that looked half as large as necessary and I recalled the experience to have been memorable, but Onward's genoa was of a different scale.  Raised to the top of the mast and taller than the main, that monster was a lot of work for two peoples to pack it in its bag while keeping all of it and us aboard thanks to the boat's safety lines and ours.  The job done, I watched keenly how April winched in the main sheet for Onward to quit its rocking and rolling.

     "I waited too long to get you up," she hollered, "the wind shifted in minutes, just like it does off Tasmania.  We will wait until daylight to put up a jib.  You did well, Sam, I might have lost that sail without you."  Goodness, a compliment, I couldn't believe my ears.  The puppy was experiencing a burst of growth, getting smart, too.  "Thank you," I said, "I'll make us a cup of coffee."  Technically she was still on watch, I was going down where it was warm and dry.

     Only long enough to make the coffee.  April took hers back down to tinker with her electronics and figure out our best option since the blow showed no sign of easing.  So I was in charge to steer us downwind and I realized that a southeast blow was bound to set us in a northwest direction towards the three-hundred-plus miles of Newfounland's eastern coast that begins with its Avalon Peninsula with its hundred-foot cliffs, then continues North with dozens of headlands and rocky bays, some probably chockfull of ice.  A lee shore, a nasty one indeed.  The boss might be pleased she had not pushed me overboard yet.

     Obviously a sailboat cannot sail straight into the wind, but with proper settings of the sails and fiddling of the rudder a helmsman can usually bring his boat to head in a direction that can be pretty close to where the wind is coming from. That's if the craft can handle the pounding of the waves.  In a strong Southeast blow a hundred-foot fishing schooner from the old days could easily run a northerly course and take its punishment on its hind quarter.  I thought our forty-foot Onward could take nothing of the sort.  We had to run with the weather if we had enough miles of ocean ahead or set a sea anchor to hold our bow into the breaking seas while drifting a bit slower in the same direction, or achieve the same purpose by firing up our diesel, a last ditch option given our limited supply of fuel.

     That's what April was figuring out below and she wasn't smiling when she came back up.  We had less than one hundred miles of sea room, at most a day of drifting with some hope to run into St.Johns if the blow calmed down a bit, or we could beat into the weather and take our medicine, the later being her preferred option.

     By then the waves were ten to twelve feet high and I had my doubts.  April didn't.  "Onward was built for the Southern Ocean," she said, "all we need to do is secure the hatch, re-fasten our safety lines and fire up the engine for the turnaround."  She freed the main sail, took the helm and I cranked up Old faithful with a fervent prayer.  We fell side to and the first wave laid us down, the second rode over us and we were heading into the third when I noticed the inflatable flapping goodbye from one of its chocks before the wind took it pirouetting into oblivion.  Then everything was hunky dory, green water rolling over the deck, April winching back the main and me shutting down the engine.  No sense in wasting fuel, I thought, that's how they do it in the Southern Ocean, turn their boats into submarines.  That was the idea of the flush forward hatch, a raised type might have gone with the inflatable and the boat would have filled.

     With the added misery of a soaking rain, the rest of the night and the morning were much the same.  The boat rose above most waves and then would come a series of strong ones.  Green water rolled over the deck, the bow would go under, we had a quick look at our lifelines and we hung to each other and the helm, soaked to the bone until the bow rose above the water again.   In the afternoon the wind eased, so one after the other we went below to change our clothes and pick up the mess on a floor dry as bone.  I was amazed, and since it was my turn, I made us massive omelets and coffee with heaps of sugar.  Life was good, but it was getting cold.

     It was quite late in the season, but it had been the typical weather pattern of a winter storm in these latitudes.  A Southerly blow brings thick, drifting snow or rain, a brief calm comes with clearing skies, then an icy wind picks up from the opposite direction.  In New England they call it the Montreal express, but where we were, approaching the Labrador Sea, it was more like the Baffin Island express, blowing fast and hard off our bow, straight from immense frozen ledges and iced-over shores.  The sky was clear, the stars would be stunningly bright, but darn it, it was cold.  Getting back in my sleeping bag after watch I shivered for a long while before finding sleep.  At wake up time I put on those fur garments under foul weather gear.

     I was comfy, feeling peachy, but on deck April was ecstatic.  Straight ahead, two craggy ice mounds were rising on the horizon.  Icebergs.  Good, I thought, we take a look and we turn South, but that wasn't April's plan.  She was all smiles, she was actually chanting:  "Disko Island here we come, ice, ice, ice everywhere..."

Next:  BOY, YOU SCARE EASY