Ok, so Now I Know

By Lorri Morgan

Boom, cracked the thunder, almost immediately after the lightning had turned the sky from ink black to so bright you had to squint. The gale was forcing us back towards the treacherous African coastline, on this my first trans Atlantic sail. Truthfully, my first sail ever! Cast ashore in the West Indies, one adventure followed another in this true-life quest to spread my wings. Humor and local color are generously added to the mix. Parents, don't let your daughters leave home until you've read this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 25, 2003
• ISBN: 9781462073801

Lorri Morgan

After leaving the Caribbean, Ms. Morgan returned to California to become a full time firefighter. She now lives in southern Utah where she raises quarter horses.

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Contents

Author’s Note

For my mother, who encouraged me to experience the world. I love you mom.

Author’s Note

Much of this true-life adventure story is comprised of letters, which I wrote home to my mother. I related almost everything, to give her a second hand chance of discovering the world. Her parents had denied her the opportunity to travel.

I resisted the temptation to rewrite or touch up these letters, even though the grammar tools on my word processor had the occasional melt down. The naivete, and the homesickness in the beginning are honest emotions. Brashness and cockiness begin to emerge, finally replaced by confidence well earned.

A few events and names have been changed, not to protect the innocent, rather to avoid being sued by the guilty.

BOOM, cracked the thunder, almost immediately after the lightning had turned the sky from ink black to so bright you had to squint. We had only been out of Tenerife a few hours when the storm rolled in. The sky was filled with huge dirty wads of cotton and as the sun went down, I had my last glimpse of giant waves coming at us from the starboard side. Now I could see in the flash of lightning that the waves had increased in size until they towered over our little boat and were racing toward us. Then the sky turned black again, just like someone had flipped a switch, so I waited in complete darkness for the tons of water I knew were about to crash on my head. And I waited. To my surprise, all that happened was a feeling of going rapidly up in an elevator. No, make that a roller coaster, because after going up, my stomach continued in that direction for a little while before catching up with my body and the boat heading down again. The rain was slashing sideways and the wind was howling. Jon and Arne had already taken down all the sails and for some reason had thrown a bucket overboard tied by a line to the stern cleat. I had asked what it was for, but apparently this wasn’t the time for a sailing lesson, especially in English. I couldn’t understand the men’s conversation in Swedish, but it was obvious they were pretty uptight. As for me, I was having FUN. I was staying fairly dry, thanks to my new foul weather gear and this ride beat the hell out of any roller coaster I’d ever been on.

The storm continued to build and I got sent below and out of the way. I usually shared the fore peak bunk with Arne because it was the biggest. Now I was told to use one of the companionway bunks that were like coffins on both sides of the engine room. You could worm your way into one feet first and then only had a few inches to fly in each direction before hitting a wall. All I could do now was listen to the sound of the water rushing by and try to guess when the next violent heeling over would occur.

When the sun came up the storm had lessened a little but the sky was still gray and sodden looking. I had my first experience cooking out in the open ocean. The main problem was not the motion of the boat, that didn’t bother me even when below. The difficult thing was that all the food and utensils and pots and pans were stored underneath things. The canned goods were under the floorboards in the bilge space so I had to move sail bags and foul weather gear and everything else that had been thrown down into the cabin in order to lift the floorboards to reach the cans. The labels were already starting to float off, but I knew they were almost all something called Swedish Fish Balls, so there shouldn’t be too many surprises. The eggs were stored under the settee cushions. We didn’t have any refrigeration, but I was told eggs would last weeks without it. I’d gather up everything and light the stove, only to discover something else I needed was under that. How to hold on to everything with the rocking and rolling was the problem. The only thing not a problem was scrambling the eggs; not scrambling them would have been the trick. There was a small salted ham hanging by a string from the galley ceiling, and also a stalk of green bananas. These were swinging with the motion of the boat and you had to duck just right to keep from getting whacked up side the head. I finally created a meal of some sort and carried it up on deck, thinking the guys would be hungry after the night they had had. Per was slumped over the life lines asleep, where he had tied himself, I guess because he only had the one arm with which to hold on. Jon was at the wheel but motioned the food away in no uncertain terms. Arne was more polite, turning his back before retching over the side. I never said I was a gourmet cook but I had worked hard on getting anything cooked under the conditions. I woke Per but he wasn’t interested in eating either. My feelings were really getting hurt now. It suddenly dawned on me that they were SEASICK, but how could that be, they were the experienced sailors. I was ravenous, until I tasted it. The eggs were O.K. but the fish balls were like mush with the distinctive smell of a dead fish bloating in the sunshine. To wash it down we had bought five-gallon jugs of Spanish wine from the merchant near the docks in Tenerife. You would take your own jugs and he would fill them out of the casks and charge by the liter. Ten cents per liter I think it was. I poured myself a little glass and was surprised that it was orange. I’m no wine connoisseur, but I had never seen quite that shade before. Well, it was awful. If chilled it might have been drinkable, but we had no means of chilling it. And there was nothing else to drink. We had only 50 gallons of fresh water in the tank that had to do for cooking, drinking and washing and everything until we made land again. You never knew when that was going to be on a sailboat. The water was strictly rationed. Jon was none too gentle in explaining this to me when he saw I let the water run while brushing my teeth…Ok, so now I know.

After several days of stormy skies, Arne finally explained to me that we didn’t know exactly where we were. To navigate they had to be able to see the sun and that hadn’t been visible since we left Tenerife. The problem was, we were sailing south along the African coast to reach the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Dakar. The whole time the winds and the waves and the currents were pushing us East. Arne said we didn’t know how far off the coast we were and in this weather we wouldn’t know until we were in danger of hitting. The only reason he was telling me now was because we were having a life boat drill! What bliss, ignorance. I was assigned to watch to the east for any sight of land, as if I could help myself from constantly doing just that. I wasn’t scared of wrecking really; I had grown up surfing and was a strong swimmer. I was scared of washing up on some remote African tribe’s territory and being sold into white slavery. Maybe that would have been historically justified, but it was not part of my travel plans. I had heard plenty of stories of white girls disappearing from Southern European port cities. Late that afternoon, the clouds finally parted and although the sun was visible, it had to be sighted at high noon to accurately tell where we were. By dead reckoning, and using a little device that trails in the water and gives you your speed, we knew approximately how many miles we had traveled. So we knew how far south we had come, but still not how close to the shore we were. However, with the clearing skies I figured I could see the lights on shore from miles out, unless there were just the jungles of darkest Africa. That dead reckoning term was a whole other mystery. I didn’t know if it was just a rough translation from Swedish, or if it was something else I should be worried about.

A few days later we found Cape Verde and as we pulled into the anchorage I dove in the water even before we had finished anchoring. I couldn’t help myself; I hadn’t had a wash in over a week. The water was none-too clear, but warm and felt wonderful. Arne frantically waved me back to the boat and I thought it was because Jon was going to get mad at me again. I swam leisurely over and hauled myself up on the stern anchor line. This time Jon wasn’t mad, in fact he didn’t seem to mind that I was swimming at all. Arne told me that in anchorages like this, the yachts throw their garbage overboard and it attracts sharks and barracudas. I had a lot to learn. Three days later sailing away from Cape Verde I looked into the water and saw three or four of the biggest sharks I have ever seen. The smallest was at least ten feet long and they were following along behind the boat waiting for some garbage to be thrown over, or some idiot to go swimming.

Before we left civilization for the last time for the Atlantic crossing, I wanted to get a few things in town. My first priority was some hard candy or something I could hoard away and ration out in the evenings. There was absolutely no food on the boat that was a treat, or even tasted good in my opinion. I had assumed after my first taste of fish balls that I just didn’t know how to prepare them. Turns out there wasn’t anything you could do to them that made them taste better. I could stand to lose a few pounds, but I didn’t want to do it cold turkey. Also the galley didn’t have a potato peeler, something that would make my job a whole lot easier as potatoes were the cornerstone of almost every meal. The most likely looking place to buy these items was a sort of hardware, furniture, and grocery corner store. The candy was easy to find as it was out front to tempt all the little children and desperate sailors. The language spoken here was a version of Portuguese, and not being a tourist destination no one spoke any English. My Spanish was not getting me anywhere so I was pantomiming peeling potatoes in hopes of obtaining the little labor saver. The blank look on the shopkeepers face suddenly split into a grin and he said, Ah, potato peeler. I think they were the only words in English he knew and I happily purchased the only one he had.

Now that we had turned the corner and were heading west, the wind was behind us. I had reasoned that we would now be sailing faster with the wind pushing us. I was wrong; the opposite was true. In a sailboat, you can actually go faster when the wind is coming at you and a little from the side, up to a point that is. When the wind is behind you, once the boat is moving at the same speed, there seems to be no wind at all. Not a breeze to cool your sweaty face and especially no air to funnel down into the stifling cabin. When you are sailing at an angle to the wind, the boat always leans over to the same side. You could put things down next to that side and they would stay pretty much in that vicinity. Downwind the boat would rock to one side on one swell and the other on the next, or maybe the next two or three. There was no guessing when the plates I was trying to serve food onto would go crashing to the floor or sometimes overboard. We were moving so slowly most of the time you could fish things out of the water unless they sunk immediately. You had to hold onto everything, which of course made the job of cooking even more difficult. After a few days we settled into a routine. The three men took turns of four-hour watches on the helm and I took turns with me doing all the cooking and cleaning up. The food was pretty bad, I admit, especially after we began to run out of fresh produce. We had no refrigeration so the meat didn’t last too long either. Jon complained but never volunteered to do any cooking himself. He couldn’t fire me, but at the same time I couldn’t quit. There weren’t any bus stations in the middle of the Atlantic.

When I wasn’t doing my chores, I would sit with Arne during his watches. He wouldn’t let me steer, but taught me some basic sailing. The Columbella did not have a spinnaker, which is a big lightweight sail made especially for downwind. We would have the main sail pushed out to one side and a headsail held out with a mop handle to the other. One must concentrate on steering because if the wind moves around behind you a little bit, the main boom will slam over to the other side with tremendous force, taking off heads or whatever else might be in its path. This is called ‘jibbing’ or ‘yibbing’ with a Swedish accent. (For years after that, I would say Look out for the yib, having been yelled at many times) That is why

I wasn’t allowed my turn at the tiller, plus if I helped sail, they might have to help cook. But I couldn’t learn if I couldn’t practice.

With each passing day, Jon became more and more critical of me. My full time job was trying to keep out of his way. Not an easy task on a 34-foot boat with nothing but water on all sides. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he was jealous of Arne’s and my relationship, not that he liked me, just that he didn’t like Arne to have a girl.

I spent many idyllic hours lying in the rope netting beneath the bowsprit. As the boat nosed its way Westward through the swells, the bow would dip into the water and I would be dunked in the warm ocean water. Many times dolphins would swim along next to me for hours, brushing up against my hand trailing in the water. I don’t know if they were always the same ones but I treated them as if they were, telling them of my life and dreams and speaking in English! We were quite far south now so the water was warm and the sun was hot. We didn’t have fresh water for bathing so we had to lather up with shampoo and dump buckets of salt water over ourselves. We were going slowly enough, I probably could have gone swimming but I still remembered the sharks I had seen leaving Cabo Verde and besides I wasn’t certain Jon wouldn’t try to sail away and leave me. I didn’t want to take the chance. Especially after Jon had had to go swimming one day. The head had backed up and no amount of plunging would clear it from the top side. We dropped the sails and he went in the water to try cleaning it from the outlet under water. Not a favorite job at the best of times, but when he came up scowling at me, I was thankful that looks couldn’t really kill. The clog turned out to be a tampax, doing precisely what it was designed to do, but in the wrong place.OK, so now I know.

Because of the watch rotation, one slept whenever they weren’t on the tiller. As I said, I didn’t get to steer but would usually sit up with Arne on his night watches. I think that’s when I fell in love, with sailing that is. The air was warm and balmy and there were a bazillion stars. The only sound was the water slapping against the boats hull as the wind pushed us steadily westward. Sometimes we would hit patches of phosphorescence, which would turn the boat’s wake into a psychedelic light show reminiscent of Haight Ashbury concerts. There were so many shooting stars I felt sure the sky would run out before we reached Barbados. Flying fish were a regular occurrence skittering across the waters’ surface, scared up by the boat or a pursuing fish. They glittered with the phosphorescence too and appeared to have jewels dripping off of them as they skimmed the surface.

One night one of those flittering little jewels sailed right through the compan-ionway door and smack into my jaw. I had been sound asleep in the bunk at the base of the companionway and in the complete darkness didn’t know what hit me. The fish must have stunned itself by its headfirst crash into my face, but after a moment started flapping madly around in my bunk. Those narrow berths have to be wriggled out of and I pretty much stunned myself trying to escape whatever it was in bed with me. But revenge was mine; I ate him for breakfast. Now fully awake we all went up on deck. The flying fish must have been scared into the boat by the school of dolphin cavorting around us. No one can tell me they weren’t enjoying the light show they were creating by leaping and splashing in the phosphorescence. There was a stiff breeze so we were moving along nicely but the dolphins circled us easily and played tag with each other. This magical show lasted for more than an hour and is one I will never forget.

One morning we turned on the transistor radio to see if we could get a weather forecast. I immediately recognized the voice of Kasey Kaseem. He was doing the top 40’s countdown. I had never particularly liked his show, but this morning it nearly brought tears to my eyes. It was the first real English I’d heard in weeks and sounded like solid gold to me.

The evening of our fourteenth night out of Cabo Verde, we dropped the sails for the first time (except for the head cleaning delay). Jon said that Barbados was directly in front of us and he wanted to approach in daylight. I strained to see anything but it looked like ocean in all directions, just as it had for the last two weeks. I was skeptical that he knew where we were, but I was hoping he was right. I had started having dreams starring huge bowls of ice cream, which I ate while standing in a fresh water shower. We were all very tan but I suspected much of the color was going to wash off. My hair was so stiff from the accumulated salt that it would wake me up if I turned my head in my sleep. We didn’t have a scale or even a mirror, but I guessed that I had lost 10 to 15 pounds in the last three weeks.

As the sun came up we were all on deck to get our first sight of landfall. Sure enough, there was a low cloud in the distance that indicated land underneath it. Barbados is a very flat island, being formed out of coral. We were heading for the Royal British Yacht Club, where foreign boats could clear customs and immigration. We would have to wait for the officials to come to our boat before we could go ashore. I could see white sand beaches and PALM TREES and the best news was that the yacht club allowed visiting crews to use their showers. No one knew if they had ice cream.

Three Months Earlier

October 7, 1972 Picture Postcard Estoril, Portugal

Hi Mom:

Ok, you can quit worrying, I arrived here yesterday. I’m safe and sound. I think I will stay in Portugal for a little while, but I won’t have an address long enough for you to write. Everything is just fine except it’s not as hot here as I expected. Sure hope it’s nice and sunny in the Canary Islands. I’m paying $1.80 a day for a private room right by the beach, not bad.

Love, Lorri

October 11, 1972 Picture Postcard Estoril, Portugal

Hi Mom:

Wouldn’t you know it, it rained today. I’m still in Estoril, but I’m going to Spain Friday and then to the islands. You can write to me at:

American Express Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Viajes Solymar S.A. Fuerteventura 8, Spain

Send along any interesting mail too. I’m fine and having fun and even losing a little weight. Really good food but I only eat one meal a day. Four courses tho. Meat and fish and soup and dessert for $1.50.

Love, Lorri

Thursday, October 19, 1972 I think

Hi Mom:

I’m still in Seville in the south of Spain. Columbus is supposed to be buried here. There is a giant cathedral, the third largest in the Christian world, but I don’t find it that interesting because I saw so many on my last trip. It’s pretty dingy too, there is moss growing all over it and there are billboards pasted up all around the walls. It’s more fun to wander the streets or sit in the bars.

You’ll never believe who I am traveling with, and have been since I got to Lisbon. I met her at the Lisbon Airport while we were waiting for our luggage. Wanda is about 55, overweight and jolly. She lives in New York, but grew up in France. She has seen a lot of the world and is lots of fun, even with the age difference. Most of her travels have been to high-class hotels. I’ve got her staying in pensions, she calls them dumps. At any rate, she has decided to go to the Canary Islands with me for a week or two. We catch a boat Saturday afternoon the 21st, and it takes two nights and one day to reach Las Palmas. (760 miles) Wanda is really going to scream when she discovers I booked the cheapest bunks. They may actually be in the engine compartment!

It turns out I’ve had quite a bit of use for the umbrella. Damn, wouldn’t you know it. The first night here, I went to a Flamenco show, strictly for tourists. I’ve also been to a bullfight. That was exciting, but I feel sorry for the bull. I found a place where the locals go to sing and dance the Flamenco. I’ve gone there the last two nights but so far have not tarnished the family name by attempting a dance.

I get hassled quite a bit by the men because of the blond hair. It’s annoying, but not dangerous. Everything is closed here for siesta, and then reopens. So everybody stays up really late. I have a date tonight with a Spanish man and it doesn’t even start until 11:00. He speaks very little English, and my Spanish turns out to be less than adequate after three years of high school classes. It takes a lot of work to communicate, sink or swim. This part of Spain is called Andalucia and they have a different accent. Everything has a th sound. Rumor has it, an early king had a hair lip so everybody picked it up to humor the king! My Mexican pronunciation sounds foreign, but nobody thinks I’m Spanish anyway.

The policemen’s hats here are really funny. They look like Napolean hats on backwards and are made out of black patent leather. Apparently the back is folded up so the wearer can lounge against the wall without removing his hat. At least that’s what I’ve seen them doing. When I pointed it out to Wanda, they took great offense. There are lots of army troops walking around the streets. Mostly they are 17-20 year olds. They’re all carrying rifles.

Wanda and I were in a restaurant today and she wanted pork chops. She speaks French but not Spanish. Well the waiter wasn’t understanding that she wanted pork chops so she drops to her knees between the tables and starts rooting around like a pig. Remember, she is quite overweight, and wearing a wildly flowered dress a size or two too small. I nearly fell off my chair laughing and in the end she still didn’t get her pork chops. Some Spanish men sent over drinks tho.

Well all for now, time to siesta. Give my love to everybody. Use the American Express address for me.

Love, Lorri

October 27, 1972

Hi Mom:

Here I am in Las Palmas, the capital of the main island of the Canaries. It’s not exactly what I expected. Maybe I should have done some research. It looks just like Miami, except most of the tourists are Scandinavian. I’ve never seen so many tourists on one beach. I got your first letter the other day, also one from Scott. Either nobody else loves me, or the mail service is really bad. It was good to hear from you.

I don’t know what to tell you about this place. It’s a big city full of Spanish creeps and exhaust fumes. I don’t know why they have such a fascination with blondes! I get hassled constantly. The weather is beautiful and the water is warm and very clear. So there is potential. I just have to go to the other islands and search around. I’ve been meeting a lot of people.

Next day

This is one of the world’s largest ports and all the shops are duty free. Indian, Chinese, African, etc. goods in hundreds of shops. I’m tempted to spend all my money and come home. So far I have only bought a Moroccan purse. I would like to go there, it’s not that far away but there seems to be no direct route. Keep writing to this same address, I can have it forwarded if I move. Right now I am enjoying just laying in the sun. I got my tan back, even if it does have bathing suit lines. I haven’t seen any surf, in fact Las Palmas beach is the biggest pool in the world because of a big reef that protects it. The biggest problem here is that you can’t drink the water. I’ve been drinking a lot of coke, the bottled water has gas in it and I don’t like it much. The first night here I got sick, but it only lasted one day. Time is going by really fast. I’m hardly ever in my