What if I have to go poo?

It’s funny how a series of innocent decisions can lead you down a dark path.

Decision 1: dinner. We’ve always been able to time our trips before so that we weren’t cooking underway, but an overnighter makes that difficult. We opted for heat and serve lentils from costco. You know the stuff. Little yellow pouch that’s ready in 90 seconds. It’s one of the family favorites because ultimately it’s chili. It may be Indian chili, but it’s chili. And we love chili.

Decision 2: second watch. If you sail overnight, somebody has to be up top watching where we’re going at all times. One person would get pretty cranky tryin to do this all night by themselves, so you break the night into watches. We decided to break the time between sunset and sunrise down the middle. First watch pretty much just stays up late after everybody goes to bed. Second watch gets up really early and makes a pot of coffee. I wanted to be able to drink coffee under the stars, so I picked the second watch.

Chili and Coffee. Stupid.

Now It’s my watch, and everybody else is asleep. It’s supposed to be profound. A time to be alone with your thoughts and contemplate your place in a massive universe. That’s great, but all I can think about is going poo. What if I have to go poo? It’s the middle of the night, I’m on my second cup of coffee, and I’m not supposed to leave the helm. They’re all depending on me. Chili for dinner. wtf.

I kinda jumped right into that. Let me back up just a few paces and set the stage a little better.

We’ve been trying unsuccessfully to do a practice overnight sail for about four months now. Eventually we’re going to be forced into needing to do an overnighter, and we wanted a dry run before it becomes a necessity. We kept missing. We tried with our instructor/captains back when we had our training wheels on, but the weather wasn’t right. We tried in the Bahamas. We tried while coming back from the Bahamas. The weather was always wrong. Ugh. Weather.

Our latest miss was on our way up the Florida coast from West Palm beach to Cape Canaveral. We started out with full intention of making it all night, but we had to cut it short when a lightening storm hit. We ended up Fort Pierce, a place we previously vowed to never return to, instead. Now we’re trying a to go from Canaveral to St Augustine (skipping a stop at Daytona beach). This particular leg is long enough to be an overnighter, but only if you really stretch it out. At our normal blazing speed of 6-7 knots (about 9 MPH), we would arrive in the middle of the night. We’re not total idiots, so we don’t like docking at night. That means we need to slow our roll to an average of 5 knots to stretch the time to about 20 hours.

We set off at about 2 in the afternoon, and the first few hours are laughable. Jade keeps asking us if we’re actually moving. It really doesn’t feel like we are. The Kennedy Space Center is so friggin’ massive that it is all we can see on the coast until dinner. The same buildings for hours. No wonder it feels like we’re not moving.

We spend most of this time trying to figure out how to go only 5 knots, which is about a ten minute mile. A ten minute mile is right about how fast a 30 year old jogs. To get our boat to go that slow, we have to try really hard. We had already ruled out using the sails to keep things simple at night. Running both engines was way too fast. Both at idle was a bit slower, but had us at 6 knots with the wind. After turning one of the engines off, and keeping the other at idle, we found the sweet spot. However, the waves have their own idea on speed, and we have to fluctuate between 4.5 and 5.5 to time them so we coast on top of them and keep the boat from rocking too much for the sleepers below.

yes, I said friggin’ in the paragraph above. I’m a sailor now, so I’m working up to cussing more.

After dinner Meredith and I attempt to chill at the helm. The kids are nervous because we’re nervous, and their energy feeds off of ours. We try to keeps our minds busy by talking about life and picking songs to listen to, but it’s a facade. We’re all on edge about our first time sailing at night. At about 9:30, when it’s good and dark , I went below to try to get some sleep.

I need to get to sleep fast, so I pull out all my tricks and go into full on nap mode. My air pods are charged up, and playing heavy rain sounds with noise cancellation on. I put on my eye mask to keep it dark and attempt to create a nirvana of sensory deprivation. Except for the smell. Boats smell. A lot. Tonight it’s exhaust, and I have no way to block that out.

Nap mode works, and I slept until about 1:30. Upstairs, I fired up the coffee while I got my bearings and got ready. I put on a hoodie under my life jacket and chuckle a little bit at the last minute decision to bring it along in the first place. My visions of sailing the tropics didn’t include being cold, so I didn’t think a hoodie was going to be necessary, but Mere talked me into it. I also grab a pocket knife from the bin (yes, we have a bin of pocket knives) for emergencies.

When the coffee is ready, I head up. On most mornings Zulu (our dog) follows me everywhere. But that’s not going to work this time. We don’t want her on deck at night, even with her life jacket. So, I close the door behind me, blocking her from coming with. She is not a fan, and doesn’t understand. Poor pup thinks she’s in trouble, but it’s for the best.

At the helm, I see that it’s even colder than I thought. On top of her hoodie and life jacket, Mere is wrapped in a towel to keep out the wind. She’s exhausted, and heads down to sleep after giving me a briefing. Two boats passed us, one going each direction. That’s it over several hours of darkness.

I want to make sure that my station is perfectly settled in, so I double check everything. All the lines (ropes) are in the right places. Instruments are dimmed. Coffee is in reach. Knife in my pocket. Wait! I don’t think I’ve used that knife before, so I decide to check it out. I click it open to see the blade. Simple single blade. I try to put it away. My sleep addled mind can’t figure out how to fold it back up. It occurs to me that I’m alone at night, on a rolling sea, holding an open pocket knife. What the hell (yup, I said hell) am I doing! I start to panic, which doesn’t help. Eventually I find the hidden latch that allows it to close, and vow to make better decisions.

So now you’re caught up. I’m at the helm at night. I had a nice nap, I didn’t cut myself, and I’m alone with my thoughts. The night is dark, and there are no other boats out. About a million miles away the Nuggets won their first NBA championship

Everything is amplified on a boat at night. Daytona is lit up and looks like Vegas when we pass by. Police lights and helicopters on shore fill up the sky, and I think the coast guard is chasing us down, mistaking us for drug runners. I think I’ve watched too much Miami Vice. I can hear the propeller on the shut down engine spin through the water. Lighthouses are bright. Really bright. Like dentist shining a light in your face bright.

Eventually I see another boat coming at us on the horizon, which gives me something to occupy my mind. Ok, what do I do? I can’t see the boat itself, only the lights. The color and placement of the lights tell me what kind of vessel I’m dealing with, and what direction it’s going. Test time! My pre-departure certification studies kick in. There’s a white light on top, and a green light on bottom. That means we can see the green light on their starboard side, so we’re not head on. If we were head on, we’d see the red and green lights on both sides of their boat.

Or is green port? Crap. Wait. I can hear our instructor’s voice in my head: “is there any red port wine left”. red. left. port. Green is port. I was right. k. it’s starboard. all good. They pass to our starboard (right) and I’m again alone with my thoughts. Well, I’m alone with my thought. What if I have to poo?

At around 3 am I realize that I’m not in the mood to think, so I put on some music to occupy the void in my head. I choose 80s music hoping the upbeat tempo will help the coffee keep me awake.

At 3:30 am Karma Chamelion comes on and I’m jamming along. That’s when it hits me, and I can’t take it anymore. Team Chili Coffee wins. I make the decision to bolt downstairs and do the deed. Please don’t judge me. My body knew that lives could depend on its performance, so I’m treating this like a Nascar pit stop. With the precision of a rocket, I achieve a record breaking turnaround time and I’m back up at the helm before Culture Club can finish the song. Now I can relax.

At precisely 4:23 am, I see a large unlit buoy to our port (left) side. I double check the chart. Whoa. Nope, not on there. That’s when it really hits me. The sea is full of surprises, and the darkness hides things that you would see clearly in the day. That buoy could have been a pretty big bang if we had hit it, and I silently vow to not rely completely on the chart.

When my watch is over, we have made it through the night. The sun is rising, and we’re still surfing along at just below 5 knots. Meredith relieves me and I go down below to grab another 90 minute nap. That takes the edge off for now, but doesn’t keep me rested through the rest of the day. I get grumpy (aka unbearable to be around) when I’m tired, and I’m tired all day. After we settle into our mooring ball in St Augustine, Mere “strongly suggests” that I take another nap while she goes ashore with the kids. She’s not just being nice. I’m being a jerk, and we don’t want the kids to be around that. I’m not my best self when tired, and I have to figure that out for the next overnighter.

Overall, our practice run at an overnighter was a success. We have some rough edges to work out for next time, but came out unscathed and with some good stories.

Maybe next time we’ll skip the chili and have sandwiches for dinner.