Every journey begins with a prayer, some people say it out loud; others utter the words in their mind. I’ve never been very good at this but as the last of the San Diego skyline disappeared behind the horizon I remembered Tania Aebi’s (see note at the bottom of the page) short, yet moving prayer:“God, I’m going out there to see your beautiful world. Please be good to me.”

The beginning of a voyage at sea is always hard. Hard on the body, hard on the mind and hard on the heart as well. The tormenting goodbyes are still stirring inside when the first signs of seasickness make themselves visible. And ahead it’s the unknown, the vast ocean with no land and no humanity in sight for thousands of miles.

It’s hard to explain to people the amount of preparation involved in such a project. The endless lists of equipment, spare parts, medical supplies, food, water. I had to be completely self-reliant for up to one hundred days, just in case. If I had forgotten something, the next gas station would be four thousand miles away.
But I was well prepared. I trusted my boat and in all my years of sailing I never prepared a boat more thoroughly for a voyage as this one.

I knew Nerissa K would not let me down. It’s us, the people, that make the weakest link, not the boat. We are fragile, moody, and when the body takes a beating, the mind becomes either a savior or the worst enemy.
We drove straight into a storm after departure and I knew this was just the beginning of the test to come. I’ve been in storms before and I wasn’t at all worried, just miserable and seasick.

The waves were 18-foot high (the size of a two-story building) and the wind was blowing 35 knots, gusting 40. Quite a change from the mild and sunny San Diego. But I thought it would last three days and then we would glide silently over the great calm ocean called El Pacifico. But there’s nothing pacific about this ocean except its name. Magellan fell for the first impression when he entered the Pacific from the stormy waters off Cape Horn. The first impression is usually wrong.

It was very cold, wet, cloudy and dark, day after day after day. At one point I thought we made a navigational error and we were headed for Alaska. Polartec hats, gloves, full storm gear on us, fleece middle-layers…off the coast of Mexico?

For twenty days we never saw the sun or the moon. Not one sunrise or one sunset. The sun is a blessing for life on Earth. Without the sun we would all die. That’s what drained us of energy. We had a cross swell from the northwest and the northeast and we could no longer use the autopilot or the windvane so we had to steer now by hand 24/7.

Day in and day out we were out there, in the cold darkness, sore and in pain, frozen stiff and covered in salt. And I clearly remember one day when I was exhausted and fed-up and thrown around in the cockpit like a sack of potatoes. The cloud cover was dark and menacing like a low ceiling over a ghost-ridden waste of water. And I closed my eyes and said: “Ok Boss, what’s next? What’s the plan now? Give me a sign. Is this going to end up well or not because I might as well sink this boat myself right now.”

And as I opened my eyes a crack appeared through the clouds and a cathedral of light rained down on us. The cone of light with its clear rays lit a patch of water about sixty feet wide and it turned the sea into the color of a bright silver plate. It was one of the most beautiful moments I had ever experienced. That’s why they say there are no atheists at sea.

It’s easier to cook inside a space shuttle than on a boat. The G-forces on a boat being pressed hard by wind and waves should not be underestimated. Flavio, one of my two crew members was slung like a doll across the companionway and slammed against the navigation table. He was alright, just another bad bruise in the large collection.

Food was found everywhere. I found different types of cooked pasta under my bed, in my boots, and, believe it or not, even up in the mast. I have a gimbaled stove and that helps a great deal but sometimes the shock of a boat crashing into a wave or being knocked over by a roller is so great that gravity doesn’t work anymore.

Crossing the Equator is always a big moment for a sailor and we celebrated onboard according to old sea-faring tradition. And from that point on we had the sun with us everyday. And the gentle trade winds were steady and warm, and the Southern Cross guided us in the subequatorial night across to the happy isles of the southern hemisphere. The moon laid a path of light for us every night and once in a while a whale would blow air just next to the boat. We had made it through the iron curtain. We were over to the good side. We broke all records during that week. We sailed the remaining eight hundred miles in only five days. And then, “LAND!”

The majestic green peaks of Nuku Hiva appeared early in the morning and as we approached the large island we were shocked by the smell of humid earth, sweet flowers and the sight of countless birds, out chasing for breakfast on the calm ocean. As we passed the Sentinel of the East, entering Taiohae Bay, a pod of large dolphins welcomed us to the Marquesas.

We dropped the anchor and sat down, listening to the sounds of human activity from the nearby village. Children chattering happily as they entered the schoolyard, stores opening, people buying fresh bread from the baker’s, scooters buzzing around, a church ringing its bells across the lush valley scattered with banana trees and pineapple plantations.

I remembered how this whole thing started. A year earlier we had the Thanksgiving dinner at Sebastian’s house in Hudson. We were fourteen at the table that day. Kambasi said the prayer in San Bushman language, and the clicking sounds alternating with Jesus' name resounded like a long-forgotten song from the birth of humanity. As we were about to begin our dinner, Seb said something about a secret mission to Vanuatu, something about the Mareki tribe and their newly discovered existence inside a volcano on Espiritu Santo. I pointed out to him that in those islands missionaries were regarded as a great delicacy for their sunset dinners. We laughed together and left it there.

But the seed had been sowed. A few months later I quit my job and started the preparations. And that’s where we’re going now. I’ve been gone from home for three months and there will be another five before I return. I miss my son and my wife and the rest of the family but I know this time apart will only strengthen our relationship and love for each other.

Now I’m in Opunohu Bay, on Moorea. In a few days my wife will join me for the coming two months while we make our way west and hopefully I shall meet Sebastian in Port Vila before setting out north to Espiritu Santo.
Until then, I read books or write, like now, my thoughts on this voyage and the people encountered along the way. Last night I found an interesting excerpt from Graham Greene’s “Journey Without Maps." I’d like to share it with you.

A great deal of nonsense has been written about missionaries. When they have not been described as servants of imperialists or commercial exploiters, they have been regarded as sexually abnormal types who are trying to convert a simple happy pagan people to a European religion and stunt them with European repressions. It seems to be forgotten that Christianity is an Eastern religion to which Western pagans have been quite successfully converted.

Missionaries are not even given credit for logic, for if one believes in Christianity at all, one must believe in its universal validity. A Christian cannot believe in one God for Europe and another God for Africa: the importance of Semitic religion was that it did not recognize one God for the East and another for the West. The new paganism of the West, which prides itself on being scientific, is often peculiarly neurotic. Only a neurosis explains its sentimental lack of consistency, the acceptance of the historic duty of the Mohammedan to spread his faith by the sword and the failure to accept the duty of a Christian to spread his faith by teaching.

(The missionaries) “…haven’t forced Christianity on an unwilling people, they haven’t made a happy naked race wear clothes, they haven’t stopped the native dances…the missionaries have not the power to stop them if they wished to; Christianity here has its back to the wall. Converts are comparatively few; there is no material advantage in being converted; the only advantage is a spiritual one, of being released from a few fears, of being offered an insubstantial hope.

Thank you to all of you who have followed my progress and supported this project.

Christian Tirtirau
Moorea
June 17, 2007

Note: Tania Aebi circled the world as an eighteen-year old in her little 26-foot sailboat called Varuna. Her candid and honest experience was depicted in her book “Maiden Voyage.” It was the book that inspired me to expand my horizons and sail the world.