Second Letter from the Edge

Theme: Explanation of Tori and Victoria

Date: June 18, 1998

Position: North 36 Degrees 42.80 Minutes

Dear Friends:

I would say that I’ve found my sea legs except when I am typing on a small screen in a swaying cabin the temperature of which is in excess of 105 degrees. I do not exaggerate. I’ll send you a picture of the thermometer. Hot as a word does not begin to describe the feeling.

Shakespeare said that each of us is a crowd with one face. I am no exception to this rule. Rather than to annoy you with all the wayward psyches that may emerge from my brain during this lengthy journey, I will bother you with only two: Tori and Victoria.

Tori is the driven one. She rises early, always has a plan and can usually muster two or three tasks that demand her utmost attention at any one time. Were it not for Victoria’s wit charm and ease with the world, Tori would be insufferable. This letter comes to you from Victoria.

Thought of in Freudian terms, Tori is the "Superego" and Victoria is the "Id." Mind you, Freud’s theories hold no sway with either Tori or Victoria. Carl Jung rules in this boat at least when it comes to the segmented psyche. There is no need to describe the "ego" which is an easy blend of Tori and Victoria well known to friends in the landed world.

Before you think I’ve taken complete leave of my senses, there is a purpose to this madness. At heart, I am a private person. I know my friends are desperately worried about me. Occasionally these worries will be justified, but many times people will be worried when there is really nothing to worry about. To keep myself writing, I must make it interesting. On occasion, I will hide behind the masks of Tori or Victoria, as you will note later in this letter when I describe Tori’s despair of yesterday. It was my despair, but describing it in the third person makes it easier to convey the feelings without necessarily reliving them.

The days are beginning to find a regularity. I (rather Tori – Victoria would sleep till noon) rise at dawn 5:30 AM to take up the oars. I row until 12:00 PM stopping only for a few short snack breaks. Then I retreat to the cabin to escape the sun if not the oppressive heat. I take the oars up again at 2:00 PM and row until 6:00 PM there is a break for dinner, the only meal I’ve taken to cooking. After dinner, I row until sunset. It is a simple life and might be idyllic if Tori would get over her little snit.

She is utterly inconsolable. Her distress comes over "having missed the elevator." Because the winds carried the American Pearl so far North during the first few days. I am in a stretch of water that is rarely moving in a useful direction. The water we need is the Gulf Stream’s main channel. This lies some 40 miles to the South. Why not just row South? That’s a good question. The problem is that between me and the main channel there is a band of water moving steadily to the West. There is no wind to speak of and rowing at my best I can make about 2 knots an hour. Given the counter currents and the adverse wind that is likely to kick up in the next few days, it could take a week or more to cover that short distance.

Instead of going south to catch the express train, I will make my way slowly and painfully to the East where I will have another chance to get into the Gulf Stream’s main channel. What wind there is continues to push me North. There is hardly any wind at all, only a clear sky and an oppressive sun. If this pattern continues it will take me until Sunday or Monday to reach the Gulf Stream’s main channel and unless I make some progress to the Southeast I will not be in the quickest portion of the Stream.

Why does this matter so much? I’m about 120 nautical miles from Oregon Inlet. If I’d managed to catch the elevator, I’d be 200 or 300 miles from the start. When the wind pushed the boat North on the first day, I didn’t worry about it because we were logging great progress for all those people moving pins across maps back home. Then the wind died and the boat and I found ourselves in the middle of a Gulf Stream nowhere a back water filament.

Tori realized our location early yesterday morning. She was very hard on herself pulling on the oars with hardly a break. After several hours of rowing her heart out with the Speed Coach reading between 2 and 2.5 knots Tori consulted the Global Positioning System. Her progress over ground was far less than 2 knots an hour, more like 0.5 knots. In fact during much of the morning the current had been pushing the boat in the opposite direction. Then came the gloom, the despair, the tears complete with sound effects. This is rare. I’ve never known Tori to succumb to tears. I (Victoria) am the crier. Tori returned to the oars convinced that all those people with all those pins in all those maps back home might think she was lying down on the job. She would have none of it.

There is a lesson in this. (There is a lesson in everything.) Tori swears that if she ever makes it to the elevator she will ignore the pins and the maps. Vanity put the American Pearl in this predicament. Knowing the wind would put miles between the American and the start, I let the boat run with the wind. I might have thrown out a sea anchor to slow our progress North, but no, I wanted to look like a champion on my first day. Now I am rowing like a champion, and looking like a true novice. The universe can be a perverse teacher.

The best part of all that wind on the second day was learning that I could still row in it. Surfing the large swells was great fun, once I worked up the courage to try it. I’m sure there is a fine line that must not be crossed, but I felt very confident in the Pearl. I know that in those conditions, I was nowhere near the line.

I hesitate to wish for wind, because it will come soon enough from every direction but the one I need. It seems counterintuitive, but I find this flat windless calm difficult to row in: hot and uninspiring. You could almost row a racing single out here today. In a racing boat I could make the main channel of the stream by tomorrow. This would not be very practical I’m afraid, no place for my bucket.

My electrical water-maker is a profoundly frustrating piece of machinery. It refuses to work outside of a garage or driveway. I’ve tried everything I can think of TWICE. I thought maybe it was sucking air through the boat’s through-hull fitting. I ran a fresh hose and weighted it well into the water. I purged the system and ran it for an hour. The result was three tablespoons of water. In total, I’ve run the system for four hours in various positions and configurations. The results have all been the same. Perhaps Sunday, I’ll take it apart. If that doesn’t work, I’ll be very tempted to throw it overboard. The thing probably weighs twenty-five pounds, I’ll be darned if I’m going to row such a heavy lunk of indolent machinery across the Atlantic. Gladly I’ve gone to the hand pump acquired by Gerard D’Aboville and Kathy Steward. It is working perfectly.

Well, that should be more than enough to let you know I’m still alive and kicking.

As ever,

Victoria