I know I’ll keep returning to this theme over the course of these 10 month at sea: it’s not about the sailing or even the voyage itself. As with everything else, it’s about the people.
I first met Claudia in June of 2004 at the Women’s World Hang Gliding Championship in Austria, where I was the ground support for a Norwegian pilot and she was the official translator. Fluent in seven languages, she’s currently working on her eighth.
Claudia had planned to join my 30 day trekking and climbing expedition to Nepal that fall but a knee injury forced her to withdraw from the trip, much to our mutual disappointment.
Claudia currently lives in her native Columbia. I can’t recall when it was that I first suggested she join our Brazil stopover. Perhaps it was a year ago, perhaps less. After all, I said, Columbia and Brazil are neighboring countries.
I later realized the geographical equivalent would be for me to ask a friend living in Montreal to visit me in San Diego since, after all, Canada and the U.S. are neighboring countries. In European terms, it was if I’d asked a Moscow friend to visit me during a brief stopover in Casablanca.
In retrospect I can’t believe the audacity of my suggestion but glad I am that I did suggest it for, not much to my surprise but certainly to my delight, she picked up the idea and ran with it.
Too numerous are the details of all the effort she put forth between the day I made my suggestion and the moment I first glimpsed her in the darkness late in the night on October 18th as our boat approached Salvador’s dock. The feasibility of her visit was still up in the air when I sailed out of Liverpool and the last chance we had to talk on the phone (on a connection so bad she had to repeat everything three times…and I still didn’t get all she was saying), she assured me that one way or another, she’d be there.
Our boat was still one hundred yards out when, in the hazy glow of dim dock lights, I recognized her (mostly from the silhouette of her thick mane of black hair) amidst the crowd of Clipper Ventures employees and other friends from other boats who had already finished the voyage. Leaning over the rail of our boat as far as I dared, I thrust my right arm out and silently pointed at her, my gesture firmly locked in happiness. The form I suspected was her lifted her arm and pointed back at me. We held that greeting a few moments until I pumped my fist in delight as I dropped my arm.
How that moment felt after a year of planning and then at the end of a 4300 mile/25 day ocean voyage I can only leave to your imagination.
Our skipper had already radioed ahead to the race organization and learned that the customs officials were content to stop by in the morning to deal with the paperwork, so I knew I needed only to wait for the lines to be secured before I could leap off the boat. Finally, after I saw the skipper step off the boat to greet race officials, I made my way down and hopped the short distance to the dock. Claudia stood amidst a group of people who included perhaps five fellow racers whom I normally would greet with a hug in such a moment. Only in later reflection did I realize I had plowed through and past them like a bowling ball going through tenpins as I reached for and eventually wrapped my arms around Claudia.
Everyone on my boat knew who she was. Months before I had mentioned to the race organization that I would have a friend who was professional translator fluent in Portuguese in Brazil and perhaps did they need her assistance? The initial response was luke warm but as organizational difficulties emerged in the 11th hour, requests for information on how to contact her made way out to our boat as we neared Brazil. She’d been doing light work for them until I arrived.
When we met that summer of 2004, our friendship began in earnest when, one evening as I was about to buy her a glass of red wine, she decided to turn the tables on me and bought me a glass. It was a small act, but one that came to symbolize our friendship.
Claudia had been there since the 10th, even though it was unlikely I would arrive before the 16th. She had assured me that, with or without me, she’d be having a great time in Salvador. Besides, she mentioned, she’d be scoping out places for us to enjoy together once I was there. On the dock that night, still full of the moment just experienced, I told her that we could do anything she wanted in whatever free time I had but there was just one thing that was my first priority.
"Does it involve the color red?" she asked with a smile.
Don't you just love it when someone significant to you gets it…gets you, truly understanding just what it is that means the most to you and how you think. While our crew gathered at the dockside bar to drink the first beer, we bought a bottle of red wine to toast our friendship and to commemorate the beginning of our friendship that evening long ago.
As she had to fly back early on the 21st, our arrival late on the 18th gave us only two full days together, days that would be completely filled with urgent post-race work and pre-race preparation. We had discussed this over the months before she came and she said she’d be happy simply to be there and to pitch in. Few of us on our boat had realized just how envied our boat would come to be by having our own private translator.
The following night, both of us having spent the entire day working together on the boat and doing a reconnaissance run to the local grocery store (where she translated countless labels as we prepared our full shopping list), our first moment of free time was spent walking the streets of the old city in the darkness. It looked so beautiful that I’d planned to come back sometime in the day to re-photograph the same scenes in daylight but that chance just never arose. It was a very hectic week of boat maintenance and preparation.
Perhaps the highlight of the entire stay in Salvador (other than my sighting of Claudia on the dock as we arrived) occurred late on that night’s stroll. After having spent more than an hour walking around the old town, we returned to a bar on a corner with perhaps ten plastic tables set up on the ancient cobblestone streets. It was around 1:00 a.m. We ordered two glasses of red wine, asking for a local vintage. It came in two juice glasses. Lifting it to my mouth, I was struck by how distinctly it smelled like grape juice. Tasting it, it seemed to be grape juice mixed with vinegar. It was so bad it was funny, so we drank it any way.
As the time past and the tables around us emptied, the proprietor would remove them from the street. Eventually, by perhaps 2:00 a.m., the only table remaining was ours. Thinking a hint was being made, Claudia asked if they would like to close down. On the contrary, they assured us, they were happy to remain as long as we wished.
Until 3:00 a.m., then, did Claudia and I enjoy our private street party, talking and enjoying yet a few more glasses of the amusingly horrible wine as the time passed.
Our boat had come in seventh. By the time Claudia left two days later to return to work, all ten boats had arrived.
In the days left before the race began anew, we all continued our exhausting schedule of boat repa
ir and preparation. We did not finish the final act—stowing 35 days of food in various corners of the boat—until 10:00 at night on the 23rd.
A short night’s sleep, breakfast, a final glance over the boat, and we slipped our lines at 9:00 a.m. to prepare for the noon start. Carrie’s boat was moored next to mine and our departure was so hurried that she and I only had the time to lean across our respective guard rails to share a brief and angled shoulder to shoulder hug and a light peck of a kiss.
We crossed the starting line in second behind Nova Scotia but soon passed them. We spent the next several hours leading the fleet out into the open ocean.
In truth, I was happy to go. It seemed it would be more restful on the sea again. Moreover, Salvador ached with bittersweet memories of the huge difference Claudia’s visit had made to me.
In the not too recent past, someone who I would have thought had the chance to know me well said in passing, "…and I know that you always want to be the hero and…"
I never caught the next thought. I was too shocked by those words. Is that actually what I project? Or, worse, is that the truth? I would have summed myself up as merely always wanting to make a difference, something I’d consider entirely different. One seems self-oriented, the other hopefully is not.
Claudia was grateful and even a bit surprised by my deep appreciation of the world of a difference her presence in Salvador was making to me. I tried to explain to her that at a minimum I felt she was an inspiration for me to aspire to in the kind of friend I wanted to be to others. I also hoped that she was a mirror, showing me what I was to others as well. The difference she was making to me by the abundance of her exuberant energy, deep sense of support, dedicated perseverance, and unconditional enthusiasm was exactly what I would want to be to others…the kind of friend I’d thought I’d been aspiring to be all my life.
Recently a new friend who’s had only the barest opportunity to know me at all nevertheless saw fit to commend me for the sense of unconditional love I projected. I was shocked again, but this time happily so. Is that actually what I project? Or, better yet, is that the truth? I certainly hope it’s what I offer but how could she have discerned that so quickly?
Do I seek to be a hero? I pray not.
Do I, like Claudia, offer the gift of friendship in the deepest and fullest sense of the word, taking such personal delight in seizing the opportunities to make whatever difference I can?I truly hope so.
