How Martinique taught me to channel my inner hippie and push through the challenges of oceanic sailing
And how what initially seemed like delay and failure turbo-charged my mission.
From the north of Saint Lucia to the south of Martinique its where I had hoped I could get the spare parts I needed to fix the broken railing on Falkor, as well as some other minor repairs and needed upgrades after the Atlantic crossing. I found a mechanic who assured me that we would get the railing fixed, but after dismantling the broken pieces, I realized that he hadn’t checked if it was possible to get the right spare parts. Eventually, we discovered that they had to be sent to Martinique from Sweden, and that the shipment would take four days to arrive.
In reality, it took ten. Meanwhile, we were stuck in Le Marin, which is basically the equivalent of a big airport but for sailboats that have crossed the Atlantic. Martinique is a French territory, and for all practical matters, we were back in Europe—that was the feeling, at least. Toño figured out that the place gave him the ick and decided to continue to the Dominican Republic by plane, and although I was sad to lose him as crew, I was also happy that he didn’t feel obliged to stay.
It was good for me to get some time alone to rest and recover after two months of sharing my home with the crew, and I had already been approached by a handful of boat hitchhikers who wanted to join the expedition through the Caribbean. I was reluctant at first, worrying about the finances of my journey as the potential for crew donations dwindled. But I also felt an intuitive nudge to rethink my strategy and accept a different kind of help for this leg.
I had only three weeks to get to Mexico, for a flight back to Norway, where I was defending my PhD dissertation, and my time was cut increasingly shorter as the spare parts were chronically delayed. Realizing that I still had a monumental 1600 nautical miles to sail and around 14 days to sail them, I found an ad-hoc solution to the faulty railing and admitted a total of five forest-dwelling hippies onboard Falkor under the condition that they help me get to Mexico in time for my flight.
They had all come across the Atlantic on separate boats, and most of them had faced challenging experiences with crew and captains, to the point of being locked in their cabins by grumpy skippers or fearing for their safety on board. But having a bunch of chanting and free-spirited, environmentally concerned, and idealistic gen Z’ers onboard proved to be healing, also for me, and after consulting the tarot deck and my psychic to rest assured that we had safe passage across the Caribbean, I decided that the challenges I was facing were meant to test my resilience rather than abandon my goals.
Ship ahoy and a barrel of rum—Dominican Republic next!