Translator: David DeRuwe Fifteen days ago, I arrived in Recife, finishing my first solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. I entered into Recife Canal with my little boat, and all I saw in the city were colored lights. I saw a boat approaching me and heard a voice I recognized coming from the boat - it was the voice of my mother who said, “My girl, what a small boat!
” 15 minutes later, I started moving towards the pier, the marina; I threw out the ropes and tied up the boat, and I hugged my grandmother, my sisters, and my family. I was very happy, and I started to hear my father telling the first impressions he had: He said he was very proud of what I had done, how astonished he was, and that what most impressed him was how precarious my boat was. After a few days, many different people kept telling me what a courageous person I was, which, for me, was very impressive because I admit to not even once feeling courageous.
I didn’t feel courageous when I bought my boat a year before in Norway. It was an old boat. For a month, I prepared it the best that I could with knowledge I didn’t have and help from a friend I had just met.
I didn’t feel courageous when I was secretly making a trip plan, not even telling my parents, not even my own family, because at that time, I wasn’t prepared to hear someone advising me against it or discouraging me. I didn’t feel courageous when I delayed my departure several times, always waiting to the following day because I didn’t feel ready. I didn’t feel courageous the first night that I spent navigating by myself, when I hit a rock, because I still hadn’t learned to sleep and wake up in less than 20 minutes.
I also didn’t feel courageous when I went through a region on the Portugal coast where there were orcas that had attacked sailboats. Not when I sailed towards the Canary Islands where a volcano was erupting, and not when I heard the weather report and cried in fear of the big waves and strong winds that were being announced. I think it was precisely because I’d never felt that sense of courage that I was able to make this trip.
I think that if I’d known before I left that I’d find the challenges I found, maybe I never would have left port, and maybe I wouldn’t have discovered that I was capable of overcoming them. I felt like I learned many things during this voyage, and one of those was to start recognizing which were the things I needed to be afraid of. So I turned the very abstract fears I had of storms, of bad seas, into things a little more concrete.
It wasn’t the waves that should have scared me - there were waves in specific directions and sizes, while I was proceeding on a specific route. I think that one of the graces of sailing alone, of leaving a port, is that once you leave, you can’t give up. There was a moment when I thought about doing that.
I was almost on the equator, and I’d gone through long calm periods, and suddenly, I went under a very dark heavy cloud, and it brought extremely strong winds and rain. I couldn’t see anything around me and the waves started to grow. I cried out of fear.
And right then, with all my forces, I wanted to get out of there. I didn’t want to go on in these conditions that were scaring me so much. I didn’t want to go on with those waves that were flooding the boat.
I couldn’t sleep; I couldn’t think. I was dying of fear. So I took the deepest breath I could, and I thought: “Tamara, stay calm, because today it’s really bad, but in the future, the sea will be worse.
The waves will be much larger, so enjoy making use of the chance you’re having to experience this now, because this bad and scary situation will prepare you for what’s ahead. When I arrived, many people who maybe never would have gone alone asked me, “But why, Tamara, did you go alone? ” I think the idea of going alone came first from the experiences I heard about from my father.
When I was a child, I had the chance and the privilege of being able to hear stories of the men of the sea. My father put me to sleep by telling me about the giant animals that accompanied his boat on his navigations. He talked about floating pieces of ice, bigger than cathedrals.
He talked about winds so strong they could pick up people’s bodies. And I kept listening to the sound of the wind as it entered the window and seeing the waves that formed on the sheets, and I imagined that maybe, one day, I, too, would have the opportunity to navigate solo. But there was a small problem: When I heard these stories and imagined myself as a man of the sea, I thought, “How can I be a man of the sea, if to start with, I’m not even a man?
” It was thanks to the books I read when I was a little younger that I began to find other role models and other examples. There weren’t many, but there were some examples of women who had left their houses and their docks to be able to navigate by themselves. And these models opened pathways for me, and it became at least possible for me to believe that I could navigate.
And I believe today that each step and each gesture made by a woman opens the way for those who follow. At the time I was leaving Norway, my grandmother gave me a suggestion. She said: “But Tamara, why don’t you just bring two idiots with you on the boat?
” I didn’t think much and I answered that if I could navigate with two idiots, I could also navigate by myself. I’m not very big - maybe you can see in the picture. I’m not very strong either.
I’m not the most intelligent person, the most capable, or the most experienced, but at the same time, the sea doesn’t care how big I am; the sea doesn’t care how strong I am; the sea doesn’t care how experienced I am. The sea would be impossible for humans if we hadn’t invented objects to be able to cross it, if we hadn’t invented boats to navigate about the waves and be able to live away from home, so I would count on my boat until the end. There were times when an extra hand was needed to tighten a screw.
There was a time when extra eyes would have helped me avoid dangers. I knew that an extra person could halve the number of times I needed to be awake and afoot all night long. But I feel that it’s only when we navigate alone that we have the chance to discover that, with our own hands, our own head, our own eyes, and our own limitations, we can go much further that we think.
When I left Cape Verde, I had the wind in my favor, and in the bow of boat I had an enormous balloon-shaped sail. This sail is very sensitive, and there was a moment I went to sleep, and during the 20 minutes I slept, the sail was winding itself up and making a knot on an iron cable at the bow of the boat. When I woke up, the knot was made; I had no way of undoing it.
It was as high as the boat - I needed to go up. The idea of climbing the mast was very frightening. While I climbed, I saw my little feet dangling over the water, and I realized if I tied the wrong knot, I had a chance of falling, and if I fell off the boat, nobody would turn the boat around to get me.
When I reached the height of the knot, I started to undo it, and I trembled with fear. I was sweating; I was terrified. It took me an hour to undo this knot, and it was maybe one of the scariest moments of my voyage, and I realized that, inside of me, there were many versions of the same person: There was the most determined person, and the most fearful person.
There was the laziest person and the most proactive. There was the shyest and the most stubborn. I needed to manage multiple Tamaras at once so that some, to the detriment of others, would take charge of the operation.
I undid the knot and came down with the untied, intact sail under my arm. When we pass many days without hearing anyone’s voice, without seeing ourselves in the mirror, without seeing other faces or finding other experiences, we discover little by little our wildest side - the side that doesn’t worry about going several days without a shower, the side that’s not bothered by eating with the pan between our knees and sometimes without cutlery. We discover that our body is much more complex and capable, and that it has many more ways of being than just those we use every day - and this was an important discovery for me.
Some days later, after I’d already hugged my parents, my grandmother, my family, when I’d already met up with other people and talked about the trip, I kept on hearing how small my boat was, how fragile it was, and how slow it was, but I knew those were just my boat’s limitations, but for me, it was my grand school. Just like a growing child, I know someday I will need to leave it, but the lessons I learned will stay with me, and those are the lessons that will take me further and bring me back safe and sound from the crossings to come. This voyage redefined the cartography of my fears and my courage, of my loneliness and my solitude.
There were three months of navigation between Norway and Brazil, where I stopped in countries where I’d never thought I’d be, and now for me, these place names have taken on smells, colors, addresses, and people to return to. Thank you.
