As I begin to pen my very first words for Slow Planet a curious event is unfolding here in Norway.

My initial assignment was to write about what it is like to set up a small business from my home in the forests of southern Norway in this ever accelerating world, but alas, something far more fascinating has caught my attention; Slow television of Slow Travel.

As I am writing this Norway’s leading national network is nearing the end of the world’s longest and slowest broadcast ever. Minute by minute they have dedicated a whole channel to the live broadcast of Hurtigruten’s voyage from Bergen on the south-west coast of Norway to Kirkenes in the far north close to the Russian border. This is a journey that takes an incredible 134 hours and has been dubbed the most scenic sea voyage around, and at this time of year it takes its 691 passengers into the land of the midnight sun at a speed of only 15 knots (17.3 mph or 27.8 kilometres per hour), so Hurtigruten (directly translated to “The Fast Route”) has long been outdone in the definition-stakes of fast transportation.

In a world where we like our entertainment to be fast paced and action-packed this would seem, on paper, to be a recipe for disaster, but it is turning out to be one of the network’s greatest successes in recent times. Population-wise Norway is a small country with only 4.92 million inhabitants. So far 1 345 000 of these inhabitants (including myself of course) has tuned in to follow this voyage. As the ferry passes towns and villages on their route they are greeted by people everywhere dressed in their finest, or in very little at all depending on character, waving flags, brass bands playing and people singing. It’s like a 17th of May (our Constitution Day) celebration in every harbour and people seem to unite over this very unusual event with a high sense of national pride and a genuine joy in watching this journey unfold so slowly before them and before us who view from afar.

It’s not only via our television screens we tune in. There is a live web-broadcast too with Denmark, USA, Germany, The Netherlands and Great Britain amongst its keenest viewers. There are frequent updates on Twitter and the Facebook page dedicated to the voyage has nearly 60 000 followers, so in some sense the fast-paced technology of getting updates on where and when at any given time seem to motivate viewers somewhat to tune in, or if not able to, at least not miss out on anything - a unison between fast and slow.

I’m no expert in either Slow or what this unusual event means, but from my little perch people seem very responsive to this piece of Slow-television. As this unusual journey by television is gathering momentum, it is in every sense a fantastic advertisement for the concept of Slow-travel. “Slow” seems to be a buzz-word again here in Norway and that makes my little tortoise heart leap with joy.

For those of you than want to have a little look-see at what this is all about you can visit the following link: http://www.nrk.no/hurtigruten/?lang=e

I’m the publisher and editor of Slow Magazine. In the first two years of publishing we’ve won national design (Australian) awards, we’ve attracted many avid readers and subscribers and we’ve enjoy producing an authentic publication that looks at life beyond the obvious fast lane. However, when I talk to advertisers, (and every magazine NEEDS them), most businesses still “don’t get it …”. Yes, I guess the whole essence of Slow, and the mainstream understanding how important the Slow ethos is, is about a decade away. Do you think this is right? Is Slow the new Green scene, it just hasn’t fully arrived? Are we talking now about a movement that will be mainstream in 10 years? Or will it always be counter culture to a point?

At the magazine, most of us feel we are publishing a title that is on the edge of something big. We seem to know it. But the big question is, will our advertisers ever ‘get it’?

Living in a culture that celebrates the elimination of barriers, we have become accustomed to technologies that promise us a higher quality of life. The railroads of the 19th century and the motorways of the 20th century are familiar examples of technological, political and economic projects that nowadays are taken for granted.

We may be disturbed by car pollution and airplane noise, but we do not usually question the infrastructure of mobility. No, we seldom question the drive for convenience and immediacy, for higher and higher speeds, for less and less friction. Commuting and long-distance travelling have become integrated aspects of our daily life, permeating our minds and value systems. Speed and mobility have long been terms with positive connotations, paving the way for projects of political and economic “improvements”. How should we otherwise understand the emergence of urban, interurban, regional, interregional, national and international infrastructure projects? What are we without cars, trains and airplanes?

Historical mistakes are not a good excuse for not doing anything today or tomorrow. So, what should we do? Why not begin by asking how we really want to live, how we really want to work, how we really want to use our common habitat. Let us imagine a world guided by slow mobility.

Locomotion is better than Valium. Get on a long distance train with passing scenery and a gentle bounce in any direction and stress will directly dissolve into fairyland meditations. Upon leaving New York, sedated by the Hudson’s sparkle and Amtrak’s rattle, I slipped into this anticipated state of daydreaming where I remained until the state of New Mexico. There, my seatmate, a Zuni Indian man, offered his service as a tour guide through the desert. He pointed out the hills where the government mined uranium for Big Boy, and soon after, he pointed to an old volcano, which the Zuni believe houses a protective spirit. A true geological paradox: cataclysm hidden under one hill and spiritual protection under the next. He also told me that the Zuni settled on land where the water strider’s heartbeat can be heard, and that our own heartbeats sound not from the physical heart, but from a metaphysical orb that floats closer to the sternum. Anxiety or sorrow can displace this orb, sometimes causing it to move up and become a lump in the throat, but it can be replaced by healers such as his grandmother, or by people who have been struck by lightening.

A cowboy drinking Budweiser cans sat across the aisle from us. He was going to California to visit his father on his 90^th birthday and was looking forward to playing the ‘gee tar’ with his pop. He wished he had brought his new Yamaha on the train so he could play us some ‘true’ cowboy music but even without it he managed a wistful a cappella song about a boy and his only friends, the saddle and the horse. After he finished singing, the three of us discussed UFO’s while the setting sun colored the water strider’s land red. I smiled at our gathering of archetypes: a Cowboy, an Indian, a Yankee, and ET, and then let the narcotic effects of the train nudge me back into more absent-minded reverie.

When I reached California, I thanked the economy for freeing up my friend’s schedule so she could help me while I finished my last bits of business on US soil. On the day before she delivered me to the docks, we looked for a pair of army fatigues, visited the gun store for some mace, and a lawyer’s office for me to write a will and send it to my parents.   I am traveling alone, and the shock on people’s faces when I explained my means around the world would be trains, buses, and boats convinced me that I should pose as a female mercenary, armed, and ready for death. 

            “You’re not a terrorist are you?” asked the security guard, Marco. I was standing at the Long Beach port, confused, under an awning at pier T, berth 136.  I had a grimace and a suitcase. I threw a grunt his way.

“Do you need transportation to your ship?”

I held my mace in my bag and put my sunglasses on.  No need to give away any emotion.

”Yeah”

Marco threw my suitcase in his truck and radioed my ship, the Hanjin Phoenix, to expect the passenger.  He jauntily complained about the evils of advertising as we drove past miles of cargo containers.  We agreed that the world is too frantic, and everything needs to slow down.  He had a pleasant, lilting accent as he emphatically stated “Turtles! You might see some turtles in the ocean, pay attention to them man.” Needless to say, I couldn’t hold my grimace very long. I crack too easily around people who share my beliefs.

            The second mate skipped down the gangway and took my suitcase.  He and Marco flashed smiles in every direction: at the trucks, the sea, each other, the robotic arms moving the containers, and then at my camera.  They ushered me up the gangway and I acted nonchalant, as if it was no big deal to me I was about to spend three weeks on the ocean in a 50,000-ton vessel with a bunch of unknown seamen.  I was so giddy and nervous however that stifling my emotional response to boarding the vessel made me snort and then drool–not a good contribution to the hard mercenary image.  I met the German captain (earring and Birkenstocks! phew) and got a tour of the entire vessel including the engine room.  I retired to my cozy cabin thoroughly disarmed.

            Normally, the passengers are the responsibility of the third mate, but the second mate, a Filipino named Joeson, was excited to have a passenger close to his age so he took charge of my comfort and safety as soon as I stepped on board.  He also threatened to be the one to give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in the event of an emergency. Like Joeson, the chief officer, Steve, and the third mate, Mark, were friendly Filipinos, but the crewmembers were wild looking men from the Republic of Kiribati sporting every variation of mohawk, tattoos, and gold teeth.  Joe told me that despite having the appearance of “head-hunters” they were quite all right and not to worry, he was thereby appointing himself my bodyguard.  The chief engineer was German and his second in command was a young Russian man, the third engineer, the electrician, the chief cook, and the cadets were Filipinos.  English was the working language of the vessel but I was the only person on board whose first language was English.  I was also the only passenger and the only woman.

            Itinerary changes are common in commercial shipping, which worked in my favor because I got to take a trip to Mexico before going to China.  This surprise vacation consisted of traipsing around Ensenada near the port, noticing strip joints and knock-off pharmacies selling cheap Viagra, followed by a quick lunch with Joeson my bodyguard.  Over tacos I learned that the conspicuous gentlemen’s clubs we passed are favorite stops for seafarers with a shore pass.  Some seafarers have visited so many of these clubs in port cities around the world that they get anxious before their annual physical because they have to get an HIV test.  Joeson’s only worry, he swore, was that his cholesterol was too high.  Later, we passed Club Xstatis and he knowingly suggested that at least a few of the crewmembers were inside.

            When we walked back to the docks, Joeson carried an extra bag of tacos and I carried a Marie-Claire magazine for quality reading and female affirmation.  We looked like a deliveryman and a ditsy gringa heading for the wrong side of town.  Because Ensenada is close to Tijuana, and because I sometimes live my life by the book of never ending fear and suspicion, when I noticed a tough looking bunch of dudes walking our way at the docks, I reached for my mace.  But Joe waved them over and then I recognized them not as Tijuana drug lords, but as the friendly headhunters from the Gilbert Islands. We stood there for awhile in front of surly Mexican security guards making chit chat and an interesting tableau: blondie with a fashion magazine, Filipino officer, and four South Pacificers with punk rock haircuts.

            “See, they are going to visit some ladies” Joeson chuckled. “They won’t stop talking about it until the next port and they have something new to talk about.”  The guards made no secret of staring at my behind when we went through security and were it not for their machine guns, I would have unloaded my mace on them.  I was experiencing acute wariness in my sternum and my heartbeat orb squirmed at the full realization of being the only woman amidst this sea of men.

            By dinnertime, the steward had still not returned to the ship.  I wondered aloud about kidnapping which led the chief officer to explain the effects of alcohol to me.  Sure enough, about a half an hour before we were scheduled to leave, our steward and another crewmember burped themselves up the gangway, bona fide drunken sailors.  They had been picked up by the Mexican police for unloading their bladders on the street and after paying a fine, delivered back to our ship.  These shenanigans are grounds for dismissal as there is a strict no alcohol policy for the Kiribati, but by breakfast the next morning, the steward was back to looking sharp with a tidy mohawk, pouring coffee and handling the bread tongs with professional flair.

            We changed our course because of two new typhoons that developed in the Pacific.  One hit the Philippines, and the other attacked Japan. Rather than following an arc that would leave us vulnerable to dangerous low-pressure weather, we skirted up to Alaska, through the Aleutian Islands, over to the Russian coast, down through Japan to Korea and then China.  When the captain explained why we were changing course, he became a dark storm himself.  He said he is losing touch with the ocean because the weather patterns have become unpredictable and sea life is disappearing.  “Especially the dolphins, there used to be dolphins everywhere, all the time. Now we rarely see them, and even less we see whales.” He and the chief officer both told me the increasing number of typhoons is proof that nature is sick of us. “Living ashore,” the captain said “people don’t understand the sea is warming, but now we have to change our course too often. The ocean should be colder this time of year, if not typhoons will develop.“ 

            Listening to the captain’s dismay, I came to think that although our modern understanding of the physical universe has been shaped by Newtonian ideas, we still don’t fully understand the cause/effect theory.  For example, I traveled for 22 days (one week in anchorage in the China Sea) on a vessel that was half full of empty containers and half full of containers carrying America’s best rotting animal hides.  The hides are going to Chinese factories to be made into sneakers on the cheap, which will then be sent back, along with other disposable essentials, to California. The ship consumes 160 tons of heavy fuel a day and we took the long way so as to avoid unseasonable typhoons caused (according to the captain’s estimation) by human behavior. My illogical voyage then is an argument for buying less, and for buying locally made goods!

            Another study in cause and effect is that of slow, solo travel; it can cause irritating loneliness, but also unforeseen connections with kindred spirits.  During the voyage to China, Joeson and I developed one of these surprise friendships.  He told me that, had I been traveling with someone, he would feel shy or like an intruder if he approached us for conversation, but since I was alone, he felt comfortable talking to me. At 31, Joeson is on his eleventh year as a seafarer and had been waiting and praying for a passenger who was under the age of retirement. He had even applied for a third mate position (a lower position!) on a cruise ship because he wanted more human contact, but everything was filled.  Seafarers have tricks to fight seasickness (smell orange peel or tiger balm) and tricks to fight libidinous urges (eat papaya), but loneliness is a difficult ailment to cure without the help of a friend.   I was happy to help, and as our friendship grew, I became privy to the inside scoop on sailorly gossip.               

            Meanwhile, Mark, the third mate beamed for the entire voyage because of a fateful encounter that he had with an old friend in Long Beach, where I boarded the ship.  While running errands on his shore leave, he serendipitously ran into his old girlfriend in the Long Beach Wal-Mart, otherwise known as the ‘seaman’s mall’ (more irony in global machinations is that the seafarer carries goods from Shanghai to the west, and then purchases them in the local Wal-Mart to use on the trip back to China). This old girlfriend is a Filipina nurse working in California and apparently shopping at Wal-Mart.  She and the third mate broke up due to the strain of long distance when she was still in the Philippines and he was just a cadet sailing on a Mediterranean liner. But wait! Years later, destiny popped up in the toiletries aisle of a California Wal-Mart and Mark has been smiling since.  A story of love and globalization– the same monstrous chain that ruined my country’s backyard became the location for a cinematic reunion of two lonely hearts working abroad.  It was a truly providential meeting for the third mate and it left him searching the horoscopes in my Marie Claire for some cosmic explanations.

            Despite the missing wives, girlfriends, and family members, birthdays were celebrated on the ship with good cheer and karaoke (invented by a Filipino) in the rec room, which was next to my cabin.  On the night we left Ensenada, the chief cook celebrated his 50th birthday with an impressive amount of Celine Dion and N-Sync dubbed into Tegalo. The trend of macho Asian men singing ‘my heart will go on’ continues to mystify me, but it was a fitting song to hear as we headed up to arctic waters.  I listened with a non-judgmental grin from my cabin and started to read Moby Dick.   We were going to whale territory so I wanted to be intellectually prepared for my transcendent sighting of a great Leviathan.  I identified with Ishmael’s desire to explore the watery part of the world and I was happy to spend my first night on the way to China with gentle waves and crooning Filipinos rocking me to sleep.

            There was a refreshing lack of disdain for ‘chick flicks’ on board which is probably related to the Celine Dion phenomenon- that is, certain culturally constructed gender rules that specify some things (Lady Dion) as categorically gay or girlie in American culture do not exist in maritime culture.  Thus, the rec room had a stockpile of movies starring Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock, or Julia Roberts.  The chief mate could recite Notting Hill, verbatim.  Joeson regularly quoted Kate Hudson.  They giggled like, sailors? when they discussed the plot of My Best Friend’s Wedding. The unabashed romanticism added a confusing dimension to my understanding of a seafarer; does a passion for romantic comedies go together with a love of strip clubs? Regardless of logic, I still wanted to fit in so I set about educating myself by watching at least one romantic comedy day. 

            In addition to analyzing the loveable quirks of leading ladies, the officers often exchanged personal stories of the occult in the bridge of the ship.  At sea, superstition and tall tales of ghostly encounters are well protected from the deadly frost of scientific proof. Steve, also a gifted karaoke star, was particularly accomplished in the art of putting goose bumps on the body.  He never whistled while on board, and did not abide by whistling in his presence, as it is an invitation for strong wind and bad weather to join the journey.  But one evening, as we drew close to the Bering Sea I sat on the deck and watched the last sunlight land with showy panache on the ocean.  I cheered and whistled, and then settled into vespers, full of gratitude for being able to experience such a show.

             Sure enough, fog developed and a sudden icy wind sent me inside. Steve complained about his knee. The weather was quickly becoming cold and damp, which irritated his bones.  “Oh, I was so cold once” he said.  “My dead father came and sat on my bed while I was sleeping.” The ship was passing through what had become an intense fog, almost zero visibility, and darkness started to surround us.  I felt duped by the charismatic sunset—such natural capriciousness! “I couldn’t move at all. The ghost of my father was crying.  He was worried about my brother. I yelled for my wife to turn on the lights but she didn’t wake up.  Eventually she turned over and put her arm around me and then screamed because I was like ice, like death.”  Wind shook the life rafts outside and we closed the door because the winter weather was creeping inside.  “When she turned on the light we both saw my father stand up and leave the room. Later he inhabited my sister’s body, but I’ll tell you that story later….don’t worry, we only have one ghost on this ship.”

            Night fell, the temperature dropped, and the swells started to grow.  We were 12 hours away from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.  Joeson joined us in the bridge and let me read the weather report sent in to the ship.  Without previous experience to relate the alarming report to, I felt claustrophobic dread run through my veins upon reading the words STORM WARNING. STRONG WINDS. Seas 18 to 24 ft.  I had just learned that despite the size of our ship, capsizing is still a danger in bad weather and that hypothermia would get me in about 20 minutes—there would be no time to lower the life boat in the event of capsizing, it would be everyman, and me, swimming alone.  I looked for reassurance:

“So, we are going to avoid the bad weather right?” I asked.

“Do you want some coffee?” Joeson replied.

“Wow, the wind sure is strong, so….what happens when there is a storm warning?”

“Did you ever see the movie Music and Lyrics?”

“No. Do you think the weather will be bad then?”

“Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore, so funny, oh I love that movie”

“What is the worst weather you have seen—why does the boat capsize again?”

“I think I’m gonna watch that movie again after my watch—it makes me so happy.”

Nobody would respond to my insistent requests to talk about the worst-case scenario. I went to my cabin and took four sleeping pills to quiet my mind as I rolled back and forth in bed listening to the steel creak, trying to banish Melville’s words “for ever and ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder man, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make.” I kept my bathroom light on to dissuade the resident ghost from visiting me on the night of a storm. I promised not to whistle again. Poseidon snapped back with stronger gusts and angrier waves. In preparation for my watery demise, I attempted a prayerful joining of my soul with the spirits of the depths but they tormented me until the magical effect of sleeping pills overpowered my fear.

            The next day, the second mate told me it is unlucky to talk too much about the weather. The storm had passed, the swells were back to three meters, and the sun was strong.  I felt an absurd sense of accomplishment just for surviving the night. I thanked him for saving our lives by not indulging my desire to discuss the details of arctic storms and then kept vigil with binoculars looking for whales.  Possessed with the monomaniacal madness of Ahab, I stayed glued to the watch.  I tried black magic, I tried singing to them, I tried meditating.  I scanned every wave’s crest  (called a ‘white horse’) waiting for a giant humpback to communicate with me. The electrician joined us in the bridge and told me the best way to see whales is to go on a Princess Cruise to Alaska.  Apparently the cruise line sold its soul to the devil in exchange for whale sightings; it works in tandem with a ranger who goes out to sea and emits some sort of sonic wave under water.  The sonic boom makes the whales jump (duh, cause and effect) and guarantees a photo op and satisfactory nature experience for the passengers.  I didn’t see even one whale spout, but at least I came by my disappointment honestly.  Conceding defeat, I communed instead with one of Aleutian’s gracefully aging snowy volcanoes.

             The night after my failed whale watch, I dreamt that I looked out of my cabin window and saw three foamy circles float up from the waves into the sky.  After the circles evaporated in the sky I looked down at the sea and the swells were enormous and bright green. The boat pitched violently but instead of being scared I was delighted.  Upon consulting my dream dictionary, I discovered that dreaming of circles can be interpreted as a manifestation of feeling complete and comfortable in the self; dreaming of waves can indicate inner exploration and spiritual expansion.  Indeed I did feel complete and round (the ship had a very good cook), unfettered from the chaotic schedule of my life on land.  Also, since my body had relaxed/been forced into the rhythm of the tides and I highly appreciated each celestial extravaganza, I must have expanded spiritually. Well! according to my dream then, the consequence of unplugging from the world of cell phone relationships and too many engagements, was an induction into a world of spiritual growth and inner harmony.    

            We sailed through the Bering Sea occasionally encountering stoic Russian islands, but no more storms.  I continued my course in romantic comedy and reading Moby Dick.  I wore a winter jacket and smiled timidly at the waves. They were strict disciplinarians, administering a chilly punishment to those who goofed off on deck.  At night the ocean and the cosmos competed fiercely to inspire the most awe from my tiny soul.  I gasped at Jupiter and the milky way swirling directly above, but then gasped harder at the dark sea pounding the ship, but then I looked up again and gasped at the white spray of billions of stars, until finally the icy, effervescent spray from below hissed at me so I called a draw—Both water and sky were equally and infinitely mysterious.

            After a week in 54 latitude, I had forgotten that it wasn’t actually winter.  I was confused one morning when I went outside and the ocean wasn’t in its usual fearsome mood–it had lightened up a bit.  The air was warm, almost balmy.   Since we left Alaska, we had been retarding the clocks one hour each evening, a process that resulted in me waking up for the day at 4am mildly disorientated.  Back on the Pacific Ocean, a day away from Japan, I was additionally confused by temperature.  My internal clock and thermometer by which I gage the time and season were completely off kilter; passing through many latitudes and the International Date Line is like an exaggerated game of pin the tail on the donkey.  At the same time however, the process of crossing the ocean was less upsetting to my internal compass than zooming through the air.  Traveling to far off places always shakes up my system, and until now, traveling by ship was the gentlest way to transport my body to the other side of the world.

            In fact, Joeson told me that ships like the Hanjin Phoenix are a popular way to transport many bodies to far off places– it is just not so gentle for most who travel by freighter. “In China and Africa we have to stay and do a stowaway sweep to make sure there are no people hiding on the vessel” he said.  They sneak onboard by swimming to the docked ships at night and hide in the engine room, the garbage bins, the cargo hold, or near the mast.  The crew usually knows a few days after departure if there is a stowaway on board because of the smell—they have to relieve themselves somewhere.  Once they are discovered, their fate is up to the master of the ship. According to word on the sea, when a stowaway is found on a ship with Filipino officers, they are humanely delivered to the next port of call and the shipping company pays the expense of sending the stowaway back home.  But if the stowaway is unfortunate enough to have chosen a ship with Russian or Ukrainian officers, they can expect to be thrown overboard or severely beaten.

            During his miserable tenure as a young and overworked AB (able bodied seaman i.e. one who chips rust and paints the ship endlessly in dangerous and frigid conditions) Joeson himself uncovered a stowaway who had snuck onto the ship in Nigeria.  Quebec was their scheduled next port of call, which meant, if discovered, the stowaway would go through a long process before repatriation, and might even be able to stay in Canada.  For this reason, ships scheduled to sail straight to Canada from Africa are especially popular targets for stowaways, but with last minute port changes being so common it is never a guarantee that the ships will maintain their original schedule.  Such was the case on Joeson’s ship. After he discovered one stowaway, two others were found and then the boat made a last minute stop in Ghana where they picked up extra cargo and delivered their extra passengers. Before the stowaways disembarked, Joeson learned from one of them that he had been sold the information about which vessel was scheduled to sail to the west by a local politician in Lagos.  That stowaway was a professional and had made it all the way to Brazil once (the best time in his life, he said).  There are also more extreme cases of human smuggling that involve shipping people in the containers, but now ports use x-rays to examine the cargo.  Still, the chief officer told me of a case in France where an unsuspecting truck driver discovered 24 dead stowaways from China in his delivery. He scowled as he said, “this kind of business makes a lot of people a lot of money.”   

            Of course it is not just people that travel illegally.  “Everybody who works in this industry has been approached with an offer to smuggle something—usually gold or drugs.” Joeson told me. “We have a good, clean ship now, but I have been on other ships…” One of those other ships happened to be the same ship with the professional stowaway.  From Quebec they went to Bombay where Indian Customs officers found 350,000 US dollars behind a panel in the chief officer’s cabin ceiling. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison in India for running a gold smuggling racket. There is a rumor of a Kiribati man awaiting execution in China for smuggling drugs through Shanghai.  And one year, Steve was on a vessel traveling from Columbia to Miami when they found two stowaways in the ship’s tanks.  The vessel dutifully notified the DEA (whenever stowaways are found coming from Columbia the ship must notify the DEA) and 8 million dollars worth of cocaine was found in cubbyholes that had been welded underwater to the bottom of the vessel.  All this information made me curious about how much the economic recession, with the decrease in shipping, affected the black market economy.

            Sailing through the Sea of Japan was like going through a slalom course of fishermen. We made clumsy turns around tiny fishing boats, looming above them and creating a wake that almost docked our score. We passed through a sudden rainstorm, which left a dazzling but malicious double rainbow that we also had to avoid due to another superstition; leprechauns don’t go to sea, but squalls and evil spirits do.  Joeson was excited because a real human hand, not the GPS, was needed to steer.  He explained how to maneuver the vessel (5 degrees portside, 10 degrees starboard side etc.) and offered me a quick try but I don’t even know how to drive a car so I opted to remain a watchful passenger as we zigzagged in suspense to Korea, avoiding rainbow spirits and fishing men.

            Due to the recession, many boats have been anchored for months and the ports are only half full of cargo.  Upon arrival in Pusan, the officers were surprised to see the port nearly full.  “Last year, this whole place was empty” said Joeson as we took a brisk walk on land “it looks like the economy is getting a little better.” It felt great to be on solid ground.  I skipped around the port like a woman who had been on a ship for two and a half weeks. We ate Korean snacks in the port canteen and I was overwhelmed with affection for the female cafeteria workers. I wanted to hug them.  More than anything, I missed a balanced ratio of the sexes. By the time we reached Korea, I had come to empathize with seafarers for the unbearable lack of yin on the ship to the extent that I could almost understand (were it not for my principles) the lustful visits ashore. 

            Sometimes women do make it onboard vessels during extended periods of anchorage in remote places.  Our ship was in anchorage for a week about fifty miles off the coast of Shanghai.  We didn’t receive any visitors, but had we been anchored off the coasts of Thailand, Vietnam, or the south of the Philippines, we might have been boarded by groups of women who motor out to sea in small boats.  Some of them set up food and drink stalls in the aft, some act as ‘wives’ for the seafarers, doing laundry and cleaning their cabins, and others are simply prostitutes.  If anchorage is a traffic jam, the ladies are the people who walk through selling ice-cold water and soda.  Of course it is the captain’s decision whether to let them board or not, but in Thailand if they are not allowed to board, then the stevedores won’t unload the cargo at the port.  Joeson joked that the Thai system was similar to the unions we have in the United States. 

            We were anchored in the East China Sea, surrounded to each horizon by other parked vessels.  Though I was surprised by the number of other vessels waiting to dock, the chief officer told me the ocean was comparatively empty—another sign of the recession.  “It used to be like a city with no parking spots,” he said.  Cabin fever struck me hard during those days because the ship just lazed around in the hot sun. Everything stayed the same except the increasing number of flies. I finished Moby Dick and wandered around staring at the silt in the water.  How did those whale men manage years at sea?!  Once, we received a pirate warning from the South China Sea which momentarily shook me out of my drowsy stupor, but the ceaseless rolling forced me back; even the excitement of pirates couldn’t compete with the hypnotic power of gentle swells and hazy sun.  Joeson let me use the radio and I called random vessels to practice Chinese phrases with them: “Bao Lin, come in, Bao Lin, this is Hanjin Phoenix– I like to play badminton every afternoon.” But then one of the vessels told me to shut up so mostly I sat in a lawn chair on deck watching yellow finches flirt with each other and plotting my future success.

            Strangely, the sea during the last few days on board was the same emerald color that I had dreamt about in Alaska. When I pointed this out to Joeson and Steve they told me their thoughts about my dream.  When I told them about it before, in Alaska, neither seemed very interested, but actually, they both had ominous interpretations of my dream that they didn’t want to discuss while still in potentially treacherous waters.  Seafarers use the term “green seas” when the ocean is in its deadliest mood, and last winter our own ship had been badly damaged in a storm by green seas.  The steel wave breaker in the forward had been completely mangled and a steel post was ripped out during a storm in the Bering Sea.  In severe storms the worst waves come in threes, the “tres marias.”  The first is strong, the second is stronger, and the third rips out posts.  Joeson and Steve believed I had some sort prophetic dream that foresaw the wrath of green seas and tres marias attacking our vessel.  It was an interesting example of hermeneutics; I believed the symbols in my dream represented spiritual transitions and the sailors believed they pointed to tempestuous destruction.  I assured them my interpretation correct because we hadn’t been attacked by the tres marias but I was happy that I wouldn’t be on the ship during the stormy winter months, just in case.

              One night, right before we went in to Shanghai, the electrician hung colored lights and brought out the boom box for a BBQ party on the chief engineer’s deck. The Kiribati crewmembers came up, the cook and the cadet manned the grill, the captain drank Heineken, Filipino pop music blared, we were all smiles, and the Russian second engineer warned me that after the fun, there would probably be a fight.  We had just learned about a murder that happened in the engine room of another German owned ship after a night of drinking. “Sometimes the crew get in fights, this guy killed a cadet with a knife from the kitchen–alcohol.” Joeson said.  I spied on other vessels with the binoculars to see if they were also having BBQ parties or knife fights.  Sitting there eating grilled shrimp and leche flan with Kiribati, Filipinos, Russians, and Germans, in the middle of the ocean parking lot, I felt like I uncovered a secret society, a brotherhood of festive, semi-lawless ships, hidden from land waiting to load up with China’s bounty.

            The shipping industry carries about 90 percent of international trade, and every product it transports has been through an adventure.  On the way to China as raw material or on the way back as finished products, maybe our sneakers witnessed a knife fight or suffered though green seas and tres marias.  They might have seen women boarding the ship, a tired able-bodied seamen crying in the cold, or a professional stowaway. They could have been pushed up against a million dollars of cocaine.  They moved through the sea on giant freighters operated by anonymous, sentimental men.  After my voyage on the Hanjin Phoenix, each time I see a shipping container I’ll think about the secret life of cargo and the unknown seafarers who ride on white horses across the ocean to deliver our “affordable” goods.                 

It took nine years, one month, and twenty-four days. But I finally got them ~ the Spanish flamenco shoes I’ve always wanted.

Way back in the day when my first-born was a toddling one-year old and my son was merely a glimmer in our eyes, we hosted an English language student from Madrid. She was a lovely soul who had studied economics and had come to the States to brush up her English. It turns out our Spanish equalled her English ~ da nada. We gesticulated and smiled and admired each other in that friendly nice-to-meet you way most international travellers do. It was then that I started a love affair with Spanish shoes because the girl had a pair I secretly coveted from Day One. They were simple ~black with a delicate strap that said “I am woman. Watch me tap.” They clicked and clacked eloquently across the hardwood floors of our Somerville home, a dancer’s lunge from Boston.  Those shoes, in all their brightness, even made me forget how little the girl and I could actually communicate.

For years I searched high, then low, for a similar pair of those black beauties. Our lovely Spanish student went home after completing her language course, sending us a condolence card of thanks because she must have thought the flower on the front was pretty. Patiently, nay, reverently, I looked for a pair of clackers just like she had in every corner of the city. To no avail.

That is, until I recently found myself in Barcelona on a power of slow trip like no other. My sister and I snatched our passports (and our husbands) for a long weekend on the Mediterranean Coast. Passing by a few boutique stores in search of a new handbag, I spotted the long-awaited footwear that seemed to call out to me like a siren’s song.

Within minutes I was the proud new owner of a pair of Flamenco heels that literally announced my arrival along the cobblestone streets. I smartly clacked my way back to the hotel with a renewed sense of purpose.

It may have taken nearly a decade, but embracing the slow fulfillment of a dream such as this was worthwhile and makes every new step I take all the sweeter for it.

Nothing feels slower than waiting for wind to sweep you 3000 miles to land. This time last year we boarded a 50 ft 1930s Norwegian ketch and did exactly that. The voyage was not without its fair share of drama, being stalked by whales and snapping masts, but it remains one of the most relaxing times of our 2 year around the world adventure. Check out below an account of 4 weeks in which sea, sky, a block of wood and 4 friends became our world.

We got on board Lista Light ready to set sail across the Atlantic in late October last year. We ended up leaving on the 21st December. It therefore wasn’t surprising that our planned departure time was slipped from morning to midday to sunset. Our voyage was destined to be a very, very slow one. Indeed it wasn’t until we had cycled through Las Palmas laden with twice my weight in vegetables, slathered beef fat on the masts, stowed any moving object in sight and eaten £7 worth of Haagen Daz ice cream that we were finally ready to let slip the stern lines and head into the open Ocean. Despite bracing ourselves for the worst, the ice cream stayed down and the fresh veg lasted us until week 3. The beef dripping, however, would later prove futile and stowing was hardly a necessary concern as after only 3 days progress the winds refused to blow and we entered the era of The Great Becalming.

On the morning of the 24th December I woke up to find that the world had literally stopped moving to celebrate my birthday. By far my most attention seeking triumph yet. The swooshing wind and raging sea had vanished and we were left with a cloudless blue sky and glassy sea. This was just as well because the boat had a birthday feast of pizza, crisps, puddings, cakes and joy planned for me and any ripples might have interrupted the cooking. So it was in this silent sea that Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2008 rolled around and took on one of the most surreal I have yet to experience. A becalming has a very strange effect on people’s behavior. Lista Light took on characteristics more akin to an asylum than transatlantic vessel. A ‘normal’ scene would be Dan and Nick in full length Moroccan jalabas waving fishing rods vacantly back and forth at our stern, Dave tinkering with some tools in a red boiler suit and goggles, and Kat attempting aerobics in half a meter square of space at the bow.

It was a surreal 5 days sitting in a little wooden boat going nowhere in a big flat still pond of an empty sea . And, during The Great Becalming the sea only conspired to add to the crazy vibes. On Boxing day evening Dave and Kat called us all to deck after hearing bizarre blowing and puffing noises in the sea. Stumbling onto the deck we try to decipher what is out there, but all we can do is hear the spluttering noises and every now and then see a flash of phosphorescence as something creeps its way around the boat. Fearful imagination runs riot as sight fails us. Suddenly we are trespassers in a world we don’t begin to understand and all we can do is sit in it and guess what might be out there. The stories we had heard of whales sinking boats come rapidly to the fore. One evening though, we could make out dolphins diving down and torpedoing their way back up out of the water with a blow. Suddenly the sea monsters slipped to the back of our minds and we could enjoy the firework display of the ocean. Even the micro fauna got a look in. After spotting patches of orange on the water from afar we (slowly) drifted over towards it, nervously creeping towards what looked more and more unnatural floating in the water (to a War of the Worlds theme tune to heighten expense). When we finally hit the orange sludge (some kind of flagellate apparently) the movement of our boat through it made it vividly glow bright green, blue and purple. Like radioactive waste there was a moment we feared this red algae might corrode us, but then we realized it was just another ocean spectacle.

By the 30th December Nick and I were ready for some wind. Ten days in and most people would be half way across by now. We hadn’t even started heading West. Thankfully on the 31st we had drifted far enough South to pick up the trade winds. Desperate for something to do we all scrambled for sails and sheets and got as much up as possible. Before we knew it we were heading 260 degrees at 5 knots. On the morning of the 1st we even had a pod of 20 or so dolphins leaping, flipping, diving and playing around the boat and 3 petrels diving in amongst the waves to celebrate the end of the becalming. It felt good to be on the road again!

Within a couple of days of 2009, after the driest Birthday, Christmas and New Year I will hopefully ever experience, we were up to 6 knots and making great progress West. Speed was on our side and so we got stuck into one of the most anticipated activities of the crossing: Fishing. To begin with our fishing triumph was entirely passive as flying fish simply hurled themselves onto our deck throughout the night. The first to make this fatal error hit Kat smack in the face whilst she was on night watch. Once the scales had been scraped from her face and calm restored we realised that we could eat these strange little invaders. Night watches became considerably more entertaining when armed with winch handle and listening out for a flipping noises on the deck it was easy enough to race around the deck smashing heads off and bucketing fish ready for tomorrow’s lunch. We probably got through a good 30 of them before the novelty wore off; not only do they look like aliens but they also have more bones, scales and wing than anything really edible.

After this episode we moved onto bigger and better things. Our squid lure, a good 40 m out the back managed to bag us a Dolphin Fish one day and a horrendously mutilated Barracuda another. The Dolphin Fish was happily gorged on for 2 hours over an unusually silent lunch but the Barracuda was chewed down more reluctantly. Not only did it look like something not of this earth with its guts hanging out its savagely tooth filled mouth, but we also read that Barracudas are sometimes toxic and will cause the central nervous system to shut down. Not the greatest catch.

The real winner was the last catch. One evening the boys shout that they’ve caught something and they think its big. Here we go again catching some ghastly monster I’ll be made to eat. Shouts grow more excitable and so I race up and watch on whilst the boys struggle pulling in a line that is racing around from left to right, up and down. Despite some nasty plunges down and wire nearly taking off Dan’s hands we finally see the beast below and the boys fight him up with cries of ‘wow’ ‘oh my god’ and plenty of worse obscenities. Nick, being the manly sea hero that he now is, grappled the gaff (long thing with big hook on the end) and speared the beast in the neck and flings him up onto deck where Dave gets him under foot and Nick pushed the gaff in further. Excitement and adrenaline is high as the boys feel their masculinity sore and the girls look on in admiration. There’s now a fish about the same size as me flapping around under Dave’s feet and there is blood everywhere. I squeal because I’m a girl and I thought it would make the men feel more heroic. I hand over the mega chopper from the kitchen and the boys proceed to hack away the head. Thankfully the fish is dead pretty quickly. The deck is red with blood. We sit back and contemplate the fact that we Lista Light of notoriously bad fishing skills caught a 1.5 m Wahoo and are going to eat like Kings for days to follow. And we did. This fish was all meat. Fish steak, fish goujons, fish pie, fish cakes, fish pate, fish sandwiches, fish pasta, fish stir-fry, fish coming out of our ears 24 hours a day. The line remained firmly on board for the next couple of weeks.

As we came to the end of the Wahoo feasting at 1600 miles from land, slap bang in the middle of the Atlantic tragedy struck Lista. At 6am Nick grabs me out of bed for my watch and I commence the routine that I know only too well. Head torch, clothes, life jacket, deck, darkness, quick chat, alone and contemplate life for two hours. However this time I only got as far as the life jacket and I hear a snap. It doesn’t sound good. Nick shouts for me to get Dave NOW but Dave’s already heard and has flung himself out of bed donning nothing but a lime green blanket that he frantically clutches around his bits as he shouts in a panic, ‘What was that?’. ‘The running back stay has snapped’, Nick’s voice sounded serious and Dave leaps to the deck. The next 15 seconds Nick helplessly looks on as our main mast throws itself from side to side in the swell. Then the worst sound you could hear on a boat – crunching, cracking and snapping wood. It sounded like we had been hit by lightening. Dave got on deck just in time to see it ‘f****************k, f***********************k’. I will never forget the sound of his anguish and panic. I race on deck and its hard to make much out in the darkness. The moon just sinks behind the horizon and all you can see is the outlines of shrouds, sails, mast, wire, rope hanging off the sides of the boat dragging down into the ocean. We are still traveling at 5 knots and so first thing is to head into the wind and slow the boat. I get to the helm, Dave and Nick start hauling anything back in that can, but mostly just grabbing knives and the angle grinder to start cutting it all away. Now the sparks of the angle grinder reveal the loss. The boat is empty and bare at its bow and vulnerability is high. There is splintered and broken wood everywhere. Kat starts getting the life raft ready and Dan mans extra pumps as the remains of the mast knock hard against the hull. The moment you fear whenever at sea, especially half way across an ocean.

But by 8 am we were all sat at the helm with the engine running and the darkness was beginning to lift. No one really knew what to say but we were alive, on the boat and hadn’t been holed, which was good news. Lista however looked completely broken, the stump of the mast would have looked more at home in a torn down rainforest. All that sail, wood, and shrouds that had got us this far were somewhere floating thousands of metres towards the bottom of the sea. However, over the next few days we all had little choice other than getting on with what had to be done. Dave spent an ambitious few hours over the next couple of days hanging on up the remaining mast fixing some temporary rigging. We re-rigged the mizzen sail onto the stump of the main and put up whatever sail we could manage.

Now more than ever we were keen to get there as quickly and safely as possible. For a moment, whilst Dave was up the broken mast this aim was dashed by our biggest visitor of the crossing. The whole crew was on deck on afternoon in silence concentrating on not letting Dave plunge to the deck when Nick and I spotted the huge face and bulge of a whale surfing down a wave heading directly for our stern. It was almost a comical sight because it looks so huge its ridiculous, but we really didn’t need to be ploughed into by a whale right now. Luckily though the visitor was just curious and repeated this action over and over again that afternoon and remained there for the next four days, surfing in the waves up to the boat, plunging under it and surfacing to blow just 10 m or so from us. We were being stalked by a Minke Whale. We spent 4 days watching our new friend and became quite attached, worried even that he was trying to flirt with us and we weren’t responding probably or that he thought we were its mother. We never will know why we befriended by a whale.

Once Minke the Moocher left us we were into the final week of the crossing. It was inevitably a slow one and though you tell yourself not to count down the days for worry that the wind might stop, the temptation is too great. Especially because it was the wettest part of the trip and some days we would all be huddled up damp and muggy downstairs eating everything and anything. That is apart from whoever is on watch who strips off and temporarily enjoys showering in the fresh water of the squall before getting a bit cold and miserable when realising that you now have another hour and a half of being naked, cold and damp alone on deck. Gradually though evidence of land popped up in the form of floating buoys, different birds, more dolphins, a few more boats and some crackling noises on our radio. At one point a small fishing boat came within 50m or so of us and suddenly seeing other humans was alarming enough for us all to worry about pirates. Firearms turned out to be the least of our worries though when 2 days later we came within 20m of colliding with a fishing boat anchored at sea and not under watch. It would be rubbish to go under when this close and so watches became more vigilant.

Yet slowly but surely the numbers on the GPS counted down. 3 sleeps to go, 2 sleeps to go… becalmed again so still 2 more to go, and then finally it is the final night watch. The dim lights of land begin to show in the night sky and then sure enough through the binoculars we could see St. Maarten. I came to take over from Nick and the horizon was littered with stars. Turns out it was land. I spent the next 2 hours excitably racing around the deck making out land marks and checking the chart for unseen rocks. This time tomorrow we were going to be on land! At 7 30 am we were all called to deck by Dave for breakfast and just to our starboard is the rocky outline of a Caribbean island. We had made it. We had crossed 3,100 miles in just under 31 days. We had come almost totally under the power of the wind across one of the world’s oceans and were about to set foot on land. The feeling was euphoric.