I think I can, I know I can, I will...

I felt peaceful the first morning I woke up alone on the boat. The normally warm, heavy air seemed fresher, the sounds of the birds chirping it carried seemed clearer, and for the first time I actually felt at home in my new home. Though there was fear lurking around, there was also inspiration, and I felt assured that I had made the right decisions. To prolong the romanticism I was feeling, and to set a tone for my future aboard Mara Noka, I made myself a cup of tea and a nice breakfast of ripe plantains smashed in manioc flour then fried. I brought my yoga mat out on deck for the first time, and sat for awhile in the early morning sun. I stretched and hummed and tried to clear my mind.

Hans came over some time later to inspect the boat. He immediately began giving me jobs to do―solutions to problems I would have never seen otherwise. He instructed me to come tie up to Ontong Java so that he would be able to help when I needed it, told me that he would put out fenders and be waiting, and then he left. I then found myself facing my first obstacle as a boat owner―I had never pulled up an anchor. Not only would I have to somehow learn to do it, and do it quickly, but there was a reef about ten yards off my stern. My hands began shaking, and palms sweating. “This isn’t someone else’s boat Kiana, this is your boat. You have to do this,” I sternly affirmed myself. I took a few deep breaths, grabbed the stainless steel handle and fit it into its slot in the anchor winch. I tugged at the anchor rope, whilst my heart was attempting to come up and out of my throat, and began pulling in the slack. I brought up a few meters of chain and then the rode went taut. I wrapped the chain around the winch and went for it. Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack―then the pressure was gone. Fuck, the anchor was floating. Now what?!?! I secured my fingers in the links and started pulling. It was heavy. I wondered how deep it was. I pulled. The sound of chain links scraping against metal consumed my mind. Then came a cling-CLANG. There was the anchor. I tied it off and looked back. The distance I had between the reef and me was slowly becoming shorter. My hands felt like putty. I jumped down into my engine compartment and yanked. It started right away, thank God. I clicked it into forward and revved, then jumped out of the engine box and stumbled over to the wheel. As the boat effortlessly steered through the anchorage, I began to calm down. Hans was standing on his stern and he began directing me with the hand signals I knew so well from my time aboard Ontong Java. I pulled up off his starboard and shut off the engine. Mara Noka continued drifting on momentum and I steered us a little closer. Hans and his crew, Marius, tossed me lines and fended the boats off as they came together. After a minute or two, we were tied up and all was calm. “Woah… you did that…” I patted myself on the back.

During the next few days I hammered, and screwed, and planed. I did all kinds of things I had never done before. I felt strong. Hans came to me after lunch time as I was smoking a spliff and said that he thought I should start looking for crew. “I don’t think I want crew, I don’t know if I can handle that again…” I said. “Well, your only other option is to go out there alone,” he replied. But where would I go now? I had convinced myself I wanted to get to Florida in order to find a job, however after a week alone aboard Mara Noka, I felt as if we had greater things in store for us. I could never do it by myself, though. God forbid. I had only just learned to pull up an anchor. So I opened myself up to the idea of welcoming a new crew. And just like that, a couple of hours later, a young boy of about 18 paddled up to our rafted up boats in a kayak. He was looking for room on a boat as crew. I welcomed him aboard, we talked, and we did some work together. I wrote down his phone number before he left, and let him know I’d be in touch. But Hans’s words were ringing through my mind incessantly—”go out there alone.” Could I really do that? Would it even be possible?

At dinner that evening I brought it up again. “Do you think I’d make it?” “Make what?” he asked. “Do you think I would survive a trip to Florida by myself?” He replied powerfully, “I mean, you’ve made it this far, haven’t you?” Yeah, but not alone… I felt as if I wasn’t getting my question answered. At the same time, however, I could hear a voice inside my head screaming what I wanted to hear. YES. OF COURSE YOU’D MAKE IT. I didn’t need the validation, I just needed to make a decision. And right then, I felt as if I had. Excitement and empowerment pulsed through my veins.

As I do with all things once I decide on them, I told everyone (―everyone also included my lover in California. It was a sad and hard thing to do. We both could see the distance it would create between us, not just in miles but in sentiment. He had been my biggest fan, and now I was letting him down―). That way I couldn’t back out. So in my mind, it was set. I would embark on this journey singlehandedly. Hans supported me, and even suggested that I follow him until the Bahamas through the Windward Passage, should I need any help during my first few weeks alone (not that he’d be able to do much besides give me advice over the VHF). Here were more puzzle pieces falling into place, graciously, creating the mosaic that will be my life.

I told my family rather cryptically what my plans were. I told them I was planning on going out to sea alone. They shrugged it off, not fully understanding what I was going to do. They told me to tie up to Hans’s boat so that he could tow me. They cared about my well-being, but I could tell they couldn’t comprehend the situation, and in some ways that made me feel better. Even though it was naiveté, I wasn’t getting any negative pushback. It helped.

The time to leave went from a date days away, to being the next morning so quickly. I had 60 gallons of water aboard, and provisions to last me three months. The first leg of our trip would be one that I had undertaken quite a few times before. 40 miles―from Puerto Lindo to Cayo Chichime in the San Blas archipelago. With the fluky Panamanian winds, and my inexperience, it would take us about 24 hours. That meant I would have to [learn to] sail my boat through the day and night, and somehow get sleep. I was so nervous that I could barely close my eyes all night. At first light I heard a rustle on the deck of Ontong Java so I peaked my head out. “Are you ready to go?” Hans asked in that tone I knew so well, the one where it doesn’t matter if you are ready because he is. “I’m going to untie you, and you just start your engine and drive out of the channel. I’ll be right behind you.” Sweat was dripping from my palms. Was this really happening?!

Moments later the lines were untied and Mara Noka and I began drifting backwards. I started the engine, set the speed, and began making my way through the channel. Crrrrrrhhhhhhhh. That didn’t sound good at all. I looked over my port side and noticed the water had a depth of maybe 12 inches. Just great. Not even two minutes powering the boat alone and I had already scraped my bottom on a reef. I convinced myself that the noise wasn’t so loud, and that I could barely even feel the lumpy reef vibrating through the plywood to my bare feet. So I continued on and didn’t mention it to anyone, with fingers crossed and hopes that I wouldn’t sink on the first leg of my trip. I realized then that I had never gotten back to the boy on the kayak...