If you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you already know that I am married to a sailor. He’s a pleasure sailor, not a sea captain-type, but he’s been one since he was 6 years old, when he found his first abandoned leaky rowboat floating in the marshes after a big spring storm in his hometown, Ocean City, New Jersey. He hid the derelict boat in a tiny inlet on one of the marshy islands and waded to it at low tide. With no oars for the rowboat, he couldn’t get very far. Finally, his father heard about his somewhat risky adventure, and figuring that if his son was that determined, he ought to buy him a real rowboat (a 12-foot Bateau) at age 7.
When I met Dave he owned a Catalina 27, and shortly after we married we bought an Endeavor 38, a sloop. I wanted it mostly to entertain on it. He wanted it to sail, of course. In either case, it’s a beauty still, I’ll admit, even though I don’t hardly sail. I get seasick, you see, if I get into open ocean. But Dave enjoys going to the boat regularly, kept at a dock in San Diego (even as a double amputee he’s quite agile at it). He sails for the day, or a jaunt of a few days with his sailing buddies.
My hubby reads sailing magazines like I read ones about cooking. And rarely do the two interests intersect. His magazine articles are full of words like “floating sheeting-point tracks” or “wing keel.” Sounds mostly like Greek to me still, even after 25+ years of marriage to a sailor. But one day recently Dave wanted to tell me about a story he’d just read, written by Deborah Shapiro (pictured above in her galley, with some of her on-board dishes) in the recent issue of Cruising World (May, 2009). First he pointed to the gorgeous photo of this boat, the Northern Light, and began telling me about the couple who sail it. The boat is a 40-foot cutter-rigged steel ketch (see, more of those words again – see vocabulary at the end of this post).
That’s the kind of photo that sends chills up my spine. But sends thrills up Dave’s spine, and those of most saltwater sailors. “Rail down” (in the water), it’s called. See how the boat is tilted, the wind filling the sails and leaning it over on its side. Sailors love to have pictures of their boats rail down. That’s macho, you know. But it makes my stomach lurch as I look at it. There, at the helm, is Rolf Bjelke in his yellow slicker. Likely his wife Deborah, the first mate, took the photo.
They met in Fiji in 1980. Rolf is Scandinavian, and was sailing his boat, obviously stopping in Fiji. At the time Deborah (from the U.S. of A) was a novice at small boats. But she was willing to learn. A year or so later she suggested they sail to the Arctic as a “training trip.” [Can you imagine – sailing to the Arctic as a TRAINING trip?] Yes, well, off they went. Some months later on their sailing journey, Deborah had not jumped ship, nor had Rolf put her ashore at the first port. They happened to be shopping in Boston. She spotted some Corelle dinnerware. You know Corelle, right? The glass dishes that don’t scratch and don’t BREAK! Having used some grungy scratched plastic dishes since 1967, my guess is that Rolf didn’t much care about how his dishes looked. Nor did he believe the Corelle dishes were unbreakable. The salesclerk demonstrated – she flung the plate “like a Frisbee” to a tile floor. It landed unbroken. So purchase them they did, and off they went, continuing their odyssey (Arctic to Antarctica). And that began the nearly continuous sailing they’ve done ever since. Rolf and Deborah are now accomplished documentary filmmakers, photographers and authors. Put them in port somewhere and they get itchy to get back into cold-cold water somewhere, in places most people would never see, could never see, except from a boat.
Deborah, along with the Corelle dishes (and a few other dishes purchased along the way – some rimmed china soup bowls especially acquired for a favorite Swedish pea soup that must be grazed through a little jot of mustard placed on the rim, plus a couple of ceramic mugs acquired in 2000) have logged over 22,500 miles aboard Northern Light. Rolf has skippered Northern Light across 214,000 miles (equal to the distance from Earth to the moon). Whew. I’m tremendously impressed.
In 1989 Rolf & Deborah actually sailed to the Antarctic peninsula and let the boat get frozen in the fast ice (that’s why they need a steel-hulled boat) for the entire winter. If you look at the photo of the boat above, just to the right of Rolf you can see a roundish shape – that’s a clear bubble skylight that allows Rolf & Deborah to peek up into the landscape without opening hatches which would let in the frigid sub-Arctic air. It was after that winter they wrote two books about the experience.
They wrote Time on Ice: A Winter Voyage to Antarctica as a shared endeavor, each chapter penned by one, then the other. Deborah wrote Letters from the Sea too. Perhaps the subjects aren’t for every reader, but I like Deborah’s writing style, so I may try to find one or both at my local used bookstore. Even though there will be lots of words and phrases I won’t understand. And since I’d like to know what they did, stuck down below on their boat for months on end, frozen in the ice. Scrabble? Solitaire? Reading? I mean, how many books can you really take for a winter stuck in ice? Surely they didn’t cook a lot. Couldn’t waste either food or the propane to cook it with. Write? – well yes, they obviously “worked” some too. And likely cuddled a lot to keep warm. My curiosity is piqued.
So here’s a salute to the Bjelkes and to Corelle. The dishes are still being made, and I’d guess Deborah & Rolf are still using theirs. Now I want to know what kind of hand cream Deborah uses!
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Photos reproduced by permission from Deborah Shapiro and Cruising World magazine. Yes, I did get permission from Deborah – she responded to a special kind of email called sailmail (messages mostly read by marine radio) as they are sailing somewhere out in the wild blue ocean, nowhere near an internet connection. But do remember, even if you’re confined on a sailboat frozen in the Arctic, some people still like nice dishes. I can appreciate that feeling. For the record, I don’t own any Corelle dishes. On our boat we have some clunky, heavy duty plastic dishes that have knife scratches just like Rolf’s did. And, in case you’re interested, Rolf & Deborah’s ongoing articles will be in upcoming issues of Cruising World. I’ll be reading them. And yes, we have a photo of our boat rail down too. And, I really have learned a lot of nautical language even though I pretend I haven’t.
Nautical Vocabulary Lesson: (mostly defined by my husband):
Ketch – two-masted sailboat, with foremast taller than the aftermast, stationed ahead of the rudder head (fore means toward the front of the boat or the pointy end as my hubby likes to tell novices; aft, or after- means toward the back, the stubby end; the rudder is what steers the boat)
Sloop – single-masted sailboat with sails both fore and aft of the mast
Galley– a kitchen on board a boat (but you knew that one already, right?)
Cutter-rigged (ketch) – a sailboat rigged for heavy weather sailing
Floating sheeting-point tracks – adjustable points on the boat deck for controlling the sails
Wing(ed)-keel – a winged-shaped form at the bottom of the keel (the keel weights the boat AND keeps it from tipping over when you’re rail down among other things)
Marie
said on April 28th, 2009:
Fascinating post Carolyn. I really admire people that are not afraid to live their dreams! By the way I am liking the facelift! A change is as good as a holiday they say!
Kathleen Heckathorn
said on April 30th, 2009:
Carolyn,
Loved the article. I have some Corelle dishes and I am going to try flinging them on the floor! When you find out what kind of hand cream Deborah uses, please post it on your blog. Have you ever tried rubbing olive oil on your hands? Makes them nice and soft, even the cuticles, though you must apply it when you have time to sit around and let it absorb before you touch anything.
gerry
said on November 29th, 2011:
where is the north light now…
lovely baot