Into infinity

When we left New York last June, my goal was to explore the mysterious Sargasso Sea – the restless, yet strangely quiet heart of the Atlantic Ocean. And together with Adele, Zephyr and Looli I began in direct fashion, sailing to Bermuda, then far into this fabled zone of calms, floating weed, monstrous sea creatures and lost sailors.

But what on Earth have I been doing in Africa, you may ask. Well… And the Caribbean? I can explain… And what are those new charts for the coasts of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Mexico? Did I get lost in the Sargasso? Or did I lose the Sargasso myself?

Perhaps a little of both.

Or look at it this way.

There is no absolute agreement about where the Sargasso really is – and that’s part of the mystique. There are estimates and studies and there’s the general idea that the Sargasso is in mid-Atlantic, where you find floating sargassum weed.

Then again, you  may encounter rafts of sargassum in all sorts of places, patches taking their rootless freedom to extremes, nowhere near the center of the ocean. For example, we came across this bunch just a couple days off the coast of Gambia.

The green mat  in middle is an errant sargassum raft.... alongside an errant sailing boat

But you can also argue that the North Atlantic gyre, that phenomenon of winds and currents spinning clockwise about the ocean, amounts to a perfectly good border for the Sargasso. An invisible, landless border, yes; protean, always moving; yet undeniable.

The gyre could be said to start at the Gulf Stream, that submerged river roaring north past the United States. Then it bends right, sweeping past Europe, Africa, and back across to the Caribbean, then up into the Gulf Stream once more.

In one sense, this is a true barrier, because the Sargasso lies inside and cannot escape. Yet the gyre is also the motor creating the Sargasso in the first place, the whirligig with the still eye at its center.

So the scientists and savants can say what they like. I'm deciding I know where the Sargasso is. And that’s what we’ve been doing on our voyage: riding the Sargasso whirligig.

This December we found ourselves on the most fabled leg of the circle: the Trade Wind route between Africa and the Americas. Leaving Gambia and setting the bow of “Moon River” for Antigua, about 2,600 nautical miles (or 4,800 kilometers) to the west, we entered a part of the world unknown to mankind before Columbus.

Of course, the great Admiral found the Americas by accident. However, another discovery was his alone: that ships descending to a latitude of about 20 degrees north in winter will get hard, steady wind blowing in a gentle curve across the entire ocean. It’s a route as reliable and relentless as the turning of the planet, a watery autobahn that remade history.

In the early days of sail, even the clumsiest ship was assured a fast passage to the New World. Crews on today’s sailing boats, which are far more maneuverable, can set aside a lot of their fancy gear, rigging the sails much like those of the past. They need simply to point in the right direction.

There are occasional lulls. And we got a two-day gale near Cape Verde. But the overall sensation was of having only to grab the sky’s coattails and hang on, right up until the rocky entrance in English Harbour, Antigua , exactly 18 days later.

Roaring west, we slid down mesmerizing wave after mesmerizing wave, covering 140 nautical miles or so every day.

These are the latitudes of one-way trips and on leaving Gambia we were uncomfortably aware of seeing the same low African coast that bid farewell to those crowded slave ships streaming across to the Americas. Would the slave trade ever have grown to such grotesque proportions without that unstoppable conveyor belt of easterly winds? It seems unlikely.

Really, anything at all will complete the journey, given time. In 1982 solo sailor Steven Callahan sank near the Canaries and, unable to return upwind to relatively nearby land, kept going in his liferaft. For 76 days wind and current carried him drifting across the Atlantic -- to safety -- and all he had to do was stay alive. Which, amazingly, he did.

Along the way, his liferaft attracted first small creatures, then slightly bigger, and finally large, life-sustaining fish like dorados that Callahan speared, becoming king of a floating island that resembled nothing so much as one of those itinerant patches of sargassum.

“Moon River” seemed tiny in the great wilderness and we felt powerless before the forces of nature. Conversely we had harnessed that same power, becoming part of the great system - bit players in the theater of eternity. Not that people belong in the Atlantic gyre any more than they belong in space or deserts, but on a sailing ship, grasping the wind, we can pretend we do.

At Christmas, a thousand miles from land, we piled presents under a Gambian mangrove branch tied to the mast. We sang carols in the cockpit, the words blowing immediately away into the night. We marked the New Year under the stars, but the midnight countdown couldn’t have been more meaningless. Precise seconds count for nothing on a voyage like this – except when the navigator angles his sextant to capture the sun.

Anchoring in Antigua, we were overjoyed to see trees and people and tropical birds. Yet a piece of me remained out there in the eternal ocean and always will.

In those weeks, we were four shipmates bouncing around a cabin the size of some people’s walk-in closets. Yet the domed roof of the universe and the ocean miles deep under our keel were the true boundaries.

We were giants. And savage surroundings gave us peace.

Even in mid-ocean, the boat's turbulence will sometimes awake nighttime bioluminescence, these fireflies of the sea that defy the dark essence of their world. Each day, it seemed to me that Adele, Zephyr and Looli matched that miracle, lighting the ocean with courage – courage which we didn’t call courage, but laughter and love. HOLD FAST, sailors' tattooed knuckles used to read. Well, Adele, Zephyr and Looli - they held fast.

Opening presents on Christmas morning, 1,000 nautical miles and about a week from landfall

Even now the Trade Winds and currents roar outside the harbor in Antigua where “Moon River” is 

safely anchored. Finally, the gyre will bend around in the Caribbean to sweep north into the Gulf Stream, the Sargasso’s western border, and so start all over again.

We too.

From here we’ll head south, west and west again into the ferocious wind funnels of the Colombian coast, then north into US waters and the Gulf Stream once more.

We are nothing. Yet the sea is infinity – and in following the gyre we caught a glimpse.