How to Sail 8,000 miles with Your Spouse Without Divorcing

Article by Kristin Zhivago

After windsurfing together for twelve years, then sailing our 37-foot Passport (Moonlight) on San Francisco and Narragansett bays for another 21 years, and after my husband Philip survived a valiant battle with “fatal” head and neck cancer, he looked up at me one day and said, “That’s it. We’re doing it.” 

“It” was having a 48-foot catamaran (Horizon) built in South Africa and then sailing it home to New England, just the two of us. “Doing it” now was because he realized I was never going to retire, and after beating cancer, he didn’t want to wait anymore. 

We did it. Once the boat was seaworthy, we set off. We were two months at sea, and we came out of the experience more in love than ever. But it didn’t start out that way. 

It was my first ocean voyage; I’d been a bay sailor up until this trip. My husband had been sailing since he was eight, crossed the Pacific Ocean while in the Marines,  and had also completed about a dozen New England-to-Caribbean yacht deliveries with a delivery captain based here in Rhode Island, in addition to all the sailing we did together. 

Building the boat in Cape Town was challenging, to say the least. We worked with the designer and builders over a two-year span, with Philip (an engineer and designer) working out various design details and me working on the builder’s accounting system almost every day. (I’m a revenue coach by trade, and processes are a big part of my work.) Horizon was a Chris White Atlantic 48, which turned out to be a stellar ocean-cruising cat. 

In October of 2008, we flew to Cape Town for the launch, expecting to sail for home in November. We ended up leaving in April of 2009, due to complications too boring to recount here. We were lucky to catch the tail end of the tradewinds, just. 

I will say that South Africa is dramatically beautiful and there are wonderful people there, but it is a very dangerous place to hang out. 

Off to New England

The first surprise for me was how calm Philip was when we were leaving Table Mountain behind us, in 35-mile-an-hour winds and a very choppy sea, thanks in part to the convergence of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in that area. 

Having sailed with him on afternoon and overnight sails many times on our monohull, I was accustomed to him being quite active each time we sailed. 

This time, he sat down at the chart table and started a Sudoku puzzle. Veteran delivery crew that he was, he knew what was appropriate. 

I stood at the wheel inside the pilot house, a little aghast, but I figured he must know what he was doing. 

One of the most wonderful aspects of the Atlantic 48 was that you could steer and run the engines in the shelter of the pilot house as well as in the commodious front cockpit, which was as close to windsurfing as one could get, without all the spray. 

Here comes the divorce part. 

We started out using the usual four-hours-on, four-hours-off watch schedule, as Philip had done on all his deliveries. By the second week, we were having arguments that far exceeded any disagreements we had ever had up to that point in our marriage. We both knew it, and we both didn’t like it. 

Philip was a problem-solver by nature, and he thankfully figured it out. Using the four-hour method, we simply weren’t getting enough of that deep sleep that one needs to stay sane. 

So he devised a schedule that gave each of us, in each 24-hour period, five to six hours of long sleep and a two-hour nap. 

Obviously, when one person was sleeping, the other person was on watch. This was our schedule:

5 pm: cooking and eating dinner. 

7 pm: Kristin goes to bed.

1 am: Philip wakes Kristin up and goes to bed for his long sleep. 

8 am: Kristin wakes Philip and we have breakfast. 

9 am: Kristin takes a two-hour nap. 

11 am: Philip wakes Kristin, and we have lunch.

12 pm: Phillip takes a two-hour nap.

2 - 5 pm: we are up together and sailing together, then it all repeats. 

All arguments ceased after that. In fact, we were so rested and so well-fed that when we were finally sailing into Newport at the entrance to Narragansett Bay, we looked at each other and said, “Do we have to stop now?”

I learned many lessons on that trip. 

It was my first provisioning job for a long journey, which turned out to be pretty easy given all those years I cooked for us and with the help of a very detailed spreadsheet that I created. But if you’re responsible for this job, make sure you remove ALL cardboard from ALL packaging. Little beasties can otherwise erupt in your lockers. 

It never hurts to reef sooner than later, especially when you see a squall on the horizon. You can go from almost calm to 50-mph winds in the blink of an eye.

Large ships can really make you nervous when you’re doing your best to steer clear while staying on course, and they’re doing their best to come and get a closer look. 

When you are on watch at sea, you must get up from whatever you’re doing every 10 minutes and look all around because it only takes about 20 minutes for you to hit another ship that is on the horizon and is coming toward you—especially when your boat is a “high-performance” catamaran. 

If you like eating flying fish, you’ll have plenty. They try to fly the full width of the 26-foot beam and only make it to the cockpit. I was never tempted to cook them. 

We were able to average 200 miles a day. 

Chafe is the enemy in a highly strung catamaran such as the Atlantic. I did chafe checks every day and managed to stave off some nasty events in the process. I couldn’t check the top of the mast, though—or rather, we had no desire to go up there while at sea—and that’s where the chafe got the better of us. 

I was on watch in the dark wee hours when I heard a SNAP,  jumped up, and looked out the pilothouse door to see that the Code Zero sail wasn’t “up” anymore. I smacked my hand three times on the side of a locker (the signal that meant, “Get your butt up here, we’re in big trouble!”). 

In any boat emergency, it pays to immediately reduce (or eliminate) any force that could do further damage to the boat. 

Philip did that with the Code Zero. He ran out to where the sail had fallen; the tack of the sail was still connected to the bowsprit. He tied that part of the sail to the trampoline and stanchions so that it would continue streaming off the port hull’s outboard side. Without doing that, the sail could have slipped between the two hulls, and we could have somersaulted somewhere out in the middle of the South Atlantic. 

We then spent the next four to five hours pulling up the sail. The large plastic collar at the top of the sail and its connected sock was the last bit to come up, acting like a sea anchor, and we could only pull the sail up briefly, section by section, when it was lifted by a wave coming from the stern. 

Philip repeatedly said the same thing to me: “Don’t fall in, and don’t rip the sail.” I took his advice. 

Oh, that’s another thing. When your husband is the captain, and you are the crew, there’s no room for questioning or doubting, especially in the middle of an emergency. You just do your part. You can ask questions later. 

When it came to dealing with vendors, Philip always told them, “Yes, I’m the captain, but she’s the admiral.” But out at sea, the captain is the boss.

We loved sailing on the catamaran for a number of years until Philip was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2017. He didn’t win that fight, unfortunately, and passed away three years ago. I’m still his wife and always will be. He is the reason I became a sailor and am still a sailor. 

I’m also very thankful we didn’t stick to that four-hour on/off schedule. •SCA•

To read more about this adventure, Kristin’s blog posts are here.