Free Ten Degrees of Reckoning by Hester Rumberg

throughout the equatorial belt. Ben and Annie, hair dyed red, tattooed, and tethered, went forward on deck with Mike to make sure there really was no line in the ocean.
    The Sleavins had a great passage to French Polynesia. It took a total of thirty days of sailing, and Ben and Annie became completely accustomed to the routines. They visited the Marquesas for one month, and then went on to the Tuamotu Archipelago.
    When we left the Marquesas we started getting into very squally weather with high winds of about 40 knots and 8-foot seas. We had to slow the boat down so that we would arrive at the coral pass of Manihi in the Tuamotus in daylight. To do this we had to deploy a Galerider, a huge net type drogue that slowed us down by 3 knots. The Galerider made it more comfortable, but that’s our version of comfortable. —Judy Sleavin
    Most of the islands and atolls they visited were much more isolated than their Caribbean stops, and they had exceptional experiences.
    Hello from Tonga. Today I realized how different it is cruising in the South Pacific compared to the Caribbean. I was watching my beautiful little girl have a long discussion with an older Tongan man. In the Caribbean there were more distractions. It was easier to mail Ben’s schoolwork for evaluations. There were airports to bring in and take out visiting friends and relatives. There were many more boats and anchorages and tourist activities. In the South Pacific, we have interacted as a family even more, if that’s possible, and we have definitely had more association with the people who live in the various places we have visited.
    That is apparent by Annie Rose’s easy familiarity with this man. He paddled by in a canoe, and he had just the shell that Annie wanted to get for Ben’s birthday coming up in November. Can you believe it? Annie just turned seven and Ben will be nine in a few weeks. So, back to the shell. The Tongan man was warmly welcomed aboard the Melinda Lee and offered juice by Annie. She began the negotiations by asking all about his family, and then produced gifts for him that were just right: shoes and clothing for his family, proper fish hooks for him, a board that might be a hindrance to the pigs that routed out his small dirt garden, and some cans of food with an opener. He produced the most gorgeous horned shell, and she had the most incredible smile on her face. She has carefully wrapped it in several towels to disguise the shape and has hidden it away for the big day.

    Also, Mike has gotten much more involved in teaching the kids. He is painstaking in his reading and writing with Annie. I love to watch Mike and the kids when he takes them out in the little sailing dinghy in a protected anchorage. I can hear them laughing as he teaches them the intricacies of tacking and jibing.
    —Judy Sleavin, October 1995 
     
    Two weeks after Ben’s ninth birthday the Sleavins prepared to leave. They had to wait several more days for favorable weather conditions, and on November 16, 1995, they departed from Nuku’alofa. They expected that the thousand-mile passage to New Zealand would take about a week.

  Five
    The Littlest Captain
     
     
    JUDY OPENED HER EYES. PAIN. WATER EVERYWHERE. IT could only have been a few seconds since she’d been hit by some flying object, so why was there so much water in the watertight cabin? She saw floating debris, diesel fuel, a large piece of teak. It took several minutes before she understood that something must have collided with them, tearing a gaping hole in the hull and letting all this seawater in.
    She was completely alert now, capable of quickly assessing the damage. The sailboat was equipped with starboard and port diesel tanks located under the settees. It was getting murkier and more difficult to see, but as diesel fuel continued to spill into the cabin, it appeared to come from the tanks on the port side. Her stomach churned. They had taken this massive hit forward. Below the settees was where