“Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God’s best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one’s self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.” – Thomas Hughes
Our circumnavigation has been on hold for the past 18 months in the country of Ireland due to travel restrictions placed on yachts. This has been difficult for many reasons. Financially, it is a huge burden as we have had to pay to keep our boat in a marina. This was definitely not accounted for in our cruising budget.
The original route we chose took us through the Baltic countries. Visiting St. Petersburg in Russia was one of Dan’s top bucket list items. We finally made the decision that we can’t wait for the Baltic countries to reopen and we must continue on our path. We are both disappointed as our route will never intersect with this part of the world again.
Amidst the chaos of being locked down and isolated, I lost the most important part of this journey for me, meeting new people. Dan is the sailor, the planner, the engineer, the master of all the mechanical stuff. I am the storyteller. Conversely, one of the most fascinating parts of traveling for me is meeting new people and hearing their stories.
The story of one woman’s journey to freedom was life-changing for me.
Making New Friends
Last February, we were traveling across the country in a car we bought while we were back in the states visiting our family. We started in California and drove to the East Coast. We spent the holidays with our sons and their families. While in New Jersey we welcomed our first granddaughter to the family. We then had to drive back across the country to California for the birth of our daughter’s baby.
During the first trip across the country, we stayed in hotels. I hated driving all day, sleeping in a hotel for a couple of hours, and paying $60 to $80 for a few hour’s sleep before waking early and continuing on our way. Dan and I agreed we would do things differently on the trip back to California.
We found a deal on Craig’s List for a tent, 2 sleeping bags, 2 air mattresses, a camping stove, and chairs, for $50 in Florida. From Florida onward, it was our plan to camp our way across the southern states (being February and all) and spend at least a day exploring new places. While Covid was still in full swing, we knew park visitor centers would be closed, people would still be distant, and we would be traveling in the apocalyptic conditions we had come to know and detest.
It wasn’t until a campground along the Florida panhandle, that we met a couple during a hike that seemed eager to stop and chat. The woman was originally from Vietnam, her husband from the Midwest. Since we were only a few campsites apart, I invited them over for happy hour that evening, eager to talk to other human beings.
We started a cozy fire, put out some appetizers, and waited at our campsite for our guests. I was actually nervous. It had been over a year since we had any socialization with strangers. As soon as they arrived, we settled back into the familiar routine of exchanging stories, ours from a sailing perspective, theirs from life in the Midwest.
Once we had told our story and they had told theirs, the woman, in her still thick Vietnamese accent, shared a part of her life with us that night. She had not talked about it in many years. The couple had three grown daughters who had never even heard the details that were shared with us that evening, around the soft glow of the fire.
Maybe it was the fact we lived on a boat that prompted her to tell us this intimate story. Perhaps we crossed paths when the time was just right. For the next hour, we were transfixed, immersed in the details of her description, into a world neither of us could imagine living through – a story that engulfed us in the true meaning of courage, perseverance. It was a vivid reminder of how lucky we are to have been born in our country.
Boat to Freedom
She began her story with a small smile on her face. She was in her 20’s and a teacher in Vietnam. It was the only time she smiled during her story, her time as a teacher in her home country a distant but pleasant memory. However, the situation in her country was becoming desperate. The Vietnam War had just ended and the political injustices were making life in Vietnam intolerable.
It took her over a year to save up the money to try and escape. She had a small apartment in the city. The underground movement to help citizens out of Vietnam was in full swing. Unfortunately, their main goal was to make money in the process of helping people flee their country.
$3,000 purchased a spot on a banana boat. For that price, this woman could reserve a spot in the very bottom of the boat. A place in the middle and upper deck rose exponentially in price. There was no room for negotiation.
The next decision she had to make was the timing her flight from Vietnam would take place. She had two options. The first, leave during the stormy season. The passage would probably be rough, storms could be severe. There was a risk of shipwreck.
Her second option was to leave during the calmer season, weather-wise. This was when pirates ruled the seas around Vietnam. Any boat fleeing caught by the pirates would be robbed and end with rape and then murder for all the women aboard.
Dan and I looked at one another across the dim light cast by the fire during this part of her story. We both understood that the context of being on a boat for this woman was diametrically opposed to our journey; the difference between heaven and hell.
Her desperation to leave her country must have only been outweighed by the hell of remaining there. Which passage option did she choose? I certainly couldn’t guess – faced with two horrible choices. She chose the stormy season.
Follow the Man
Finally, it was time. I’m not sure how she communicated with the exporters of people, but she received the instructions to arrive in the city market at a certain time and place. She was to look for a man wearing a blue hat. She was not to make eye contact. She was to follow that man, her money in hand.
Following the directions, she entered the market at the appointed time. A short time later, she spotted the man in the blue hat. She kept her eyes down and followed him through the crowds. A short time later the man cornered her. He held his hand out for her money, all the money she had in the world.
His instructions were brief. She was given a date and time to meet at the docks. The passage leaving Vietnam was to Thailand. It would take three days. She was told there would be food and water for those three days. The boat would be boarded in the dead of night. She was not to mention her departure to a living soul. She would have to abandon everything she owned to make the voyage.
She didn’t give us details on how terrible things were in her country at that time to force her to flee. We do know she left her family behind. Afraid to interrupt her dive into the depths of these horrible memories, we sat in silence, waiting for her to continue.
The Banana Boat
Over three hundred refugees were packed onto a three-deck banana boat, maybe 30 feet long, in the dead of night. Our friend was forced into the bilge against a bulkhead with a hundred people packed tightly around her. No one on this deck was allowed to bring any belongings.
When the other two decks were loaded, the boat cast off. As predicted, the seas were rough. There were no bathrooms. There was no ventilation. As the banana boat fled offshore, the passengers began to get sick.
This is the part of the story that brought tears to our eyes, her description of human suffering was unparalleled to any personal account we had ever heard. We could see, even in the dim light, the pain of her memories. She told the story haltingly, reliving the smells, the pain, as she described the extent of the suffering.
Human excrement, from both ends of the body, began dripping through the boards above her head. Those that had succumbed to seasickness were almost comatose. She described them as being limp-like noodles. Their bodies were tossed in their cramped space like rag dolls. They were the lucky ones.
As the hours passed, the level of the excrement rose. Two hundred bodies above her were evacuating and she was at the bottom of the barrel. There was a porthole above her. If she stood on her tippy toes, she could grasp the edge of the window. Using all her strength, she could pull her body up and breathe the fresh sea air for a brief moment before having to let go. The small breath of fresh air and a glimpse of the moonlight kept her hopes alive as the stench was unbearable.
Five Days Later
Provisions, or the meal the human traffickers promised, consisted of a root bulb. Each passenger, that could still eat and drink, received a root that minimally provided the food and water promised. The first five days, they were given a root twice a day. Clear that the three-day passage was much longer than anticipated, the rations dropped to one root a day.
I thought at the beginning of her account, one can tolerate anything if you know it’s only for three days. When her time aboard reached the five-day mark, and no news of any pending arrival, this is when I felt my bounds of tolerance and my will, would surely be broken. Her’s would not.
Her ship’s fortitude did give way. Both a terror and a relief, a hole formed in the bilge, suddenly flooding the boat with seawater.
Screaming for the crew, men rushed down with towels to stuff into the hole, stemming the flood until it could be repaired. Buckets were brought down and those still strong enough to stand were ordered to begin carrying buckets of water to the top deck to dump overboard. Our heroin was still one of the strong ones.
Arriving top deck, she got her first glimpse of the families that could afford the expensive top deck accommodations. Her most poignant memory of the voyage thus far was seeing the wealthy families gathered around an inflatable inner tube. The families, with fathers, mothers, and children, had piled all their gold, silver, and most precious possessions on the inner tube in the event the boat did sink. The small children were not given a spot.
As she reflected on this scene, she shed some perspective on the situation.
“Even though these families were wealthy, they were in the same situation as the rest of us. If they arrived with families in a new country, with nothing, they would not survive. They had to protect their money to make a new start. Without it, they would have nothing.”
She relished the opportunity to move and bail water. Soon, however, the leak was fixed and she was back in the stench and waste that continued to build once again.
Ten Days Later
The roots were finally depleted. Our friend curled in a ball, no longer having the strength to pull herself up to the window for a breath of fresh air. The level of excrement rose to her knees. The smell was beyond nauseating. It was clear the boat was lost at sea.
When all hope of survival had vanished, suddenly, there were shouts from above. Desperate for news below deck, those still lucid yelled for an update. Replies were relayed. The banana boat had spotted an American oil rig.
As the refugee boat approached the rig, warning signals blared across the water. There was no communication between the boats other than a loudspeaker. The Americans shouted that under no circumstances was the boat to come any closer. The fear was that their boat was armed with a bomb to blow up the rig. They were forbidden to approach.
Thinking that if they got close enough, they could swarm up the rig, the captain tested the warning and continued the approach. Immediately, water cannons were aimed at the small banana boat.
“Come any closer, and we will sink your boat,” the American vessel warned.
Below deck, on the banana boat, war erupted. There were two factions of thought going through the minds of the refugees. The younger generation wanted to pull out the repairs and sink the boat. If the boat sank, the Americans would be forced to rescue them.
Not all were on board with this plan. Physical fights broke out among the passenger. Crying and pleading for their lives, the elderly, begged for their lives. Many of them couldn’t swim at all. With their lack of strength, they would die. They would sink with the boat.
This was another poignant moment in this tale, the moment when she had to chose a side. Her eyes flitted from side to side as she relived the moment, the indecision, and the decision. Protect the lives of others, or save her own. Having no food, covered in filth, tired, and facing death, our friend chose the lives of the elderly over her own.
The younger generation discussed their options and made the decision to let fate take its course, praying that God was on their side.
After several hours of drifting a safe distance from the rig, it seemed their one chance for salvation was lost. The seas were calm, but with food depleted and no rescue in sight, hope was gone.
As we listened to the culmination of events, I knew this woman was telling me this story, but I had no idea how she was still alive. I felt quite sure I would not have made it that far. I had a few rough days at sea in a storm and thought I was going to die. Would I have had her strength in the same situation? Ten days at sea, with barely enough food and water to stay alive, covered in nauseating human excrement, I simply sat in awe as she took a deep breath and continued her story.
Not Home Yet
Silence across the water was broken by the loudspeakers from the oil rig. The rig made contact with a ship bringing them supplies. If the refugees could wait eight hours, the ship would arrive with the supplies and then take them aboard their vessel. Salvation for the banana boat was finally on its way. Yet, the road ahead was anything but paved.
I looked at this woman with more respect than I have for any human being I have ever known. I couldn’t imagine living through what she did. Three hundred other passengers suffered the same fate. How many other people have I crossed paths with and never had an inkling that they shared a story of hardship to gain entry into our country? Why had she chosen now, this day, to share this story? I was in awe.
Her story continued. All the passengers on that banana boat survived. It had to be a miracle. While the ocean passage was over, the next leg of the journey was extreme in its own way. The survivors were taken aboard the vessel and then delivered to a refugee camp in the Philippines.
This woman, having survived the nightmare at sea, spent the next 5 months in a refugee camp with 30,000 other refugees. The quarters were confined, they were basically imprisoned. They were fed one meal a day, the same meal, rice, and a can of sardines.
Success in America
Having survived all she did, this woman arrived in America and became an outstanding electrical engineer. She married a wonderful American man, was employed by the US government working on military missiles used in the defense of our country. The couple raised their family, had just retired, and are now traveling the US by RV.
When showed a picture of her three grown girls, I looked in wonder at three stunningly beautiful and successful women. They all featured long black hair, sun-kissed brown skin. They radiated smiles that could light the sky. They emanated confidence that could only be passed on by a mother who overcame such an extreme experience. I’m quite sure she was a mother that taught her girls the value of many of the things the rest of us take for granted.
As the campfire waned and our evening came to a close, I felt sure there had to be repercussions from that time in her life. I asked her, “Doesn’t that experience haunt you?”
She explained that she has put that part of her life to rest. It may be one of the reasons she had not divulged all the details to her children. There was only one fragment left from those days that she has not been able to shake, besides hating sardines and rice – the smell.
Whenever she experiences an unpleasant odor, like when driving and she smells cow manure or the filth from a processing plant, her body remembers. She begins to shake, and she is transported back to her curled position in the bilge of that banana boat, trapped in human excrement. She has to fight through the replay and bring herself back to the present. It’s a battle she feels she may never overcome.
New Friends in Ireland
As we travel to new places, I meet interesting people. They become chapters in my stories. People are guests in our story, the same way we are guests in theirs. Every person has a personal lesson waiting to be told. The new friends we meet are like new adventures. You never know what lessons they will teach you through their life experiences.
I often find that we all meet each other for a reason. We don’t meet people by accident. They are meant to cross our path for a reason. We meet the people we’re supposed to when the time is just right. We haven’t met a plethora of people during the past two years, but those we have met have certainly enriched the story of our lives.
While the amazing women who migrated from Vietnam taught me about the plight of immigrants to our own country, I recently made a friend in Ireland who gave me perspective on life in Northern Ireland.
Peter Ronaldson was wearing his OCC (Ocean Cruising Club) cap when I passed him on the dock just a week ago. I stopped him of course, as all OCC members love to connect. He had heard of us, the Americans, and had even read my blog post about being stranded in Ireland.
We had been feeling quite down about being delayed in Ireland longer than expected. Peter was that ray of sunshine that lifted our spirits when we needed it the most. He and his lovely wife Evie brought us to an informal get-together with fellow sailors. We were introduced to many wonderful people and welcomed with open arms. This was our first gathering with a group of people in 2 years.
Wanting to help further, Peter drove us in his car to provision for our boat. While this may seem trivial, it was a huge asset for us. Normally, we can only purchase what we can carry in our backpacks and on our bikes. With Peter’s help, we filled our newly installed refrigerator and freezer with a month of supplies.
What made this new friendship so special, was having Peter and his wife aboard for dinner. During this time, we learned of their world adventures. We heard stories of their lives, of life in Northern Ireland, and for the first time since we’ve been here, caught a glimpse into the world of what it’s like to be born in live in this country.
Once again, I understand how important people are to our journey. The stories and experiences we learn from new friends enhance our trip around the globe. Our lives and perspectives are so vastly diverse. Interacting with others and developing friendships enriches our lives in so many ways.
We are all human. We all need one another. I believe our paths are not random. They cross for a reason, connect for a purpose, and bring us together when we need help, or can offer it.
I hope the world is opening back up, that our journey can now continue, and we can continue to meet people and share their amazing stories. For now, our story is that we hope to get our engine part on June 9th. We will finish repairs and set sail for Spain when the wind is blowing from the North across the Irish Sea.
Out of respect for our Vietnam friend, for anyone who cares to read it, below is some information written by an American vet who fought for the freedom of those trapped in Vietnam, and other countries under the guise of communism – it’s a story not often told. I pray daily for those who are fighting against communism and to keep our country free.
Fair winds,
Alison and Dan
s/v Equus
Why We Fought
Some of us remember why we fought, the evil we fought against, and the brothers whose freedoms were in peril. The estimated total deaths brought on by the “Communist Invasion” of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and the Republic of Vietnam is 2,450,000 from 1954–75. The victims of democide (deliberate killing of civilians) included 214,000 by North Vietnam/VC.
Deaths in Cambodia and Laos were estimated at 273,000 and 62,000 respectively… Mao…His policies, cultural revolution, and Red Guards caused the deaths of 40 million to 70 million disarmed people in China during his 27-year reign; We remember…Cambodia, Pol Pot, 1975…the communist leadership purposely inflicted “a population loss” (mass murder) of between 1.6 and 1.8 million people from 1975 to 1979.
The Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into a socialist agrarian republic, founded on the policies of ultra-Maoism. Khmer Rouge carried out a radical program that included isolating the country from foreign influence, closing schools, hospitals, and factories, abolishing banking, finance, and currency, outlawing all religions, confiscating all private property, and relocating people from urban areas to collective farms where forced labor was widespread. The purpose of this policy was to turn professional and urban Cambodians, or “Old People”, into “New People” through their agricultural hard labor. These actions and policies resulted in massive deaths through executions, work exhaustion, illness, and starvation. This is what communists do. We Remember.
Great Post!