On embarkation day, once we’re unpacked, Patti puts on her a Psychologist hat and heads down to the Medical Center. There she introduces herself to the shipboard doctor and offers her services as needed. And she has been so summoned on occasion but never so urgently as on a voyage from Sydney to Hawaii in 2015.
It was on that particular voyage that I had finally learned to understand the navigational chart and on this day, we had departed Tahiti and were headed northwest toward Hawaii across the vast Pacific Ocean. Our heading was +/- 355 degrees and it would take about two days to reach Hawaii. But when I awoke early the next morning, I turned on the navigation channel and noticed that our heading had changed drastically; instead of 355, we were now headed 220, in other words, we had turned around and were headed southwest!
It was early in the morning and in my imagination this had been the scenario: The captain had missed Hawaii by mistake and was headed toward his next stop, Vancouver, Canada. When he realized his mistake, he turned the ship around and was headed back to Hawaii at 220 degrees southwest. That’s what I imagined.
But at 8 am, the captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen: At 1 am this morning the US Coast Guard directed us back toward the Equator in the mid-Pacific. There a private yacht has run aground in uncharted waters and, although we were hundreds of miles away at the time, we were the nearest ship to the distressed sailboat. So we will do our best to rescue the mariners and head back to Hawaii once they are safely onboard.”
Because the east side of this uncharted island was so shallow, we had to anchor our huge ship well off the west side while those two unlucky mariners were forced to walk 7 miles barely above sea level across terribly abrasive sand and brush to get to us. Then they were told to shed some of their gear and swim out to the rescue zodiac in dark and dangerous waters. When they finally got aboard our mother ship the owner of the sailboat was devastated; his investment was now a total loss, and so was his dignity. So Patti rolled up her sleeves and went to work.
Believe it or not, despite this 12-hour delay our captain, at “full-steam-ahead,” was able to make it to Hawaii with a loss of only two hours. And we are happy to report that not only his partner but the sailboat owner himself, layered now in donated designer clothing, soothed by a warm shower, luxurious bed, delicious gourmet food, and comforted by Patti’s compassionate care, disembarked in Lahaina in a considerably better mood.
And we all had a great story to tell!