“Put on your headphones,” Colin said, acting as the kindest, most supportive version of himself. “Get in your writing groove. I’m happy to sail the boat.”
There is a reason I love this man.
We were doing a 7-hour passage between Muros and Vigo, Spain, on our third day-sail in a row, and I’d been trying and failing all week to get into a writing rhythm. I’d set a deadline to get Book 2 to beta readers, and I was deep in that project-crushing pincer where there was both less work time than I’d planned and every chapter was taking longer to edit than I’d expected.
So I took Colin up on his offer. I got in the groove. I got really in the groove. It’s my favorite part of writing—when I lose track of everything around me. I wasn’t on an aluminum sailboat in 2026 anymore. I was on a packet ship in 1841, on my way to China, in dialogue with Ellen and Perk and several colorful characters I can’t wait for you to meet. The writing flowed the way it does when I drop-in instead of push-in, and I finished the edits on chapter 11 feeling really proud of the work.
It was a good feeling because it had been a lovely but also pretty mixed-up month.
If the Bay of Biscay took it easy on us the first time, the second half made up for it with a three-day, 25-knot rodeo ride thanks to confused seas on the beam. Pristine took to it like she was a Labrador and we’d just thrown a tennis ball into the ocean. The humans had a slightly harder time—banging into furniture, walking on the walls, bracing so the drawers didn’t fly open at speed—but we got used to it, and mercifully, medication-free, nobody got sick. I don’t know why they call it gaining sea legs—it should be sea stomach—but either way, we now seem to have acquired all the sea body parts we need.
But when we reached A Coruña, Spain, the bilge alarm went off, and we found a bucketful of seawater in the aft compartment. After deep research—which involved cleaning, drying, and then hosing the heavenly heck out of everything aft of the mast—we found three tiny corners of a transom locker that had somehow escaped welding altogether. A piece of paper was too thick to pass through those gaps, but water was tricksier, and found its way gleefully through. All under warranty, but it meant another pivot: our next stop was now Vigo, because that’s where we could get the repair made.
And then at 9 a.m. on the very morning of that third passage—the one with the headphones—we’d turned on the motor to leave the anchorage, and the whole Oceanvolt screen turned red. Our motor is really three motors, lined up to make 36 kilowatts of electric power. C21 (!), the screen said about motor 1. C21 (!), it said about motor 2. C21 (!), it said about motor 3. We restarted. The errors remained. We restarted again, and the screen said Yeah, nice try. Did you not hear me the first time?
The motor is also under warranty, so some slightly frantic texting found us remote tech support, who could help if we just plugged the diagnostic dongle into our Windows PC. Did we have a Windows PC? Of course not. Could we run a virtual machine on my Mac? For the software, yes. For dongle, no. We were midway through planning a dinghy ride to a beach to a walk to a bus stop to a two-hour bus ride to the nearest electronics store that might conceivably sell us a Windows PC, when Colin—in a last-ditch effort—dove in to check the prop. It spun fine. We restarted. The error disappeared.
By then, it was 2 p.m. We looked at each other and said, “We’ve got to get to Vigo while we can!”
So off we went. The day had been a whole lot of frantic and the kind of distractions that usually make deep editing work impossible, which meant I was thrilled when I finally took off my headphones that day, having successfully gotten in my groove, and proud of the work I’d done. I stowed the laptop. Stretched. Got a glass of water. And stepped up to the cockpit from below to say hi to Colin.
Except there was no Colin.
Was he down below? Had I been so deep in my own little world that he’d passed me without my noticing? Embarrassing, but—when I’m in the zone—definitely possible. “Colin?” I asked the boat.
Nothing.
“Colin?” Louder. “COLIN?”
Nothing.
Here’s what couldn’t possibly have happened. My beautiful husband couldn’t possibly have lost his balance on a wave and fallen off. It was inconceivable that this could be how our adventure story ended. I told myself this with increasing force, and the panic kept catching up anyway—because of all the fears out here, storms and pirates and grounding and even sinking, my #1 nightmare has always been exactly this one: going topsides to discover I am alone.
To pass my basic keelboat exam years ago, I had to pivot a J24 to pick up a “man overboard” represented by a floating Tide bottle on a grab rope. To pass basic cruising, I’d done the same in a Catalina 36. To become an instructor, I had to do so with 100% perfection. I am highly trained in recovering Tide bottles. Trained enough to know that in the couple of minutes it takes to turn a boat around, your victim can be a hundred meters from where you expect. And that’s if you’re watching.
I’d been belowdecks for hours.
With headphones on.
If Colin had called for help while falling, I’d have heard nothing but my spa-music playlist.
The panic came on for real then, in a car-crash of jumbled thoughts. Do I turn the boat around first or call mayday on the radio? (mayday). Was I writing for two hours or three? The size of the search grid would change dramatically based on my answer. (3). Do I remember how low the real-life odds of what we called “successful recovery” really are? (Sadly, yes.)
I’m fairly sure I was no longer breathing. Any second I would snap into gear—I tend to be weirdly cool-headed in emergencies—but I knew that once I did, I’d be walking through a door I’d never return from. I’d be the woman whose husband went overboard while she was obliviously wearing headphones.
In desperation, I called his name one more time.
“What?” he said.
Colin was standing at the bow.
Colin was snapping photos of dolphins.
I almost threw Colin overboard.
But the moment he saw my face, tears already streaming down my cheeks—he made a sound I will never forget. Oh. Spoken with such deep pity, it felt like soul-level communion. And then there was the embrace: a long, clutching hug that went on well past what he expected, and then past that further still.
I did no more work that day. Didn’t even try. I made him a sandwich—not a lazy on-passage ham-and-cheese but a gourmet on-passage ham, cheese, freshly cut red onion, lettuce, and French mustard. I would have added tomatoes if we’d had them. I would have put it on freshly baked sourdough from Tartine and wrapped it in gold-leaf if I could have.
For me, lunch was an emotional eating binge of butterscotch candies. (I have since removed all candy from the boat in the name of a healthier diet. Removed by eating, of course.)
Maybe you’ve had one of these moments. The phone that rings at the wrong hour. The test result. The near-miss on the highway that leaves your hands shaking at the wheel. The moment that re-sorts everything in an instant, and everything you were white-knuckling drops quietly to the bottom of the list.
Here’s what getting walloped in the face by what really matters changed for me (besides the obvious new protocol of no headphones on passage).
I accepted I would miss the deadline. Perfectionist that I am, I built a new, saner schedule that allows for the fact that I’m trying to write a world voyage while also making one.
I found myself far more devoted to my good-hearted, supportive husband. I’d love to tell you I’ve treasured every moment with Colin since and never felt an ounce of friction. I cannot. This is real life. What I can say is that I treasured many more moments than I would have otherwise—and the friction of two humans in a small space under stressful conditions passed far quicker than it ever did before.
And then there were things I could only notice by comparison between July Cheyenne and January Cheyenne.
We hauled our home out of the water for the first time, in an unfamiliar country, and my thought process was not a litany of all the ways she could be dropped, crushed, bent, or maimed. It was: Oh, we’re hauling the boat today. Okay.
We had to take apart a perfectly good electrical system to prepare for the welding, and my thought process wasn’t: We’ll never get this back together. It was: Oh, I need to learn to read an electrical diagram and trace wiring. Okay.
When welders arrived to torch our finely finished aluminum and cork decking, I thought: Oh, I don’t think I can watch them set fire to my house, but… okay.
And when I couldn’t make coffee in the morning because the electrical system was in pieces, my thought was—actually, that one was: Not okay! But I hiked 50 minutes up a hill and back to get a double espresso and bring Colin his flat white. So in the end: Okay.
That was the mixed-up half of the month. The lovely half needed no reframing. Like when Colin and I stood in A Coruña’s central square with a couple thousand of our newest friends to watch Spain win the World Cup in dramatic overtime. Or when Juan, a friend from my bark Europa voyage surprised me with an in-person visit. Or every single bite of every single octopus tapa I ate.
Spain, I think we’re going to get along.
As I write this, we’re still on the hard, and there’s still a C21(!) gremlin to quash—but we are, at last, a watertight boat. Colin and I have now practically dismantled and—more amazingly—reassembled Pristine’s not-insubstantial electrical system. It took a welder, a translator, a haul-out, and a minor miracle of luck, doggedness, and dock-tribe generosity to pull all that together in a port we’d never heard of three months ago.
This morning I made an espresso on my boat, and it felt like a minor miracle too.
This is life. Nothing is perfect. Everything is fascinating.
Fair winds,
Cheyenne
P.S. Some great news that belongs to you: The Navigator has been downloaded over 2000 times in its first year alone! Thank you—truly—for every download, every review, every referral to a friend. You did this.
Recently, a reader named 40weeks left five stars and wrote, “Anxiously awaiting book 2.” I’m so glad to hear it! Also, you and me both, 40weeks. :) I do my best to move the manuscript forward every day—headphones or no headphones. And one fine day soon, it will pass my quality standard of something I’m truly proud of, something I can confidently say is worth your precious time and attention. That day is coming ever closer.
The photo of the dolphins that cost me years off my life:
