Women & the Wind

I had been feeling very lost in absolute freedom.

Not having any responsibilities besides this boat,

not having anything to do.

So when Lærke told me that she wanted to go sailing,

I got really excited about the possibility of a project.

I knew I wanted to do a project that was not about me.

It was not necessarily about the boat,

it was not necessarily about

how we sail or whatever,

but I wanted it to include other people.

I've always lived my life in such a way

that when I feel something exciting,

I chase after it and keep doing it and keep talking about it

as if it's going to happen, whether I know it is or not.

- That's how you sail?! - Yeah.

It just seemed very cool to join the idea of women

sailing across the North Atlantic,

which not many people do in general,

it's not the choice trip

because it's rough.

And the boat being so rustic and simple

in its capabilities to sail across, it's interesting.

Mara Noka is a James Wharram design.

NARAI Mark one,

built in 1971 through '74.

It's based off of the Rongo,

which was James Wharram's second boat

that he built to cross the North Atlantic

west to east for the first time ever.

Nobody had done that on a catamaran before.

I found Mara Noka in Panama.

I did not know how to sail at all when I got the boat,

I did not know how to pull up the mainsail.

I understood wind,

but when I started sailing,

it really felt like the boat was sailing me.

After one week of sailing constantly

for the first time,

I started to know the noises

and that was such an interesting experience.

I don't know, you create like a symbiosis with this vessel.

Through that first year of sailing,

it was really, really rough all the time to watch the boat get loose

and feeling this sense of debt to the boat.

I could feel that it was in pain sometimes,

but still enjoyed what it was doing.

There's just such a special connection with it.

It felt like it was excited for

new adventures.

When I lived in my hometown, I would go often down

and just sit by the water and look out.

And even though it was a bay,

you couldn't see land on the other side, and I've always just found a lot of

peace in looking at the ocean, because it's like a blank canvas and

you can just look out and

anything seems possible.

I've always wanted to

sail on a long journey since I was a child,

and I remember these books

from this sailor family in Denmark that my parents would read to me,

and there was one about one of the kids going on this big journey,

and they were in the Caribbean, and they met all these animals.

Like seeing dolphins and turtles,

and it's just been in my head for a long time,

and then I just started to tell people that I was going across the Atlantic,

and then sometimes I create my own reality by just repeating stuff,

and then that was what I wanted to do.

Eventually

figured it would be really cool to document

how the plastic travels across the ocean, because that was

something that impacted me a lot on my first Atlantic crossing.

Plastic pollution

in our oceans is a huge problem,

and it's constantly making me think about better solutions.

I live in the Canary Islands where I work with Clean Ocean Project,

so I'm always on the beach collecting trash, doing beach cleanups.

And I remember one time on one beach we found

over 45 plastic bottles and they were from all over the world,

and many of those bottles have crossed the Atlantic

because they travel with the same winds and the currents as the boats do.

So I thought it would be interesting to follow that journey.

I just need, I need help. Yeah.

Well, can I help?

I met Kiana when she had just done her first Atlantic crossing by herself,

and she was passing through the Canary Islands, and I thought,

what a badass woman,

I want to do something with her.

So we started talking, and quickly

we started dreaming about doing a project

and we had no money.

But eventually I thought, I want to do this

and I want to make it happen no matter what.

So I sold my old car.

I sold my surfboard.

I told everyone, “See you in three months.”

And I went to see Kiana.

I met her in the boatyard,

and then she told me

there are a few problems with the boat,

but we're still going to be sailing in two weeks.

The two weeks quickly turned into a full year.

We ended up peeling the tar

and nylon coating off of the boat

and exposing all the bare wood

that we glassed over, which was a very laborious process.

On top of that, fare and paint,

prime and paint.

Then we changed the entire top deck.

Yeah! Watch out!

We learned that nothing really ever goes as planned,

and that's just a big part of the whole adventure.

And even if it was hard most of the time,

we were lucky that we received a lot of support

from friends and family and people around us,

and that was a big motivator to keep going,

and also, we both knew that the alternative

that would be, giving up, would be even harder.

Kiana, who I had only met once,

previously at the boatyard

when I saw this boat in shambles basically,

sent me a message

asking if I wanted to cross

the North Atlantic Ocean

and make a documentary about it.

My first

response was like, “yes,

heck yeah!”

It's been a dream of mine since early teenage years.

Like maybe 13 or 15

I started dreaming about sailing,

but never really looking

or seeking out for an experience.

I feel very drawn

to the unknown and pushing myself

and being in uncomfortable situations

and exciting situations.

So it's just like the instinctual yes.

Hell yes.

Every cell in my body was like, “Let's go girl,

let's go and cross an Ocean!”

For preparations of the voyage,

I always have a tendency of taking too much food,

but in this instance, having three people instead of one,

I was completely lost

in the sense of like how much we would need.

So I just used, like, all these kinds

of vegetables that take a long time to go off.

We had a 16 six-gallon Jerry cans.

In that one gallon per person per day,

that includes your tea, your showering,

your drinking water.

Power comes from solar panels,

180W of solar panels, and four batteries.

And for cooking fuel, there's a propane stove,

and we took three tanks of propane.

I learned very quickly,

after three weeks of waiting for “good” wind to leave,

because I thought the wind was like, “Yeah, haha, the wind is always good!”

It requires a lot of patience, and it requires you

to be very humble

and wait

and listen.

And I think that has a lot to teach.

“Oh I see. Oh…”.

That for me was a test in itself.

I thought I was like, yeah, I'm patient, I'm Zen.

But those first three weeks waiting for wind,

I was not Zen.

But it makes you

just realize that you're not in control.

All you can control is yourself, your emotional state.

“Shock is a life threatening condition

in which blood flow to the tissues of the body

is inadequate and cells are deprived of oxygen.

Any serious injury or illness can produce shock...”

We left Beaufort, North Carolina on June 27th, 2022.

Headed for Flores in the Azores.

As the crow flies, that is 2200 nautical miles,

so you'd hope that you'd be moving at 100 miles a day,

and that would give us an arrival estimate

of about 25 days.

That whole experience of not seeing land.

I wouldn't say it was a very dramatic feeling.

Cause it's so fast that you don't see land.

The whole time, even though you're surrounded by water,

you just feel like you're in a small bubble,

and I think it's just impossible to comprehend

that you are in this massive ocean.

Liz, you're doing a great job.

Thank you for guiding us.

I can't believe

this is the boat that we painted.

Sanded, like, did all these things.

It's so strange to see it in the water.

Thinking about this boat in the boatyard for so long.

And now it's was just doing what it's supposed to do.

My plastic lookout spot.

It's insane. We're in the middle of freaking nowhere.

- This one is freaking old. - We knew that crossing the Atlantic,

it would be basically impossible for us to pick up plastic.