learning to trust - twice
I was walking to dinner in Qingdao when my phone rang.
"WTF, why is this happening?” a crewmate asked - no hello, no context, just that.
"What?? Fill me in," I said, still walking, still not understanding that the ground was about to move under me.
There was an email. I hadn't read it yet. We were getting a new first mate.
That was just the first of several calls that came my way in a span of minutes. I had become used to being the one that people came to when they had questions, when they needed help understanding. Honestly, I ignored the other calls. I wasn’t in an emotional state to take them, nor did I have answers to offer.
I made it to the restaurant in a daze. My friends were already at the table, two of them racing against me on other boats, and one of their mothers - all of whom by that point had become something like family to me. I sat down and told them the news, breaking with each word. Right there, at dinner, in front of people I loved, crying over a change I didn't choose.
Faith had sailed with us since race start in Portsmouth. She stumbled through the Bay of Biscay with us, survived the Southern Ocean with us, checked off the two coasts of Australia with us, and made it all the way to China with us. Seven countries, three major ocean crossings, two equator crossings, and one email later, she was being given to another boat.
She was the one I laughed with during long watches, the one I dreamed of future careers with (even skydiving instructor made the list), the one I drank tea with in the settee when the day had been too much, the one that made a mean orange cake for funsies, and the one I riffed back and forth with when it came to absurd “would you rather” questions. She read me without me having to explain myself. She was my comic relief in the middle of chaos, and on our boat, chaos was not in short supply.
And now, she was leaving. Two nights before we set sail for South Korea. Shortly after, we were looking forward to the North Pacific - the leg we’d all been quietly dreading and looking forward to in equal measure. As I envisioned what that leg would be like, I knew Faith was a constant that would keep me sane.
I want to be honest about something without dwelling on it: things on our boat, underneath the surface, weren't good in that stretch. Not everything was bad, not even close, but there was a kind of dissonance running through the boat that people weren't naming out loud, or if they were it was mumbles rather than doing anything about it. We didn’t really feel like a team. We felt like a group of individuals just hoping to get across oceans safely, and competitively. These are not the same things, and anyone who’s crewed a boat knows how much that distinction matters when the weather turns. I'm not interested in re-litigating any of that here. What matters for this story is that Faith had been one of my anchors through it all up to this point, and now she was racing with a different team (the competition) - seemingly with one panicked phone call and an email.
The following day we had crew brief followed by a meeting on the boat. Both Faith and new first mate, Amy, were present. We had the chance to properly thank Faith, and I made sure she knew we’d hug in every stopover port moving forward. Then, we met Amy. She’d been on the same journey with another boat since race start and came aboard our boat with an attitude I wasn’t sure I was ready for (but knew we needed): we’re moving forward. We'll address what needs addressing, but I'm here for you.
I’d heard nothing but great things from a friend of mine that previously sailed as crew under her leadership, but knowing that someone is fun and nice at a bar is different from trusting them across oceans. She’d been through the same races we had, been through the same storms, but had vastly different experiences. I simply didn’t trust yet. All I could focus on was the feeling of loss while the voice in the back of my head kept screaming “opportunity.”
Amy saw that in me, though. She named it without me having to. She told me she understood, because she was grieving her own crew too - people who'd become family to her on her old boat over months of racing - but knew she had to move forward. Three first mates were swapping boats in that reshuffle, and all of us, in our own ways, were starting over.
The leg to South Korea was short, just a few days, and we came in third. A good omen, maybe, though I wasn't ready to trust omens yet either.
Then came the North Pacific.
It’s a hard leg by any measure - long, remote, and unforgiving. Amy and I leaned on each other to get through it like never before. We checked in on each other, took care of each other in the way you learn to when there’s no other choice. Something was building between us, but it hadn’t found its shape just yet.
Truthfully, it didn’t fully shift until after Panama - two legs later - building slowly until then. To further complicate boat dynamics, we had a new skipper (more on that leadership change at another time perhaps). From this point forward, both Skipper and Amy spent a solid portion of every watch on deck with us, not just popping their heads out of the nav station when we needed them.
The balance of time in the nav station versus on deck is a fine line - a personal decision that every leader on a racing yacht will handle a bit differently. There are weather forecasts, currents, tacking angles, and general racing tactics to review regularly - not to mention the constant comms requirements and current performance of the yacht, much of which can be seen in the numbers down below.
Having leadership with me on deck meant that, as watch leader, I had a second set of eyes on safety across our crew. When storms approached, I didn’t have to rely on early warning signs and then have a separate conversation to make decisions - we both noticed the small changes early and could make split-second decisions, reacting to even the smallest changes in the conditions.
Not everyone on the boat saw it that way. Having a skipper or first mate on deck could just as easily read as looming, like they didn't trust the watch leader to lead. Amy and I talked about that tension more than once. It was an adjustment the whole boat had to make, whether they liked it or not. For me, specifically, having Amy there stopped feeling like oversight and began feeling like a partnership.
She provided coaching on the helm when I felt in over my head and wanted to learn from her coaching of others. She took the wheel when our watch needed relief. We problem solved in real time when the ocean asked something of us. Somewhere in all those hours on deck together, something opened up between us that hadn’t been there before.
We sang together - her love of music ever-present. We danced on deck when the wind was right and the work was done. While monitoring conditions or check-helming, we talked about the hard things, on and off the boat. The kind of conversations that don’t happen unless two people have decided to trust each other with the real version of themselves. She'd remind me to be easier on myself when I was being too hard, and she'd sit with me in silence when that was what I actually needed instead. We challenged each other. We pointed out the beauty when the other one was too tired to see it.
By the time we reached the later legs of the race, I couldn't picture finishing without Amy.
I think about both of these women often. Two first mates that came into my life at different points in the race, and in very different chapters of their twenties. The crew had a completely different relationship with each of them, just as I did, shaped by different circumstances. The coolest part was getting a front row seat to watch each of them grow, as leaders and as humans, over the course of the year. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being grateful for that - for the inspiration - or for either of them.
What I keep coming back to, though, isn't really about either mate specifically. It's about what it means to lose the person you thought was irreplaceable, and to find out (against your own resistance) that you had more room in you than you knew. I didn't choose to let someone new in that fast. I fought it, quietly, for longer than I probably let on. But the ocean doesn't wait for you to be ready, and somewhere along the way I stopped comparing what I had to what I’d lost and just let it be its own amazing thing.
Relationships are a part of the circumnavigation the average person doesn’t ask you about when they inquire about how the race went. The best parts weren’t the mileage, the storms, or even the podium finishes. Just: who was standing next to you when it got hard, who brought out the best in you, and how many times did you have to learn to trust someone all over again before the year was through.
