Part 2: The Doldrums to Belém

Editor’s note—This is the second installment of a story that began in the March 2026 issue.
Click here for part one.

I’m dimly aware of the sunbeam as it traces across my belly. Back and forth. I’m hoping the sun rises before I have to. Otherwise I’ll burn. It’s about three hours after dawn and just shy of too hot to breathe. Below me, Capucine shuffles restlessly, and I catch a knee or an elbow through the mesh rack. I consider pulling myself up higher to give her more room, but moving feels impossible. 

The sunbeam begins to creep upwards, across my chest towards my face. Sleepy French on deck burbles down through the hatch, and I want to tell them to head up for God’s sakes, they’re off course and my nose will burn before I even open my eyes. But words are as impossible as moving.

It doesn’t matter. Someone is watching the compass, and slowly the boat comes back up and the sunbeam slides back down. In the gentle swell, it resumes its slide back and forth. Something about Edgar Allen Poe’s Pendulum flickers through my mind, but it’s gone before it becomes a real thought.

It’s best not to move. If I pretend I’m not here for a little longer, maybe I won’t be. I could return to the dream about a road trip and an old friend back home. With my eyes closed, it still feels more real than the creaking rigging and endless, unintelligible French.

But the sunbeam is real and the sunburn will be too, so it’s time to roll over and start the day. 

•     •     •

11/1/25

Since we’ve been south of 15°N, it’s been so hot it’s hard to believe we have another 15° to go until we hit the equator. The seas have calmed down quite a bit, and we’re again reeling in the miles, waiting on a wind drop and shift. Tomorrow we expect to be slow, but with any luck that will be the slowest it gets. We have over a week to go though, so no one’s counting chickens yet. 

Other than struggling through the first chapter of a book in French, I’ve made very little progress on anything: my French, my reading, my writing…I suspect I will get home and wonder what I’d been doing for all these weeks. It’s a great question that even now I can’t answer. Watching a compass and thinking about washing my hair? Chit chatting and trying to fall asleep? My head’s on the cusp of being empty enough to write, but whenever it gets close, an interesting conversation or challenging watch fills me back up enough to put it off another day. 

Camille and Ade are baking scones, which I honestly cannot understand in this heat. Behind me at the chart table, Maïté is doing actual work on a laptop, which seems equally baffling in this heat. I think it’s better outside, but I can’t stand the thought of direct sun. 

Time is moving very strangely. It feels like we’ve been here forever and have forever to go. We’ve been pretty much staring at the same horizon in the same colors with the same wind speeds for 10 days, and it’s turned time into taffy, stretching and melting. (To look up when we get back to shore: did Salvador Dali ever sail across the Atlantic?) 

Here’s a comprehensive list of everything we’ve seen and done since leaving: the shadow of Lanzarote on the horizon, the shadow of Gran Canaria on the horizon, a jibe to wing on wing, three ships around us all at once off the coast of Western Sahara, the wind coming back around so we could jibe back, a few more straight line jibes, a ship at night in the distance from Cabo Verde, some flying fish, bigger waves, smaller waves, an empty passenger ship bound for Belém, and a large pod of dolphins. That’s everything. Literally everything in ten days.

11/2/25

Unfortunately we all journaled too hard about how nothing was going on, and karma rewarded us with engine trouble, a broken winch, and a night of squalls. Ade and I were meant to dive today to check on the prop, which is our best guess at the source of the engine’s problem, but it started up fine this morning so we’re not messing with it for now. 

Today it feels like we are in a new land. For so much of the past two weeks, it’s been slow and finicky driving with blank, unchanging scenery and nothing to do but our best. But we’re in the doldrums now—high for this time of year at 11°N. We motored most of the day through a towering panoramic cloudscape, which barely changed all afternoon in the still air. 

It was a day of short fragments. Of pressing heat. Of tall clouds and little shade. Soft piano music. Mangoes a few days too ripe. Quiet conversations. Bare breasts, bronze legs. The chafed, peeling, pimpled skin of weeks at sea. All a part of the moment at hand, all contributing to the honest satisfaction of living in that moment. 

The sun will only last an hour or so more, and in the evening shade my skin tingles, not burnt but newly tanned. The boom squeaks in the swell, and the water washes by. It’s a gentle evening after a gentle day. The girls have been allotted a few sips of wine each, and the chatter in the cockpit is spirited and tumbled through with giggles. From my perch in the forward pit, it feels far away, like it’s already a memory, fuzzy and faded around the edges. Closer is the splash of flying fish returning to the sea. The genoa rumbles in and out, unable to support itself in the softening evening breeze. I have a book in my lap that I’ve been meaning to start since 2013. Putting it off one more night won’t hurt.

We have seen so many shooting stars on this crossing that we have run out of things to wish for.

11/3/25

We’ve just passed the thousand mile perimeter to Belém, and everyone is jubilant, perhaps forgetting how long the last thousand miles took us. 

We saw a butterfly this morning, fluttering around the deck before taking a rest on a winch. I watched it with mixed awe and sadness. How could it have gotten here, so far from land? How could it possibly get back? (To look up when we get back to shore: Monarch lookalikes, Butterfly migrating patterns.)

11/5/25

This afternoon we were hit by a massive squall system. They’ve been rolling through constantly for two days, but this was something new, appearing in an instant and gusting to 36 knots. 

Camille and I had just set the trinq and returned to the cockpit when the wind kicked up. She was on the helm, fearless as ever, even as the boat broached. I talked to her through it while dropping the traveler and resetting the sails, easing the boat back to course. 

The wind summoned Capucine and Sandra, who dashed forward to put a second reef in as I took the helm. The rain was something else, straight sideways and hard as hail. Visibility was down to a few meters, and Maïté brought up our snorkel mask just so I could see where I was driving, which made us all howl with laughter. Unfortunately it fogged up, making visibility even worse for my blurry and stinging eyes (Remember for next time: ski goggles are much better for this). 

When the worst of the gusts passed and the boat was happy again, Maïté took advantage of the rain and washed her hair with water pressure that rivaled the marina showers in Lanzarote. Then she washed mine while I was still driving, laughing at the absurdity of it all. And then it was the watch change and since we were already having a spa day, I shaved my legs in the dregs of the squall while Sandra took her turn at the helm. 

It must be said that the activists are wholly different people than the young women I met a few weeks ago. Gone are the timid drivers and the worried gazes when the clouds rolled in. They are delighted by the squalls and the breeze. They are resilient and brave and they take care of each other. I am incredibly proud of them. 

11/7/25

Now that time is short, the days are slipping through my fingers. I’m not sure what I missed when I skipped my journal entry yesterday other than that there were squalls, because that’s all there seems to be anymore. Everything is wet through, and no one has a stitch of dry clothing left.

In the darkest part of the night, we threaded between two fast moving systems that blotted out the horizon so completely that I felt we were well justified in running a little high of course for the better part of an hour to escape the thrashing. 

We’re doing okay, but every day someone new is feeling unwell, and there was a scary moment yesterday when Sandra collapsed after a particularly tense jibe. She seems to have recovered well, but we’re operating cautiously. Capucine has been taking over watches when she can so that everyone has a little extra rest.

On a happier note, today we celebrated Camille’s graduation from Oxford, which she’s missing to be here. I gave a commencement speech, and we sang and shared an apple cake made from the dregs of our provisions. It was a beautiful evening. 

We’re motoring now. There’s absolutely no wind between the squalls, and so it’s a constant game of sails up, down, in, out, trim, trim, trim. 

11/8/25

Today we must face the reality that—however improbable it seems and unwise it feels to hope—we will soon reach shore. 

Capucine called me over to the nav desk this morning and said, “read this, but don’t say anything.” She pointed to a paragraph in the pilot guide, which cautioned that pirates are a significant concern in and around the mouth of the Amazon. One should plan a course from the 40-mile river radius to their destination entirely during daylight hours. Even boats going three times our speed had been chased down. The trouble is that even in perfect conditions, L’esprit d’équipe can not make the whole trek in one day. There was no avoiding being in the Amazon at night. 

We looked at each other for a moment, chewing on the problem. “What do you think?” she asked. This is perhaps her greatest strength as a captain. She’s decisive and firm yet has no ego about asking for ideas and consensus when it matters. We talked it over in hushed tones, not wanting to worry anyone before we had the full picture. We’d been in contact with a flotilla of other boats headed for the COP30 and decided to reach out to them as well as a few others we knew on the ground. 

11/9/25

Today we crossed the equator to much fanfare and celebration. Sandra made an excellent Neptune and Capucine assisted her as Yemanjá, the West African/Afro-Brazilian goddess of the sea. We have poured out rum, been baptized in sea water, and sacrificed our hair and our troubles. We are triumphant and jubilant. We are almost there. 

11/10/25

The first real sign of land was the water changing color, first to a bright turquoise, then to a silty brown that sparkled golden in the late afternoon sun. By that point, the horizon was studded with the silhouettes of pangas. They were packed full and low to the water, and I was a little worried as the steep waves tossed them around. Occasionally they turned bows towards us and drove in so close we probably could’ve tossed them a baseball. 

Due to the piracy warning, this made everyone a little nervous, but it seemed that they just wanted to have a look at us. We’d managed to get in touch with the right people on the ground to help us navigate the river, and police boats were being sent to escort us after nightfall. I was somewhat surprised to hear it at first, but given that we were ten young women in a slow boat and quite a lot of media attention was on the COP30, it does make sense. 

The mouth of the river is so wide that we didn’t actually catch sight of land until we were quite a ways up it, paralleling the mangroves on the southern bank. We gaped at them like the mirage of an oasis in the desert. 

To cap off our adventure, we had one last drama around twilight on our final night. Sandra was driving and there was a frenetic energy onboard as the girls had a seemingly endless number of videos to record about the project and their efforts at the COP. 

I have no idea how she saw it with the low sun angle, but Sandra caught a glimpse of a buoy just ahead of the boat and ID’d it instantly as marking a submerged fishing net. There wasn’t time for anything graceful or tidy; she threw the helm over. Ade and I, who had been on the high side a moment before, were suddenly tossed towards the lifelines. She had been sitting outboard of me, and I looked down to find a fistful of her life jacket in my right hand and the jackline in my left. The remnants of the exploded preventer swung limply just forward of us.

“Everyone okay?” 

We were. This crew had always been diligent about life jacket and tether protocol, and we’d made our own luck this time. The men on one of the nearby pangas cheered. It was probably their net that we’d almost gotten snared in. We waved back to them in sheepish apology. 

As night fell, the lights on shore seemed garish after so much darkness. In the small hours of the morning under the careful watch of the police boats, we pulled up to a fuel dock—spitting distance from land but not quite within reach. We relished the final hours of being in our own little world, drinking champagne and using a semi permanent marker to decorate ourselves in “tattoos” commemorating the trip. We stayed up until dawn.

When the sun rose pink over the river, we had our first real look at civilization: Buildings and docks and pangas full of commuters crossing the river. After the better part of three weeks at sea, it all seemed surreal. I’d gotten so used to our little life aboard that it was strange and otherworldly. Somewhere along the way, we’d crossed through the looking glass: The voyage was our reality, this was the dream. 

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The Women Wave Project

The Women Wave Project was created by six climate activists looking to get to the 2025 United Nations Climate Conference (COP30) without flying in order to start a conversation about the environmental impacts of air travel and lack of accessible alternatives. With little sailing experience, they brought on five sailors for two legs of the trip—Cherbourg, France, to Lanzarote, Spain, then across the Atlantic to Belém, Brazil—and sailed the 1985-1986 Whitbread Round the World race winner L’Esprit d’équipe. In total, they spent 35 days at sea and reached over 3.5 million people with their message through social media, press conferences, and outreach.

The Activists

Adélaïde Charlier

Camille Étienne

Coline Balfroid

Lucie Morauw

Maïté Meeus

Miriam Toure

The Crew

Captain Capucine Treffot

First Mate Sandra Marichal

Watch Captain Philippa Rytkönen

Watch Captain Lydia Mullan

Watch Captain Laura Ilse

This article was originally published in the April 2026 issue.