♪♪ -♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ -♪ Oh ♪ -♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ -♪ Oh ♪ -♪ Hey ♪ -♪ Ooh ♪ -♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ -TotalBoat has supplies for all of your projects and advice from in-house experts for all of your questions.

Everything we do supports our philosophy, "Do it yourself, but not on your own."

Visit totalboat.com to learn more.

♪♪ -Once the boat goes into the water, she starts to come alive, you know?

♪♪ You set out on your goal, but how far will we get?

Will we get there?

You don't know what you come up against.

And people said, "What is your destination?"

I said, "I would love to make it to the Bahamas, but you never know."

-That was a bit scary to think, "We've never had this time alone.

How is this gonna work?

Maybe this isn't gonna be so dandy."

He kept saying, you know, "God willing, we're gonna make it to the Bahamas.

If something doesn't happen to this boat or something doesn't happen with Tenley's health, we're gonna make it."

And I kept wondering, "Why is he saying this all the time?"

I know he's superstitious, but I thought, "Why?"

It was like a foreshadowing.

Who knew that our trip would be bookended by cancer diagnoses?

♪♪ ♪♪ -I was born in Holland and at the ripe old age of two jumped on an immigrant ship with my parents.

Went to South Africa, and grew up there and sailed.

I come from a family of boating.

My grandfather in Holland had a boat.

My dad had a boat.

I was 23 when I left South Africa.

It was the height of apartheid.

And I wanted to compete more in international level... [ Waves crashing ] ...but I couldn't because of the boycott against South Africa.

So I thought, "Well, I'll leave."

I was lucky I had a Dutch passport.

-I was born in Minneapolis, and then my mother remarried and we moved to Texas.

♪♪ I met my former husband while I was in design school at University of Houston.

I was getting my interior design degree, and he was getting his master's in architecture.

♪♪ He was very funny, very smart.

It was good.

Our relationship was good.

I did break up with him a few times 'cause I just felt... something was amiss.

-I was completely passionate about sailing.

For many years, I did a lot of sailing.

I mean, I did well over 100,000 miles and 10 transatlantics and a circumnavigation.

Those long hauls of 25 to 30 days at sea... you get into a rhythm and you just get nature in the raw.

Very, very few people get to see that.

♪♪ One time that I remember very strongly was at the end of the Round the World race.

So, we had basically 16 guys sail a 76-footer around the world, and it took us 124 days.

And we were sailing the last sort of 10 miles.

It looked like we were gonna win the race, and we were bowled over and sailing along beautifully.

It was early in the morning, still quite cold.

And I thought to myself...

I get choked up about it.

"It's the end of an amazing adventure.

The crew will break apart after this.

We'll never all sail together again."

That's what's going through your mind as you're -- as you're coming up to... [ Inhales shakily ] ...up to the finish.

[ Cheers and applause ] And we did end up winning the race, and it was because of that team.

I mean, the team is everything.

-Read is my firstborn, my daughter, and she was born in Houston, and she was born at home.

And then 15 months later, Billie came along and we moved to Jamestown.

[ Birds singing ] ♪♪ -My goal was never to settle and live in the United States.

My goal was to leave South Africa and -- and get out of that small fish bowl of sailing.

And a friend of mine said, "Have you seen New England?"

And I said, "New what?"

And he says, "It's up near Boston."

I said, "No, I haven't been up there."

I said, "But I don't like the States."

He says, "You haven't seen squat."

♪♪ -He drank a lot... and then would go into a tunnel and not come out for a few days.

And I just kind of put a blind eye on it.

♪♪ -If you're interested in sailing and want to race and get involved, Newport is the best place in the world.

You have a beer in a bar, you bump into a guy, you start chatting, and he's like, "Yeah, I've just sailed across the Atlantic on XYZ boat."

It was just a hive of sailing activity, and I just thought, "I just got to go and live in Newport."

♪♪ -Things got worse and a little bit more...volatile.

I...couldn't deal with it anymore.

I couldn't raise the children in that environment.

I said, "It's time for us to end this, and you need to go."

He left the house.

We called it off.

♪♪ -My dad was a keen photographer, and he was always saying, "Oh, let's go and shoot a little bit," or "Let's go in the darkroom and let me show you how I make my prints."

And I did it once or twice, but I was bored out of my brain, you know?

And I did a transatlantic crossing in 1979, and one of the guys had a camera.

He had a Nikon, and he was always clicking away and shooting.

And one day I said to him, "Can I look through your camera?"

You know?

And I thought, "Wow!"

This is beautiful how you can frame it... ...how you could sort of move things around and compose and all that.

And that sort of opened my eyes.

♪♪ And because I had a lot of time at sea on fishing boats and ships and sailboats and motorboats... and I'm fortunate enough that I have a creative eye, so I could sort of marry those two together pretty nicely.

♪♪ -I met Onne at a slideshow at IRYS, the International Yacht Restoration School.

I had seen Onne's name on posters around Newport.

♪♪ I thought, "Well, I love photography," and a dear old friend of mine had met Onne before and said, "Let's go to this slideshow."

And he started speaking, and my friend kind of elbowed me and said, "He's cute, isn't he?"

And I was like, "Well, yeah."

-And little did I know that Tenley was in the crowd.

-I was blown away... because it was quite impressive.

♪♪ When a person has such drive and passion... ...it's very sexy, it's very appealing.

♪♪ He showed one of his nieces and nephews jumping down this sand dune in South Africa, and he got kind of choked up talking about his family.

And I was thinking to myself, "Hmm, he likes children.

I gotta get to know this guy."

-So of course I get choked up.

She sees that and said, "He loves kids."

Two or three people said, "You got to meet this gal."

So...was set up on a blind date that I knew about but Tenley didn't.

And she walked in there with her two little kids, and we chatted.

And she was obviously looking for somebody to share her life with.

-It was kind of a slow-ish courtship because of my kids.

I -- I had to focus on two kids, and -- and I was working in Providence as an interior designer.

He was busy with his career... ♪♪ -♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ -...but he loved coming over and having meals and an instant family.

And I do remember at one point, you know, that discussion of... "You've got two little kids here.

What if this doesn't work out?"

And I said, "Well, we're never gonna know unless we give it a try."

And I said to him, "You know, you can move in, but you have to know that you're marrying me.

I've got two little kids in this house, and that's -- The ultimate goal here is to be married."

♪♪ We got married on Prudence Island.

You have to go to Prudence Island by boat, so we went by our boat.

And, uh, tide was a little low and we couldn't get as close as we wanted, so Onne took his pants off, hopped out overboard, and carried people ashore.

You know, the kids on his shoulders, picked up the minister and carried him ashore, and then picked up me and carried me ashore.

♪♪ Shortly after the wedding, Onne adopted Read and Billy.

But the day the adoption went through, we got word that Bill had passed away.

Onne was like a big kid when we married.

He was so excited to have two little kids in his life, I think.

And I said to Onne, "I think we should have a child."

So we planned a child, and we had Adrian immediately.

♪♪ It -- The first 15 years of our marriage, Onne was probably gone a third of the time, traveling all over the world.

[ Birds chirping ] I felt that the public needed to be able to purchase this beautiful photography that Onne took.

I started the gallery 23 years ago.

And I had done 20 years of interior design and was ready to make a change... ...and I thought, "You know, why not just hang a shingle in Newport?

It's a touristy town.

Get people in to buy."

I do look through all of his images.

After each photo shoot, he'll come back saying, "Oh, you know, I took this shot.

You might really like it.

You might want to take a look at it for the gallery.

I think it will work."

I put the ones that I like up, and it seems the ones that I like a lot sell well.

It's just kind of intuitive.

My job is selecting the imagery, selecting the frames, selecting the sizes... making sure the orders are taking place.

Barracuda is number 18.

So let's try this a little lighter.

We have a staff of people that help us, but I oversee all the decisions that need to be made for the gallery.

♪♪ -You get to a point in your life where the kids are all gone, and now you have time together to do things, and you're still fit and healthy to travel.

-So this was our time to do something for us.

-It was time to sort of put the sails away and -- and make life a little more comfortable for both Tenley and for myself, and let's go to a trawler.

Something that chugs along at eight knots.

You don't have to worry about "click, click, click" and heeled over and all that stuff.

Testing.

One, two.

One, two.

So that's -- that's how we come to Snow Goose.

I've always wanted a trawler, and I came across this boat in Jamestown.

It was owned by a fellow yacht club member.

And I said, "What's going on with your boat?"

He says, "Well, I may put it up for sale."

Take a quick look up here.

[ Snow crunching ] And I said, "Could I go and have a look?"

Plenty of snow on deck... And this was in the winter.

...as you can see here.

Had a really good look around.

Then I noticed there was quite a few tired things on the boat.

You know, the hot water heater, the instruments, the lighting -- just all the stuff that had been put in the boat in 1986 was still sort of there.

And I thought, "That's quite a lot of work to put all the..." And you really do need to do that.

So with that in mind, I made Jack an offer.

And I thought, "Oh, my goodness, that's the end of the story," but he called back the next day and he said, "The boat's yours."

-I'd never felt better in my life.

I was working out, I was running.

I felt, "Wow, for 60, I'm feeling pretty good."

I went in for a routine mammogram and...got a phone call saying that I needed to go back to have another test.

I really wanted to ignore it.

And Onne said, "Please?

Your mother had breast cancer.

Please just deal with this."

-You hear "breast cancer," yeah, of course you worry, you know?

You know plenty of people who haven't made it.

-And I was a chicken.

I didn't want to have a biopsy.

Then I got a phone call and he said, "Your test came back positive.

The biopsy is cancerous."

I was freaking out.

Onne was devastated.

-You sort of put yourself in that position.

You think, "Wow, I hope this is gonna be okay, you know, that we're not gonna go carry on a life without Tenley."

-He couldn't do anything.

I'm the one that had to go through chemo.

I'm the one that had to plow through.

♪♪ And in the meantime, he could... be putting all of his energy into this trawler.

He could fix a boat, but he couldn't help me with my cancer.

♪♪ I would sit for about five hours and receive chemo wearing this freezing-cold cap on my scalp.

I lost just about half my hair.

And I would do it again every week.

-Tenley very rarely came to the boat in the winter when I was working on it, but I would say to her, "Okay, what's important to you?

Hot water?

Fridge?"

-Have you ordered it already?

Did you order it?

-And she would say, "Yep!

Super important to do this, this, this."

-Okay.

This was a great diversion for him.

He wanted the boat comfortable for me, for both of us, and that was, uh, a very loving gesture.

-And today's mission is to... take down that little mast.

You know, you think of a trawler and you think, "What is it?

Why is a mast important?"

You don't have to hoist any sails and all that, but you have to have a place to put the navigation equipment, the radar, the radios, the nav lights.

All that stuff is on the mast.

You can see how everything is, uh, sort of... you know, the paint is not in very good shape.

So it's just a matter of cleaning it up nicely... and making it look new again.

Not rocket science.

Just a bit of time.

♪♪ See how it looks.

♪♪ ♪♪ Well, the mast is up, painted, new instruments.

Ready to go.

The ultimate goal was to get it to a level where everything worked perfectly and was super reliable.

I'm a machinist by trade.

I can work well with my hands.

I understand tools.

On the Round the World race, I was the engineer on the boat.

One of the most important jobs was to keep the systems going.

And I couldn't just run out and go to the hardware store or go to the boatyard and get a mechanic.

We were 3,000 miles from the closest land... so you had to fix it.

So all those skills and years working on boats, they all went into the memory bank.

[ Loud snap ] Bingo.

And so I knew I needed at least one winter, probably two, to get the boat to that standard.

Life in New England in the winter time.

It's beautiful... but I'll take a beach in the Bahamas any day.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -When we bought the boat, the upholstery was a little tired and it has that typical kind of gray, beige color to it.

It's a small boat, and it's all monochromatic wood, and I thought I would get a splash of -- of color.

So, this isn't considered their marine grade?

-This is.

-Oh, oh, oh.

The woman who did our upholstery comes to the boat and makes a template of these sizes of cushions... and goes back and has it all manufactured in her shop.

-We didn't find it.

[ Sewing machine whirring ] -And it just -- it fits perfectly to a tee.

Katie, who is the upholstery woman, said, "How about yellow pillows?"

And I loved that idea.

-By the time that we left, I'd had two winters and two summers to get her ready.

I had done as much as I physically could to get that boat in good shape, and I felt I was ready.

All done.

♪♪ ♪♪ The whole idea was to get as far as the Bahamas, but that was, let's say, 1,700 miles away.

And this is not on I-95 where you're doing 65, 70 miles an hour.

You do five, six, seven miles an hour.

♪♪ -I had finished 15 months of chemo, and five days later I hopped on the boat and we take off past Castle Hill on Narragansett Bay.

And I don't have a clean bill of health quite yet.

I was supposed to have a mastectomy and I opted for a lumpectomy.

I was nervous about that.

Did I make the right decision?

So it wasn't such smooth sailing, let's say, in the beginning.

I was a little nervous.

♪♪ -Well, good morning from Long Island Sound.

We're heading west towards Point Washington.

We've got a nice fair tide.

I felt very responsible because here I was taking Mom off shore.

I just had to make sure the boat was safe and that Tenley would be safe.

And right now, we have about 15 to 17 knots out of the north.

So Tenley and I had always had in our mind to do the Intracoastal Waterway, which is basically going down the East Coast of the United States, but inside water, be it marshes, rivers, canals, lakes.

-Onne always wanted to do this trip, and I was really never that interested.

I thought, "Eh, I don't know, going down the Intracoastal?"

Because I thought I had seen all of the United States, so I -- I wasn't so psyched to do this trip.

♪♪ -You're coming from Long Island Sound, where it's pretty quiet... and suddenly the beast awakes.

Hence Hell Gate.

Welcome to Hell Gate.

Here we are dialing for dollars, trying to keep the boat in the middle.

Hell Gate is where you come in from Long Island Sound and you approach the East River.

And there's just whirlpools and waves and all kinds of madness.

You start to get in towards the hum of the Big Apple.

This is the city, just going at it.

[ Horns honking ] The sound of all the air conditioners and all the buses and the trucks and the taxis and the ambulances and airplanes from LaGuardia coming right over it.

And there's traffic there.

There's tugs, there's barges, there's pilot boats, there's ferries.

And to be able to go motoring right down next to the United Nations and all these iconic, world-famous buildings... it's pretty exciting.

♪♪ We had folding bikes on the boat.

Mexican place we ate with Billy.

Versus walking, you can get so much further on a bicycle.

I saw a retired guy from Argentina.

[ Onne chuckles ] -He's South African.

-[ Speaking in Spanish ] -Whoa!

Where'd you learn to speak in Spanish, eh?

-He was fishing, and he caught a beautiful big striper.

-Oh!

-Oh.

-Good job.

-And he was very excited.

-It's a keeper.

-Yeah, I think so.

-Bye!

-Give me a horn.

[ Horn honks ] -It's okay.

-Wow.

-Tenley wasn't always on the boat.

There was times when she would have to go back for maybe a scan or a meeting.

She got off in Manhattan.

-There were three times I got off.

I had to come and go and come back home and kind of face reality in a way with my health.

Plus, I was running the gallery and I had to get back to make sure things were managed.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Good morning from Chesapeake City here at the Town Dock.

What a great place to be.

And we're just gonna enjoy the day here today.

-You guys have a safe trip.

-Thank you.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Birds cawing, chirping ] -So what is your name?

-Freddie Wheatley.

-Okay.

And you're from here?

You're native?

-Yeah.

Yeah.

-Yeah.

And what do you do for a living?

-Crab, oyster.

-And how's it been going?

-Well, it's so-so.

It's like it always been -- some days is good, and some days ain't.

-Yeah, we live on a small island, too, but 5,000 people, not 800.

-Yeah.

[ Both chuckle ] Bit different, ain't it?

-This reminds me a bit of Block Island, which is up there.

-Oh, yeah.

I'm familiar with that.

My father used to work on the Manhattan boats up in New England.

-Oh, wow.

-Out of Boston, out of, uh... Greenport, Long Island, New York.

He used to work out of there back in the '60s.

-Wow.

-That was my vacation in the summer -- I'd go up there with him a week.

♪♪ [ Motor whirring ] ♪♪ -Where are we?

-We're in "Onarock."

-[ Chuckles ] -We're in Onacock.

-Onan-- -Onancock.

-Onancock.

-And I'm gonna go get some coffee, and then we're supposed to get the best glazed doughnuts in Virginia.

♪♪ The highlight of the trip for me was meeting all the people.

-I'm Schuyler Van Vechten Hurlbut, and I've been making cranberry orange relish for probably about 15 years.

It goes great with rockfish and turkey, cream cheese and bagels.

-My name is Monique Martin.

This is my candle company.

They give you a nice clean burn for a nice aromatherapy session.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Well, we've just left Hampton and steaming through the -- the warships here in Norfolk.

Norfolk, Virginia, is the base of the North Atlantic US Navy fleet.

All these big ships were just tied up like little boats in a marina, you know?

But this is the might of the US Navy.

There's military police everywhere, and don't go too close, 'cause there's nuclear submarines on that side.

It was great photographing through there.

♪♪ ♪♪ The only locks you encounter on this whole trip are at the Dismal Swamp.

So you've gotta go I think up and along and down the other side.

And locking is fun.

♪♪ We're coming up to the lock ahead of us, so we'll slow right down and see what the procedure is here.

So why do you need a lock?

If you're going from, let's say, a waterway onto a lake, there may be a difference in water level of anywhere from, you know, 3 feet up to 10 feet.

If you didn't have the lock, you just have a cascade.

You'd have a waterfall.

So to make it navigable, they put locks in there.

You go into the chamber, you go as far in as you can, and the lock master will say, "Starboard side two, port side two."

-Hey!

-You gotta have somebody on the bow tending lines and somebody on the stern.

Put the boat in position and throw the line to the lock master.

♪♪ Everybody's in.

Close the doors.

They flood the lock.

♪♪ As soon as it levels out and the water's calm, they open the door and you'll steam out.

♪♪ Well, we've finally arrived in the Dismal Swamp, and it's beautiful.

The sun came out, and, uh, a beautiful view of the boats ahead of us.

There's a little bit of a procession.

I think we were with three other boats, but it was fine.

They went maybe a little quicker than us and gave me something to shoot with perspective.

-It was surreal going through there very slowly.

It was beautiful.

It was very beautiful.

[ Birds chirping, singing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ Onne's first swim of the voyage... in Alligator River.

Hope there aren't any alligators in there.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Well, good morning from Belhaven, North Carolina.

What a beautiful ride.

So quiet.

Tenley decided to stay on the boat and relax.

She did a bike ride yesterday.

And look at this on the left-hand side here, the cotton.

When last have you seen cotton being grown like this?

Unbelievable.

That's amazing.

I've never done this before.

I think I'll just make a little stop and let's have a look at the cotton.

Park my bike.

[ Birds chirping ] Very cool.

And it's everywhere.

Miles of it.

The world still so relies on cotton.

It's crazy.

You'd think in today's age that, with all the modern fabrics, that we would have created something that would replace cotton, but no.

Lots of cotton.

Cotton, cotton, cotton everywhere.

♪♪ ♪♪ Good morning from the Waccamaw River.

So the sun's coming up.

It's just starting to hit the tops of the trees behind us and there's a little mist on the water, so, um, it should make for a nice picture.

I'm shooting this at 1/60 of a second at f11 at ISO 200, and my lens is set at about 24mm.

So you get a little idea of what I'm playing around with here.

♪♪ -The boat life was so simple and so relaxing.

I took time to dote on myself.

I exercised, I took my vitamins, we ate well, and just took life at a simpler pace.

And I read, and we could relax.

♪♪ ♪♪ What I realized on the boat together is... we depend upon each other in work and in home life, but on a boat even more so.

-This is Snow Goose on 13.

-I really depended on him.

He was the captain.

He knew how to run the boat.

And I think he depended on me just to be there, to do whatever I could to help, to be the first mate.

And that -- that dependence was a new feeling that we haven't had before, and that's -- it's a -- it's a beautiful feeling.

[ Chuckles ] -So as you can see, St. Augustine's a very old city, the oldest in the United States.

-The only thing I noticed going down the Intracoastal was that he had lost weight.

I had lost a bit of weight as well, though, which a lot of people who just -- just go on a boat start losing weight.

You're going up and down the stairs, you're eating more healthy, you're riding bikes, so he had lost some weight.

♪♪ So I did some last-minute provisioning today, some perishable goods since we're leaving shortly.

So we're set to go.

[ Waves crashing ] -You get down to Florida and then you got to cross over, and then boom, you're in the Bahamas, you know?

And it's a complete dichotomy.

So different.

♪♪ Beautiful beaches.

Crystal-clear water.

Little settlement.

Great, great local people.

-How many people live here?

-Between 80 and 90.

-Nice.

-This is what we eat, actually, right here.

-Oh, gotcha.

-You could boil it, you could steam it, or you could, like, take it out the shell.

-For us to go down on our own boat and have the time and the luxury of saying, "This is a great place, let's hang here for three nights," or "Let's move on," that was my goal.

♪♪ I just remember climbing into my bunk at night, not feeling great and thinking, "Okay, a good night's sleep and I'll wake up tomorrow morning."

It's like when you have a little flu or a little bug in your stomach.

9 times out of 10, you sleep well, you wake up in the morning, boom, ready to go.

-Okay.

-But every morning, I'd wake up feeling the same and I thought, "Oh, I'm just not quite shaking this thing."

Tenley really picked on the big pointer when she noticed that my eyes were yellow, and we both decided it was time to call my doctor.

And he said, "Onne, you should pick up your anchor now and beeline down to Nassau," which was about 70 miles away.

♪♪ ♪♪ The doctor said, "Let's just do a CT scan."

And an hour later, whatever, the results came back... and he said, "We found a mass on your pancreas," you know?

♪♪ So that was a shock, but it was a much bigger shock to see Tenley's look on her face when she heard the diagnosis.

♪♪ -I hit the floor on my knees.

I was so shocked.

I...could not believe this.

I had known people that died in four months of pancreatic cancer, from diagnosis till death.

♪♪ We went back to the boat hours later... and Onne said... "I've had a wonderful life.

I've done everything I've wanted to do.

The kids are fine.

You'll be fine."

And I at this point said, "You're not talking like this.

We're going forward.

I don't want to think of a future without you."

♪♪ [ Waves crashing ] You think your life is over because his life is over.

But...again... you put on a strong face because you can't... crumble.

[ Waves crashing ] And, um, you know, the next step was we've got to get ahold of Boston.

We got to get to Dana-Farber as soon as possible.

-So my first call, you know, you'll laugh, but the first call is to make sure the boat's okay, you know?

And the second call was to a friend of ours up here, Martha Tuff, who works in -- at Dana-Farber.

[ Exhales sharply ] And I said, "Help me."

[ Flag fluttering ] You know, I realized that, yeah, this was serious, and we had to jump on it.

Thank you.

-You're very welcome.

Have a good afternoon.

-You, too.

Bye-bye.

-Dr. Carol did say, "So, the bad news is you've got a mass in your pancreas.

But the good news is it's in an operable spot and it hasn't spread."

So with those words, I thought, "Well, let's hope that we can -- we can work through this."

And then we got to meet all these amazing oncology, endoscopy, radiation, surgery, all boom, boom, boom in meetings at Dana-Farber in Brookline.

And I just thought, "Man, I'm in the best hands."

Top guys.

♪♪ -He was very sick with bile in his system.

Before they could give him any chemo, he had to have this bile released and he had to have two surgeries, two stents put in his bile duct to release the bile.

And before then, I was watching him disappear in front of me because he was getting thinner and thinner.

He was dwindling right in front of my eyes.

I remember inconspicuously taking a picture of him standing by the fireplace, and I texted it to the kids and said, "Please come home.

I don't know how long this is going to last."

♪♪ -I had to get a stent because the mass on the pancreas was blocking the bile, so they had to open up that bile duct.

That stent didn't work.

I went back in again.

They put a second stent in.

That worked perfectly.

Then we had to wait for the bilirubin numbers -- that's how much bile is in your body -- to come down.

They were way too high.

They couldn't do chemo with that.

So once the numbers came down, then I started my whole chemo regimen.

-Finally, we could see some light.

Who thinks that chemo is going to be light?

But he was well enough to accept chemotherapy, which was our only hope at that point.

-Here it comes.

-I have your first chemotherapy.

This is called oxaliplatin.

-Super strong stuff.

You know, you see the nurse arriving with full-on gear and a face mask and two layers of gloves, carrying a yellow bag with a radiation cross and skulls on it that said "poison."

Like, "Geez, they're gonna put that stuff in my body?"

You know?

So, any case, the moment that, you know, they do flavor number one and then that's plugged into the port and you can see it dripping in and certain effects, and... you know, it's just not a fun thing.

[ Machine whirring, beeping ] Dr. Wischhusen, my oncologist, said to me, "Look, this thing comes back and it nails people."

-For 75% of people, regardless of the treatment that they have, the cancer is still going to come back at some point.

And that will ultimately, uh, most likely be what takes their life.

There are a lot of cancers that we can cure.

-Uh-huh.

-So if you catch certain cancers like pancreatic, lung, colon, et cetera, a lot of the solid tumors, early enough with a combination of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, they are curable.

So it always makes sense to try because there are a lot of wins, too.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -I said to him -- I called him Dr. John.

I said... "Can positive thinking heal me?"

And he says, "Well, I don't know about that, but negative thinking will kill you."

♪♪ I never let myself go down that dark hole.

I kept my projects going.

I said, "We've got to tell this story about what I'm going through now."

This is not Mr. and Mrs.

Happy on their boat doing the Bahamas.

This is some dude is now fighting for his life.

His wife went through this 6, 8, 10 months ago, and now it's my turn.

♪♪ Halfway through we did a scan, and the mass had substantially become smaller.

And at the end of the chemo, it was even smaller.

So they said, "You're really reacting very well to the chemo.

We're super happy."

♪♪ And then I went into radiation.

It's always a challenge tying this bloody knot behind my neck.

We're doing radiation, and I'm well over halfway of 15 sessions that -- that we normally -- that I have to do.

So I'm doing 15 sessions, 5 every week.

Some bunks, yeah.

I've been in very narrow bunks in my life.

[ Machine whirring ] The machine turns all the way around, and it does to complete 360 cycles of radiation with radiating the -- the mass.

-What this will do is we'll monitor his positioning for us, so if he were to move during treatment, we would see that.

[ Whirring continues ] -In a way, it's a blessing to get this later on in my life.

If I didn't make it and I left Tenley with these three kids to raise, that's a mission, you know?

And that's not fair.

Every child needs a father and a mother, you know, and I'm fortunate I've been able to do that.

So, yeah, it's a, um... As a father, it's -- that's really the only time I get choked up... talking about them.

[ Softly ] Yeah.

-These moments are okay.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Need to have them.

Not everybody -- Nobody's Superman, when it comes down to it.

-No, exactly.

Especially when we talk about family... [voice breaking] that's when it hits me.

♪♪ Those people really cared.

And I say this from the bottom of my heart, that they really cared and they knew my name and they knew what I was doing.

-What's your plan then?

-South Africa.

-Oh, wow.

-Summertime.

This is a tough thing to go through.

This is a life-threatening situation, but they make it bearable.

-This job is certainly not for everybody.

Hope, giving people a smile on their face.

If I can make Onne laugh or just give him something for the day... -It's remarkable that these people have this passion and this care and this caring for you.

Once radiation was finished, I had a little bit of a break and then it was time for surgery.

Good morning.

-Good morning.

-Morning, Eric.

Hey, Cassandra.

[ Door closes in distance ] [ Wheels squeaking, indistinct conversations ] -This is Mr. Onne van der Wal.

We're going to do a robotic Whipple procedure.

He has boots in place.

-So, Whipple surgery is where they have to cut the top of the pancreas and the mass off, and then they have to re-plumb... the connections with the stomach and the duodenum and all the bits and pieces in that digestive tract.

[ Monitor beeping ] It's a massive surgery.

-Put this in and watch.

-I mean, I think it was under the knife for about seven hours or something, and there's only a handful of guys who are really good and who know how to do this the right way.

And Dr. Tom Clancy is...

Very fortunate he was my surgeon.

-And once our instruments are in position, then we can see on the screen we're all ready to go.

-Okay.

[ Monitor beeping steadily ] -And the way that they did the Whipple was it wasn't a big slice.

and go in and open up and hands in and all that.

It was done robotically.

So, there are two pipes that get inserted.

They're like 12 millimeter or sort of half inch, and that has camera and tools and lights and all that kind of good stuff.

-And just watch there that's going inside the abdomen.

-That was all done robotically.

[ Beeping continues ] ♪♪ There we are.

Here's Billy.

Chatting to Billy in Portland, Oregon.

-I guess I just wish I could be closer.

-Right.

-Hearing that it was a success, um, was -- was hugely... um, it was a relief.

♪♪ -It felt like a heavy blanket of sadness just over my life for the last couple of months.

Now the blanket's lifted a little bit.

Coming into the hospital room late last night and waiting hours and hours to see him... Just never loved him more.

-It's been a long time in preparation, so it was a big relief to actually go onto the table yesterday.

Like Dr. Clancy said, this is what we've been preparing for.

-During this whole process, I've been confident that he's always going to pull through.

And obviously that's not without its worries and -- and fears, but he's a strong guy.

This is a, um, a great checkpoint.

We just had a good race, but there's -- there's a lot more to the regatta, you know?

♪♪ -So I had chemo after the surgery.

Dr. Clancy said, "If there is still a little cancer floating around in your body after the surgery, they can be floating around and parking somewhere else and starting again."

The last session was towards Christmas, the end of the year.

I tell you, I was halfway through, or three quarters of the way through, and I just said, "You guys, where's a bucket?

Because I'm not gonna hold it anymore."

And I feel lousy, this is really hitting me hard, and this is the last infusion.

And I said, "Can you just stop the drip for a second," you know?

And Heidi called Dr. John and -- and said, "Onne's just having a hard time with it right now.

It's the first time I've seen him so feeling..." And Dr. John said, "He's done so well.

We've given him so much chemo, we can stop here.

I'm happy with what he's got."

So he said, "Disconnect, and he's finished."

[ Bell ringing ] ♪♪ It was Billy who was with me, and I thought, "This is so great that Billy's with me."

And I walked out of the clinic... the Dana-Farber clinic, with Billy thinking, "We're done."

And we had a great ride home.

It was wonderful.

Home for Tenley's birthday party and for Christmas.

And I was home.

♪♪ -A cancer patient lives scan to scan.

So I'm scanned twice a year for breast cancer.

Onne is scanned right now every three months.

-I'm very fortunate in that I've been traveling a lot, and I've seen some really great places on my assignments and with my family.

But I had another trip to take, and that was to go to South Africa with Tenley and visit my mom.

So, you and I were sitting at the Royal Cape Yacht Club in Cape Town having lunch, just the two of us, and you said to me, "This is amazing.

This is a miracle that we're together."

-Would I live long enough?

Would all your treatments go as we hoped?

And it was only at the very end that the specialist said to you, "I have the best news that I can tell you, and I wish I could say it to more people.

You are okay.

You are fine."

-When Onne had to tell his mother that he had cancer, she was very supportive and thank goodness she was with Mariette, his sister.

And they got off the phone, and his mother was a mess, as you would presume, but held it together for Onne on the phone, as she is -- She's that stoic of a person and that type of a mother... ...that's gonna hold it together so her son doesn't panic.

-Yeah, I feel the same.

Very grateful that we are both here.

We're both alive.

I've had tons of great support from my family.

I'm not a religious person.

My family is.

But tons of prayer coming from them, and they firmly believe that that could help me.

♪♪ It's always great to go down to the fishing boats and relive a little bit of my youth.

♪♪ -♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ -When I lived as a young kid in Cape Town, instead of going to school, I would go and work on the fishing boats.

I just loved it.

[ Speaking in Afrikaans ] But to catch up with a guy who I'd worked with on a fishing boat 45, 50 years ago was remarkable.

So when I was about 14, I fished with Arthur Adams on the Hamburg.

And do you know the boat?

-Yes, definitely.

So aren't you Onne?

-Yeah!

I am!

-'Cause there was a youngster Onne on the vessel, always with Arthur.

-Yeah.

I loved it.

-Arthur's great.

-Yeah.

I'm so excited that we could meet today and talk a little bit, you know?

Thank you for your time.

Baie dankie.

So nice to chat.

♪♪ -It's so nice to see you so content here.

You know, it's -- it's amazing.

-You know, if things go a little south with -- with what I have and I end up not making it, I could see spending my last few days here in Hout Bay, you know?

-That hurts.

I mean, that hurts to hear that, but I totally understand.

-Yeah.

-I get it.

I'm happy to see you content here, but, um... we're gonna go home, too.

And you're gonna go home healthier.

-Absolutely.

I mean, it's great to be here.

It's been great... -One of the things that we have always shared, maybe more than anything else, is our sense of adventure.

And after being diagnosed with cancer, I think that has blossomed even more.

-♪ Ooh ♪ -I mean, we only have who knows how many more years left to travel, and there's a lot of the world for us to adventure together... ♪♪ ...and a lot of life for us to adventure together.

♪♪ [ Indistinct conversations ] [ Cheering ] -[ Chuckles ] Oh, you did it!

Aww!

You did it.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ -♪ Oh ♪ -♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ -♪ Oh ♪ -♪ Hey ♪ -♪ Ooh ♪ -♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ -TotalBoat has supplies for all of your projects and advice from in-house experts for all of your questions.

Everything we do supports our philosophy, "Do it yourself, but not on your own."

Visit totalboat.com to learn more.

♪♪