First Day at Sea and the Pursuit of Work/Adventure Balance
Hello hello hello hello hello. I was just relieved to discover that no one has read any of my stories for eight days. The entire internet, busy doing other things. At first I thought: well I figured at least someone cared! Then I took it as liberation. Great! I can go back to saying whatever I want, not worrying about anyone!
Experiment continues!
I write to you this morning from the Biscayne Bay, south of Miami, where my captain and I sailed solo yesterday. It was our firsts solo sail, and it wasn’t a sure thing it would work out — far from it. But in the end, we made it.
Let’s see, takeaways.
The conditions were rough, but doable: twenty two and five. Twenty two mph winds and 5 foot waves. Both coming in from the East. It took us about an hour to motor out to the open water, past bridges and 100' yachts being towed by tug boats.
Neighbor Glen had been kind enough to show up at the dock right at 9am and help us get the lines off. We hadn’t asked him, but apparently getting each other’s back is what boaters do. God, I love that kind of community.
Exiting the channel, coming out to the ocean, the waves picked up immediately. All of a sudden we were cutting straight through 5'+ rollers which might not sound like much, but is a hell of a lot rockier than the 2–3' days I had been out on prior.
We headed a few miles perpendicular from the shore, then cut south and began to run parallel with it. The waves were no longer crashing on the bow, but were now slamming directly on the port side (left), causing us to pitch back, forth, side to side like big marble in a car’s cupholder. I sat perched in the highest point I could find gazing at the horizon, trying trying not to think about being nauseous.
“Let me know when you’re ready to get the sails up,” said Ben from behind the wheel.
“Sure. I’m gonna need about three minutes.”
Rewind back one hour. We’re on the New River, just starting to head to sea. I’m on deck, rolling up the docking lines. These are all of the lines that attach the cleats on the boat to the cleats on the dock. You put them in front, behind and beside the boat so that they hold it roughly in place, but still allow it to move up and down a few feet with the swell.
So I’m rolling all of these things into bundles to store them for the trip. The diesel engine is on. We’re cruising past funky old 70’s apartment buildings (pre gentrification), and expansive McMansions that look like Chinese plastic replicas of Italian villas (post-gentrification).
For some reason I start to think about my life.
Okay, so I’m trying to combine two things: work and boating. I’m trying to engage in a new adventure while also pushing my career forward via the magic of the internet.
You’re living the dream! people keep saying to me.
Is that true? I don’t know. But the path I’m on is a narrow one. To honor the adventure requires I embrace spontaneity, be joyous, be present, be grateful, explore, be open. But to continue with work requires I be disciplined. Keep a routine, get back to people, remain tethered to the world, think in enterprising ways which distracts from the moment.
To do one or the other is easy, any person who is adaptable can adventure, and any person who is disciplined can work. But to do both, properly, at the same time. Is it natural? Is it crazy? This is the task. If I pull it off, then I will be, in a certain sense and for a short time, living a dream. I prayed for a second: how do I pull this off?
FFwd back to the open ocean. My gut started to feel better so I told Ben we could go ahead and raise the sail. The wind was so strong that we decided to raise just the genoa (front sail) and see how it would do by itself. (Normally we would raise both the front sail and main sail). I made him talk me through each step of raising the sail in painstaking detail, not because it’s complicated, but because I’d found that as soon as I became confused during an activity motion sickness started to kick in. So I needed to know exactly what I was going to do and do it.
So all at once Ben says “Go!” and started pulling on things on his side of the boat. I take a line down from where it was tied, spool it out on the floor and make sure it goes smoothly through a pulley. As soon as that line is going I move on. I go to a winch and tie a knot in the end of a line, and then remove it form the winch it was spooled around and throw it on the bench in front of me so that it too can spool out. ::: FOOOOM::: the genoa is out and full to bursting. Ben takes a big winch handle and sticks it in a winch on his side of the boat and wrenches it with all of his strength, pulling the 50 foot taught sail into shape ::: CRANK CRANK CRANK:::. Soon we have a sail in the beautiful shape of a wing.
“How fast are we going?” I ask
“8.5 knots!” he replied.
We had achieved our boats top speed with just the genoa on our first try. Beginners luck? I’m sure. The universe has a way of blessing those just starting out on daunting activities. Sort of an easy onramp. Then it’ll be up to us to keep it up.
I got back into my perch, Ben turned on the autopilot and stretched out on a bench. “Now we’re gonna go in a straight line for about four hours!” he yelled over the wind. “Cool” I shot back.
I felt like I was on drugs. The queasy feeling of near-motion sickness has a very close resemblance the onset of mushrooms or other hallucinogens. I gazed out at the horizon, through miles of whitecaps in dots and lines, forming and disappearing, all going the same speed in the same direction. It was meditative. I started to have thoughts. I started to feel bad for everyone I know who was stuck indoors during lockdown, and who deteriorated in that time. I felt the importance of reconnecting with nature.
Fifty or so flying fish blasted out of the water, shooting out of the surface, sailing away from us for about 30 feet, then smacking right back down and disappearing.
In a near hypnotic haze we passed the hours. I put on Fleet Foxes (Helplessness Blues), then Zero 7 (When it Falls), then Henry Jamison (The Wilds) and let them play in full. We passed Miami, and some tankers anchored out in front. Birds flew over to check us out, battling the high winds, then flew right back off. We saw bright yellow objects floating just a few feet beneath the surface. What were they? Turtles? Fish?
The hours swam by. We didn’t say much. So this is sailing.
