On Sailing
Because we dream
Over the years, Dawn and I have sailed in the Bahamas, Belize, the Salish Sea, the coast of California, the Florida Keys, Georgia, Gibralter. We did all this in various charter boats and on our own boats - Maravilla and Tushita. We sail, because we dream. We sail because we thirst for something other than ordinary, something beyond normal, something magical. We sail for redemption.
It's like this...
An easy cruise south in Saratoga Passage, Dawn down below, Tushita on autohelm, full sail, making 6 knots, sky and water blue, blue. Me hanging on to a port shroud, standing on the side deck, outside the cockpit. The air is fresh and cool, the wake chuckles as Tushita rolls along. With no warning, a misty white spout rises close off the bow! Another! Four majestic orcas surface, whoosh, inhale deep a boat length to port, heading north fast. I smell their blow, hear the deep rumble suck of their inbreath. As quick as they appear, they are gone, diving deep. Their magnificence is astonishing…a surprise gift of beauty from the inscrutable sea.
In the Keys on little Maravilla, my racy trimaran sailboat. Earlier that day we were pummeled by towering thunderstorms with crackling lightning and powerful downpours. We anchored, dragged into the channel, avoided disaster and collision, snarked at each other, pissy. The storms moved off to the northwest and a perfect northeast breeze developed behind them - now a beautiful sunny day. Dawn takes the helm, I settle in beside her, trimming the jib. She has not driven much before, but the conditions are perfect. She has the knack and puts the bow down just ever so…lifts it, feels the boat slow…and pushes the bow down again…accelerates. Girl, boy and boat sail as one. Fly fast, quiet and at ease across an empty Florida bay on a fabulous, blue day. Love.
Another day on Maravilla, this off the coast of California between Catalina and Ventura. Sailing north on a return to Ventura, thickening fog. We close the coast, just off the beach break. Greasy backs of green swells topple into white foam to starboard. They are all we can see. Soon, we can’t even see that, can only hear the thump, roar and hiss..it is unnerving. We are tiny and inconsequential lost in the foggy breath of the ocean. We sail by feel, guided by ghostly glow of digital chart plotter. The breakwater must be near…very near. We slow, blow our horn, listen to the waves, smell the kelp and land, snuggle into our jackets in the drippy gloom. There! There it is, rising from the fog mere feet from the bow - a twenty foot tall wall of rock. We turn hard to port, negotiate the serpentine entrance, glide into the still, grey harbor and tie off to the dock - safe. Eyes as big as dinner plates, breath returning, glad to be alive, aware of how close we were to disaster - we high five, kiss and step ashore, laughing.
In the Bahamas, on Maravilla again. Pinned for two days in the mangroves by a twenty five knot buster from the northeast, Dawn has had enough. We up anchor and sail away from protection into the blow. We tack in the lee of the island until we round the point and take a long board down the Bahamas Bank toward Sale Key. All day we bang and pound to windward, tossing water over the cockpit, drenched in our foulies. Dawn takes a trick at the helm and drives like a hero, punching into and over the wind waves in a wet, staggering roller coaster ride. It is the bravest sailing I have ever seen….before or since. That evening, we anchor in the protection of Sale Cay, blown away by the sunset, to sleep floating among the stars.
On Tushita now - easy run from Blind Bay back to Anacortes. We motor out into the channel between Orcas and Lopez Island, set the jib, and fall off toward Thatcher Pass. In a building southerly the sails curve like porcelain, powerful and hard. Water drips from the taut sheets, she leans and rolls, dances. We heat it up through the pass, past little James Island and out into heaving Rosario Strait. Rollicking now, Tushita demands attention and a firm hand. The tide sets us south, is balanced by our leeway drift north. The jib lifts and pulls, is offset by keel and rudder - a complicated balance of wind, boat, sail and water. The sea whooshes alongside, the occasional sploosh wets the jib and douses the foredeck. Mt Baker floats in the haze ahead. The Olympics hover over Port Townsend far away across Juan de Fuca. Echo-dog lays on the downwind cockpit seat, snoozing. A car ferry overtakes us close on our port side. We wave and dash on - windy and sparkling - free.
It is an intrepid act of love and faith, this sailing. It connects us to the real world, exposes us unprotected to primeval forces. Ingenious monkeys, we balance wind and water to derive motion and energy. Audacious, yet humble; we skirt disaster, play with fire, sail across oceans. The gods of wind and water laugh, delighted.
In these clamoring, burned-out days insane, human-centered culture wages vicious war against the gods, nature, and itself. Water disappears from the American West while it pours into the sea from Greenlands glaciers. Intelligent, communal, ancient forests are destroyed to produce idiotic, mute, mass-produced “crops”. Mountain tops are leveled, entire species extinguished while the planet weeps and burns. Society is beset by fear, fraud and corruption. We get lost in a digital nightmare of our own making.
Yet, tomorrow, a blue-gold ocean still glitters in the sun. A quiet boat stands out to sea, snow-white main and jib full and drawing, white froth at her bow. She nods to the incoming swell, falls off a point and settles on a broad reach for the islands across the strait. Her skipper trims the main and jib, adjusts the helm, settles into the cockpit with a cup of tea, satisfied. Down below, warm and cozy, the mate relaxes on the settee, reads a book amid the lurch and creak of a sailboat underway.
So we sail away, escape across a sea of eternal beauty and light.
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