...until it's over. Amen.
Underway at noon Nov. 1. Feel a tug of the heart to say goodbye to the family that runs Marina Milagro. Josh, Jody and 11 yr. old Juliana, 8 yr. old Joshua. They had us over for dinner the night before – fried chicken, mashed potatoes, we brought salad, wine and chocolate. Then they had extra pancakes this morning – i contributed the last of my maple syrup.
We got a good start on the next leg. With the help of the northbound current in the Yucatan Channel we sailed 151nm in the first day. All close hauled and steadily reducing sail as the wind settled in and built. At about 4:30 or 5 i saw a big turbulence about 50 yards off the stbd beam. Our senses alerted, for a few minutes we saw large shapes going by underwater. Maybe 5. We think they were manta rays. Ann was feeling motion sick despite the meds. Still she managed to stand her three hour watches. Tough to do when sick, but she did it well and i appreciated the sleep it afforded me. The second day the wind backed a bit so we could ease the sails to a delightful reach. For the first time since Panama i put the drifter up. Good to see it again and dry it out.
At one point we were only 70nm from the Dry Tortugas. I was sorely tempted to turn and share this remote stop with Ann (Google it and maybe you'll see the attraction). The Gulf Stream's help would have made short work of getting there. Christine and i had enjoyed it over 27 years ago. But an eerie feeling had already come over me on our exit north from Isla Mujeres as Ann and i and Akimbo went over the same shoals Christine and i had navigated so long ago. My excuses ran something like "my paper charts for Dry Tortugas are lousy (to back up my computer navigating)," "the first cold front of the season is coming and we might still be able to beat it to Clearwater," "the sooner i wrap this journey up safely...the sooner i've accomplished that," "the Tortugas are not far away if i want to come back..." We sailed on.
We were thrilled by a visit from a pod of pilot whales that second day. Briefly they swam with us like porpoise. They are bigger than porpoise and don't have the "bottle nose." I'd never seen them before. And we admired the "deep" in the deep blue sea.
On this last leg my sister and i had a running conversation that i want to share. She has been finding buddhist teachings helpful, especially Jack Kornfield's take on them. One of my more vivid memories is of sitting at the start of a college Buddhism class 38 years ago, looking up from my notes confused. The professor was outlining the foundations of Buddhism. He had explained that it is NOT a religion, that buddhists are exhorted to not accept teachings without affirming them from their own experience, that they face squarely that all things are impermanent...and that life is suffering. That's when i looked up. "Excuse me? But that's not my experience." My childhood had been happy, my adolescence lucky (if, by definition, confused). Could so many buddhists be wrong and little ol' me be right? I shook my head. I've never been able to swallow that life is suffering. Even now.
Kornfield restates Buddhism's cornerstone in a way that resonates deeply for me: "life is pain, suffering is optional." That small change makes a huge difference. It changes what sounds like a life/death sentence into something one can hope for, from something depressing into something that might be worth exploring and living. Still, this teaching names only one side of the coin that is life. The other side? "Life is pleasure, joy is optional." Pain and pleasure are not to be denied or medicated. There is nothing "wrong" with either of them. They ARE a part of life, their ebb and flood are inevitable. In fact they may even be the wheels of evolution (in the eastern lexicon - of karma) or of life itself. If one is to live, really live, pain and pleasure are to be met and known deeply. They happen. To us. While suffering and joy happen by us. At the end of this voyage i hope i will recall its pleasures. There were plenty of mistakes, regrets, storms, calms, and hardships too. But why conjure them up except for perspective, to learn from them and to keep from taking the pleasures for granted? Pain deserves times to be suffered. But there is no need to hold on to it. Pain will hold on to us even when we let suffering go. We go on. And pleasure deserves to be enjoyed. My heart leaks like a sieve but damn if it doesn't keep beating and loving. Until it stops i'll take it as a testament that life is worthy of us, and we of it. Aren't the best relationships...usually mutual?
Without realizing it, our hopes to beat the cold front to Florida evaporated during the third night. We struggled with light following winds all night. The waves hadn't subsided yet, so the genoa got thrashed...for a pittance of speed at times. We even ran the engine a few hours when our speed got below the "sanity barrier." Lots of the sail repair tape on the genoa's uv cover went to tatters again. I was beginning to identify with that old sail. It was becoming my mascot. First chore at our new home would be to take sails into a sailmaker and see what he/she could do to stretch a few more years out of them.
With some storms nearby, wind finally started blowing again after daybreak. Our luck was holding as our course seemed to lay itself between the squalls. We had just enuf rain to wash the salt off the decks. Ann was feeling better. We were charging along under the drifter a good part of the day. But i was "getting greedy" again. The next line of dark clouds was approaching. I battened down hatches...would probably take down the drifter and unroll the genoa. What's the last thing to do to get ready? Go pee off the swimstep. I was at the transom and literally "caught with my pants down" when the leading blast of wind hit. I'll let you imagine. (I almost wish there had been an aerial view of the scene caught on camera...to view at a much later date and laugh). "If it weren't for that..." i might have been able to save the drifter. But no. One hand went to take over the steering and bear off before Akimbo would broach, my other hand went to trying to pull my shorts up and foul weather pants back on. Overpowered, we broached, rounded up, thrashed and tore the drifter. The deed was done. Now Akimbo simply lay across a sea flattened by wind and rain while Ann came up from below and i went forward to collect the torn sail. I had to drop it in the sea, collect it in over the lifelines onto the deck, pull the jib out of the hatch to the sail locker, stuff the torn sail in and put the jib back. (At least it hadn't torn completely thru and left the halyard and shreds flying from the masthead.) Then we unrolled the tired genoa and once again took off.
I was disappointed with myself. The torn sail could be repaired, but it was testimony to poor seamanship. Plain and simple. After 13 months at sea, wouldn't i be a better sailor? It's important to me to be good at what i do. But i didn't let the torn drifter ruin our last day "out there." Sometimes my efforts have been something to be proud of, and others deserving of embarrassment at least. So it goes. Long ago i was relieved of a heavy load when taught a wise lesson - that perfection may be aspired to but never expected and very rarely reached. And even then, only briefly touched, never grasped and held. In fact isn't it imperfection that makes the world "real?" Perfection..."would be so boring. It'd be the death of us. In the face of it, real interest and curiosity would have to vanish." It's imperfection that is perfect, that makes loving each other (and life) a choice we can make and remake, each time anew, rather than involuntarily. "The option makes all the difference." I can sail more precisely, more "perfectly," in an afternoon than i can over so many months and miles. This was a long trip, mistakes were inevitable. Sometimes i got away with them, others they seemed strictly punished, trying to minimize them definitely kept me "entertained," at least none were fatal...i forgave myself pretty quickly this time.
But it wasn't over yet. The wind slowly clocked to the north as the secondary cold front arrived with the dark. And it was building. (Sean called the next day to say the front's force and arrival woke him up at home and he had tho't of us. It was one of those nights to think to yourself, "i'm glad i'm not out there.") It became obvious that we could not fetch the entrance buoy to Clearwater Pass on this tack. We would fall short of it...by 7 nautical miles. We carried the genoa until i was no longer comfortable getting closer to the beach that was fast becoming a serious lee shore. Would the tattered genoa even tack without more and worse damage? I didn't want to tear another sail if i could help it. If i had changed to the jib earlier we could have used it, but now the foredeck was tilting and bucking so that it was dangerous to go forward. If we turned around the deck would pitch less, maybe then i could switch to the jib and we could broad reach for shelter back south. But it's hard to give up miles and we didn't want to re-cross the Tampa Bay shipping lanes now since the radar was no longer working. We were so close. I turned on the engine and rolled up the genoa. After all, how long could it take to motor the last 7 miles to the sea buoy in a 30,000 pound ocean going sailboat?
Answer: it could take 3 hours. It was another mistake - when i rolled up the genoa i should have strung the jib. Tacking under it would have been far safer and left us more options. Hind sight is a bitch. What did all the mistakes in thirteen months have in common? That i focussed on where i was going instead of where i was at the time.
What would normally have been Akimbo's 7 knot cruising speed was knocked to 2 knots. Sometimes it felt like she was going backwards. I had to test to make sure we could even "motor tack" across the wind and waves to claw away from shore if we had to. Our only exit could be to "tack" like that and turn downwind. Or, the water along this coast only around 20 to 30 feet deep, i could ready the anchor to drop it - but it would be a literal hell to ride on an anchor in this and i no longer trusted the anchor chain anyway. Ann had been standing, holding onto the dodger frame and watching for crab pots. I told her to take a more secure spot in the cockpit. She asked if she should put on a life jacket. My answer was an emphatic yes and put the strobe light in its pocket too.
When we finally reached the buoy it was midnight. We motored a little extra distance north of our turn and, careful to not get carried away by the waves, made that turn in increments, not all at once. The waves were big, way too much for the autopilot to handle. I was steering and Ann was picking out the lights of the channel markers from the background of the city lights. The first red mark almost eluded me but not Ann. This was no time to get out of the channel. For the first time ever, a wave washed into the cockpit and around my ankles from behind me. I asked Ann to close the companionway. If anything went wrong, any little thing, then "the dominoes would fall" and everything would go terribly wrong. Why invite the sea straight into Akimbo thru the companionway if it came to that? In all this trip, not unexpectedly, we had seen some challenges. But this was downright lethal. In the last mile? "You've got to be fucking kidding me." When we got into the channel, with the wind behind us, i tho't our speed would increase and we would "fly" into the relatively safe bay. But our speed was only three or so knots: the current was against us. Three hours earlier the current wasn't coming out the pass against the weather coming in the pass..in less than 20' of water. The pass had been...passable. Looking at waves breaking on either side of the channel flat out scared me. Looking behind us, i couldn't tell where we could have come in thru the waves. There was no exit now, no margin, all options were gone, we were stuck and had to make this work. Our adrenaline was pumping, we were very alert. And we were lucky.
Once we passed safely under the bridge and into the bay i felt like turning around, shaking my fist and screaming curses at the sky. But that would have been taking it personally, as if the weather was trying to not let me get away with this trip. And we STILL needed to pay attention to the task at hand. Ann called Bud and Rhoda to tell them we were in. We picked our way thru the howling wind and the channels in the dark to their dock, where the lights were on and Bud stood. We went by downwind past the dock to get a good view of what tying up would be like. When we turned around the wind acted like brakes on Akimbo's speed and i found it very easy to crawl her into place. We tied up but couldn't get off the boat and go into the house - the posts we tied to lie some 13' off the dock to put Akimbo in the water depth her draft requires. I was too tired to take the hour to pump up the dinghy to go in. We were safely tied up, told Bud to go to bed, we would do the same, and the hugs would have to wait until morning. It was 2am...i woke up three hours later. To stand my watch?
Crazy. Absolutely ridiculous (nothing sublime about it). So, NOW it's over. I want to take a little time to look back, reflect and write one more entry. To close this chapter of my life, before opening the next.
