Syzygy Sailing

"What is it that motivates you to want to sail around the world?"

I’m been considering this question in greater depth lately–more people have been asking, and I’ve been more closely examining my standard response.

My standard response goes something like this: over the past decade I have experienced a substantial amount of adventuring around this country, largely through climbing and canyoneering, and the excitement and newness of those activities has faded.  Four years ago this culminated in looking for a next step, a new activity, a grander undertaking.  Learning to sail, then saving money to buy a boat, then buying a boat and fixing it up, then sailing the boat around the world–all of this combines into one very ambitious new adventure.

I want to encounter new people and new places, I want to experience things that take me beyond my current boundaries, I want a larger universe.  The few times I have traveled abroad have been rare and precious gifts.  Each occasion has provided unequaled education and inspiration–I return home invigorated–and I constantly ask myself what is my major malfunction, that I don’t travel more frequently.

I want to run away from it all.  Other cruisers commonly advise that escaping is a really bad reason to sail away.  Better to face your demons at home they say, deal with the root of the problem rather than running away, because the demons are really inside you and you’ll take them with you wherever you are.  They are surely right–but I also think that escape can be a good reason to go.  I want to escape those cancerous aspects of my current life that I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to excise for some time.  Sometimes one needs a dramatic departure from the current life–a discontinuity–in order to make a new start. 

I’ve started sleepwalking through this bay area life, and I hate that more than anything.  I hate the sleepwalking!  I think it happens to everyone, it’s a natural consequence of human makeup.  It’s evolution, our minds are hardwired to turn things into habits–it’s the smart thing for the body to do.  When an activity is new it takes extra time and concentration and energy; when it becomes a habit it requires little effort or thought, and we can do other tasks at the same time.  Learning to drive a car requires concentration; you have to actually think about turning the wheel and pressing on the gas and when to do it and how much, etc.  After you’ve been driving for a few years is is completely habitual and requires no conscious thought, and because of this you can eat food and carry on a conversation while driving.  Making habits is efficient and natural.  It also robs us of the excitement and risk associated with activities.  You figure out a route to work, you learn how to complete your job the same way every day, you eat at the same few restaurants each night, you sleep on the same side of the bed with your head at the same end, every day.  Eventually the whole day, the whole month, a whole year just becomes a habit–then you’re sleepwalking.  And the insidious thing about it is that sleepwalkers don’t realize they’re sleepwalking.  The mind doesn’t give you feedback about how habitual an activity is becoming.  It just gets easier and easier until you consider it boring and you don’t think about it anymore–if you’re like me, your day job provides an example.

Are these motivations sufficient?  A good enough justification for spending all of my money and time and putting everything on hold for five years in order to sail around the world?  Are the motivations strong enough to withstand the knowing look of a good friend (someone who can effortlessly identify and dissolve bullshit)?  Are they strong enough for my family–the watchdog reminding me to spend my life in a worthwhile way?  Am I bullshitting anybody?  Am I bullshitting myself? 

I am engaged; Karen and I are getting married next fall.  Karen and I have talked a lot about our future after the boat, and we are optimistic and excited about that part of life too.  So the question of motivation gets harder to answer, as life on land looks pretty promising too.  The sailing trip isn’t the same no-brainer easy "yes" activity that choosing to do a hard climb, grueling canyon, or lengthy road trip once was.  People talk about how hard it is to go skydiving–when the moment comes how can you jump out of the plane–but that’s why it’s so easy–it’s only a moment.  You just have to get up your gumption, your "f-it, just do it" for only an instant and then you’re out of the plane you’re committed and reasserting your commitment is irrelevant.  It only took a second of effort.  If you had to maintain the same motivation–that level of fearlessness that it takes to push yourself out into the air during that moment–if you had to constantly sustain that day in and day out for years, it would be impossible.  Preparing for this trip has not required just one single huge sacrifice or commitment or leap; it has required years of plodding sacrifice and commitment which will continue until the moment we sell the boat.

So you tell me: are my motivations sufficient?  Do my answers to the question justify all the time, effort, money, and sacrifice in order to take a sailing trip around the world?  My reasons for taking the trip haven’t changed, my motivations are intact.  So far I remain satisfied with my answers.  They don’t silence the internal questioning as easily as they once did–my life is more complicated than it was when we first embarked on this project–but they still quiet the doubts.  I examine my motivations much more frequently than before; my answers are correspondingly more polished, more carefully given.

Everyone at my school — students, fellow teachers, and administration — has known about this sailing adventure for a couple of years now.  So it shouldn’t have come as a shock six weeks ago when Sarah, the principal (and my boss), emailed me this note:

Jon, could you please get me your resignation letter as soon as you have a chance?  I want to start the search [for a new teacher] as soon as possible.  (Unless, of course, you’ve changed your mind : )

Thanks,
Sarah

But it did. It shocked me. The note made me pause, blink, blink again, and contemplate the magnitude of the choice laid bare in the e-mail — quit my job or not —  and how it all began with seemingly innocuous choices four years ago.

I’m about to quit my job, a job I’ve had for eight years. For Jonny, the purchase of the boat was the terrifyingly committing step. For me, this step is the extraordinarily committing one.  I think I know why. If things ever went sour or didn’t work out, I could simply shrug off buying the boat as a poor financial decision, like the decision I made to leave money in the stock market for the last six months. I wouldn’t be the first boat owner not to go sailing. But quitting my job is more undoable. I’ve got the job security of a teacher, and the comfort I derive from that snuck up on me, without me realizing it.  Why in my right mind would I let go of that?  I know plenty of other people who have asked me as much.

Four years ago, when the idea for our trip was first hatched, it wasn’t so committing.  Matt and I had just taken our first sailing course, and the idea seemed more fanciful than anything else. It was distant and intangible. As a first step, we committed to saving some money. No big deal. In fact, we treated the money-saving as a competition, and spontaneously e-mailed each other screenshots of our savings account just to rub in our positions. It was playful, like keeping track of who has done more weekly push-ups.  Jump forward four years, and it doesn’t seem like a game anymore. I’m walking away from a career.

I should have been able to fire off a resignation letter that same day in response. All it required was typing a few sentences, and after all, I’d already made the decision to resign four years ago. The decision to buy a boat took me down a path, and I’ve gotten so far along it that now much of what I do feels pre-ordained. My choices have become necessities of the circumstances I’ve put myself in, and I’m feeling swept along… and I don’t have any control.

To try and take back a little control, I spent six weeks chewing on the decision to formalize my departure from my job.  What ended up happening was it chewed on me.  One little person on my shoulder would try and call me crazy.  If acted out on TV, that would be a  caricature of my  mom.  Another romanticized the possibilities.  That little person whispering in my ear would be some amalgamation of Tom Robbins’ fictional characters.

I finally wrote the letter. I had to and felt that out-of control-feeling as I wrote it.  I hedged, however and asked for a leave of absence instead, which makes it easier for me to come back.  I also apologized to my principal for taking so long.   And even if I feel a loss of control in this particular decision, I kept coming back to the excitement I feel about what lies ahead.  About the learning that will happen, the experiences that will unfold.  Friendships created and deepened.  Now I’m impatient to get started, and scared about the scope and breadth of preparations we have yet to make.  I’m ready for the next chapter of my life. And it’s coming quickly!

In the cosmic scheme of things, a sailor could lose at sea an object of far more value than a rubber bumper. But let’s be honest: we’re not at sea, and our pride is at stake, and we can’t afford to drop anything overboard — even a $20 bumper.

So when one of them (we have 6) ended up in the Bay last weekend, I wasn’t about to abandon it. Instead, I took it as an opportunity to practice Man Overboard (MOB) drills.

The MOB drill is a short series of steps designed to return the boat as rapidly as possible to the dropped object (or overboard crewmember). The idea is simple: you fall off, tack, aim slightly downwind of the object, head up, and hopefully come to a stop right at whatever (or whoever) fell overboard. It is a basic skill; every safe sailing crew should be drilled and practiced in its execution. If someone falls overboard in the Bay, you have about 15 minutes to pull him out of the cold (53 degree) water before he’s in serious trouble. If he’s a poor swimmer, and goes overboard in jeans and a hoodie, without any flotation device, you might only have twenty seconds.

Over the summer, Jonny and I had practiced MOB drills ad nauseum on much smaller, nimbler sailboats, J-22’s, up in Berkeley. Jonny would toss an old soda can into the water, and yell CAN OVERBOARD! as if some dreadful emergency were unfolding, and we’d sail over to it prontospeed. Perhaps because it was summer, and we were having so much fun, we felt that we’d developed at least moderate MOB skills.

This afternoon, I was sailing with Karen, Jeff, and Kristi, and a storm was moving in from the Northwest. We were approaching the short, dredged, channel that leads through otherwise shallow water into the marina. And this time, our MOB drill to retrieve the bumper was sobering.  The number of steps was not short, our return to the bumper was not rapid, and we were definitely not at a standstill when we got to it. We sailed right past it each time. We spent a frustrating half hour trying to retrieve it; meanwhile, the wind and chop picked up as the sun proceeded to set.

The only consolation is that we were able to consistently sail right up next to the bumper. If it had been a conscious person, he’d have been able to grab a line or a hand on the first pass. Not so with the inanimate bumper: it was a pain in the ass.  Every time we came up on it, our wake pushed it just out of reach. I hated that bumper.

On the 7th attempt, Jeff finally snagged it, and we turned back for the channel — and just in time, as it started to rain. As we approached the entrance, another bumper went into the water. (Whether it came untied or was dropped I am not sure.) This time I decided to douse the sails, fire up the engine, and drive over to retrieve it. As I began to motor around, the boat failed to respond.  It was at this point that I noticed how low the tide was, recognized that we were in a shallow area, and realized that we were running aground. I gunned the engine in an effort to plow our way through the silt, and back to the deep channel. At the same time, Kristi trimmed in the mainsail, to help us heel over (thereby reducing our draft and freeing the keel from the muck). It worked, and we made it into the deeper water without getting stuck.

But pursuing the bumper a second time was out of the question — especially since the bumper was headed straight for a sandbar like it was on a mission from god. I motored us home, dejected as ever on account of our cruddy MOB skills, our lost bumper, and our near grounding. Then, just as we were entering the marina — because what would insult be without injury — the engine began to overheat.  I thought we’d resolved that issue. Well, put it back on the list.

Back in slip B-19, it poured on us while we folded the sail, coiled the lines, and stowed everything. Everyone was drenched and shivering, too miserable to hang out for drinks. Kristi later came down with a cold. Karen and I went out for pizza, and on the way back home, just for kicks, took the local road along the shore, to see if we could spot our blue bumper in the dark.  Ludicrous, I know.

We pulled off the road in a spot where the water came within 20 feet of the road. I got out of the car and walked over to the rocks to have a look. Would you believe it? I spotted a piece of blue and walked a couple feet down the rocks and found our bumper. I even found a Nalgene right next to it, so I ended up coming out ahead for the day. Well, ahead by one measure.

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Matt gets to take apart and fix the engine. Jonny gets to work with the outboard. Matt enjoys the satisfaction of fixing our heater. Jonny enjoys meandering around the marina in Cabron, our dinghy, and saving other sailboats that have run aground. Jonny and Matt are currently enjoying what they described as ‘near tropical weather’ and are planning on going sailing Saturday. I sit at home while it’s 20 degrees and miserable out. It’s approximately 148 days, 10 hours and 30 minutes until I leave Denver behind for good and join them in San Francisco. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to keep my not-so-astounding handiness skills (and here. and uh.. here) from getting too rusty. So I’ve been looking for various things with which to tinker. Along comes my dishwasher.

Continue reading “I gotta do something to keep me busy”

A few days into my 10-day Thanksgiving vacation a strange feeling arose. It was an urge to tinker. A force within wanted me to repair, fix, build. Of course, I’ve always been the restless type, never a fan of lazy vacations or Sunday movie marathons. But this urge was so physical — like I needed to hold tools in my hands lest they curl up and wither — that I had to wonder if the sailboat thing hadn’t changed me.

So I went with the urge. I climbed up onto the roof of my folks’ house and did some caulking. I fixed a part of the roof with my dad. I cleaned the gutters. But this was just regular maintenance. I still yearned to build something, and the opportunity that presented itself came in the shape of… a bird feeder.

Continue reading “The deep-down urge to tinker”

Our windvane is a purely mechanical and exceedingly elegant piece of equipment that can be set up to automatically steer the boat for us. I was eager to put it into action one day this past fall so I stepped off the stern onto a support to get it ready–and a piece of steel tubing promptly broke off, nearly dumping me in the bay. A minor setback, I reasoned, until the very next piece I touched also disintegrated in my hands. Clearly it would need detailed attention (par for the course).

Over thanksgiving Jon and I removed it from the stern of the boat and took the entire thing apart piece by piece on the foredeck, under a tarp in the pouring rain. Every single bolt and washer came out–often unwillingly and sometimes in a few pieces. It was fun and gratifying to bring all of our skills to bear on the stubborn bolts and seized pieces. When victory was ours, we compiled a list of parts that we needed.

Our windvane is a Monitor brand, made by a company called Scanmar, and fortunately for us Scanmar happens to be in Richmond just 10 minutes away. I put the disassembled pieces of our monitor in the back of my car one morning and drove over to Scanmar to pick up the parts we needed. When I brought our 1991 vintage monitor in the front door, I was greeted by the three guys that have been making and repairing Monitors for the past few decades. A russian machinist with little english, another jovial guy also with a thick russian accent, and a british motorcycle aficionado complete with long braided ponytail and leather bicycle garb. They were an eclectic group, but they clearly shared an enthusiasm for their windvanes. It was as if I was Santa delivering an early christmas gift to three young boys. I was bombarded with advice and questions and answers as all three of them dug through the bin of pieces checking out our old windvane. They were unanimously excited and unanimously supportive of our do-it-yourself style. In taking apart our windvane, we had thought that we achieved an intimacy with the workings of the windvane, but these guys were at a whole different level. Between the three of them they could have had that thing back together in perfect condition in less than an hour–but they shared our philosophy and supported our style: we were going to do the work ourselves to save a few hundred dollars, even it took 10 times as long (which it most certainly will). I left the shop after an hour of continual conversation feeling happy and excited. It was like visiting old friends and sharing familiar conversation–with three strangers I had just met.

Continue reading “Regarding the excitability of Boat People”

A friend in Wyoming called me a couple of weeks ago and related a harrowing near-tragic sailing story…

Her boyfriend and two buddies were out sailing the First Lady on Jenny lake. It was late October, and snow had already begun to fall in the mountains. Most boats had been pulled out of the lake already.

After a day of sailing they headed back to the dock. It was dusk. Three quarters of a mile from shore, a gust of wind knocked the boat over. The First Lady, a Catalina 27 — is not exactly burly.

At first, when the sails hit the water, the captain thought the boat would right itself… alas, the retractable “keel” (more like centerboard) decided to retract — and the boat continued to roll. Very quickly, it ended up in full turtle position — 180 degrees upside down.

The three guys — all healthy and strong — scampered out off the boat, into the 55-degree water, and up onto the hull, where they clung, hoping the whole rig wouldn’t sink. (San Francisco Bay is about the same temperature year-round.)

And then the fun part: they spent the next hour, cold and shivering, yelling for help, hoping someone at Signal Mountain Lodge (about a mile away) would hear them. Luckily, someone heard, and sent help….

The next day, four guys in wetsuits returned to the boat, and spent eight grueling hours, with the assistance of a couple of tows, righting the boat. The First Lady was more stable capsized, apparently, then upright.

The scary part: only one person knew the three guys had gone sailing, and since the three guys were all bachelors living alone, if they hadn’t come back that night, nobody would have sent out the troops. Yikes.

Just another reminder of how committing it is to go out on the water — even with an 8,000-lb keel, even in a sailboat that rights itself from 120 degrees —  someplace wet and cold and far away from everything, where you could yell all you want and nobody would hear.

Well in the blink of an eye two months went by–without a single day of sailing. The half moon bay trip was the last time, and although it left me eager for more time on the open ocean, the rest of life intervened. I’ve been keeping busy with other things: jonny and I climbed half dome via the snake dike route, karen and I drove to utah to join friends for a week of canyoneering, and I picked a thousand pounds of grapes with phil to make some wine (fermenting at this moment). But not much boat related stuff to report. I did get to the boat for a few days sometime in September to install the new head and associated plumbing (99.9% completed anyway), but that was all.

Finally this past weekend we got out for another fun social sail–this time we just barely ducked under the bridge before heading back. It was a super warm day, complements of an exceptional indian summer, and it was really, really good to pass the time with some old–and new–friends. Jonny and I each took a turn climbing to the masthead while under full sail, on the newly installed mast steps, and it was spectacular to be at the very top of the boat with it heeled over nicely in 10 knots of wind. Thanks so much to gary, anna, rob, julie, and dana for joining us for the day.
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