[Hilde’s log]
It’s much easier to describe the places we go than it is to give any idea of what it’s like to live on a boat from day to day or to describe how living on a boat affects my psyche. As I’ve mentioned before, we are our own little floating universe, Planet Raven. Most of the time that’s good, but periodically I am subject to loneliness, homesickness, and fear, just as I was on land. Whatever I am feeling, there’s not a lot to block it out, not much in the way of distraction. There is certainly nowhere else to go.
The good days are wonderful. The scenery is different and mostly beautiful, the people are friendly and often fascinating. Sailing is fun, now, but still plenty challenging enough to be interesting. David and I get along well, for the most part. The jobs we do are repetitive, but probably not any more onerous than jobs on land (I do fantasize about a dishwasher). Some days are more interesting than others. Sometimes we’re bored. On the good days, that’s all okay. The bad days are awful. I find myself subject to all sorts of fears and my imagination runs riot. I know when things aren’t going well for me because I read nonstop, pulling myself as far away from the boat as I can get. This is not a new behavior – I did it when things were going badly on land, too. I stock up on books the way other people lay in medicine.
As we left Hope Town last Thursday morning, one of our new friends expressed surprise when I told her we were always nervous going out. “You mean it doesn’t go away?” she wailed. And for me, the answer is “No.” Usually, the fear I feel when leaving port is just garden variety dock dread, which goes away almost the moment we get underway. This last week, it was a different beast altogether.
We’d been in Hope Town harbor, on a mooring ball, for four nights. Practically the entire time we were in Hope Town I’d been suffering from a higher than usual level of anxiety, waking every morning with every disaster imaginable stomping across my waking consciousness. When we last left Marsh Harbour, our plan was to leave the Abacos, stopping in Man O’War Cay first, then Hope Town, then Lynyard Cay, then across to Royal Island at the northern tip of Eleuthera. The trip to Royal Island is a long one, about 60 miles, which for Raven probably means leaving in the afternoon and sailing overnight to arrive in the early morning. None of this is anything we haven’t done before. But for some reason I just got more and more anxious. I told myself it was bad dock dread and it would go away.
After we left Hope Town, imagine my chagrin when it got even worse! And to top it off, it wasn’t just me. David was having quite a case of his own. By the time we got to Lynyard Cay and had anchored in the lee of the island, we were both in a state, dredging up everything we hate about cruising, from the space issues to the constant maintenance to our inability to just relax and be in the moment and have fun. I was ready to chuck it all in and go home, and I mean the next flight out of Marsh Harbour. If we’d have had internet at that anchorage, I might well have booked the ticket. The emotional tornado just kept swirling and reached a peak the morning after we arrived at Lynyard Cay. David had finally decided that we simply had to go back to Marsh Harbour to take care of two engine issues (the heat exchanger and the fuel pump) which have been hanging over our heads for weeks. I was in an awful funk, scared spitless by the ocean, the boat, and life in general. I was determined to go home, as in Texas, period. I focused that fear on being afraid to get in the water and go snorkeling. Snorkeling is one of the reasons for this trip for me, so the fact that I couldn’t make myself get in the water was huge. I just sat in the cockpit and cried and felt afraid until I got furious enough at being a wimp to jam myself into my wetsuit and jump over the side. To his credit, David didn’t push me.
Once in the water, plowing along toward the beach, all the emotional turmoil of the past five days was carried away in the gentle current. Anyone watching from the boat probably saw a gaseous green cloud lift off my head and float away. I paddled along past fish and grass and sand dollars and suddenly started having a great time. I picked up pieces of all sorts of shells, alternately floating and paddling. By the time David picked me up in the dinghy, maybe 45 minutes later, I was back in the present, centered, and happy as could be, as in cheerful. I had faced down my fear of getting in the water and was feeling victorious. Somehow that small action cleared the rest of the storm. I was ready to head off to Tahiti.
This is a pattern that tends to repeat itself with me and it’s bloody exhausting. I wish I didn’t get scared or feel insecure or get angry. I wish I didn’t have to face down whatever negative thing pops up. I’m glad that when I finally do, it leaves me for a while and I can be present. I’m glad that so far I have managed to stick it out and have not turned tail and run. Sometimes it’s close!
My favorite theory is that out here there is nothing between me and all the emotional crud I have stuffed over the course of my lifetime and with the lid off it just bubbles up apropos of nothing. I read once about an American woman who decided to become a Buddhist nun. The interviewer asked her what that had been like for her. She said, surprisingly, “Well, for the first two years all I did was cry.” She was spending time in a monastery, isolated from all distractions and meditating. The lid was off and all her grief floated to the top. After two years, the emotional storm cleared and at the time of the interview she was serenely happy. I live in hope.
It is possible, since this time both of us went through such a storm, is that it really wasn’t safe for us to go out with these engine issues going on and our subconscious selves knew that and raised a ruckus.
Who knows? That’s just the way it is sometimes. Maybe it doesn’t happen to people on vacation, because they’re on vacation. But we live here. Wherever you go, and all that.
The sail from Lynyard Cay to Marsh Harbour was lovely, just fantastic, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I sailed a lot of it at the helm and did a darn good job. Those of you who know what a total waste of space I was on the boat just two short years ago know what a feeling of accomplishment I have. It was fun to come back in here, where it is so familiar. This morning we got up and watched the Sunfish and Optimist regatta, with about 30 Sunfish and 20 Optimist Prams flitting over the water like so many butterflies. We had a ring side seat from the cockpit. Who needs tickets to the Olympics? The stereo is happily pumping out oldies (the soundtrack from Empire Records, so we aren’t completely lame and out of date). We had pancakes for breakfast, our old friend Jeff on Moonstruck is due in harbor in a couple of hours, David is fixing the engine, and life is good. And, oh, by the way, I have a great tan.
No comments:
Post a Comment