Captain's Log
Captain's Log April 2007The Call of the Sea
Like all passagemakers, we had a frantic few days before the start of the trip, getting the boat ready, topping up fuel, water and provisions and then watching the weather to make sure that we would be sailing in the best weather patterns. I think everyone who set off on that passage was feeling frayed around the edges when we finally hoisted sail and motorsailed out of the Chesapeake and into the ocean. Even if you have been out there many times before, you still know the trepidation of a long sea passage and all the vagaries the sea can throw at you. The first few days are always a bit difficult as we get used to the broken sleep patterns of standing regular watches and overcome whatever seasickness we may suffer. There is cooking to be accomplished at an angle. There are bunks to be made as snug as possible so you don't roll around sleeplessly while off watch. There are the inevitable rattles, creaks and irritating clinks emanating from all of the cabinets that need to be muted with cushions, towels and soft stores. By the third day most passagemakers wake up feeling like new people; they have been through the adjustment phase of sea travel and have become acclimated to the motion, to the routine and to the sense of adventurous self-reliance. You have been through a real transition, sort of like shedding your shore skins and emerging as a human pelagic creature. You find, after three days at sea, that you are much more keenly aware of the wind direction and strength and have rediscovered old instincts about the wind's meaning and what it foretells. You have had time to get used to the motion of rolling waves and now you can look at them and understand what they say about the weather out there and what it portends. Through the night you have met the constellations overhead, the North Star or Southern Cross and made friends again with the planets. Landfall is always a huge pleasure and relief; you have the sense of "mission accomplished" and the pride of having gone aboard your own boat where few of your fellow humans have been before. For us, the sailing life, passagemaking and cruising are all about the transitions we go through, all about the shedding of skins and the discoveries of the simple, natural pleasures of being closely connected to the elemental planet. After all, seven-tenths of the planet is ocean, so why not get to know it better? Joseph Conrad aptly titled his first book, written when he had come ashore from a career as a ship captain, The Mirror of the Sea. Once you are out there, you get a chance to really know a mysterious and magical part of our world; you also will meet, if you care to look, a strangely new and smiling face staring back at you when you look over the side on one of those still calm days when the sea is like glass. The new you. Fair winds,
Last fall we had the good fortune to sail with the Caribbean 1500 from Virginia to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. The transitions of the passage, from the dark green waters off Cape Hatteras, to the deep blue of the Gulf Stream to the translucent pale blues of the mid-Atlantic and Caribbean, marked a kind of evolution for the crew. 
