Hit It

If the roughly hewn timber and rock breakwaters of Port Townsend and Ketchikan were parenthesis, our adventure would not be contained in an aside. This was an exclamatory excursion and it would burst through any sort of manmade containment without apology. Hence our slamming and swirling encounters on our exit from and entrance into “safe” harbors, the start and finish lines. 

Save whirlpools and overfalls, hitting stationary objects (breakwaters, islands, docks) or being hit by other moving objects (containerships, massive logs, tugboats) was my greatest fear on boats. Losing an engine was high up on that list, too, as it would only contribute to such jarring opportunities for puncturing the hull. I suppose it wasn’t so much the hitting as the sinking that worried me. And not so much the sinking but the drowning part, gulps of salty sea and plankton through baleen-less jaws, a diving deep without a spyhop to follow.

I am in love with the sea, I am a mermaid, a shapeshifting flying fish, but the imagination of my heart can only go so far, breathe so deep under the edge of water.

Entering a race where the rules forbid even having an engine on board, where sailing and rowing and paddling (or peddling on some boats) are the only means of propulsion, where turbulent tidal rips and currents and whirlpools let you know that you are definitely not the one in control, well, it seemed a little nuts. Because hitting shit was inevitable. And hit shit we would. I pretended like I was OK with that reality but in fact I was terrified and I knew this was the very best reason for me to enter the race.

Even with tens of thousands of miles of sailing experience I felt pretty vulnerable and anxious as I boarded the ferry to Port Townsend where the Race to Alaska would begin. Walking down the street with a dry-bag heavy with emergency equipment over my shoulder, I watched the truck trailers sporting modified plastic kayaks and mini mono-hulls crawl towards the waterfront. When I leaned out over the rail overlooking the docks full of trimarans and hobie cats and tiny coffin-like boats, I cried.

Not out of fear but excitement and relief. These were my people! Nuts, every single one, some even more so than me! We were all coming together to push our limits, to challenge what was considered safe, to use our skills and stamina in ways we couldn’t yet imagine. I was soothed by the camaraderie, like a snug school of sardines finning past the gaping jaws of a shark.

Last minute preparations, repairs, modifications dialed up the frenetic energy on the docks. In less than 36 hours (and two beer-soaked parties later), we would all be squeezing through the narrow harbor entrance and pointing our bows towards Alaska. Well, those who could actually point more than 45 degrees into the wind would be doing so. As part of Team Onism on a 24-foot homebuilt trimaran with 25-year-old sails (and trampoline and hull), we would be pointing a lot of places along the way but rarely in the exact direction we wanted to go. Of course we didn’t know this when we started. We were very aware we didn’t know a lot of things about the boat. We went anyway.

We hit the breakwater in Port Townsend battling 20-knot winds on the nose with oars and paddles. (The oars and paddles were in the water, not in the turbulent air smacking that laughing wind on the snout, but sometimes our propulsion implements felt like they might as well have been skyward the progress was so painfully slow.) It was 5am, we hadn’t eaten breakfast or slept a wink as the halyards clanged and docklines creaked all night. To make the 6am start the 60+ boats started clawing their way out of the harbor before sunrise. Or perhaps the sun had already risen but was obscured by the angry black clouds overhead.

Before we had a chance to think about it (or have coffee. Damn!) the trimaran in front of us pushed off into the fairway. That meant it was our turn and god I wasn’t ready lets just take our time but now we’re being pulled forward by boyfriend and husband and father and now fuck we are in the fairway and now I am paddling and now my lungs are burning and I realize that paddling in a drysuit sucks and my muscles are now burning and suddenly I am yelling “Let’s do this ladies” like a gym coach on steroids because I am afraid if I don’t yell I am going to stop and cry but I keep paddling and Emily keeps rowing and Katy keeps steering and yells “Don’t stop!” and we don’t. There is a crowd cheering us on from the railing above but I can’t hear them with the blood rushing in my ears and we round the corner

we can see open water

we can see the other boats

we are almost there

but the wind still takes our bow a second before we can get the jammed staysail to unfurl and we drift more like slide more like plow towards the timber wall to port. Contact! That sounds so gentle but it is more of a crunch and we are sliding against the splintering wood and we think we will spin and end up on the beach where there is another fucking happy group of people cheering us on (DON’T YOU SEE WE ARE GOING TO CRASH?)

But the fluttering of a white wing saves us and pulls us into the wind. We are flying towards the rest of the (floating, sailing, safe) boats and we can breathe again. Yell with joy. We have not even officially started the race but we have started the journey.

We have hit shit. We are OK. We are more than OK. We are laughing.

We are on our way to Victoria and then Alaska. Alaska!

I am on my way to discovering who I am when the boat hits the breakwall, when exhaustion and steep waves and adverse currents will mix with bubbling shame, when the sight of fins and flippers will connect me to my briny blood.

When in the last moments of the race we are spun in circles inches away from hungry sharp rocks and we are able to laugh again and accept our pirouette of a finish as we guzzle beers and ring the brass bell and hug fellow racers when we finally make it to the dock in Ketchikan. 

I will finish with a smile on my face, arms strong, hands blistered, heart full.

We hit shit and we made it. 

Spun, rain-soaked, sun-drenched spirits
bursting out of whale bone cages to meet the yellow dawn

and the next

 )not-to-be-contained(

ADVENTURE.

On Fear

I have been reading about fear. I have been absorbing the notion that what we fear most is not necessarily the harm that could befall us, but more so the bodily reaction to fear, that anxiety and sense of losing of control. I have read that we need to accept the actual feeling of fear because the circumstance doesn’t really matter much. You cannot stop potentially painful things from happening (car crashes, violence, falling off a cliff) just because of your fear of those things happening.  I mean, sure, you can lock yourself up at home, but what if there is an earthquake that takes down the house or a brown recluse hiding under your pillow? You are still full of fear, even hiding under the covers. 

We are a fragile fabric of skin held up by breakable bones and powered by a mechanical system programmed to eventually fail. So why did this finite system program fear into the mix? For our safety? Or so that we can learn how we move through the world?

And in this book I am reading it also says that we have basically the same physical symptoms with fear and falling in love. Fluttering heart, lack of breath, time stops. They are the same. It is simply the perception that differs.

I think of sailing. How I push myself every time I step onto a boat. How the loss of absolute control has become a standard in my life. Perhaps I compensate in other areas on land for this lack of control when I am at sea. The ridiculous thing is that I am no more in control on land but it is not so immediately obvious among the houses and cars and perfectly ordered cans of beans on grocery store shelves. The straight lines and speed limits lead me to believe there is order, that we have covered Nature over with smooth dominance and therefore we can function in predictable ways. 

There are no straight lines at sea. The horizon is curved, flying fish arc above and below the surface, even becalmed water holds circular movement. Fear is transformed into alertness as every moment changes the course. Out there it is visible. Out there, I have been scared, for sure, but the ocean doesn’t allow for the what-ifs to accumulate for very long. The blank canvas of the sea makes anything possible and so those what-ifs spill over and color the sunsets with their oranges and reds. In a place that may seem more dangerous, fear is replaced with a horizon-less love.

Then I think of living on land and all the complications that arrive with this choice. Taking care of a house and animals. Having a job to pay for such things. Making time to do the things I love (like writing and cooking and sailing). And the fear creeps in. How can I be more scared of this ‘stable’ life than a squall at sea? Is this why I need my dose of sailing, to remind me of that fearlessness? Is this why I am so adamant about sailing to Alaska, something that truly scares the shit out of me? Or will this simply be another adventure in a long line of adventures, a way for me to feel alive, special, but no more the wiser or stable? I sit and stare and worry, brain spinning, hands still.

So I go into my kitchen and cook. I go to my laptop and write. I go work on the boat or go for a swim. Instead of standing on the cliff and fearing the fall, sometimes I actually jump. Not all the time, but I am learning to jump, fall, release and let the love rush in.

When we face our fears, be it a rogue wave or a husband waving me home, we face death and we face life. We are always alive…until we aren’t. And no amount of fear will ever change that reality. So jump. Live.

Re-membering the Gears

The gears are blackened with old grease, flecked white with deck paint, crusty with remnants of salt. Springs broken, plastic collars worn. I lift metal off metal and bathe it all in paint thinner. My lungs burn. I can feel the brain cells dissolving with the grime.

Along with the tension.

When I was asked to clean the winch, I froze, heart pounding. I haven’t done that in years…if ever (by myself). Is this something I can do? But I’m not detail oriented. I might lose a pawl spring, forget to put that gear thing back into the gear holder thing, neglect getting all those paint chips out of crucial crevices. 

We need these to work. Without these, we can’t control the sails. If we can’t control the sails we can't sail to Alaska. If I don’t sail to Alaska I’m not sure what else I can control in my life, not like I can control what happens there. 

This tiny winch feels like so big right now, all these levers and springs and gears in motion. 

Or not. Why is this winch seized?

A moment later in my head, gears cracking into motion: This is bullshit. I've sailed tens of thousands of miles offshore. I can fix a goddamn winch. 

Yes. Bring it.

The metal feels good in my hands. Smooth and circular on the outside, sharp edges of screws and springs inside. I retrieve bits from the stripping liquid and brush off old uselessness. I swipe on fresh grease, a promise of motion in tiny slippery particles. Help me out here, OK? I whisper to the solid teeth of gears and the forgiving push of springs. You are not lost. You go into your places and I reassemble your body into a clean new you. 

Reborn.

Circular clips over shiny metal plates. In place. It (I) feels secure when I fit the handle into its grooved home and spin. My arm knows what to do. The lightness that fills my body is unmistakable. This is home, this feeling. With each revolution I am revitalized, spinning in memories of oceans and wind, trimming in energy and making fast this knowing. 

I know. My body knows. My heart knows. Revolution. 

No fear, just spinning and motion and yes.

Remembered.

The Cliff

Sun stained hair dangles over the edge of the cliff, brushes against jagged rock and flowering grasses rooted into the sea-salted promontory. Chin on the ledge, eyes just over peering down at white foam crashing and dissolving at the base of the vertical drop. 

I hear voices to my right, “That must be at least a hundred feet. Wouldn’t want to time that jump wrong.” A nervous laugh and a shuffle of feet away from the jutting lip of earth. There are tourists here at this “Hazardous Zone.” I am one too, a visitor in this place of soft curves and sharp edges and ants crawling over it all, which includes my body prone on shifting pebbles. 

I look down. 

I feel the distance and the depth of the sea. I imagine whales nesting in kelp gardens and sea stars stretching spiny arms just below the surface. I can feel the myths of this place: tribes of sea people under the waves creating the ebb and flow with their exultant dancing and watery breath, providing shelter for the fish, tending gardens of sea snails, smiling up into the distant sky with bubbles escaping between coral teeth.

A woman lies down on the top of the cliff to my left. She scoots her face past the edge and peers over. She is not me but suddenly I am dizzy, my body tense and drifting over the stone with her motion. I close my eyes and swallow hard. I feel as though the earth will tilt, slide me off this solid rock and sift me into the sea. My body acts independently of my mind, my legs tumble over my head, I am somersaulting through space, torn by rocks as I fall, torn by waves as the plank of me collides with the surface. Rejected by the water, I float lifeless, eyes still closed.

All this movement in the mind, a waterfall of images because of another body that could possibly fall, a woman that could possibly tumble to her death, someone I could not possibly save. What is this? This responsibility for strangers (myself), the fear of others (myself) plunging off very tall things: cliffs, masts, rooftops, bows, bridges. What part of me is terrified of the uncontrolled descent? From where have I fallen? What jagged wall has torn me apart?
Who am I trying to save?

I challenge myself to jump. 

I curl back from the edge, unfold myself to standing and stare out at the vast expanse of undulating gray. Hills of motion and wind rippled valleys around evergreen islands. I breathe in salty air, watch the tour boats create arrows in their wakes pointing to shore. I breathe out the fear and rear back, winding myself up for the step-step-nothing. 

I am in the air, free from gravity for a moment before arcing towards the deep water. My arms open wide, the fluttering of my clothes my feathers, I am flight and forgetful of what earth feels like under talon and hollow wing. The moment comes when my body finds molecules different from the air I’m holding, holding me, and I shatter into a million brilliant shards of sunlight. I dissolve in the white foam and become a billion blinding stars overhead, a thousand flitting fireflies in a golden field, a bioluminescent spume of whale’s breath in the night.

I open my eyes and the woman is gone. My equilibrium restored, I am alone on the edge of this world with the dandelions and ants and pebbles. The ocean has consumed me right here on top of this cliff.
I am no longer dizzy and scared.

I am flight and I am falling,
I am shattered and I am whole,
I am dissolved and I am complete.

I stretch my arms over the cliff then curl back into the world, away from the edge, resting on rock-tattooed knees. The sunlight is glittering on the turbulent water as I stand and walk away. There is a splash. I don't turn around. The tribes below the surface dance on.