We're All in the Same Boat Here, Guys

We met up with the Lashers! They are wonderful and it's been great to hang around a real family.

All of the people around these islands are families on vacations. Here we are, 4 of us of similar age and eager to sightsee, and I recently found myself wishing I too were on a family vacation. Traveling with friends is great, but as we get older, family trips are fewer and farther between, and their tone is changing. I yearn for the good old days.

On family trips, there was a lot of bonding involved and it’s okay to get annoyed with one another. "I don't want to go to the 30 millionth museum in Paris, I don't care if they're giving away the Mona Lisa! " "Okay kids, run up and check if they have a vacancy for the 20th time." "They have Gucci in the states, get back in the car!"

Family vacations were tornado-like tours of every historical, topographical, cultural and aesthetically pleasing site within a 1000-mile radius of each hotel or tent, each day. Guidebooks were sometimes involved, but there was a lot of behind-the-scenes planning by the 'rents. "We'll tell them it's a short hike, throw on the Barbara Streisand, drive into the Alps and before they know it, we'll all be climbing up vertical caves deep in the heart of Switzerland. … I don’t think we’ll hear the whining in the caves."

Every re-occurring trip was pumped to the max. “Ashley, want to wake up at 5 and get in 10 miles before breakfast so we can water-ski before lunch (sail if it’s windy, read if it’s raining)?” “This family makes first tracks and is last on the lift.” It was good to pack all that in there. Now I realize how precious vacation time is and how much there is to see and do.

Ahh well, someday I can englighten my own family. Today was a beautiful day on Saba Rock. Families are all around. They build memories and annoy one another while sailing aboard chartered chariots of holiday cheer. “Honey, pull in the gosh darn jib. Timmy, what did I say about handstands on the lifelines! Dakota, tell your new friend Dakota to go back to her own family and leave the Cheezits here. Randy! For the last time, if you play with the gaff, somebody is going to lose an eye.”

Yikes, this kind of reminds me of my own crew. Oh crew, I guess you’re family. But seriously, no Barbara Streisand.

Ahh!! Isla del Encanto

"I challenge you to visit Puerto Rico and proclaim it is not enchanted," said the cruising guide. The author now lives outside of Milwaukee, but I figure he is still enamored with Puerto Rico. On a side note, he is the proud owner of a parrot, as we learned from the back cover.

A large herbivorous dinosaur would certainly enjoy a big bite out of the Puerto Rican countryside. Munch munch crunch. Leaves dangle from it's big happy mouth. It's not just brontosauruses who want to bite Puerto Rico, I do too, but I'll be honest in saying I don't really know how to deal with my feelings. It's just so green and forested. Mmmmm.

One thing we saw in Puerto Rico Was Coconuts:

I didn't know it at the time, but I was later to drink the very milk that is sheltered in these objects with a straw.

Then We Visited The Arecibo Observatory,

home of the largest radio telescope EVER. It was really sweet. We watched a video on what goes on at the Observatory. At first I thought, "Oh good, a video that will explain in plain language what it is the scientists are actually studying here." I was wrong. The video used the most complex jargon in the most unnatural and nerdy way possible. Instead of a voice-over explaining what the scientists were doing, the scientists themselves addressed the camera and one another with vague one-line comments: "Billy-Paulina, the transducer reducer super 430 megahertz mega uber antenae is interfering with our work on sector D PQ-niner-squared over in Phase C, Rendezvous Point: Code Hovering Octypus-hat."

Then someone would respond with an impossibly simple solution: "Oh shooty-bummer, Chet, send someone from Electronics over to assist them."

At the end of the video, the credits mentioned that the video was in fact created by a production company in, - hold your breath-- EVANSTON, ILLINOIS. So that's handy. Now I can show up at their doorstep in 5 months. "Hello! Yes, I saw your video on the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. I'd like my 5 dollar admission fee back, please and thank you. And please tell me just what goes on in that metal super dish, and you'd better not tell me it's a giant microwave.

--See the previous post for some action photos from this one room we were in at the Observatory--

Then we snorkeled

to take cool underwater pictures for kids of cool stuff that we almost saw. We did see eachother under the water, which was cool. And some sand and coral, which was enjoyable as well.

All in all, Puerto Rico was enchanting and educational. I'm excited to go home and tell our Puerto Rican kids that I have seen, and desired to eat, their homeland. In another life, I was certainly an herbivorous dinosaur. But now, now I am a sailor.

Remember that time we were all invited to give speeches at the Arecibo Observatory? Me too.

Can you believe it? Neither could I. We show up for a tour of the largest radio telescope in the world and they ask us to give speeches!! What do we know about top-secret, super-duper-intense technology as used in such movies as Goldeneye 007 and Contact?!

Alot. So much, I can't even write it all down. We just know that much. Trust us. Because they did. and you should. Okay, bye.

DISCLAIMER

I wish I had more time to edit and revise, but I barely have time to sail and work. I just wanted to mention that I wish I could make this better - flow, grammar, structure, voice, you name it. No excuses, just explanation. :)

Marking the True Departure From Home

There’s something ungodly beautiful in transitions. Several people have recently commented, “This trip is going to change your life.” It’s an odd thing to be aware of the change that is occurring. I think this notion sunk in best when I first noticed that land was out of sight.

The disappearance of land from line of sight isn’t all that unusual or exceptional. However, when it happens for the first time and one is intending to sail a good part, if not entirely, around the globe, loosing sight of land is a rather large moment. For me, it wasn’t a memorable moment immediately. I wasn’t sitting on deck staring out with a hand shielding my eyes from the sun, watching wistfully as land morphed from a blob to a dot. Somehow, in between setting the sails and discussing the weather, the coast of the United States had faded below the horizon and the planet’s curvature now refused to display anything but a clean, endless parade of waves and sky.

It’s funny how you can’t actually participate in these moments until they have passed. When we cast of the lines at the dock in New York City, the momentous theatrical feeling one might expect was not present. We were just us, the Aldebaran crew, going for a sail…around the world. Goodbye, parents, goodbye friends. We love you, but we’ll see one another soon.

My moment came later, on watch alone. We were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and I could nearly feel my brain wrinkling with new emotions. And yet, people do this trip all the time. Once a year, it’s a competition: The Newport to Bermuda Race. But no, this time was different, this particular piece of ocean in the middle of the vast blue landscape, was a wide-open, wonderfully lonely world. It was like finding oneself suddenly naked in an empty auditorium. Something feels odd, but something bigger feels beautifully at ease. I’m going to dance on the stage now, spin and leap like a fool. Because there is no show, there is no audience.

I’m on watch alone and there’s no one for miles. At least, no one we could reach via VHF radio because that works on line of sight, as I recently learned from the ‘Why SSB?’ Section of the obtuse SSB manual… Waves. Wind. I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life. No one ever thinks, “I’m going to forget this experience immediately,” but nevertheless, I’m holding on to this, my first true experience of falling in love with the ocean. Lakes and day-sails are small tastes. This, this is going to make me cry. This, this is it.

We’ll see how I feel after the 26 day passage to the Marquesas.

We’re leaving Bermuda tomorrow. I’ll get back to that later.

Existential Moment in the Head

This past evening, I awoke in the middle of the night to hit the head. The moonlight, on its way through the prism in the deck, played tricks on my tired mind, making me look older. I was simultaneously thinking about aging and wondering how quickly I would be able to fall asleep again, when I had an insentient philosophical thought: Before I die, a full bladder will summon me from dreams hundreds of times and I will answer the call in bathrooms all over the world. Each bathroom will be further along the continuum of my life and thus, a new point on the graph of my personal growth.

I extorted three points from this series of thoughts.

ONE: The insanity plea is a nice little safety net to keep in my back pocket.

TWO: Really, though. Whether between trees or walls, the bathrooms one uses in the middle of the night are indicative, in some ridiculous way, of the shape of a life. A place one has decided to spend a night represents some kind of planning, or lack thereof, that says something about place of mind and place in life.

THREE: This series of thoughts in the head at 2AM was pre-empted by my unconscious mind attempting to wrap itself around what is currently going on in my life: I am growing and changing. I live on a sailboat.

The moments between full and empty bladders are the moments of true understanding. Life as I know it is changing right out from under the bathrooms in which I deposit my clear and copious evidence of hydration.