It’s good to have an indicator for when you get really tired. Not “sleepy” tired, but fatigued, in the way that can compromise thinking, decision-making, and all the rest. Lately, I have that indicator.

When Anke and Dave were on the boat last year, I wasn’t getting much sleep. I’m not that good at sleeping anyway, and then we did, after all, sail through the night. At some point along the way Anke observed: “Shemaya, you really jump around between whatever things you are doing.” I had noticed this before, myself, that sometimes I tended to jump to whatever caught my attention and work on that, until the next thing caught my attention, often partway through whatever I had just been in the middle of. Eventually I decided that this wasn’t the end of the world, that six different things all got finished in the end, but that it was funny that I was completing them in so many disjointed parts. The advantage of doing this on a small boat is that you are never very far from being reminded of the tasks that you’ve wandered away from! Anyway, after Anke made that observation I started to pay more attention.

Which brings me to Mummy. My mom had a lot of issues, and a life with some really substantial difficulties. She was prescribed a broad array of psychiatric drugs, and endured a number of horrendous procedures that were considered “treatments.” Some of these things she found helpful, and others not. After one of them, her ability to stay on a particular task really deteriorated. Visiting at her apartment, in my 20s, she would suggest that she would make some coffee, which sounded good. 45 minutes later, that process would be somewhat underway. By the time she was getting older, there were folks who were coming to help with things like getting out of the house to go to appointments. One of them told me that taking a morning shower took about four hours, from start to finish. It was a long project, to get out of her apartment!

Once I got my own “jumping among tasks” clearly in view, I started to pay more attention to what was going on. For my mom, it was brain injury that caused this issue (never mind that it was an intentional surgery, and that she actually felt good about the results, and was willing to put up with the other effects.) With me, I started to pick up on the connection between lack of rest and task-jumping. It could be lack of sleep, or it could be the fatigue that comes with strenuous effort, both physical and mental. For example, sailing in big conditions with lots of factors to keep on top of, like tide, current, and tricky navigation with serious consequences for goof-ups. Doing heavy emotional work can contribute to the same effect.

It’s handy to have a quick shorthand for recognizing that level of fatigue. Nowadays, when I notice myself jumping between tasks, I say “oh look, I’m channeling Mummy.” Then I can both remind myself to follow one task through to completion before changing (probably a good pratice from a safety perspective), and to get some rest. Bonus, I get to think of my mom, in all her complexity. To embrace that I was able to say “oh, would you like me to help make the coffee?” And that she said yes.

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Besides all the technical details of planning, provisioning, sailing, etc., doing something like this kind of trip involves a good bit of work on how you get yourself through it, body and spirit. It’s often just plain fun, which does the trick just fine at those times. But being out, particularly for so long, is also challenging, both physically and in terms of how it feels emotionally. I have a small but sturdy collection of tools that help keep my personal well-being reasonably in order, on both counts.

On the body front, along with basic things like regular exercises and attending to sore muscles, including carrying a “thera-cane” on board to be able to easily and effectively work on back and shoulder muscles, I’ve also been working with a variation on Yamuna Body Rolling (thank you Joanne!) Ordinarily this version of bodywork self-care involves using a soft ball about 10 inches in diameter, but the small boat version is scaled down, with a firmer ball about 5 inches in diameter. It works well for following muscles, using one’s body weight to apply gentle pressure from where the muscles begin to where they attach at the far end, helping them release and let go. This helps not only the muscles but nearby nerves, connective tissue, etc. That’s a tiny description of a more involved process, but if anybody is interested it’s easy to find out more at: http://www.yamunabodyrolling.com I’m particularly fond of the book Body Rolling: An Experiential Approach to Complete Muscle Release, by Yamuna Zake. Though this book is directed toward bodywork practitioners, it’s a gold mine for anybody who’s inclined to really get into the subject, regardless of background.

The bottom line, on the body front, is that along with good food and a moderate collection of favorite supplements, quite a bit of time doing bodywork has been really helpful. Days in quiet harbors are a real treat for this, and have made the difference between this whole boat project being doable and simply not.

And then there’s the inner work. I do a lot of this anyway, at home, in the process of working through old history. But I’ve been surprised to find that the same tools I’ve come to for working on old issues have been very, very useful for the more immediate strains of sailing/cruising. The two from which I get the most mileage are EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) and TRE (Trauma Releasing Exercises).

EFT involves tapping on a series of acupuncture points, while focusing on the particular issue at hand. The theory is that this releases blockages in the energy meridians, leading to more ease and comfort, both physically and emotionally. One of the lovely things about it is that there is no need to force a dividing line between physical and emotional experience – whatever seems primary, whether it’s fear of the rocks, or pain in a shoulder, one can go through the EFT routine focused on that issue, and allow the strain to move, and change, following and tapping one’s way through, and out the other side of, wherever it leads. Surprisingly often doing this makes a real difference, creating ease where before there was anything but.

There’s a lot of material on the Internet about EFT these days, some of it better than others. The book that I like the best is The Promise of Energy Psychology, by David Feinstein, Donna Eden, and Gary Craig. It’s coherent, and low on hype, and does a good job of explaining some of the more detailed levels of what’s going on and how to best use this tool. On the Internet there is https://www.emofree.com/eft-tutorial/tapping-basics/how-to-do-eft.html which is the website run by Gary Craig, who first worked out and continues to develop EFT. Free tutorials are available on that site, both text and video, and with a bit of time one can very effectively teach oneself how to work with EFT and begin using it. (I’m probably going to say this about a million times on this blog – I’m not affiliated with any of these folks, and I’m not getting anything for making any of these references. I just like their work, and I’ve gotten a lot from it.)

On the sailing front, I have used EFT for everything from fear of leaving a harbor to mortification over discovering that when I anchored at 9 PM in the dark in a small, unfamiliar harbor I ended up square in the middle of the channel, which became obvious at six in the morning when just about every lobster boat in the harbor was squeezing by about 3 feet away. EFT is great for mortification…

It’s a broad subject, potential topics for EFT work while sailing, but I’ll leave it there.

There are also things that happen while sailing/cruising that can be really, really scary. Sometimes this is because present events resonate with old ones, and, hopefully not often, sometimes this is because a present event has had the potential for real catastrophe. For these situations, I start with EFT – sometimes during, if it doesn’t interfere with appropriate action in the moment, and almost always after. And a funny thing can happen in the time when it’s safe to relax after the event is over, and one has the space to settle in with what’s going on internally. Bodies have a way of releasing fear, tension, and stress, by shaking it out – the kind of shaking that many people have experienced after something like a car accident. The technical term for this shaking is “neurogenic tremors.” Trauma Releasing Exercises are a technique for accessing those body tremors, but I’ve found that once one is familiar with what’s going on it’s easy enough to just let them happen, and run themselves out, with no need for specific exercises. There is fascinating work, done by David Berceli, on this subject.

Berceli has written a couple of books and produced DVDs based on his work, which has been done primarily with survivors of war trauma and survivors of extreme natural disasters, particularly the big earthquakes in China, and I believe with the tsunami that did so much terrible damage a few years ago. Unfortunately you can’t just get all the information on the Internet – but one can understand that a person needs to make a living! It’s just a little less convenient to have to actually order the book or a DVD (my how times have changed!) I found the shorter book, titled Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE): a revolutionary new method for trauma/stress recovery (2005) really useful.

Anyway, the technique of actively choosing to shake out the effects of seriously scary situations has been really, really useful to me. It’s so simple, is grounded in what other mammals on the planet do routinely, and is incredibly effective for moving beyond difficult experiences.

People bring up with me fairly often this subject of fear, when it comes to being out and about this way, sailing a good distance from home. And of course I get scared, or worried, or significantly stressed about one or another aspect of being out on the water. I’m a person who’s prone to worry anyhow, and there are, after all, significant concerns, given weather, rocks, equipment issues, and the multitude of judgment calls involved in sailing. The real answer is yes, it can be scary – or embarrassing, or a number of versions of distressing, or sometimes simply infuriating (for exactly how long is that wind going to NOT blow?) – but it’s just a bit more of a compressed version of everyday Life. It’s the tools for moving through these everyday events that make it doable. What I love about being off in the boat is that being out here also provides space for moving through everything that doing this brings up in the first place. And the more one moves through, the more peaceful the whole business gets. It’s a fascinating process, and that fascination is part of what keeps me so engaged with the whole undertaking.

I used to do this kind of distance sailing without most of the above-mentioned tools. And of course I found other ways to deal with the very same strains. But I like it better this way. There’s nothing like the right tool for a job.

Friday, August 2, 2013

My Internet access has become extremely limited as this trip has progressed along the coast of Maine. This is because the Internet gizmo that plugs into the USB port of the computer relates to a company that does better farther south. That would be T-Mobile.

So now, an upgrade is in progress. I never used to care terribly about not having e-mail while sailing, and it became a treat to not use the computer for a week at a time. But now I have a blog! And I’m enjoying the process of writing, and up until the Internet connection stopped working well enough, I was enjoying putting things up in a somewhat regular way. Now, several posts have been written, and are waiting their turns. This one is by way of explanation, so that when things eventually work out, the sudden collection of posts will make some kind of sense.

Presently, myself and boat are anchored by Birch Island. This is in the small archipelago that defines the Muscle Ridge Channel, south and a little east of Rockland, Maine, on the west side of Penobscot Bay. “Muscle” is actually spelled that way in this case – according to the cruising guide, that’s the archaic spelling for the small blue shellfish. Any way around, it’s a lovely spot, with a sandy beach on Birch Island, and extraordinary quarried granite on islands on the other side of the anchorage.

The quarrying history has its sadness – in a 50 year flurry of people and machinery, many islands in this region were terribly torn up, their granite hauled to Boston and New York for historic buildings, and the islands left lower, with piles of broken rock tailings and giant rectangular blocks made into wharves that were used for loading the ships during the original quarrying process. It’s a mixed history, but those granite wharves are pretty amazing to see.

The other especially attractive thing about this anchorage is that it’s the home base for Mainstay Provisions, a business run by a woman named Reilly Harvey. Each evening around five o’clock she brings her specially outfitted workboat around the anchorage – cooking lobster! Boatside service, with lobster, sometimes steamers, sometimes chowder, and all manner of baked treats and salads. Particularly because I don’t get off the boat very much, this is my idea of perfect heaven! It’s the ideal place to stay for a few days.

Which brings me back to the Internet process. Yesterday Suzanne went to Best Buy (thank you Mike for tracking down the best way to do this!) and got a new gadget, which is now in the mail to my Aunt Patsy who lives on the other side of the Muscle Ridge Channel. The gadget is a Verizon “jet pack” – apparently also called an “air card.” The idea is that it uses a signal from a cell tower to make a little Wi-Fi hotspot.

I originally set out to get a smart phone – I’ve been resisting these things for a while but the idea is that they too can make their own little Wi-Fi hotspot. Then the fellow in the store said oh, well if that’s what you want it for, how about this thing – the jet pack – which is cheaper, has a $20/month plan for 2 GB of service, and according to him provides a better Internet signal. So I said yes, and it’s on its way. We’ll know if it works by if anybody besides me gets to read this post right here!

This undertaking was not without its complications. Suzanne had to become an authorized person on my phone account in order to set up the new gizmo in the store, which meant that I had to reach a real human being at Verizon, which is no small feat, and then call Suzanne and the salesperson back in the store to let them know that was done. Explanations of the myriad equipment/plan choices happened between me, Suzanne, the salesperson, and on and on.

None of this would have been a big deal if I had not been sailing at the time that Suzanne was in the store finding all this out! And talking on the phone while sailing would not have been a big deal if the wind had blown a little more, or I had more understanding of the current dynamics in the channel out of Seal Harbor, or I had the good sense to postpone either the phone calls or the departure from the harbor. As it was, phone calls were interrupted – priorities being the way the current was sweeping the boat directly toward the rocky point on the north side of the harbor entrance. You would think that the current would divide around the point, and sweep the boat either to one side or to the other. No dice. Straight toward the rocky point. No giant breakers or anything, but really too close. So I caved and started the motor, with some significant exasperation, mainly at myself for getting into this situation. “Needing” the motor, in the way that I’ve been using it, is a scorecard that indicates room for improvement, in one way or another, whether in planning, or preparation, or decision-making along the way.

There were several lessons from this experience. First, and most obvious, it doesn’t matter how important whatever is on the other end of the telephone seems – if there is the least question on the here and now sailing front, the phone has got to go. The motor worked, there was no terrible danger, the outcome was fine, but an example of good seamanship it was not. If I had been paying full attention I would have continued making tacks in the tiny breeze as I saw the boat entering the stream of the stiffer current. I had been actually making progress, using this strategy, gradually making headway toward getting around that point without mechanical means, though it was a question whether the flooding current was going to increase too much for the failing wind even with careful attention. Anyway, we won’t know, because I was busy on the phone, and not giving the here-and-now situation my full attention.

As it was, I got off the phone anyway without having resolved things, ran the motor, got the boat around the point and into the main stream of the current going north, shut off the motor and went back to sailing. Once things were completely calm, the phone process was picked up again and also resolved. I am absolutely, perfectly delighted to have made this much progress with the Internet gizmo – but the biggest lesson I am taking from this experience is to improve my decision-making on the mix between sailing and phones.

It’s easy to take phone use while sailing for granted, because unlike cars, on a fast day this boat is going about 5 mph, and on a day like yesterday about 1, and “traffic” often means you can see another boat passing about a mile away. But still… better lines need to be drawn. And in the face of competing priorities, the here and now needs to be first. Funny how electronics can be so seductive – if the person on the other end of the line was in a crisis and my participation could make a difference, I would still bend towards staying on the phone, but I’m going to be much, much more alert for the simple non-crisis priority questions.

Now, at the end of all this, the gizmo is in the mail, due to arrive across the channel either tomorrow (Saturday) or Monday. One way or another it will make the last bit of travel connection, and we’ll see if it works! Here’s hoping. Meantime, this is a great place to sit in the rain and the fog, watching the beautiful islands.