Other sailors have told me – from their cozy position on a powerboat, or from a spot firmly on solid ground – that one day it just changed. Nothing dramatic or bad happened; they were just done. It seemed incomprehensible to me, at the time, in each conversation.

There is another Auklet post, written but not yet put up, from the beginning of this summer. It has to do with considering the possibility of being done, and various reasons for this dramatic shift, but was written while there was still sailing to do this year. I had committed to the Junk Rig Gathering in Penobscot Bay, for one thing. As the organizer of the event, it would not have done, to miss that. Certainly not for a reason as diaphanous as this odd feeling in the back of my mind.

It’s good that I went on that trip, which turned into 37 days, up and down Penobscot Bay, as well as the going and coming back to Gouldsboro. Penobscot Bay is a solid 50 miles from here, or more, depending on route, and how one counts arrival and departure. It was a good trip, better than the previous two, earlier in the summer, this one with lovely wind and quite a bit of fine weather. The Junk Rig Gathering was stellar, and visits with friends and family from Rockport to Swans Island all added to the enjoyment.

Oddly enough, when I got home I still had that feeling, more and more entrenched, that it’s done. A profound relaxation even, as the boat came out of the water, rather than my usual immediate pining for spring. This was good to discover. It wasn’t because of a bad trip, sloshing around with no wind and not enough sleep, or fog and no wind, or bashing grindingly to weather, into too many gusts and too many waves, or any of that.

During that last trip there was beautiful, stupendous sailing, along with the typical interjection of less-than-stupendous harbor issues, those last completely balanced by nights, and days, in gorgeous, idyllic, peaceful coves. There was more to learn – always, which is one of the things I love about sailing – and a chance to feel the familiarity with the boat that has made it possible to sail well in a variety of situations. Sailing onto and off of docks, and out in the wild wind and foaming waves, there is huge satisfaction in watching the boat, and rig, go, with a certain amount of competence, from all these years.

Oddly, and for the first time, this wasn’t enough. The rather cramped space inside the boat – which has never bothered me for longer than the first couple of days after moving aboard – felt constricting, and uncomfortable, ongoing. The long calms were aggravating, rather than meditative. More than all of that, the fear of making a mistake, of ending up on a rock somewhere, or overboard, never really left. I said prayers for actually making it home in one piece, hoping that I might pull that off this one more time, and thinking how ironic it would be to crash just when I was ready to stop.

Fortunately, no rocks were so much as tapped, this entire season, and I stayed firmly on the boat, at all the appropriate moments. Neither of these concerns used to cause me nearly so much stress. In the past I have indeed clunked rocks occasionally, not being that worried about it, while at the same time staying attentively away from the big ones with breaking seas. While I was always careful to not fall off the boat, it wasn’t a big concern, other than being mindful of exercising basic caution. The risk did not particularly worry me after the first couple days of adjusting to being aboard.

Now, I have lost my nerve.

The funny part is that it doesn’t feel like “I have lost my nerve and therefore I am ready to stop sailing.” That might be it, but it feels more like I have become ready to stop sailing, and therefore whatever magic that produced the nerve to do all the wild things I have done afloat has evaporated, along with that underlying, rather driven desire. The desire melted away, and with it the capacity to do those somewhat brave, nervy things. Oddly, I’m not really missing it.

This could of course change, and I could go out again. But I don’t really expect that. Sailing has given me so very much: solitude and self-sufficiency, when my life on shore had neither; travel, and marvelous connections with people; friendships and good times remembered, which all remain; a task requiring such depth and breadth of knowledge as to make it completely absorbing, for years. Connection with the gorgeous ocean, and the light, and stars, on the water. Nothing takes that away.

Meanwhile, there have been other considerations. This last year has been somewhat daunting, from a memory perspective. I’ve written before about both cognitive and memory issues, that have come and gone, and various interpretations of why that might be. It has become more difficult to remember odd things that pass in a day, or a week. On land it is rarely significant, but it remains shocking to perceive such blank spaces where something was once known, or to completely forget relevant, familiar details, in the face of a current question.

On the water, there is a limit to how far one can go, compensating for those kinds of gaps. At some point, extra study, and knowledge, and a rather OCD approach to daily systems, are not enough to tip the balance toward safety. I think that I could still do it, sailing off, but the risks feel palpable, in a way that they didn’t used to.

Perhaps this comes back to the question of nerve. Nothing used to stop me, including obstacles that are not these days as big as they once were. But the drive has left. The boat – and sailing overall – have brought me here, blessed to be in a place where the tide rises and falls outside the window. Or at my feet. The warm weather will come again, and I hope to be swimming.

It’s enough, now.

[Photo credit: Suzanne Jean]

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There is more to say, about this and that – a little bit of trip stories, the Junk Rig Gathering, and the article about the Mer Veille radar detector that I’ve been meaning to do for ages. Posting that other entry from a few months ago, about contemplating stopping, is on the list. I’ll hope to be filling these in, over the next while.

Thank you so much to all the many readers here, and especially to those of you who have written back. It’s been such a pleasure.

A funny thing happens, off sailing for days, or in the intensity of one long day with an assortment of conditions. For a while I thought that this was all about fatigue, that odd experience of being much, much less connected to the necessities of daily routines. Small mistakes, or details overlooked, and a focus that feels dreamy, rather than the usual, grounded, routines of the day. After those long two or three day passages – of which there have now been four, this year – it happened again that it was the day after, even after having had a good night’s sleep, that I was prone to those odd mistakes. This year I became especially aware of the feeling of dreamy, altered reality that went with it all. As the year has gone on, I’ve found this happening even after long single days of major effort, with no overnight sailing at all.

Often, those extended, hard-push days come because of a schedule that involves trying to visit with somebody, who will not be available a day or three later, after the amount of time that would be involved if the sailing schedule were more relaxed. So after having sailed hard, on what would normally be a rest day, I find myself in to a dock, and visiting. Oddly again, by part way through the day of activity and interaction at the dock, rather than being more tired, and more affected by fatigue, instead I am back into that “normal” place. No more unobservant mistakes, no more sense of dreamy unreality to the tasks of the day. If it’s time to sail away later, to someplace for the night, that goes forward with the usual grounded routines solidly in place.

Meanwhile, there is this: sailing, for me, and single-handing, particularly, have that quality of “I just have to do this.” A pull, that when honored feels exactly right. When neglected, there is the feeling that I am missing something vitally important. All these years, I could not have told anybody more than this: that I simply am drawn to doing this, with a sense of both urgency and deep desire.

Along the way, time in the boat has contributed to increasing strength, well-being, and overall health. Through the long winters ashore these have often slipped, but have returned again with a good long dose of boat time. Once again oddly, if I hang around on the boat for too long in one place, with friends, enjoying the fun of life near town, that magic shift begins to lose traction. I’ve begun to think that oh well, just being on the boat is not the magic cure.

Then for whatever reason, it’s time to be off to sea again. Sitting with exhaustion, and those long, long days that unfold themselves when the weather is just right to sail, and just right the next day, and the one after that. With a destination in mind, it makes no sense to decline a good wind; doing so can mean an extra week, and/or long slogs upwind, or worse, without wind at all, floating in place for half a day or more, if one has the poor judgment to raise the anchor in the first place (nevermind that the weather report said that there would be a breeze). So in those times that are just right, it’s off to sea again, communing with the wind, and the tide, and the long, long days, sometimes into nights.

Surprisingly, in those long runs strength returns. Along with that dreamy feeling, somehow interwoven with fatigue, but I am learning that although they are interwoven, that dreamy feeling and fatigue are not the same thing. The dreamy feeling has complications: it can feel like loss of cognitive ability – and in some ways, it is. Although mistakes are not catastrophic, they can be pesky.

In a conversation about all this a few weeks ago, I talked about concerns of losing mental capabilities, and fears of something along the lines of dementia. But I got an interesting response back (thank you, Lori): that when one is doing deep inner work, in a big way, sometimes one ends up in an altered state that is something like meditation, and in that place, the normal everyday stuff can slip away. I heard this and thought, yes, that feels right, somehow true to my experience. This was relaxing – I mostly stopped worrying about dementia – and it was illuminating, especially in relation to sailing, and that dreamy state. As in, sailing off for days or weeks at a time is an entry into a different kind of awareness. Sailing requires focus, and at the same time, that very focus can be the pathway to disengaging from the concerns and cares of one’s land-bound life. Rather like meditation.

This connection between sailing and a meditation-like state, and the experience of healing, goes together with the material that is taught by the brain retraining folks, particularly in the work by Ashok Gupta. Gupta focuses quite a bit on stillness meditation as a primary tool for recovery from chronic illness that is related to limbic system issues. (See previous posts, linked below, for more on this.) Myself, I don’t ordinarily consider myself somebody who is good at meditation. In brain retraining, I have been more drawn to the techniques offered by Annie Hopper (also referenced in those same links), which do not particularly emphasize stillness meditation. And yet, here is sailing, and this meditative-like state, and my experience of improved well-being, if I spend enough time in that place. It’s not just being on the boat; the kind of sailing matters. Off, and alone, with enough time to be totally immersed.

This is the kind of sailing, and boat time overall, that lets one press into that place of somewhat altered reality. Partly fatigue, but partly something else. It’s liberating to go to sea, any way around. That it has this aspect that is something like meditation is not something that I’ve thought about before. I’ve just known that whatever that feeling is, I want it. And it feels deeply important, far beyond the glitter of an interesting toy. Come to find out, the mechanics of this healing are becoming perceptible.

So this is what I’ve learned: the motion of the boat is good, and I’ve known for a long time that it works rather like passive range of motion exercises. Muscles, joints, and everything else, that are over-tight, or strained, loosen in the process of relaxing into the gentle shifts of a small boat. Not so much in snappy, uncomfortable waves, but with attention and some luck one can mostly avoid those. The less obvious benefits of the sailboat process come from that state of meditation, that arrives without fanfare, often completely invisible as it interweaves with fatigue. As I’m learning to recognize that meditative feeling, I’m hoping to become more fluent in working with it. I am told that as it becomes more familiar, it’s easier to move in and out of a place of meditation, shifting between that dreamy state, and the requirements of everyday life, with more fluidity and ease. It’s the jarring of the transitions that I think contributes to the odd mistakes, especially when one has no idea what’s happening in the first place. Recognizing the process should go a long way toward helping with that.

The other obvious question, having come this far, is whether once recognizing and becoming familiar with that state of meditation, it can then become possible to move into it regardless of outside surroundings. As in, do I have to go sailing to find that place? I like sailing anyway, for all the many reasons: the water, the motion, the intriguing challenges of rigging, wind, and current. The absolute, extraordinary beauty of light on water, clouds and sky, and wild shorelines of all varieties. But sailing having shown the way, having opened the window, perhaps it is also possible to enter the feeling of that place, from anywhere at all. And by entering the feeling of that place, to have access to the healing that comes of residing within it. It’s a long way around, compared to basic brain retraining protocols. Heaven knows that making this boat project happen has been a vast undertaking. But sometimes the long way around, with all its depth and richness, is just the perfect thing. So I’m paying attention, feeling the perfect gift of the opportunity to watch how the entire process unfolds.

In the meantime, there is more sailing this fall, with a plan to haul the boat in a few weeks in Gouldsboro, and to settle in for the winter there in the new house. Presently I’m in Smith Cove, outside of Castine, watching the rain. It’s a snug place to be, with gale warnings on the radio, and time to sit still, and write.

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[mostly written in September, 2015]

Previous posts on brain retraining:
http://sailingauklet.com/2014/07/28/brain-retraining/ (skip to bottom for resource links)
http://sailingauklet.com/2014/10/26/brain-retraining-on-board/

A number of years ago, when I was sailing the Falmouth cutter, one night I ended up in the drink. It was about two in the morning and I had been anchored in back of the breakwater at Duck Island, on the south coast of Connecticut. The weather deteriorated and it wasn’t so nice out there, so I decided to go in to my regular slip in the nearby marina.

It was raining, with a fairly stiff wind that wanted to blow the boat away from the float that I needed to tie up to in my short slip. (The photo above is that very boat and marina, but a slightly different slip.) Alone, and the docks of course deserted at that time, I made the tight turn to port, into the space between my float and the adjacent boat, and with dock line in hand took a rather long step from the starboard rail to the end of the float. Normally this would have worked, but the wooden float was slick in the rain, my foot slipped, and down I went, presumably with a splash.

I say “presumably,” because I have a clear memory of coming up to the slip, stepping across, the grip under my foot letting go, and the very beginning of falling backwards toward the water. Then there’s a big blank spot, and my memory begins again when I am in the water, floating easily because of all the air trapped in my warm clothes and foulies. I had apparently had the presence of mind to keep holding onto the dock line, because it was, thankfully, in my hand.

The docks at that marina are somewhat high, and I floated beside mine for a couple of moments, considering what to do next. It was obvious that I wasn’t going to be climbing right out of the water, so after a little thought along the lines of, “if there is ever a time when I really ought to inflate this lifejacket, that would be now, at two in the morning, in the dark and the wind, in the water.” The lifejacket inflated as it was supposed to, and before the boat could drift too far back I swam close enough to a cleat up on the float to be able to reach up and tie the line I’d been holding. As things went on, the boat drifted back to hang on that bow line, almost touching the boats on the dock across the way.

Meanwhile, I was focused on the matter of how to get out of the water. For some reason it did not occur to me to try to use the emergency rope ladder on the boat (regularly used for swimming), so we still don’t know if, in a tremendous amount of rather wet clothing, it would have worked to climb that. It also didn’t occur to me to swim the fairly short distance from my slip over to the rocky shore, between the lines of boats. From there I could, at that time, have walked around back to the dock and the boat. I’m a good swimmer, and after all had the lifejacket inflated, but swimming to the shore simply didn’t cross my mind as an option. There’s some current that runs through there, so perhaps that was for the best.

What I did think about was that the marina was full of people on their boats, probably sleeping. I was going to need help to get back up on that dock, and knew that at least some of the people I knew were within range. So I took out the little orange ACR whistle stashed in the lifejacket and gave it a try, with quite a number of pretty energetic toots. No response.

All the safety training materials I’ve seen, from backwoods, to kayaks, to generic boating, say that whistles are far more easily heard than people’s voices. I was thinking about that information, there in the water, with no response to the whistle, but decided that voice was worth a try regardless. Things weren’t desperate – I was floating, I was warm, and I wasn’t even particularly wet, with the foul weather gear taking time to allow the water to get in. So I started hollering the names of two friends who I was pretty sure were sleeping in their boat just a couple of boats away on the other side of the dock. That went on for a bit, with no response, and then it finally occurred to me that I should actually be calling for help. So instead of just the friends names, I yelled out “I’m in the water – I need help!”

That was all it took. Seconds later several friendly people were on the float, reaching to give me a hand. Together we figured out the best way to manage, and shortly I was out of the water. While that was happening somebody meanwhile had pulled the boat in and secured it to the proper cleats.

As we all collected ourselves, I asked them if they had heard the whistle, and they said no, not at all. They had heard me hollering the names of my friends (who, sleeping in their cabin, never heard a thing), but attributed the yelling to the kind of rowdiness that sometimes goes with life in marinas. But the folks who heard these calls were awake, and dressed, and as soon as they understood the situation they were there in a flash.

Nowadays I have “storm whistles” stashed all over the place, as well as the knowledge that in this sort of situation it’s not only okay, but crucial, to say very clearly that you need help. I hope to not land in the drink again – after that event I changed my docking system, to make stepping across unnecessary – but I sure did learn a lot from the experience, and the “basic facts” are just the beginning.

The most remarkable thing is that it’s now about 12 years later, and I still have no memory of the actual time when I was falling. What I do remember is feeling terribly banged up afterwards. When you fall accidentally off a boat, particularly near docks, it’s not necessarily the ending up in the water that’s the problem. Rather, the biggest issue comes from what you hit on the way down. I was fortunate not to hit my head, but based on the pattern of bruises, I think that my left arm must have come down on something pretty hard. And I had that overall thrashed feeling, which I’ve only otherwise experienced after a major car accident.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s not particularly important that I don’t remember that second or two of my life; the surrounding memories, and evidence, make what passed in those moments pretty clear. I’d like to know what I bashed on the way down, but the injuries are long healed, and it doesn’t really matter. What is more than relevant, however, is the illustration provided by this experience.

As I’ve said before on this blog, I’m a survivor of quite severe childhood abuse. Most of this abuse I know about because of an odd kind of “shadow memory,” and because of the repercussions of those childhood experiences in my adult life. Just like those 1 to 2 seconds of falling from the boat, I have no regular, clear memory of many of the things that I know took place. And very much like being in the water after that fall, the outcomes of my childhood experience – the physical and emotional challenges of my adult life – point to how things got that way. The only difference is that a person floating in the water is so clear and unequivocal.

As somebody pointed out to me (thank you, Lori) after the post from some time back titled “Thoughts on Rescue,” there is no lying in ocean rescue. Nobody thinks, “oh, the person I see in the water might be lying about it,” while the rescuer tries to decide whether or not they should fish them out; there is no evaluation of motives, or memories, or stories, nor is that question even relevant to the situation. Whether the person who needs help is in a life raft, or crawling through smoke in a burning building, the appropriate response is unequivocal. If it is physically possible, they are rescued. Even if the person doesn’t remember falling, it’s obvious that they are in the water, and people reach to help them back to dry ground.

These days, I am fascinated, and comforted, by the relationship between memory, history, and the here-and-now. When I ask myself, “oh, did that old stuff really happen?”, all I have to do is look around at the surrounding present. When the surrounding present is just as incontrovertible as floating in that harbor, dock line in hand, you know that it’s true.

I’d prefer not to have fallen off that boat, but gosh what a gift it was. I learned a lot, lived to tell about it, and gained a model for better understanding of the entire arc of my life. Can’t ask for much more than that…