Music for Sailing Among the Stars

Tags

music, poetry, sailing, Sea of Cortez, Stars, Troy Armstrong, universe

One of my poems has been set to music. An amazing composer, Troy Armstrong, emailed me earlier this year and told me how he had found one of my early blog posts called “Swimming Among the Stars,” which featured a poem I had written long ago. He was so moved by the poem he set it to music.

His choral piece is called “Swimming Among the Stars,” and while I was thrilled and honored that he should do such a thing, I was blown away by the song itself, which is hauntingly beautiful. You can listen to it at the link above.

While it’s meant to be sung and he’s working on having it recorded by a choral group, what you hear below is from a synthesizer. Even so it’s incredible . . . tell me what you think. I’m so deeply humbled by it. You might want to visit his website and hear more of his music. Some created for orchestra, string quartets, solo instruments, and voice.

The poem and part of the post that inspired this music is copied below, or you can read the original here, which included a night swim. It was written when we were sailing across the Sea of Cortez one moonless night. Here’s what I wrote in that post:

We sail across the universe on the back of a tiny planet at the edge of a galaxy that swirls around us. Too often we forget that–how embedded we really are in the universe.

I became acutely aware of this one night when we were crossing the Sea of Cortez from Baja to mainland Mexico. There was no wind, no moon. The sea was perfectly still like the surface of a dark mirror, marred only by our trailing wake.

Above us the bare mast stirred a billion stars, which were reflected in the sea’s surface below. I felt like we were on a starship sailing through the cosmos. Later that night I wrote this:

Night Crossing, Sea of Cortez

The sea appears so simple
With a dark, indulgent face
The stars there twice reflected
Like a world spun out of space
Our sloop shoots through the cosmos
Through a mute and moonless night
Our wake a fiery comet
Streaming effervescent light
With all the universe inert
We slip from star to star
Then reach across the Milky Way
Toward galaxies afar
Eons swirl, light-years unfurl
And none can still our flight
Leaping toward the infinite
To apprehend the light.

I’m not alone in seeing the overlap between the ocean and the night sky. Various artists are fond of depicting whales and dolphins and other sea creatures swimming among the stars.

The ocean and the universe stand at the edge of the wild, the last two true frontiers we have to explore, except for the human consciousness, of course. The ocean and the universe have become symbols for consciousness as well as adventure.

We seem to grasp that there is something that connects all three—some deep, dreamy, ever-flowing, ungraspable, powerful yet nurturing element in which we all are steeped. That calls us to move beyond ourselves, beyond the safe and familiar, the already known. That inspires us to reach for something that lies just beyond our grasp.

I’m still reaching. Are you?

Sailing with Kids into the Unknown, Continuation of Sea Saga, Part VI

Tags

adventure, Baja, children, Cruising (maritime), Formosa 46, lifestyle, memoir, Mexico, sailing, Sailing Around the World

This post is a continuation of the article I wrote about long-distance sailing with children that I wrote long ago as we embarked upon what would be a 6 ½ year voyage around the world. Read Part I, HERE.

Cruising with Kids, Dream or Nightmare?  Part Two

So amid tears and protests, we moved aboard “La Gitana” where she lay patiently at her slip in Ventura, California. There Dale and I gave up the roomy aft cabin to the children with their collections of stuffed animals, Barbie dolls and Star War Empires. Then we settled back to await the inevitable bouts of tears and sulkiness that must accompany this new adjustment period in our lives.

But it never happened. Chris was too busy learning to sail our dinghy, while Kelli was totally enchanted with her new, tiny inflatable and happily rowing off backwards to visit new-found friends living at the marina.

Soon surfing and boogie boarding became the favored past-time, and the children were heaving boards to heads and going off to explore the waves together.

By the time January and our much delayed departure date rolled around, the children had made new lives and new friends for themselves at the marina. But there were no tears at departing this time–they were as ready to head out as we were.

Already they had learned that they could adapt to a new environment and make their own places in it, wherever that place might be.This easy acceptance of and adjustment to the cruising life continued. We spent two delightful weeks at Catalina Island before heading further south.

Even in that short time, the children’s sense of independence and self-reliance increased as they rowed themselves ashore each day to explore the little town of Avalon by themselves or took their places at the fishing dock among all the old-timers there.

Chris became so adept at working the oars of our ten-foot dingy that he became the family’s official rower. Whenever the four of us went to shore together, it was his strong back and broad smile that transported us there.

I’ll never forget one twilit evening when Kelli offered to row the trash ashore, and, despite my doubts, Dale said she could handle it. I watched, trans-fixed, as my little eight-year-old daughter heft the large bag into our ten-foot dingy, untied the painter and shoved off, manning the heavy wooden oars that I myself had trouble with. She rowed, not backwards this time, but like a good seaman with her back to the future as the gathering twilight slowly hid her from view. Kelli won more than a bit of independence that day–she won respect and admiration, for she rowed a straighter course than I could.

By the time we reached Cabo San Lucas and rounded the tip of Baja into the Sea of Cortez, we had discovered that many of the more trivial concerns that, nonetheless, loomed so large in our minds had disappeared. Now it’s hard to imagine why we once thought that lack of privacy or cramped quarters would become a problem.

Our forty-six foot Formosa with its large center cockpit and forward and aft cabins has provided us with all the privacy and living space that we seem to need. We live as peaceably here as we did in our house and perhaps more so. Not only are our cramped quarters not a problem, but they have often proved a blessing.

Now when the children bring the Legos out to the salon table to build spaceships, Dale or I are often drawn into the creative enterprise. And it is easy to supervise school lessons from the galley while in the midst of kneading sourdough or canning chicken. Then, when we do need that time to “be by ourselves,” we’ve found that cooperation rather than space is the prime factor. And cooperation is readily available. Why we once thought otherwise seems a mystery now.

The simple luxuries of a daily shower, a washing machine and TV are no longer missed. While the privacy of a good, hot shower is still a luxury that we would readily welcome, we’ve found that it’s only just that–a luxury, not a necessity. Its absence does not affect the quality of life or well-being in the least.

Fresh water sponge baths and sea-bucket showers are enough to keep us feeling as fresh and clean as the humidity permits. Then, when we are in a port where fresh water is plentiful, nothing compares with a fresh-water sun shower during the heat of day or within the warm caress of a starry night.

I’ve discovered that washing laundry in buckets of salt water and rinsing them in fresh keeps our clothes as clean and soft as they need to be. It is not the drudgery that I had anticipated. At the house, doing laundry for me was always a rather tedious task performed alone in the semi-gloom of our garage. Now I do the laundry in a bikini on the bow of the boat with the brilliant sunshine and wind refreshing my spirits while panoramic views of busy harbors or lovely anchorages enchant my mind. And never am I a lone. There is always Chris to haul up buckets of water for me, Dale to help rinse and wring, and Kelli to hang the clothes on the life lines.

The absence of TV has been one of our greatest blessings. It opened the fascinating world of books to our children who, until we began cruising, seldom read. We were only a week into our cruise when Chris, quickly drying the last of the dishes so I could begin our nightly reading session of The Hobbit, exclaimed, “This beats watching TV any day!” And this from a boy who had suffered the cruelest deprivation of his life only months before when we cut the cable to MTV.

Since we’ve been cruising, I’ve ceased to worry about depriving the children of their involvement in organized sports and clubs. We’ve found that this life at sea provides ample opportunities for developing skills, independence and self-reliance that more than compensate for that lack. These cruising activities seem to be more holistic in scope, as well, encompassing many aspects of a single theme.

Fishing, for example, has become a favored past-time for the children, but this passion involves far more than casting a line into the sea. Each child catches and salts down his own bait, rigs and cares for his own poles, then cleans and fillets his own catch. They both spend many enjoyable hours making lures out of feathers, bits of colored string, and other odds and ends.

Chris, especially, actively seeks out and devours any articles or books on the sport of fishing that he can find, and he spends hours pouring through our charts and cruising guides, looking for the best fishing and diving spots.

Our fish identification book has been worn to tatters by constant perusal. Now, when I am puzzled by the identity of an unfamiliar fish, I have only to describe it to the kids to find my answer. Even the children’s artwork nowadays includes many finely detailed and colored drawings of the fish they admire.

In cruising, we’ve found that many of the skills that the children learn provide as much practical use as they do play, Rowing, sailing, and working the out¬board motor are not only fun but are the children’s main means of transportation to and from shore. Swimming, snorkeling, and diving provide excellent recreation as well as dinner.

Chris has become quite proficient at hunting and spearing fish and lobster, often free-diving to thirty feet to stalk a grouper or free an anchor. Kelli’s snorkeling and diving produces clams and scallops for supper, as well as a myriad of pretty shells for creating jewelry.

A cruising life does provide less opportunity for the children to play with their own peers, but even this lack does have its compensations. The children have been forced to seek companionship in unexpected places, including each other. Their many expeditions to shore to explore the beaches and towns together has fostered a growing sense of responsibility, cooperation, protectiveness and con¬sideration between the two. It is often commented on how close they seem to be–comments rarely merited in the highly separate lives they led ashore.

In addition, both children have become quite adept at striking up friendships with many of the adults they meet. These adults have included not only other cruisers or vacationing Americans, but many of the local Mexicans as well. Some of these friendships have become very special .and lasting, while others have led to some unique experiences.

The children’s increasing command of Spanish has allowed them to become friends with some of the Mexican shopkeepers and fishermen and their children. In the process, the children have waited on tables, made signs in English, and helped out their friends in other small ways, as well as enjoyed several tours of local commercial fishing boats. One special friendship with a young American couple working down here led Chris to work and pay for his own diving instructions, allowing him to become a certified scuba diver at the age of twelve.

When the children do happen to come into contact with other cruising children, these friendships tend to be swift and deep, bonded as they are by their shared, unique experiences. They are learning that friendships need not be limited to one’s own peer group or even to one’s own nationality but are to be nurtured and savored wherever they are found.

One of the very special aspects of cruising has been the increased opportunities it provides for children and parents to play together. The few bouts with boredom aboard our boat have only led to the discovery and sometimes rediscovery of enjoyable pursuits. I’ve discovered the joys of sewing, an activity I had formerly shunned, when Kelli and I began to design and hand-sew doll’s clothes. Dale, after a lifetime of avoiding most board games and cards of any sort, now enthusiastically plays both with his family. The children’s love of drawing has caused me to rediscover my own love for it and Dale to discover it for the first time. Most notable, I believe, is the rediscovery of the child within the adult, as Dale and I find an increasing sense of whimsy and nonsense pervading “La Gitana.”

It is not only the play and pleasures, however, that are shared aboard a cruising boat, but the work, the responsibilities, and the learning as well. Aboard “La Gitana,” all the water and fuel hauling, the grocery shopping, the laundering and cooking, mending and sewing, and the bottom cleaning are joint activities, shared by all to some degree. Chris and Kelli are a great help when it comes to sailing the boat. They handle much of the foredeck work as well as much of the anchoring now.

School, however, is our most challenging responsibility. I have been very pleased with the quality and content of the Calvert correspondence lessons, but it has taken some time for all of us to adjust to the children-as-pupils and mother-as-teacher relationship. Having taught school a bit in the past, I had no qualms about teaching my own children. However, I have since discovered that there is an emotional bond, or perhaps tension, between mothers and their children that does not exist in the normal classroom and does not facilitate the learning process.

It seems to make the goofing off and the squabbling, the stricter expectations and shorter tempers all the more prevalent. The children somehow feel much freer to criticize their own mother’s teaching standards and techniques than they ever did their former teachers. I, in turn, find my own children’s sloppy work habits and inattentiveness much more exasperating than I did with my former students. Even normal shipboard activities seem to confound our best efforts as Dale tears apart the salon looking for some tool while working on one of his own projects, or friendly neighbors row by for a chat. Underway there is always a herd of dolphin, a caught fish or a call to tack to upset our lessons. And yet, I keep reminding myself, isn’t this what we imagined maritime cruising to be all about–pitting ourselves against the unknown challenges in the world, in each other, and in ourselves, grappling with it and coming out the better?

And so, we’ve grappled with our schooling these past two years, and, in fact, have seemed to come out the better for it. School is now a much more orderly process. The disruptions still occur, but we’re learning when to be firm and when to be flexible. The children are learning to accept my higher standards, and I am learning to handle the highs and lows of teaching them with more equilibrium.

The satisfaction of personally supervising their studies and watching each child struggle with and acquire new skills and concepts now outweighs the moments of temper and frustration. Dale and I feel, more than ever, that the children are receiving a better, more comprehensive, more individualized education than they ever would have received ashore. And, in the process, our own basic education is getting a thorough review. It’s a learning experience shared by all.

We have been cruising aboard “La Gitana” for over two years now, and not one of us would trade this life for our life ashore. Not all of it has been pleasant. I haven’t mentioned the time our drinking water turned a gunky brown and all of us were sick flat on our backs for a week, or the time I heard a bump in the night and looked out the porthole to see a huge shrimper looming over our bow, or the time I set the kids’ bunk cushions ablaze while trying to dry them with the portable heater.

Then there was the time I dropped the thermometer and the mercury rolled into the 45 gallon water tank that Dale had just cleaned and refilled, and the time our kitten swallowed some bait attached to a fish-hook, and in her excitement jumped overboard and had to be reeled in on the pole. And there have been other times like these, including the common drudgery of hauling water, cleaning fuel tanks and scraping the boat’s bottom. But what life is without these “times”?

To me, one of the magical things about cruising is this meshing of the ordinary with the extraordinary, the dreadful with the delightful. This life, we’ve discovered, is not an extended vacation, an action-packed adventure, nor an escape from reality.

It’s neither dream nor nightmare but simply a way of life—of living from day to day—that we find very satisfying. All of the doubts that plagued me before our cruise began have now been thoroughly tested and dispelled–at least for the time being. I’ve learned that this cruising life can be all the things that we dreamed it to be, and more, and sometimes less. In fact, it’s a wonderful life; but this one, like any other, has its great unknown–and that’s the magic of it.

MORE POSTS ON OUR SEA SAGA

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Sea Saga, Part III – First Stop in Paradise, the Virgin Islands

Sea Saga, Part IV – Ex-pats and Pirates in the Bay Islands of Honduras

Sea Saga, Part V – La Gitana, Our Larger Self

Sea Saga, Part VI – Cruising with Kids, Dream or Nightmare? (Part One)

Sea Saga, Part VI — Cruising with Kids, Dream or Nightmare?

Tags

adventure, children, Cruising (maritime), Dreams Come True, life-style, memoir, sailing, Sailing Around the World

The following is an article published in Latitude 38 many years ago. I’m reprinting it here as part of our Sea Saga series, about our six and a half year circumnavigation aboard our sailboat. The article will be posted in two parts. This is the first.

Cruising with Kids–Dream or Nightmare? Part One

It was the last day of our garage sale and I was happily breezing through the house directing potential buyers to the last of the hanging plants and picture frames. Within the week we would be moved aboard “La Gitana,” our 46-foot Formosa, preparing her for our long-awaited cruise into Mexico and the South Pacific. I was so excited by the prospect that I almost didn’t notice Kelli, our eight-year-old daughter, when she came into the family room and stood staring at the empty walls as if stunned
.
“I thought it was only a dream!” she cried, then burst into tears.

It was “only a dream”–a dream-come-true for Dale and me. But for our children, it may have seemed more of a nightmare as they watched the bits and pieces of their lives being hauled away by strangers.

A year of patiently hand-feeding them tales of sailing off to tropical isles where they could swim, snorkel, and fish every day was rapidly losing its influence. When tasted with the very bitter sacrifices that were being required of them, such tales did not seem so sweet.

Our decision to go cruising had not been a sudden one. The idea had been playing in the backs of our minds since we were first married. We decided then that “someday” when the children were the “right” ages, when we were financially able to leave on an open-ended cruise without the need of returning to a work-day world any time soon, we would leave for the South Pacific. Ultimately, our dream was to sail around the world.

But it took an idyllic bareboat charter in the Caribbean some ten years later to finally budge that dream into reality. We realized that our children, then seven and ten, were the perfect ages for living aboard a boat. And with a little reshuffling of the financial deck and a lot of belt-tightening, we could just about squeeze by on that open-ended clause.

After all, if we didn’t go now, when would we? We could wait until the children were grown, but how could we deprive them of such an adventure? And who could wait that long anyway?

Dale and I spent many happy hours convincing ourselves that what we would be offering the children in a life at sea would more than compensate for the things that they would be giving up. We thought of the wonderful experience of traveling, the great cultural and environmental education, the challenges and opportunities for self-development. It all sounded so good, so true, and yet, a perverse thought kept plaguing me: Was it perhaps “too good to be true”? I began to consider the darker side of life at sea.

Simply moving aboard a boat and sailing off into the world was going to require some drastic changes in lifestyle quite apart from the obvious benefits. The mere logistics of gathering the four corners of our large house and fitting it within the space the size of our family room alone required some creative mental maneuvering. Trying to envision some semblance of tranquility and order within such a jumble seemed beyond the stretch of my imagination.

Could the four of us truly be happy living together in such close quarters? Wouldn’t the lack of space and privacy release hidden demons within us that would turn our cruising dream into a nightmare?

Even simple luxuries took on new ominous dimensions as I tried to mentally delete them from the frugal lifestyle we were contemplating. While it seemed we ought to be able to live happily ever after without the benefits of hot showers, a cold fridge, a washing machine and TV–what if we couldn’t? Who knew what trivial monkey-wrench could throw the whole dream askew?

One of my secret fears was that we might all become extremely bored with our cruising life. I tried imagining day after day, week after week of nothing but bright skies, warm seas and white sand, and found the effort becoming tedious.

After all, just how much swimming, fishing and snorkeling could one endure? Even heaven could become tedious after a while—couldn’t it?

Most of our worries centered on the children. Chief among these, and certainly the one most on the minds of the grandparents, was the question of safety. Were Dale and I being irresponsible in taking the kids off into the unknown danger that seemed integral in such long-distance cruising? Who knew what deadly storms or hurricanes, shark and appendicitis attacks, pirates or revolutionaries we would be exposing them to?

Then there were their social lives to consider. Our children never seemed so happy as when they had hordes of kids to play with. Surely it was grossly unfair of us to deprive them of their peers and of the opportunities and enjoyment that organized sports and recreations offered. Often, I would find myself closely watching my two children as they moved about their daily activities–the very activities of which we would soon be depriving them.

Christopher, at eleven, was fully enmeshed in that preadolescent social scene of soccer and baseball, skate boarding and video-games. It was a life-style in which he felt quite comfortable, and even while Dale and I felt that the life we were offering him was better, the question remained: Would he think so, say ten years down the line? Or would he feel cheated of the normal activities of adolescence?

At eight years old, Kelli’s life was so much simpler, and yet such simplicity seemed all the more wretched to deprive her: doll houses and baby cribs, roller skates and her first two-wheel bike, gymnastic classes and tap dance lessons. Was she a budding ballerina whose career was being cut to the quick? What other new talents and skills would be left unplumbed as we dragged her away from future softball games, piano lessons and Girl Scout activities? Really, just how much were we truly asking our children to give up in order to accommodate our dream?

With Kelli’s tears that bright June morning, all of these questions and doubts came bubbling back to the surface, bringing into sharp focus our quandary: would this cruising life that Dale and I so clearly envisioned reach in reality the expectation of our dreams; or would it fray somehow and wear thin under the wear and tear of everyday living, dissolving into the nightmare our children half-expected?

The trouble was that we would never know until we had lived it. And to Dale and me, regardless the outcome, this life we so clearly envisioned seemed worth the effort and the risk. We had this singular opportunity to draw together as a family and pit our strengths, our skills, and our spirits against an unknown life and, just perhaps, come out the better for it. It was a chance we could not pass up.

(To Be Continued) Read part Two HERE:

https://deborahbrasket.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/sailing-with-kids-into-the-unknown-continuation-of-sea-saga-part-vi/

MORE POSTS ON OUR SEA SAGA

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Sea Saga, Part III – First Stop in Paradise, the Virgin Islands

Sea Saga, Part IV – Ex-pats and Pirates in the Bay Islands of Honduras

Sea Saga, Part V – La Gitana, Our Larger Self

La Gitana, Our Larger Self – Sea Saga, Part V

Tags

adventure, Boat, circumnavigation, Dreams Come True, Gypsy, La Gitana, lifestyle, live-aboard, Sail, sailboat, sailing, Sailing Around the World, traveling, Yacht

We named her “La Gitana,” Spanish for the gypsy, partly in tribute to our family’s Spanish heritage, partly because sea gypsies are what we would be once we moved aboard her and sailed away, partly for my long fascination with everything pertaining to Gypsies.

I loved the music, the dancing, the clothing, the jewelry, the colorful furnishings of the caravans. I loved what they stood for, the capriciousness of their existence living on the edge of society, their adventuresome spirit, their playfulness and spontaneity, their wildness—all the things we grew up thinking of as gypsy-like. La Gitana symbolized all of that for us. We feminized the masculine gitano and added the lyrical signifier “la” for alliteration, and to show her singular importance. The, not a.

Of course she had to be feminine—all ships traditionally are. They are vessels that serve us, that carry us in her belly, under her wings. Her sails are softly rounded breasts bravely and proudly pulling us onward. And she was alive! So lively with a personality and purpose all her own—a creature, not a thing.

She seemed almost as alive to us as the other creatures that she cavorted with, the dolphins that played at her side, the whales that swam beneath and circled her, the flying fish that landed on her decks. Her spirit was all her own. But her breath, her pulse, her beating heart, her life blood, was us, the people who inhabited and cared for her, plotted her course, walked her decks, stroked her beams, and dreamed her dreams.

It was a symbiotic relationship. We trusted her and sank everything we had into her. And she depended upon us to steer her away from the harbor and allow her to run with the wind, to lead her to a safe haven and hunker her down when the hurricane blew.
Originally she was called “Swagman,” which is what peddlers and tinkers are called Down Under. We bought her from an Aussie living in San Diego who had commissioned her to be built in Taiwan—a Formosa 46, a 46-foot Peterson designed cutter rigged sloop with a center-cockpit. Cousin to the better known and more costly Peterson 44.

We had invested so much more than money in her—our hopes and dreams, our safety and security, our hearth and home, our larger selves. She is what separated us from the sea on those long ocean voyages and moved us through the air by harnessing the wind. Deep in her belly she rocked and sung us to sleep. When the storms rose she sheltered us from the rain. When huge rogue waves came crashing down she lifted us up. When the wind died away and left us floundering in the middle of nowhere, she was the still center in a circle of blue.

I cannot tell you the pleasure and affection I felt when we were ashore and looked out at her waiting patiently for our return. What it felt like to bring our dinghy aside her and hoist our provisions aboard. The thrill of weighing anchor and heading out to sea, raising her sails, watching them fill.

Hunkered beneath her dodger during night watches, I listened to the rush of waves and sails in the black, black night, and watched her mast stirring stars. Sleeping below deck as she rocked with the waves, her rigging humming overhead, the soft gurgle of the ocean whispering through the hull, was sweetness like no other.

I loved sunning my chilled skin on her warm teak decks after a long morning hunting and diving for scallops. Falling asleep in the cockpit on balmy days in port, watching the stars gently rock overhead as she rolled with the soft swells.

How I miss her! But we carry her in our hearts and in our memories, in the words on these pages, and the novels I am writing. I like to think another family has taken over where we left off, hugging her close, and steering her on new adventures.

La Gitana—my larger self.

MORE POSTS ON OUR SEA SAGA

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Sea Saga, Part III – First Stop in Paradise, the Virgin Islands

Sea Saga, Part IV – Ex-pats and Pirates in the Bay Islands of Honduras

Sea, Sky, Earth, Fire–My Daughter on Her Wedding Day

Tags

adventure, daughter, sailing, traveling, wedding

She was married beneath a cliff on the edge of the sea standing barefoot on the rocky beach.  Barking seals sunning on rocks and crashing waves nearly drowned out the simple ceremony.

Hunchbacked boulders rose from the sea behind her like giant guardian sentinels. A single guitarist played flamenco music to match the red rose in her hair while the late afternoon sun glimmered across the waves.

Sea.  Sky.  Earth.  Fire.  All four essential elements holding the world together blended beautifully together that day.

It’s not surprising she would choose such a setting for her wedding day, with all the things that she loves, that helped shape her into the strong, fearless, independent and beautiful woman she is today, in full display.  Sea, sky, earth, fire.

She grew up on a cruising sailboat, after all.  The rhythm of the sea and sky moves through her body.  She was rocked to sleep in her bunk with the sound of the wind and waves rushing all around her, and a sky full of stars for a nightlight.

The world was literally her playground. In every new port or cove we entered she and her brother would row ashore to explore on their own–us trusting they would return safely to us.

Even when her bother stayed behind in Australia she continued to explore on her own.

In Cyprus, Turkey, Malta, Spain—this woman child of fourteen slipped through the streets with her canvas backpack and torn jeans scrawled with the names of the heavy metal rock bands she’d come to love.

With her long dark hair and sun-browned skin, her dangling earrings and silver bracelets, she looked like the Gypsy she may have been, her Spanish heritage in full flaunt.

Her first guitar was purchased in a tiny shop in Toledo.  I can still see her bending tenderly over the strings, strumming softly, her face half-hidden by her long bangs and curling strands of hair.

When we returned home after seven years of living on our boat, I worried about this woman-child who had barely seen the inside of a classroom, who had been home-schooled nearly all her life, whose lab work was diving for scallops, gutting fish for frying, drying sea-horses, and identifying shells she’d found beach-combing.

Whose knowledge of history was gathered from the villages she roamed, the cathedrals and castles and museums she visited, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon in Athens, the Alhambra in Spain.

Political science was gleaned first hand when we were caught in a coup in Fiji, aided by navy sailors flying the cycle and hammer in Port Aden, accused of selling arms to  enemy rebels in Sudan, and sailing into Panama on the day it was invaded by US warships in the overthrow of Noriega.  How would she survive High School in the United States?

I needn’t have worried.  She was as solid as a rock.  She had such a strong sense of herself that none of the juvenile drama and gang warfare and cliquish snobbery fazed her.

Nor was it surprising that she chose archeology as a career, or took up skydiving and surfing as her hobbies, or fell in love with someone who loved the sea and sky as much as she did, a fellow skydiver and surfer.

My daughter is as earthy as she is sea and wind washed.  As  down-to-earth as they come.  She digs in the earth for a living. She hikes across hills and mountains surveying the land and mapping archeological formations.  She uncovers and catalogues chards of earthen pottery and stone tools from ancient middens.

She hammers copper and strings stones to make her own earrings. She grows her own herbs. She designed her own wedding gown, baked and decorated her own wedding cake.  She runs marathons, works out in boot camps, and eats mostly vegan, mostly organic.  She takes charge of any calamity with the iron resolve and don’t-mess-with-me attitude of a Marine staff sergeant.  If she hasn’t had her morning coffee—well, watch out.

For there’s fire in her soul too.  You can see it in her dark snapping eyes, her loud belly laugh, and the way she salsas across the dance floor. In the way she tumbles from planes and rhumbas across the sky, nearly 2000 jumps now.

The thorny rose tattoo that circles her ankle, the diamond stud in her nose, and the chipotle pepper in her dark chocolate wedding cake all attest to her fiery, feisty nature.

You can see that fire in the flamenco inspired wedding dress she designed with the tea-dyed Italian silk, layers of French Chantilly lace and funky high-low hemline, a red flower in her hair to match her red heels. You can see it in the flowers she chose for her bouquet, the scarlets  and purples and oranges. You can see it in the way she looks at her new husband and basks in the love-light of his eyes.

Sea. Sky. Earth. Fire.  All are perfectly balanced in this beautiful daughter of mine, and blended in perfection on her wedding day.

Did I mention how much I love her?  How proud I am of her?

For you baby girl, from your mama–the speech I never gave but composed in  my heart as I watched you on your wedding day.  January 12, 2013.  Twelve days after the world was supposed to end your new life begins.

Sea Saga, Part IV – Ex-pats and Pirates in the Bay Islands of Honduras

Tags

adventure, bareboat chatering, Bay Isands, Honduras, Roatán, sailing, travel

“This is life in its most eloquent and elemental form—a life worth pursuing,” I wrote at the end of my last Sea Saga post about our bareboat charter in the Virgin Islands.

By the end of that trip we had decided that our dream of sailing around the world was something worth pursuing as soon as possible.

But it was another trip later that year to a more remote location that made the dream seem palpable. Our bareboat charter in the Bay Islands of Honduras with Dale’s father felt less like a vacation, and more like a shakedown cruise, where we dipped our toes into what a life sailing around the world might really feel like.

The Bay Islands lie in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Honduras, but in many ways they seem like distinct countries.

While Honduras mainland has a Spanish heritage and language, the Islands were settled by British buccaneers, Dutch merchants, and slaves brought in from other Caribbean islands.

English is the main language here, spoken with a lilting, calypso-style accent.

We arrived on a converted DC-3 airplane used widely during WWII.  The walls and floor of the plane were panelled in what looked like kitchen linoleum, and school bus style benches served as seating.  Two portable fans were mounted on the wall near the front of the plane.  Six manned machine guns stood guard as we took off.

We landed on Roatan Island, the largest in the group.  A van takes us down a dirt road through jungle terrain laced in swamps to our lonely outpost at Maya Cove, where the bareboat charter is located–we were their only guests that night.

As the sun goes down, I can hear what sounds like the chattering of monkeys, although they may have been bird calls. Later that night we are treated with a lightning storm flashing across the dark sky and backlighting the hills and forest.

We take off the next morning on a well-provisioned 44-foot center-cockpit cutter, and spend seven days exploring the islands.

Here small colorful towns are set on stilts built out over the water, canoes serve as taxis, and the “roads” between “bights” are canals overgrown with mangroves.

On the main island of Roatan we visited Old Port Royal, French Harbor, Coxen Hole, Brick Bay, Oak Ridge Harbor, Carib Point Bight, Jonesville, Calabash Bight.

At Calabash Bight we meet Rocky Cooper, a young blond boy who rowed his canoe out to our boat and sold us jade beads from a Mayan site up in the hills.

Later, his mother came out to sell us more things, and on another night we met Nathan, his father, who came aboard and spent the evening entertaining us tales of the islands.  The Coopers apparently are one of the oldest and most prolific families in the islands, descended from English buccaneers who had settled in the islands in the 1800s.

From Roatan we sailed south to Los Cochinos, the Hog Islands, small tropical islands with a string of coral reefs and tiny cays, some uninhabited, others owned by families.

These are the closest to South Pacific style sailing you can find in the Caribbean.

Lamb (Lam-bay) Cay was so post card perfect with its perfectly spaced palms, soft white sand, and black volcanic rock center, we felt we were Hollywood movie stars on location for the filming of Michener’s South Pacific.

The snorkeling there was the prettiest we had seen yet–crystal clear water with every color of coral imaginable, and scads of tropical fish, some I’d seen nowhere else in the Caribbean.

One of our favorite stops, however, was on Cochino Grande to visit with the Hansen family, an American couple with two young children.

They ran a supply boat between the mainland and the islands and often entertained sailors visiting the islands.

Their children loved living on the island and told us they never wanted to leave. They seemed older than their years, independent and self-reliant.

They were home schooled in the Calvert School system, a popular k-12 grade correspondence course that we eventually enrolled our own children in when we set sail.

By the time we left Honduras, we felt we had travelled back in time to the mid 1800s when buccaneers built shanty towns and travelled by canoes, as well as having  traveled halfway across the world to a South Pacific paradise.

We saw our own children like the Hansen’s being home-schooled and living adventurous, independent lives close to nature in the great outdoors.  And we knew it was only a matter of time before we set sail on our own lifetime adventure.

Sea Saga, Part III – First Stop in Paradise, the Virgin Islands

Tags

adventure, bareboat chartering, beauty, Dreams Come True, lifestyle, Nature, sailing, snorkeling, Virgin Islands

“This is where it all begins,” Dale whispers to me we take off, rising through layers of clouds thick as fog. “This is where we leave the beaten path forever.”

We are leaving Puerto Rico International airport aboard a tiny six-passenger airplane bound for the British Virgin Islands and nine days aboard a bare-boat chartered cruise. This was to be our first step in testing the waters of living about a cruising yacht before deciding to consummate our long-delayed dream of sailing around the world.

“Start slow–and taper off” is the motto for island living we’re told by the manager of the West Indies Yacht Charters at Maya Cove as he greets us and our good friends Steve and Kathy with rum punches when we arrive.

We whole-heartedly comply as we sail away the next day on our O’Day 37 and anchor off lonely Norman Island, which is said to be the inspiration for Robert Luis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Somehow I’m reminded more of something written by Jules Verne as we set off early the next morning in the dingy to explore the caves hidden in nearby cliffs.

There’s an eerie beauty that clings to the island as we slip though long, cool shadows cast by the dark cliffs rising steeply from the water. Above us large sharp-winged albatross circle the pale sky and screech like ancient, flying reptiles once might have done. While in the seas below, I can almost feel the whirlpool that could soon be sucking us down to some prehistoric paradise beneath the ocean. We pull the dingy onto a small, rocky beach where two angry gulls swoop down from the cliffs, diving noisily at us. Soon we are snorkeling toward the caves, finding that the watered world below holds all the primeval beauty and excitement we anticipated.

We tack across the channel toward Virgin Gorda the next morning, where we stop briefly at “The Baths” and climb among the giant-sized boulders strewn along the beach.

Later we press on toward Spanish Town, where we wander down a narrow, squall-puddled lane amid wild orchids and flaming Jacaranda trees to find Fischer’s Cove Restaurant. There we dine on spicy-sweet pumpkin soup and the most succulent lobster that any of us can remember tasting.

The next day we sail into Gorda Sound and spend a quiet evening at Robin’s Bay, cleaning and cooking the tuna that Kathy caught on the way. In the morning we head to Mosquito Island and anchor off the reefs where we go snorkeling.

We circle past beds of plump brain coral and wander through the lavender gardens of lacy fan coral where fat butter-and-black striped fish seem to hover like bees. Swimming past the rocky point, the sea becomes so deep that we seem to be tottering on the brink of some dark, fathomless cavern. We dive down into these cooler waters and are suddenly swallowed by thousands of tiny silvery-quick fish. Always, lying just at the edge of our vision, wait the pug-jawed barracuda, like wary watch-dogs. We surface on the far side of the island and sun ourselves in a quiet, sandy cove before hiking back across the island through an intricate maze of sea-grape, palms and cacti, then swimming out to our boat.

That night we anchor at the Bitter End Marina, an appropriate name it seems. Sleeping under the stars on the deck, looking out between Saba Rock and Virgin Gorda, it seems we’re perched on the very edge of the Caribbean with all the Atlantic and the dark shores of Africa hidden in the night before us, blowing its hot jungle-scented breath across an ocean to touch us where we lay. From a nearby boat, men are singing a low, rowdy drinking song, floating across the water like remnants torn from a colorful, pirate-ridden past. Even the stars seem half-submerged in a night swollen with dreams. It’s our first night of no-rain, and we lie there in our pool of moonlight, talking quietly and sinking slowly into sleep.

The next morning as we head back toward Tortola the rain that avoided us the night before is close on our heels and Steve and I are busy snapping shots of the dark, but lovely on-coming squall. Too soon it’s upon us and I barely have time to put the camera away before we are heeled over, topsides awash. Kathy is furiously reeling in her fishing line, her bikini top blown down about her waist, while she slides helplessly over the side. I just manage to grab hold of her before she’s washed away, when Steve calls for her to run and get the soap so he can take advantage of this tropical shower. Within fifteen minutes the squall has passed and I have my camera out again. This time I make the crew line up and pose, asking them to look as much as possible like drowned rats. Steve, especially, seems well suited for the task.

The northern shores of Tortola are exceptionally lush and inviting with several deserted coves becoming our own private play grounds.

Here the water seems spilt from a paint box—deepest indigo flowing into turquoise, and then rinsing out to a pale sapphire on the soft, white sand—while behind rise groves of palms and steep, forested mountains.

Cane Garden Bay is but a wider, populated version of this.

We lay at anchor in her large generous mouth with run drinks in hand, a kind of easy languor settling over us as our senses become well sated. On shore we measure the progress of an old man on a donkey riding out of the steep hills, disappearing in the foliage, and crossing a stone bridge.

Nearby a boat plays at spinnaker-riding. We watch as the wind catches the brightly colored sail, lifting it high about the mast like a giant kite, while swinging on a line drawn between the clues, a young woman squeals with delight.

Toward evening, colors grow mute and sound emerges—faint tinkles, soft drumming, a syncopated beat. The two sleepy beach bars are finally stirring and soon a battle of the steel drum bands is in full swing. The hypnotic, calypso music is wafted through the balmy night, across starlit water, luring wayward sailors ashore. In time, we too succumb.

We make our last anchorage at Little Harbor on Peter Island. Kathy and Steve catch a red snapper and king fish on the reefs that we barbecue for supper. The moon rises plump and round over the mountain, dancing briefly with roguish clouds before another squall blows in. We sit below the Bimini in a womb of water, none of us wanting to go below and put the night to sleep. When we do it is one by one, each along, like candles that burn out slowly and separately in the night.

It is a rare occurrence, these last nine days in the British Virgin Islands—a trip that surpasses even our inflated fantasies of it. The best part is the naturalness of it all: the rising to a shared breakfast beneath the early morning sky, the daily scrubbing of decks, dishes and laundry, then festooning the life-lines with drying clothes; the fascination of snorkeling and sensuousness of sailing, when the sun and rhythmic seas soothe the soul even while vigorous winds and drifting vistas stimulate the mind.

There’s the feeling that this is life at its most eloquent and elemental form—a life worth pursuing. We leave the islands with one conviction firmly in mind: It’s time for our dream of sailing around the world to begin ripening into reality.

But before we do, we take one more bareboat charter into the tropics—this time to the Bay Islands of Honduras with Dale’s father.

[Stay tuned for Part IV of our Sea Saga—The Bay Islands of Honduras]

Walking Among Flowers

Tags

aesthetics, art, beauty, flowers, French Polynesia, human consciousness, Nature, poetry, sailing, Tao, writing

Landfall in Nuka Hiva

Out of the dark blue sea rose a lush-green mountain ribboned with cascading waterfalls.This was what we saw after 29 days at sea, our first tropical landfall on our round-the-world journey–the Marquesas Islands

Walking through the village on Nuka Hiva down narrow, winding roads, past pastel-colored houses surrounded by gardens overflowing with flowers and dense tropical foliage, melting in the heat and humidity and the perfumed air . . . . . I felt physically and mentally assaulted, overcome by the intensity of the colors and the abundance of the beauty that surrounded me.

EK Photo & Art Layers of Blue

Perhaps it was because we’d been so long at sea, or because this was our first glimpse of a tropical paradise. Or perhaps it was for me as it has been for so many artists and travelers coming to the South Pacific for the first time.

Colors exploding all around me, shattering the senses—sight, smell, and sound washing together. Undulating waves of color, wrapping around me, streaming through me, carrying me away.

EK Photo & Art Luscious Pink

This sense of being awash in, or assaulted by, color, stayed with me and revisited me often on our travels through the South Pacific. Sometimes it was a soft, sensual immersion. Sometimes a harsh, brutal slaying. It knocked me off my feet and broke me open. I swallowed it whole.

It all came together one day in Moorea in the Tahitian Islands. La Gitana was anchored at the end of a deep cove, with green mountains walls on one side and a valley opening up between them.

Anchored in Moorea

On the other side was a bluff with a small cottage surrounded by a flower garden that trailed down the rocks toward us.

EK Photo & Art Magnolia

Each afternoon magnolia tree blossoms would drift down into the sea and our daughter rowed among them, gathering the sweetly scented flowers.

As beautiful as it was down here on the water, I kept wondering what it would be like up there, in the garden on the bluff, walking among flowers.

At the time I was reading Creativity and Taoism – A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art, and Poetry by Chang Chung-yuan. He writes of the “interpenetration of Nature and Man” by which ”the artist reveals the reality concealed in things [and] sets it free.”

One of my favorite drawings in the book is Flower in Vase by Pa-ta san-Jen(1626-1701). There is nothing beautiful or delicate or uplifting about the drawing, but it affected me deeply, physically, like a punch in the gut.

Chung-yuan explains the drawing this way: “No attempt is made at beauty or refinement of form, merely the primary essentials of the object are given. Here we see innocence or the quality of the uncarved block at its best. What is within is manifested without.”

EK Photo & Art Orange Tulip Painting

The “uncarved block” is elsewhere identified as “original simplicity,” “simple, plain,” “obscure and blunt,” “unattached and depending on nothing.” It has “no artificial efforts” or “ intellectual distinction.” It is “not self-assertive but disappears into all other selves” thereby “moving within the forces of the universe.”

Heady stuff. All I know is that the drawing affected me much the same way I felt when being “assaulted by color”: something in me is shattered and released at the same time.

The poem I wrote that day in Moorea captured something of that.

EK Photo & Art Poppy to the Sky

(Robinson Cove, Moorea, French Polynesia)

Walking among flowers

Drowning in scent

Petals assault me

Cool and bent

Pistils are pounding

Stamens stab

Colors exploding

Stun and grab.

Walking among flowers

I die a keen death

Bloodied and trampled

Bourne by my last breath

I lay like a light

On the garden wall

Then swooping, swallow

Flowers and all.

Beauty is not always gentle and soothing, or sweet and sensuous, or uplifting and reassuring. Sometimes it can be blunt, brutal, shattering. As “red in tooth and claw” as the untamed wilderness Tennyson wrote about.

I doubt beauty is meant to simply sooth or sate or inspire us, but to break us apart and open us up. Much like all great art must do.

Think of Van Gogh’s starry nights, or Picasso’s abstracts, or O’Keefe’s flowers.

EK Photo & Art Fiery Sunflower Painting

Was Monet’s impressionism or Seurat’s pointillism pretty ways to put paint on canvas, or ways to reveal how light and color and shapes and all manner of things break apart and open up and take us in. Ways to become immersed in the stream of things.

“Walking Among Flowers” is my way to revisit again and again that shattering into the stream of things.

[Many thanks to EK Photography & Art Gallery for use of the beautiful photographs and paintings. More can be found at http://ekphotoartgallery.wordpress.com/ ]

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Tags

adventure, Dreams Come True, lifestyle, sailing, Sailing Around the World

[Click Here for Part I – Catching the Dream]

We married on the fly. I had no wedding gown, no ring, no cake. No one thought to bring a camera. Our parents were given an hour’s notice to meet us at the altar. I’m still amazed the minister agreed to tie the knot on such late notice. We were married standing beneath a giant heart covered in roses in a chapel decorated for another couple’s wedding.

We drove off to Santa Barbara later that afternoon to spend our wedding night with our best friends, Steve and Kathy. They graciously gave up their bed to us, a mattress on their bedroom floor, and slept on the couch that night.

The next morning we rented a 10-foot sailing dingy and headed off toward the oil rigs in the channel, even though storm warning flags were flying. No one knew how to sail, but how hard could it be?

We made it half way to the oil rigs before the steadily building waves started swamping the boat. Kathy and I frantically bailed water with our straw sun hats while the guys managed to get the outboard engine started and the boat turned around. We finally made it to shore, wet and cold with ruined hats, but undaunted by the adventure.

That afternoon we headed south to find an apartment while Dale looked for work. Meanwhile I enrolled myself in the local high school. Although I had already turned 18, I was still two months shy of a diploma when we eloped. I lasted about a week at the new school, and then enrolled myself in a community college. By the time I finally took the courses needed to get my long-delayed High School diploma, I’d already earned a BA in English.

A retired Port Captain at Long Beach Harbor eventually taught us to sail.

Not long afterward we moved back to the Central Coast where we bought a small sloop that we launched and sailed at Lake Lopez, Morro Bay, and Santa Barbara.

Our next boat was a Columbia 26 named Dulcinea. 

We kept her at a slip in Santa Barbara, spending long sunny weekends aboard with the kids and cruising along the coast and to the Channel Islands.

Even so, it wasn’t until we took a bareboat charter in the Virgin Islands and later the same year to the Bay Islands off Honduras that we knew for sure we could do this—live this way fulltime, sailing from one island to another . . . forever.

Our dream of sailing around the world was reborn.

Stay tuned for Part III of our Sailing Saga: Chartering in the Caribbean

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Tags

Dreams Come True, First Love, sailing, Sailing Around the World

The wildest, bravest, and most romantic thing I’ve ever done was to fully embrace my boyfriend’s dream of sailing around the world and make it my own.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s why I married him.

I was already falling in love at this point and the thought of sailing around the world with him someday pushed me over the edge.

But there was more to the sailing dream than that. I’d always been fascinated by the ocean and as a girl I loved reading books about kids who grew up around boats. I loved films about high-sea adventures and swash-buckling sailors. I was wild about pirates.

In a Junior High Home Ec class, we had to put together an album about our future lives, and mine featured a long, elegant yacht. When I showed my mom she declared, “You’ll never be a sailor—you’re far too lazy.” (Yah for moms with dire predictions you can rebel against!)

But I can see why she said that. I was a dreamer, not a doer. I’d rather read than go swimming. I gave up trying to surf because it was too exhausting (and cold!) getting the board past the breakers. To be fair, it was just me and a girlfriend winging it. I had no wet suit, it was winter, and the board was ten feet long. (To be even fairer, she learned to surf.)

So when I met this handsome, adventurous man who was a doer and dreamed of sailing around the world, I fell hard, all the way.

Dale was already a man of the world at age 21, a Viet Nam vet. He’d enlisted because he wanted to go to sea. He tried joining the Navy but they wanted a 4-year commitment and he was a man in a hurry, so he went next door and joined the Marines. You know–Marines—the sea—right? Clearly he hadn’t thought this through, but risky behavior was in his blood. His dad was a bull rider before becoming a high steel worker, and later a mountain climber.

By the time we met, Dale was racing off-road vehicles in the Baja 500, and earning a living walking high steel beams like his dad. He drove a Porsche. He had a mustache and sideburns. He looked like a pirate.

I was still a senior in high school. I wore pigtails and sang in the choir. I drove my grandpa’s old Rambler.

He was the opposite of everything me. Exactly what I was looking for.

Twelve years passed before we sailed away together and saw our dream come true. But by then I was largely the driver of the dream. Dale had become the responsible adult. He thought we should put our dream on hold until our two kids were grown. I said no way. I’d waited long enough. I’d never had the chance to grow up around boats, but by golly our kids would.

Stay tuned for Sea Saga, Part II – First Sail, Bailing Seas