Motoring the ICW, West Palm to Manatee Pocket Florida

After our Saturday sail to West Palm we spent our first night on the hook.  Even on anchor Robin wanted to sail.  It heeled and tried to sail away all night long. Adam and Clyde watched Robin snake circles around the anchor as if it had a mind of it's own. Scratching their heads in bewilderment, they occasionally radioed us to make sure we weren't dragging. We weren't. I guess Robin, like us, just can't stay in one place for too long without growing restless. Or maybe, now that it's tasted real salt, it's jonesing for more.

Sunday morning we set out back to Stuart. Adam in his 1978 Seafarer 38, Seeker, us in Robin. Clyde rode with us for the first hour then hopped on Adam's boat. And I do mean hopped. While motoring up the ICW, we pulled up close enough to Adam's boat for him to jump across.  Clyde and Adam went on and AJ and I stopped for fuel. After a long trip to West Palm, I, at least, wanted to touch ground and see where we'd landed. So we had a beer and took a mile walk before proceeding up the ICW.

It was a calm and confidence building experience.  We motored through the heavy water traffic and 7 or 8 lift bridges. I learned how to radio a bridge and hold to in mixed winds and currents until the scheduled openings.  We had no definite plans to get all the way back to Stuart.  We kept our eyes out for an anchorage or somewhere fun to spend the night, but there wasn't much after Jupiter, and with the current in our favor we were making good time.  We arrived in Manatee Pocket at high tide about 20 minutes after dark. Motoring in the dark wasn't much trouble, but it would have been nice if the channel markers inside the Pocket were lit.  Though we spotted them easily enough with a flash light.  Adam and Clyde hailed us on the radio when we came in sight of the anchorage.

A little ways after Jupiter in the early evening we found ourselves alone on the ICW. There was no water traffic between Peck Lake and the Pocket at all.  But just as we settled into our solitude we were joined by a loan dolphin. He delighted us with his company until sunset. 

No Exit: My Overly Dramatized First Offshore Experience

Last Saturday we went onto the ocean for the first time.  A one day trip south from Stuart to West Palm Beach directly against the waves and currant. Like AJ, I too was not prepared for the emotional effects of this journey.

"I'm never getting on a boat again!"  I texted to my friend back in Arkansas. My single sense of elation on that ride was realizing I could still use the cell phone. It was my lifeline in that moment, and I praised the heavens for the ability to make contact and receive proof that the world of land wasn't a dream I had just awoken from.  Her reply was a glint of hope that this thrashing hell was not an eternal limbo. But I wasn't able to maintain this gratification.  Soon after the first text I couldn't look at the screen long enough to even decipher a message without feeling horrendously physiologically confused.  You can't look away from the see-sawing horizon, not for a second. This becomes exhausting.  You fantasize about closing your eyes, but if they start to flutter you fall off a cliff. You fantasize to the point of hallucination about what it would be like to have your weight accepted by any surface, to be wrapped in gravity's caress. But you must stay upright, you must use every muscle continuously and involuntarily to maintain balance as your body responds and fights the constant unpredictable arrhythmic motion of the boat. You have to hold on. I have never been that tired. It was a new kind of tired. A tired that brought with it a visitor I wasn't expecting or prepared to accommodate, despair.

"I have no legs" I realized on the cabin floor. I could see them, but they had no feeling, no response. "No legs! No legs. What can I do to save us without legs!?" Conclusion: Despair. Resignation and acceptance of death without a fight if it comes. Because, well, I have no choice but to accept it without legs to kick back the sea!

"I cannot eat or drink." I thought in a blood sugar crash after my second bout of vomiting. "If this went on for days I would die of dehydration on the cabin floor with 75 gallons of fresh water accessible.  I will die of starvation with a pantry full of food! On a dry and floating boat!" Conclusion: Despair. I will die even if the boat survives.

"Congratulations on your Darwin award. Arms and legs are for climbing trees, you stupid stupid little monkey."  I scolded myself while staring into the abyss of churning waves as I spewed my puke at them.

I wanted it to stop. But it wasn't going to. Nothing could stop it. There was no exit. No getting off this ride. I was trapped. Powerless. At the mercy of the elements. You have to be lucid to enjoy the uniqueness of this existential location. You have to be lucid to track the constellations across the night sky. You have to be lucid to sail a boat. To eat, to live! I felt like all those years of work were for nothing.  I expected to battle fear. The ocean is terrifying. No question. However, you cannot battle and learn and conquer if you are incapacitated. It felt hopeless.

I should explain something to those who have not experienced seasickness. As I had not until last Saturday. It's not as simple as the motion sickness you get from carnival rides or riding in the back seat of a car as a child on windy roads.  Or as simple as the nausea and continual vomiting and dry heaving of food poisoning or a stomach bug. I was prepared for a little nausea, even a lot of nausea. But seasickness isn't nausea of an isolated organ, like the stomach. It's a nausea and hallucinatory disorientation of your entire being. It's nausea of the soul. I was never more sure of anything in those hours, than the fact that I would never, ever get on a boat again. All of the things I wanted to experience seemed unobtainable. It was all for nothing.

But like all pain, it is somehow soon forgotten when our faculties and objectivity return. When we finally pulled into West Palm the floor beneath me calmed to a more gentle rhythmic motion. The sun was setting. The air was cooling. The world slowed down. We motored to an anchorage where we met Clyde's friend Adam. We tied up alongside his anchored boat and the pace of life became normal again. After a couple days of processing the memories a few things were very clear.

My boat wants to float. My boat does not want to tip over. My boat WANTS to sail.

What I get to take away from this experience is trust in my boat. And that feels really grand. But unfortunately our bodies take a little more convincing than our minds. The mind controls the body, eventually, if you dedicate yourself to it. But it takes time for our physiology to believe what our minds are telling us, especially when we are standing on the edge of the unknown. Adrenal glands go off when you logically know you are in no danger. Stress blindness kicks in despite how prepared you feel. It will be a long period of adjustment. Change is never easy. But it is always worth it. If you cling to nuggets truth that get you though, eventually conflict between mind and body ceases and that truth integrates itself into your being, your personality, your reasoning and decision making. That truth is a compass that will ceaselessly direct you towards tranquility if you follow it.

There is indeed no exit. We're going to the Bahamas.

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." ~Anais Nin

Anchored at Peanut Island, West Palm Beach

The Offshore Sailing Experience: Overly Romanticized First Impressions From a Life Long Newb

Sea trials continue aboard Robin with a recent 30 mile offshore sail south to Palm Beach and next day return over the weekend.  I have exited the Stuart/Saint Lucie inlet on a Catalina 32 with a friend before and remember the water churning between the rocks, with us taking massive sheets of water over the bow and across the deck.  For about 200 meters, a little bit of current, shallowing depth to a narrowing straight, and the gentle incoming ocean swell combine to become a hippopotamus washing machine, the type of washing machine that you would use to heavy rinse, spin cycle and tumble dry an entire load of dirty hippopotami.  After those 200 meters, everything becomes gentle ocean swell.  That was not yesterday.

I felt a bit sick as I approached the inlet with thoughts about everything I had worked for, everything I had built, every penny spent, a normal life deferred and invested in this, this inert thing that I am now taking into an unforgiving ocean that doesn't care if it takes it all from me.  Then my thoughts become much more minute and detailed.  I began to think about every fitting that I had checked for proper torque in the rig, hoping that I hadn't missed one somehow, every detail of the last three years of building the boat came into my mind.  I felt momentary panic as I tried to recall an actual memory of tightening every fitting and every keel bolt and every engine bolt.  Each one sprung to mind, but can I even trust my memory?  Is my mind feeble?  Am I just trying to convince myself of safety?  Am I sure I didn't completely hallucinate the last three years of hard work?

Then the inlet came.  Or rather our eight-ton boat blasted through a wall of water after diving off the end of a water-cliff, sending a foot of water over the bow and foredeck.  At the same time, Sarah accidentally bumped the engine control from full-bore to idle.  I thought we had stalled the engine with the massive crash, but at least I was thinking something new and present.  We were now without power exactly in the middle of near-vertical ten foot seas between two very unforgiving rock spoil islands about 50 meters off either side. That moment of real panic instantly flipped the switch and put all other worries in perspective.  When shit hits the fan, for me, everything slows down, I feel calm, and priorities fall into line.  Suddenly it didn't matter if I had properly tightened any of those bolts now.  I planned it, and I did it, and now the only thing that mattered was getting out of the inlet and sailing the boat with all my faculties.  Within that life-long second of stark reality, I realized what had actually happened and slammed the engine back into full thottle; eyes, hands, and mind resolute on escape.  After a few more crashes we were clear of the inlet.  Motion became more ocean-like, but not as much as the NOAA weatherman had led me to believe.  It turned out that while the inlet's washing machine was still running on heavy duty cycle as expected, the ocean was apparently left running as well.  The weather had predicted 2-3 foot swells in a 7-9 second interval with 10 knot winds coming from the east, putting us on a lovely bobbing reach down the coast.  We ended up beating into a 25 knot southeast wind in 5-6 foot seas that were on a 3-4 second interval, but raised our sails, shut down the engine, and set our course south anyway.

The motion reminded me of my blacked out rides on Blackhawks, Chinooks, and the small twin prop cargo planes run by the special operators, winding through the windy canyons and valleys of Afghanistan, mapping the earth with our turbulent flight path.  Even tumbling along off-camber mountain roads in humvees peering through tiny green tunneled nightvision goggles watching for wadis and ravines induces a similar feeling.   These motions are incomprehensible to people with feet perpetually on land.  Feeling the world in three dimensions instead of just two, as your ground support seems to tilt wrecklessly and sometimes falls out from underneath you.  But I've never been one for motion sickness.  I was the guy calmly reading the newspaper as we dove and swept through the mountains.  This was my element.   Robin ate up the stiff seas as gracefully as could be expected.  I sat confidently, but easily, allowing my body to shift with the constant motion, hand on the tiller, eyes scanning the sails, the rig, the water, and the horizon, my only concerns with the next wave and the next wind shift.  I entered my zen state: the blind, uncaring world, and me. Riding it out, keeping an eye on it, and feeling its continued warnings by the seat of my pants.

All the books I have read and experiences of my life may have prepared me for this physically and mentally, but none of them prepared me emotionally.  The feeling of freedom and joy when you get to live life for yourself, of your own accord, proceeding into an environment of your own choosing in the direction that you want to go.  I wasn't doing it for anyone or anything else, nor was I a slave to the perpetual years of boatwork and dreamchasing.  This was me, being me, for the first time in my life.  This was the dream.  It was coming true.  It was finally tangible.  I wasn't expecting the dramatic state of the seas to be less dramatic than the emotional transformation.  In a way I finally became a man in those hours to Palm Beach, every dousing of salty spray adding hair to my chest and iron to my hands and soul.  Some people find themselves in the company of or under the tutelage of others, but some people must find themselves by themselves.

Unfortunately Sarah was sick almost the entire day, and I looked after her as best as I could. The seas calmed some in the last dusk hour before we pulled into the Palm Beach inlet and dropped anchor at sunset.  We met up with a friend of a friend there and came back to our slip in Stuart up the Intra-Coastal Waterway the next day.  But what detailed events actually occurred during those two days?  I barely remember.  I barely care.  I just know that I felt it, and it felt correct.