Home, Alas!

Current Location: Deltaville, Virginia

Current Coordinates: 37° 33' N, 76° 20' W

Listening: "The Only Living Boy in New York," by Simon and Garfunkel, 1970

On Tuesday morning of this week Mike and I checked the weather and decided that we would not be able to leave for La Coruna, Spain until Wednesday morning because of a strong low pressure system hanging around in the Bay of Biscay. Within minutes I was arranging my travel plans home.

I flew from Cork to London Heathrow and then on to Copenhagen where I spent the night before catching my flight back to Dulles the next day. One note--As I was coming down an escalator in Heathrow airport I realized that the woman standing at the bottom was Reese Witherspoon. I did a double take and was immediately reminded of this scene from Cruel Intentions (1999). Only I think that Reese was a bit more impressed by Ryan Phillippe than she was by me.

After unpacking and a long run down Grove Avenue the reality of home began to set in. I'm now beginning to try and document everything by organizing my photos and journal in a manner that does justice to the impact that this experience has had on my life and on my outlook on the world.

The best reference point for doing this is looking back through my blog entries. While doing so it occurred to me that neither the images nor the narrative can stand alone--they must be considered together in order to really grasp what this experience was like for me. If you scroll through the pages of images that I have incorporated into the body of the text you might get the wrong impression. I snapped most of the photos when I was inspired by a sunset, or by a landscape or by some other awesome spectacle. The sum of this paints the picture of an idyllic experience--the perfect process of self discovery. But there were also some very difficult moments, many of which I described in my narrative. The two considered together give the most exact representation of what life was like for me over the past two and a half months aboard Gitana.

I talked earlier in the blog about wanting to document this experience as thoroughly and fearlessly as possible with strict adherence to verisimilitude. But I admit now that I was at times quite self -conscious about sharing my thoughts ideas, many of which I have kept private. I was also concerned with how others might perceive my efforts and that some might deem my writing to be the ramblings of a self-important author. In retrospect, I'm glad that I chose to bring you along on this journey. Now you know more about who I am and where I'm coming from. I hope that each of you also understands now how important you are to me.

A few last gasps of preachiness:

I mentioned earlier that the most important thing I learned from this experience was how to manage a difficult personality. I'd like to retract that statement now. True, Mike is and was absolutely a challenging person to work for (but a good one). But I remembered that in the past I've dealt with many difficult personalities in work settings and came to the realization that life is full of characters who test our faith and our understandings of ourselves and how we fit into the world that surrounds us. He's just another chapter--and a very good one at that.

Another important thing that I've drawn from this experience is that I've learned to tolerate lower levels of stimulation. I think that this is an important maturing step and I'm glad that I've finally made it. Throughout childhood, into college and even for a while after life for me was about finding the next big event, the next rush, or the next problem. Because of my time at sea (and more specifically my numerous 4 hour watches behind the helm) I have finally learned to relax, to enjoy the calm, and to really appreciate the brief moments of complete peace that creep up on each of us from time to time. I relish these now.

And the last and most important thing that I've learned from this journey is to choose faith. Life, like the sea, gives us ups and downs. It's much easier to adopt a defeatist attitude when we find ourselves plagued with doubt, humbled by failure, or hurt by love. But I've learned over the past few months that there are just as many opportunities to be positive and faithful as there are chances to bemoan some of the circumstances we find ourselves in.

And for this reason I cling to the many awesome images I've seen over the past few months at sea. If the narrative was the venue for my inner dealings with faith, doubt, and growth, then the images are visual reminders of how beautiful life is for those who choose to believe.

Amen.

Oblivion

Currrent Location: Crosshaven, Ireland (near Cork)

Current Coordinates: 51° 53' N 8° 29' W

Listening: "This Must be the Place (Naive Melody)" by Talking Heads, 1983

Gitana pulled into the Royal Cork Yacht Club on Friday afternoon (August 1st) around 3:30. The passage from Dingle to Cork went smoothly and afforded us many spectacular views of the southwestern coast of Ireland. Also, after two months of steering southerly courses, Gitana finally rounded the southwestern corner of Ireland and then sailed due east--the first direction change in 2 months of sailing. Cork harbor is huge, large enough for the Titanic to have sailed into it before heading off on her ill fated voyage across the Atlantic in April of 1912. Cork was her last port of call.

Coming 'round the southwest corner of Ireland

Royal Cork Marina

We have a very nice slip because Mike is a member of the Royal Cork Yacht Club. There are all kinds of other amenitities here--hot showers, a very nice bar that is designed to look like the captain's quarters at the stern of a square rigger with large bay windows that give a panoramic view of the marina and inner harbor. This place is heaven compared to many of the places where we've stopped. Also, the weather is fantastic. Finally, it feels like summer! Compared to Bodo way up north, I feel like we've entered the tropics. It's great.

Jack got off of the boat and I miss him already. He had the uncanny ability to diffuse the most tense moments aboard Gitana with a bawdy rhyme or suggestive maxim. Really, I can't even repeat any of them here considering my audience.

But there is also the dimension to Jack--the Royal Navy sailor, the succesful business man, the father and grandfather, the patriarch. Being at sea boils people down to their core character and I will now say with conviction that John Charles Nye is an honest, compassionate, venerable man. I love and respect him and will always be thankful that our paths crossed and that I had the opportunity to know him.

I never explained exactly how it was the Jack came aboard Gitana. About 20 years ago Mike and Jack sailed together as crew around Cape Horn on an old square rigger named "Lord Jim." Shortly thereafter Mike asked Jack to join him aboard his boat to sail from Nantucket to Brazil. Mike explained to me that Jack had all sorts of problems keeping a course from Nantucket to the Caribbean. He kept jibing he boat--claiming that the wind had suddenly shifted or that a gust blew him off course. But Mike attributed these mistakes to Jack's trouble with numbers. I saw this with Jack a few times when I was on watch with him--he'd need to be steering a 180 degree course but I'd look down and he'd be on 108. Anyway, Mike unfortunately had to ask Jack to get off of the boat because he deemed that Jack's jibing problems were too much of a danger. Mike has always felt bad about this, and saw the North Sea passage that we've just completed as a way to make amends with Jack.

Because of all of this and because of Jack's age Mike never considered Jack to be crew in the same sense that I was. Scrubbing the deck, cleaning the head, sweeping down the cabin, completing log entries were all tasks performed by me and me alone. This isn't a complaint at all, just a description.

Exit Jack, enter Zach! Zachary Johnson is Mike's 22 year old nephew from Grundy, Virginia (southwest, Va). When he says his uncle's name it comes out like "Maahk. " For instance, he said to me, "man, I can't believe that you've been on the boat with Maahk for two months!" Niether can I--he's absolutley been the most challenging personality that I've ever had to manage. But he's also the best seaman that I've ever met. I'm learning a lot from him, a lot of which has nothing to do with sailing.

Having Zach on the boat has made life much easier for me. He's the work partner that I didn't have in Jack. Zach and I share all of the chores that I mentioned above. In Bodo, it took me 5 days to scrub the teak wood deck. In Cork with Zach, it took us only two days.

We've now been in Cork for a week getting the boat ready for the passage to Spain. The passage covers 485 nautical miles almost due south through Bay of Biscay on down past the coast of France to La Coruña, Spain. This 4 day passage would be the longest leg of my trip. However, it might be that I don't get to go. Now that we've finally got the boat ready to go the weather does not look good. According to the most recent forecast there is a gale blowing out of the south most of the day on Tuesday. We can't leave before it (for getting caught in it) and we can't leave any later than Tuesday morning because I've got to be in La Coruña by Friday night at the latest to connect with my flight from Madrid back the States that I've booked for Sunday, August 17th. I can't come back any later than August 17 because I need to get my passport off to the Italian embassy so that I can get my student Visa in time to be in Florence, Italy by September 2nd. Right now all that we can do is wait and watch the weather.

Report Card:

Now that this experience is almost over it's appropriate to take inventory of what I've learned and what I've accomplished. As of this moment, I've sailed 1598 miles from the Arctic Circle down through the North Sea to the north of Scotland, down the western coast of Scotland to the north of Ireland and from there down the western coast of Ireland around the corner to Cork where I am now. If I get the Spain passage in I will have sailed right at 2000 miles.

I've learned a lot about the mechanics of sailing, about which sails to use under which conditions, about what to do in rough conditions and more importantly what not to do. I'm comfortable with all of the rigging on the boat, all of the knots you can imagine to fasten down everything from sails to seat covers, and I've also become a pretty good cook. I've learned a lot of "stuff."

But the most important thing that I've taken from this experience is that I've learned how to manage a very difficult personality. Mike has been harder on me in the past two months than anyone has ever been on me in my life. It has toughened me up, made me more careful, observant, and intentional about everything. Around Skipper there's really no relaxing, just brief moments when you're not obligated to perform a specific task. I've been with him virtually all day long every single day since May 27th and I admit I look forward to being to set my own agenda again and perform tasks at my own pace and on my own time. My patience is admittedly running thin but at this point I've got all of the oblivion I need in fact that I will definitely be off of the ship on Friday.

And none of what I've said above should be taken as criticism or complaint. Really, it is just the way things were, the order that Mike systematically imposes in the lives of any and all crew aboard Gitana. He runs a very clean and tight vessel and is the most knowledgable and worthy seaman I've ever met. His methods and habits have served him well and kept safe all who have sailed with him. Here's to you, Skipper. Thank you.

I'd also like to express a very sincere THANK YOU to all who have kept up with my blog over the past few months. Knowing that there are people in "the other world" thinking about me has helped me tremedously. During the most challenging moments it has helped me to think, "how would Dad react to this situation?" or "how would Mom deal with Mike?" Thoughts of many others have also flooded my mind during the most difficult moments at sea when I feel far away from rationality and peace.

I'd like to use this opportunity to debunk one of the greatest myths ever--the widely held notion that sailing is a relaxing escape from reality. During the first few weeks of this experience I wrote at length about Robert Pirsig's article "Cruising Blues and Their Cure" that was published in Esquire magazine in May of 1977. I think I could have chosen a better name for that entry but the idea that I was getting at was valid. Only I had no real understanding at that early and relatively benign point on this journey just how valid it really was. In retrospect, it's as if that entry was about me preparing myself for what was to come--the most thorough and intensive test of my self-sufficiency and "manhood" in one of the most unforgiving (the sea and Mike) environments possible. Passion, in the sense that I so loftily described in that entry, is what has pulled me through this experience. In Solzhenitsyn's language, this same passion has absolutely facilitated the growth of my soul.

A few more chapters to come. Stay tuned.

--Paul

"Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism."

--Sigmund Freud

Two additional notes/observations:

1. Black Irish women are beautiful.

2. "Hurt," by Trent Reznor as performed by Johnny Cash (2002) is the most powerful video that I've ever seen.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008

Current Location: Kinsale, Ireland
Current Coordinates: 51°42′ N 8°31′ W
Listening: Hallelujah, by Martin Sexton

Day trip to Kinsale. Boat is in Cork. We sail for Spain on Thursday.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died yesterday. He was 89. This is the second person that I've written about or been inspired by on this trip that has died recently (also, George Carlin). I hope I'm not bad luck.

I'm reading "a - lot" (two words, thanks mom) about Communist Russia under Stalin as I prepare for my graduate program. Stalin targeted intellectuals (and many, many other types of people) like Solzhenitsyn for thinking (which was not encouraged) and placed them in the gulags. Solzhenitsyn's eight years in the Soviet work camps were the subject of much of his writing and the basis for many of his political beliefs.

Some of his words inspired one of my first posts on this trip. I'd like to remember Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn today by posting this again. Have a look if you haven't already. And if you have, you've done your homework and you've got the day off.

Another more detailed report coming before Thursday when we sail.

--Paul


"Long periods of well-being and comfort are in general dangerous to all. After such prolonged periods, weak souls become incapable of weathering any kind of trial. They are afraid of it. Yet it is a fact that difficult trials and sufferings can facilitate the growth of the soul. I know there is a widespread feeling that if we highly value suffering this is masochism. On the contrary, it is a significant bravery when we respect suffering and understand what burdens it places on our soul. "

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn