Ahhhhhh…. The spirit of boatness is back! I don’t know where she went, but I am very pleased she is back. Maybe, to make her presence known, she demands day after day of hard labour on the boat. Or maybe it is the iminent prospect of a 5500 mile ocean passage across an unknown sea, the need to get it right, before setting sail. Or maybe it’s getting free of the troubles of survival in the city, a return to the pleasures of a moonlit wash of the sea lapping on the boot top. Or maybe it’s all three. Or maybe it’s none of the above. I don’t know.
But I do know what hard labour looks like. I wake before the sun, alone in the aft cabin double berth, the predawn light not yet visible through the hatch over the berth, no hints yet of another day coming. It’s too soon to get up – to groan with stiffness yet. I usually lie there a moment thinking I really want to sleep, then that part of me that keeps me on the straight and narrow says sit up in bed and meditate in the quiet, you always like it when you do!. And I do, often sitting for 30 to 45 minutes, alternating between a relentless stream of thoughts and the odd moment of floating free. Sometimes, if I have woken early enough, when I am done, I will reward myself and crawl back under the covers. As I auger into the comfort of the cold side of my pillow, I inhale the comfort of Conversations tugging at her lines. With a certain smugness, I remember the sound of aircon will drown out the call to prayers in this part of the world – I have done my part.
Finally, its daylight. I am genuinely ready for another day in the magic kingdom. The pleasure at the day’s sweet smells are soon overwhelmed bythe heat. The sweating begins almost as soon as I stagger to my feet, and grope forward to the galley and put the kettle on for morning coffee in my underwear. And I mean, the sweat is on! In this 32 C plus climate, I will sweat until the lights go off at the end of the day and the aircon in the aft cabin goes back on. But we cope. I will several times during each day be showering under the hose on the swim grid, recovering my wa. By 7am, coffee in hand, I climb up the companion way to sit in the cockpit, waiting for it and sunrise to bring my excitement for the day. Before it is done, I am usually off on the first project.
Today, is day four of hard labour. I started with thinking what to do to get our crew, Ali, started. But he surprised me, already at work on the forward hatch when I came on deck with my coffee. He was pulling out the leaking main hatch lens. By the time I said “selamat pagi” (good morning I am learning) he was already getting the hatch ready to re-bed. I looked over my list of 46 items. I decide this mornig to start small. I installed a new hard point (a place to attach life harness to in nasty weather) in the cockpit, replaced a grill over the engine room vent, and laid a bead of silicon around the galley top before the rot set in. After lunch and a requisite 20 minute nap, I had the marina call me a taxi and dove into Jakarta traffic to buy some groceries. Without Irena, I either have take Ali out to dinner every night, or cook for us both.
By 2pm I was back with a trunk load. I had found an excellent grocery store, with fresh food and everything!
I decided to tackle the goose neck (the joint between the main boom and the mast) It had been making the dry grating sounds of dry metal grinding bare metal. It turned out to be one of the few jobs that actually went as planned. I easily pulled out the ten ¼ inch machine screws. “Easy” because the mast manufacture did it right – anchoring the stainless steel bolts in a stainless steel plate, instead of tapping into the mast’s aluminium extrusion. I drilled and ground a couple of custom washers to fit (you can never have too many tools) and, with some waterproof lithium grease, the whole things was back together in two hours. I had time to spare so I pulled off the mainsail “stack pack” and the dragged out the 50 kg sewing machine and started to install a plastic drain in the cover canvas. The plan is to direct the rain water off the main sail into the ships water tanks. In the name of simplicity and weight (not to mention cost and trouble) we have forgone having a water maker. The main sail, at over 750 square feet catches a lot of water in a tropical squall. With luck and if I have put the drain in the right place, we will have lots of free water this way. We would never run out of drinking water with our tank capacity, but extra water makes the passages much more comfortable. Washing the salt off at the end of each day at sea is a huge luxury for a small boat cruiser and one to which I am increasingly disposed!
So that’s a day of hard labour on Conversations. Tomorrow I am going to have Ali haul me 65 feet up the mast on the power windless to inspect the rigging, and change light bulbs to LEDs. I think I’ll have him practice on a bucket of water first. And I’ll tell him if he drops me he won’t get paid.
The quality of 'boatness', I have decided, is the quality of feeling engaged in something of value. Its a 'quality of being' available to everyone, but not of course, necessarily in the guise of 'boatness'. It would be any other thing of value to a person. In the quality of boatness, I feel back in my own skin. For me the elements are being in a place of nature, being engaged in a project that challenges me with an uncertain outcome, of sufficient challenge that I rise each day with a sense of purpose and possibility. And a sense, 'its up to me'. So what, you might ask yourself, is your quality of 'boatness' and what are the elements prerequisite to your having the joy of experiencing it?
I think, another element is that when we are in our 'boatness' whatever that is for each of us, its about doing what I (we) are here on the planet to do. It's not that boatness is everything, and that it is perfect and it is the only thing - it is not any of these of course - but it is to say that "for today it is enough". Tomorrow it will be different, and that does not take away from the value of it for today.
Tonight, Ali and I had salmon steaks, salad, potatoes, and French bread. Sentenced to a life of hard labour? I should be so lucky!
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