Pure Joy! Irena

As we sit here in Black River Bay, one of the most beautiful anchorages in the world, each morning Cress and I rise at about 6am to enjoy a quiet cup of coffee in the cockpit together. It’s a time for us to check in with each other and talk about our plans, both short and long term and just generally spend a few minutes in gratitude for the life we are living. I suppose since Canadian Thanksgiving has just passed I have been thinking of everything I am thankful for and one of those things is the wonderful lifestyle we have created.

Yesterday morning as we watched a few fishing boats head out of the anchorage I watched them go by and waved to the excited tourists as they anticipate a fun filled day. As my eyes followed them out of the bay, I noticed some splashing activity out near the reef. With binoculars in hand I saw that they were dolphins – a pod of dolphins in fact, likely 25-30 of them! One or two small boats were following them, keeping their distance and allowing them to jump around to their heart’s content. I called Cress to have a look, and he immediately said – “Let’s get the dinghy and head out there – get your swimsuit on - quick!” At first, I objected… No, it’s too cold, they will be gone by the time we get there, too many other people around….. But Cress was not taking no for an answer – and finally my heart got the better of me and we were in the boat in a flash. We motored gently toward them and watched them swim and jump around for a few minutes.

At Cress’s urging, I was on the bow, with my feet hanging over the top ready to jump in if the dolphins allowed. One tourist from another boat jumped in, and I followed with mask, snorkel and fins.

Of course we could not swim to keep up with them, but within a few minutes, the dolphins came over to us. They were swimming under me, around me, beside me – so graceful I could barely breathe. I was talking to them through my snorkel, and just floated around keeping quite still as they literally swam circles around me! It was magical…. They simply exude grace and well-being – pure joy. I felt like they were hosting me in their kingdom. They were patient, curious and friendly, and it was a wonderful experience to be among them.

How fortunate I am – just one more thing to be thankful for! One of the things I especially value about the life we are living is that we are able to share it with so many other people. Since we set out from Vancouver in 2005 we have had about 50 people on board with us in various parts of the world! Some for a few days, some for a few months, some with sailing experience, some land lubbers, some close friends and family and some complete strangers (now friends!). And just as we enjoyed having all of them, I am quite certain that all of them had a unique and memorable experience.

And we are not done yet! How fun is that! Cress and I think of it as our gift, something we can give back and share with our community. So if you are thinking about it – stop thinking and start talking. If not now – when?

With heart and gratitude,
Irena

Black River Anchorage, Mauritius

Another day ending at anchor in Mauritius, Black River Bay. Weather changing. Tomorrow rain.

Eitan? Well not quite yet, though he has aspirations …..

Remember how much fun it was to fly a kite as a kid? The thrill of running the kite to a great height overhead? The fun of flying the kite up and down and around the sky? The tug of the wind in your hands? Now remember water skiing, maybe wake boarding. The rush of running on water, leaping over waves, crashing and getting picked up by the boat rope and doing it again and again? Welcome to kite boarding – it’s about kite, board and man/woman hooked together in a riotous assembly of wind, water, power and flight.

Yesterday, Irena, Eitan and I left Conversations at anchor in Black River anchorage and made our way by bus and thumb to the kite boarding beach at Le Morne, on the southern tip of Mauritius. It was Contest Day! We stood on the main beach, open mouthed at the site of a hundred wind surfers and kite boarders zooming, leaping, crashing (well, not into one another, amazingly enough). The tradewinds howled around the headland at 25 knots, kicking up a small surf inside the reef, and out at the reef, half a mile from shore, we could see great curlers crashing on the coral, and specs of kite boarders and windsurfers dodging death. Colourful and impressive we thought. Then, “enough of this”, we said, “let’s head for our lessons”!

We left the main beach and headed for the equivalent of the 'kiddy pool around the corner. We checked in with John, our Mauritian instructor, got trussed up in wetsuit, harness, helmet, kite, board and radio and the three of us waded out into waste deep water. Guess what? It’s even harder than it looks.

Yesterday was our first lesson in Mauritius, but third lesson overall. To this point, Eitan and I have had about 5 hours of instruction and practice. We have learned how to rig the kite, launch it and sort of control it. We can body drag downind, pulled by the kite (very fun) and even body drag our way up wind with kite power to recover a lost board. And, we can fly the kite with one hand, put the board on our feet with the other, and launch! Well sort of. My launches are still a dance of stand up and fall down. Eitan, is progressing more quickly (dammed youth!) standing up for a few seconds then falling down.

But by gawd, we will both be kite boarders before we die trying.

Reflections

I find kite boarding intoxicating, but as an initiate, intimidating. There is huge power in the wind, which is both its attraction and threat. And the water too, is not land, as much as I love it. Hooked to the kite, I feel committed (which is hard for me!) and I feel a little daunted.

But I want it. I really, really want it. I want to be able to zip along the surface and leap 50 feet in air as I see kite boarders doing all around me But first I must climb the wall, the wall we all encounter when we set out to do something we do not now know how to do - Learning. Learning is a bitch. Learning is confounding. It’s hard work. It’s humiliating. It’s fraught with failure, festooned with fun, filled with firsts, finally finished, and then begins again. It is a cycle.

As children we do learning as play. As adults we make it work. Why? I think as children and youths we are essentially fearless, invulnerable in ourlack of experience and less developed capability for self-consciousness. As adults, we learn our limits. With declining strength, we hesitate. Over the years, we experience the world’s push back, we get hurt, and we become more cautious. We develop a history; we tell ourselves a story about our limits. No doubt about it, as we age, we are less inclined to learn because we are more afraid, increasingly of things with a physical learning component.

My father once said to me “you have to be tough to be old”. I agree. I would say we have to be courageous to age gracefully, happily, to keep learning despite our predilection to the contrary. If learning is the essence of life, then he is right, we do have to be tough to get old, because it is harder to learn as we age. I am 56 and I cannot keep up with young Eitan’s learning on the kite board. He is learning faster than I am and it pisses me off. So I have a choice to make. I can be discouraged, or I can be determined. Kite boarding is a first hand reminder for me: the essence of courage is reaching for what I want despite my fear of failure, my fear in this case I will never get up, and stay up, on the board. It’s about COURAGE.

What could be more fun than that!?

Black River

In our usual way as 50-somethings-I-don’t-sleep-like-I-used-tos, Irena and I woke at dawn yesterday and had coffee in the cockpit. As we waited for the java to work its magic, we talked over our greater plans. By 7am we were quite awake. “Heck, why now just pull the anchor, and set sail this instant!” Moments later, Eitan was roused in the v-berth by the sound of anchor chain in the hawser, just feet from his head. When the anchor cleared the bottom,

Irena swung the bow off the 20 knot breeze blowing through the anchorage. We raced downwind and out to sea between the two reefs defining the Baie’s outer reaches.

Safe in deep water, we sailed south under genoa alone. To port and to windward the trades swept down the island mountains, filled with the fragrance of forest and sugar cane. It made us hungry for porridge and brown sugar. In the sky, the morning’s brilliant young sun shone traded places with mountain top rain showers, pouring their last drops on us when they could reach us just a ¼ mile from shore. On the land, browns traded places with greens, mountains with coastal plains. On the water, the trade winds fanned, pumping 25 to 35 knots.

As we sped past the coastal hamlets of Flic ‘n Flac, Tamerin and Black River, I watched the shore side houses, thinking, “How odd, here we are at sea looking back at you, as you are on land looking out at us” At sea, on Conversations, we marveled at the landscape to port. On land, in their homes, people I imaged people looked out to sea, marvelling at its beauty and immensity. It is as if we each strain at our own edge, it is as if we both long for something that is not ours, for what is just beyond our reach. It seemed to me in the moment to echo the human condition.

By noon we had sailed 25 NM down the western lee coast of Mauritius, from Grand Baie in the north to Riviera Noir Baie in the south and re-anchored. We had entered the harbour in another rain shower and set the hook in 3 meters of water. All is well.

Reflection

The perspective we enjoy when standing on land looking out to sea, (or viewing the land from sea) reminds me of the perspective time gives us on our lives. With time, we see from a distance, what we could not see up close. Things in our lives make sense from this distance, when all was confusion at the time. But this is all in the context of looking backwards. What if we look forward into our lives when we stand on the shore looking to sea: What can we see then about our future?

Roz Savage, of whom I wrote in my last blog, spoke of a seminal experience in her life, an experience responsible in fact for her departure from her former life as financial consultant, to her life as an ocean rower. (www.rozsavage.com) Roz told us of how she sat down one day and wrote two obituaries. One obituary reflected her life as she wanted it to be; the other obituary reflected her life as she was then living it. The two diverged significantly. It took some time to realize, but she credits this exercise with being the inspiration for her choice to create her new life. Incidentally, now after having rowed across three oceans – The Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean – she says she is finished with rowing. What is next for her she does not know, but, I would bet whatever it is, she won’t have to re-write her life dream obituary – only the details of the ‘how’ will change.

Roz’s dream life obituary was her standing on land looking out to sea. She was standing in ‘grand perspective’, viewing her life in the future, from afar, asking and answering: What do I want my life to achieve? It is significant that she was looking ahead in her life, and not behind. We may become overly concerned with understanding our past, with forgiving ourselves for it (guilt) and with allowing ‘what we did limit what we can do’. This is reinforced by our cultural common sense. Uncommon sense says, on the other hand, it doesn’t matter what has been, the future is ours to choose.

There is another piece of Roz’s story that relates to Sail7Cs. Roz says, once she decided to live a life in accord with her revised obituary, “rowing found her”. She had no previous knowledge or interest in ocean rowing. Roz’s is a good example of living the Sail7Cs’ ideas of “COURSE”. She decided at a deep level what she wanted her life to achieve, (wrote her outcome - obituary/vision) even before she knew how it would be achieved and then let life deliver the way forward (rowing “found me”). And as for what is now next, she has no idea what, but she has confidence it will make itself known to her in due COURSE (if you will pardon the pun!)

There is another great question begged by Roz’s story: How is it possible to make that deep “decision” to go for it, even before we know how to achieve it? It’s not enough to create the vision, at some deep level we must also decide to commit to it then step back and let life present the opportunity. How do we do this super human thing?

Lose Yourself in Mauritius

Timeless days have stretched into weeks on the Island of Mauritius. After 10 days in port, we left Port Louis and it's horse races behind (and a little of our cash) last week and, with 11 people from other cruising sailboats on board, made a party of sailing up the island to Grand Baie.

We have been here at anchor a week now working on our latest boat project – cockpit curtains! With water temperature down to 21 C, it’s a lot cooler on passage and this is only going to get more so as we head next south to the Cape of Good Hope. Its seems our thinned blood of the tropics no longer has any taste for cold salt spray in the press of 25 knots of breeze. It seems we favour the comfort of a sheltered cockpit, tucked in out of the main force of the wind, sheltered from the dreaded splashes that find their way onboard and into the cockpit. To show for 6 hard days of sewing, we have 6 new curtains made from Sunbrela (acrylic cloth), 1mm window plastic and heavy zippers. Running aft from the dodger to the helm, each panel is zippered to the bimini overhead and to each other and then hangs down to the cockpit coaming where they are fastened securely, three curtain panels to a side. We broke the last of our sewing machine needles doubling stitching the last of the seams, so that was the end of that. Good enough for now.

As a distraction from our labours, we have had the pleasure of meeting Roz Savage, woman ocean rower extraordinaire. This week she ended a 154 day row (she put to sea last May) across the Indian Ocean from Australia. She ended her voyage at the Grand Baie Yacht Club, not 300 meters away from where we are anchored in Conversations. We joined the crowd on the dock to greet her, and later had lunch with her. Now that’s an accomplishment without cockpit curtains! Check out her website www.rozsavage.com for more about true grit.

Reflections

[This blog marks a departure from it has been. I have been much inspired by my conversations here in Mauritius, with Michael and Dominique and Roz Savage, in particular. “Reflections”, is Michael’s inspiration, a reminder to share the inner voyage is Roz’s. Thanks!]

At our almost daily evening dinner gatherings of sailors and new friends, we indulge in perhaps too much wine and too much beer, but never too much conversation. The night before they headed back out to sea, bound for South Africa, we had a farewell dinner with a sailing couple Michael and Dominique, crew aboard Pachamama (www.toptotop.org). Sailors are naturally a curious lot, bent on living out their lives in their own way. Added to this, was a time with Roz, talking about her row across the South Indian Ocean. It was not surprising we got on to talking over dinner about following ones dreams. We spoke of the confusion we suffer over exactly what do we dream of doing and how do we differentiate what we are meant to do, from what we are conditioned to want do. We agreed, that from the moment of our birth onward, we come under a lot of pressure to value this and that, to act in this way and that, and to see the world in terms of good and bad, right and wrong. As a result, we fix ourselves reflexively in a particular place in the world according to our conditioning. After all, if we did not indoctrinate each tribe member, how else could mankind create societies and cultures? But what cost does this indoctrination have to the individual’s happiness? That’s you and me we are talking about here! Added to this, the bumps and bruises we accumulate over the natural course of our lives bend us a bit (or a lot) out of shape. Getting down to sorting between what we are born to be doing with our lives and what we have been trained to do, or “should” be doing, is tricky work.

I need to digress for a moment to address a core assumption; namely, that each of us is born to a unique mission in life, a unique thing we ought to be doing with our lives. (Why this is so, and ‘who’ if anyone or anything chooses such a mission for us is, is another question). When we are engaged in that mission whatever it is for each of us, our experience of life is inherently satisfying AND usually difficult. But uncomfortable or not, when we are engaged in our mission, we experience our lives as being full of purpose and meaning. The corollary is also true; to the extent we fail to engage our life mission, we suffer for want of purpose and meaning. But regardless, our lives are difficult. The way I see it, if life is going to be tough either way; it might as well be spent in purposeful engagement. (I think a lot of us fail to seek our mission by getting lost in our natural desire for comfort and security, but that too, is a question for another day.)

Let’s return to the question of “How do we sort out what we are meant to be doing from what we have been conditioned to be doing.” Or in terms of Sail7Cs, how do we set COURSE for what we are meant to do?

In our dinner conversation we came next to the bold declaration: “we need to sort between our neuroses and our passions”. For we are indeed creatures of habit and patterning and most of us suffer our own neuroses to which we are, ironically, passionately attached! (Def: Neuroses are a class of functional mental disorders involving distress whereby behaviour is within socially acceptable norms.) We are drawn to the familiar in us, even it is uncomfortable, distressful, or even neurotic. And we are mostly unaware of this process in ourselves and its content. Most of us, from all our training, have a pretty good idea of who we should be, but not many of us have a very good idea of who we really are.

So, to the short strokes: Awareness is the first landfall on the voyage to choice and change. COURSE calls on us to become conscious of our patterning by doing deep personal discovery work to learn who we really are so that we can separate the instilled “shoulds” from the deeply held passionate wants. Tragically, we fear this discovery process, because at some level, ironically, we fear we will discover what we already intuit - that who we really are is not who we were told who we should be! Which of course what we are trying to discover. And, our social system doesn’t do much to encourage this process of self-discovery either, preferring to focus on telling us who we should be. Our society on the whole mocks “personal development” as soft and fuzzy, of being somehow irrelevant, which I suppose it is, for it’s purposes. But whose purpose do we want to prevail in our lives?

My advice: Do personal development work, the deeper the better, and do it life lone. Do workshops, retreats, get coaching, meet cool people, etc. and talk about stuff. It’s actually a lot of fun once we get past our initial fear, and it contributes to becoming whole, happy and engaged in your life mission. It’s a core part of COURSE.

On another day, I want to explore the other side of the equation: How do we learn more of what we are “authentically passionate” about. Most of us have never had permission to go exploring our passions. How do we get off the dock and put to sea in discovery of what we are meant to do?

In the meantime, let me leave John Masefield’s words from his poem SEA FEVER set the tone for this discovery - Cresswell

SEA FEVER

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.