Captains of the World

“There is something oddly familiar about this visage”, I thought, “but for the life of me, I cannot think what it is”. From the cockpit of Conversations, I was watching Captain M scooting across the anchorage in his dingy at a very good clip, bound for the town pier.  He was standing in his dinghy, looking squarely forward, his belly poking out, his shoulders back, his chin leading the way. He had the dinghy painter in his right hand, like a leash, and in his left hand, he held tightly to a tubular extension to his outboard motor, arm behind his back. He was nearly as tall as his dinghy was long. He could have been Nelson captaining a frigate.

Captain M is one of about 10 cruising skippers we have been sailing with across the Indian Ocean. Our small armada of cruising boats sail together in an informal way, usually meeting up in each port down the line as we complete the shorter passages between islands. In each port we spend happy evenings over beer and wine, full of wind, comparing notes on the last passage, giving advice on the next passage. And everyone is as free with their help and spare parts as they are with their opinions. It’s an endless conversation and my crew protests over the monotony of such ‘boat talk’. But to me who loves all boats, it’s a brotherhood of ease. And of course, it is of inestimable value in getting our own little craft home safely. Irena and I often jest, “It’s easier to get boat help and spare parts in the furthest reaches of the tropics than it is in downtown Vancouver!”

I have grown particularly fond of Captain M. Like many cruising skippers, he has the gift of being thoroughly who he is, comfortably, playfully, doing the sailing around the world thing with an ease that belies the challenges. He is full of stories of misadventure, opinions and points of view that have been honed to a fine point from years of telling. In his company, I know he will tell me exactly what he thinks no matter how contrary it might be to the ‘right’ thing to say in the moment. And I think he has earned the right, no matter what others might think, from a lifetime of bold experience, beginning with his tour in Viet Nam as a helicopter gunship pilot.  

“Never look a single hander in the eye” (a single hander is a person sailing his own boat around the world on his or her own) he was saying loudly the other day with a twinkle in his eye, “you might never get away!” Hilarious, I thought, when he so carries on himself, but unlike him, I lacked the courage to kid him of such in the moment. So I like to be in the presence of his confidence and I like to bump up against his strength, though not always to my profit. When I complained the other day of having to dance around our oversized wheel in the cockpit, Captain M proclaimed “I bet my wheel is bigger than your wheel!” I rose to the challenge. It was a foolish bet. Disturbed unaccountably from my slumbers the very next morning, I poked my head out of the companionway to see him striding away down the quay. Later he claimed, and I had to submit, that he didn’t even need his tape measure to make his win. “What were you thinking!” he chided. It hurt, especially as I don’t ever pay to drink Johnny Walker Black for myself. And neither does he, he says, the rascal. And, he said with a grand smile as he received my package, “But my wife does!” And so it goes.

Reflections

Captain M has the gift of proclaiming his place in the world, in his own way, without apology. I appreciate him for it. Perhaps in my association with him, his boldness will rub off on me. And I believe, there is something to be learned from each of the cruising skippers who make up this community. They are all, in their own way, people who more than average occupy the space in life they were meant to occupy. They stand apart in their fullness. I am sure every skipper has their moments of doubt and shame, but in a valuable way they have clamoured over a lifetime of experience to stand in a high level of self-assurance. This seems to me to be the essence of ‘Captaincy’ - to proclaim their right to be and to live as they are meant to, to manifest in their fullness, amidst their internal parade of doubt and uncertainty. ‘Captaincy’ is to be in the place we were born to occupy, even though the world may seek relentlessly for us to be elsewhere. In a way, it is their gift of courage and learning to the world – to be who they are – for in that authentic expression, they are for others a champion of their becoming. It’s a charge to be amongst such people.