What could go wrong?

Things fail, crack, break, and rot on even great boats but jeez is it hard to avoid a grandiose attitude about your own boat. When I started reading sea stories and watching sailing videos, I had this voice in my mind that went something like, “Oh yeah, but that probably won’t happen to me” or “Yeah, but that could probably have been prevented” or “I’ll have this better boat where things like that won’t happen” and then, “well, once I get everything fixed then things like this won’t happen anymore.” Exceptionalism is as American as apple pie but it really didn’t serve me well to hang on to the idea that nothing was going to go wrong once I got my own boat.  

When I first took my Dana out for her sea trial, the engine failed and we had to sail back in to the dock. A few weeks later, during her second sea trial and survey, the engine which had been “fixed” failed again when leaving the haul out. The engine was worked on again and with great confidence, “fixed” and then died again as we were about 15 feet off the dock. On our first sail, the furler jammed on the way in to the marina and we had to sail/bob/not crash with the one knot breeze up and down the fairway at far past dark and dinner (because the engine was still not working) until we got her loose and untangled and furled and in her slip. That damn furler has jammed on me enough times while underway that I really should have replaced it by now. I’ll tell you, being surprised with the task of running up and down the decks while on the fairway, in front of the yacht club, managing traffic and trying to unjam a line on the bowsprit when I was tired, cold, and hungry has probably taken off years of my life. 

There was the time the tiller split in two during my ocean race out to the Farallons and the time the rigid boom ripped off of the mast when sailing down wind on our way back from the Santa Cruz race. Oh, and the ocean race on an Darfur 45 where the head overflowed onto the deck about 30 miles from land. There was the time the batteries inexplicably went dead and mistaking the source of the problem as the battery charger and not the fuse, had to be replaced at $500 a pop. I’ve chronicled mysterious leaks and had to go up the mast a couple of times to retrieve halyards-which reminds me that one of my halyards suddenly released on the stays’l on that last Round the Rocks race and may still be hanging up there….and that was after dropping the fuller pin in the water about three hours before the start of that race and having to drive across the island to try and find another one. Oh, and of course, this is not including the ongoing maintenance, which has included replacing, rebedding, rewiring, and rerigging just about ever wire, bolt and sheet on her.

And I will never forget that whale that I thought was going to end it all. I was out on an ocean race and saw a whale off in the distance. I got my phone ready in case she came up again then all of a sudden, there she was, so close I thought she had to hit the keel, she was right there. I clip in to a harness on ocean races, but I hadn’t really considered that while it would keep me in the boat, it would also have the effect of slamming me like a rag doll onto any number of hard surfaces if she were really rolled. I honestly believe that I was about to die.

Having an attitude of exceptionalism  and “not to me” just made me frustrated and unhappy. Boats are already time consuming, expensive, dangerous and painful to bang your shins on. Adding in some story about how things “shouldn’t” be this way or happening to me or whatever just added an element of suffering that was both naive and unnecessary. Eventually the boat taught me better and I moved on to how things are instead of how my mind decided they should be. I expect that things will go wrong, have forgiven her for this, and thanked her for making me a less delusional person.  Having things go sideways regularly was what it took for me to finally get some patience, a virtue helpful everywhere in life, but also crucial when dealing with the material and especially mechanical universal.

I can remember a situation very early on where I dropped one of the little disks for the engine cover down into the bilge. It dropped like a quarter and rolled down the bilge towards the bow, far past where I could see it or reach it. To me, this was like it had gone and left our universe to go live its own life in a different, unreachable dimension. Telling a friend and Dana owner my woes, he began tackling the situation with a faith in material constancy that I was completely without. Things break and you through them away. Things get lost so you buy a new one. I took this kind of thinking for granted and so when he leaned this way and that and used a hangar or something and this disk emerged, I was given a lesson about how wrong minded I have been about so many things and that this kind of attitude was not going to serve me on boats.

 Last weekend on the Dana I had many opportunities to work on my attitude. After not dropping anything in the water (first disaster averted) and get everyone on the boat safely (second disaster averted, both the dogs have taken a dunk at one point), I headed out to my favorite anchorage. There was good weather, little traffic, and higher winds in the cove than expected. It took me a couple of passes to pick the right spot for my anchor and then I set about inflating my ultralight kayak (which fortunately inflated, despite some of the seams coming apart and not using if for nine months- um, that would have put an early end to the trip, third disaster averted) and taking the little ones to shore.

I have a beautiful dinghy for the boat, one that is nice enough that I don’t trust it to be left unattended on shore, so it really isn’t any help beyond sailing around the marina. An inflatable kayak without a paddle on the other hand, is a little less enticing to teenagers, other boaters, or the people living in the bushes above the beach. After an afternoon of lounging on the beach, throwing the ball for Farmer and giving Ely his pets, I took the dogs back to the Dana, tied the kayak to a post on shore, and I headed off with my paddle to dinner.

After dinner, I left the paddle at the restaurant and didn’t realize until I was all the way back at the beach. Fortunately, I was able to get back there before they closed and then made it back again. Taking Uber to Target to pick up an oar at 10:00 pm on a Friday night would have been a real bummer. Forth disaster averted.

We slept at anchor, er, at least we slept for a little while until Farmer started puking up sand from our time on the beach. There were two trips to shore under the moonlight, until revelers appeared on the beach and so we confined our puking to the cockpit. Between the puke, the shaking dog, the people on shore laughing, and the noise from the bridge traffic above, it was an active night. A three o’clock trip back to the marina 40 minutes away to drive over to the 24 hour emergency vet was the fifth averted disaster.

Farmer and the Sand

Even on a good night at anchor I only really half sleep, as each unusual wave and motion sets off the chance that the anchor has come loose and I am drifting to any one of the lee shores in all four directions.  (there was the time I anchored a little too close to shore and found myself sideways on the rocks at five in the morning, with a good four hour wait until we were floating again) 

Eventually, we all fell asleep and when I came up on the deck in the morning I found that the dinghy had become unattached to the boat and was about seven feet off the starboard stern. Immediately realizing how much I did not want to get in the water and swim after it, I did the dumbest thing possible, I pulled anchor, turned on the engine and hit reverse, disturbing the water just enough to send the kayak bobbing to shore. After a thorough bout of self pity, I reanchored, disrobed down to my skivvies and jumped in to the 52 degree water, paddle in hand, and swam out to get it. After a few minutes in front of the Webasto heater and a pup trip to shore, we headed off to our next destination. Sixth disaster mostly averted. (the kayak came untethered once before and fortunately it floated into a little corner of a nearby marina and due to its electric green color, we were able to find it pretty easily) 

We arrived at my second favorite destination, a place whose natural beauty is inversely proportionate to the level of dilapidation to the docks. I was able to squeeze the Dana onto the shaky, half broken dock, but only side tied a bow and stern, neglecting the spring line that would have been prudent. Had I taken the time to really eye the other boats as we walked up to have brunch, I would have seen that nearly all the boat had eight to twelve different lines holding them at all angles to their slips. Two cocktails and some amazing truffle fries later, I turned in early, having tea and tidying up and then heading to bed. No disasters, yet. 

The winds were up and blowing straight on the bow at 15 knots all night. The dock and fenders from my boat and others were creaking, squeaking, pulling and pressing in all directions. An annoyance, especially given the previous night’s mayhem, but I tried to tune it out until I felt quite the bang and realized that I must get the lines retied and try to make the situation more civilized. When I got up on deck, it took a moment to orient, as the boat was now facing a different direction. Um, What?! The Dana was turned around, untied from the dock, and the bowsprit was about in line with where the stern cleat had been. Both her dock lines were severed and the stern was headed toward a rocky lee shore now.

I was able to get back on the dock off the bowsprit and I am still unsure if I got there just after she had spun, or if her keel was caught on something below and she was stuck but there was just about four feet of end of the dock for me to jump onto. I had enough of a bow line to pull at her, against the wind, making a little progress each time and waiting for moments to work her forward. I can’t really even remember now how I made it all happen– getting new lines out of the cockpit, pulling her forward, replacing the severed ones, running new ones and securing them but I guess with adrenaline, many things are possible. 

I think her keel was caught, even though it doesn’t make sense, as her back end was half in a tight fairway that other boats should be able to clear, so there shouldn’t have been anything for her to catch on. Given how much wind there was and the direction, she should have been pushed backward, toward the dock, but definitely toward the shore. It was kind of thing where time was hard to track, I don’t remember being cold, I was very sore the next day, and I still can’t totally explain how it happened the way it did, in the nick of time, instead of me waking up to us scraping the rocks.

I couldn’t have done what I did a few years ago and certainly not with a shitty, “this won’t/can’t/shouldn’t happen to me” kind of attitude. When I started with the boat I didn’t have the trust in myself to work difficult situations, trust in the material universe, ability to stay calm and have patience in an unnerving situation or even the mindset to handle shock. When I took an incredible Safety at Sea class from Ashely Perrin, she talked about how she would jump into arctic waters every day so as to lessen the shock that comes from being really cold. I think a lot of “shock” is the time it takes our mind to reconcile the difference between how we think things should be and how they actually are. The way to minimize this time is to practice having things going wrong. Letting the mind get used to seeing things how they are is how we can be ready for how they are when how they are– is sideways. 

This practice is one I am grateful for and I came out of that situation feeling a kind of pride and relief that was surprising. Yes, I certainly feel stupid for not securing the boat better- and the kayak-obviously there is a little bit of a theme here about how much effort I put in to tying good lines- but try not to get hung up on the technicalities here because I feel far more relief with how I was able to handle the situation than I do shame about my laziness. That kind of, “oh you should have….” “well if you hadn’t….” “that’s why I always….” That kind of shaming is part of that “not me” attitude that is at odds with the basic nature of life. Death, rot, cracks, scrapes, broken heart and broken parts are inescapable. They can be minimized and worked with, but anything beyond that is at the cost of shutting out the brilliance of how things are. 

 I was able to move from puking to swimming to scrambling in relative calm along with walking around a whole variety of mishaps. I couldn’t have done that in a relaxed way and certainly dealt with all that in succession and still laughed by myself when I began this journey. I lacked confidence and I had the worst attitude about needing someone else to help/fix/manage my boat/life/heart. As much as I was trying to do things on my own, even solo sailing I preferred to have the boyfriend that became a boatfriend nearby on his own boat as a safety net.  

This last year has been taking off the training wheels and the point isn’t that I am making mistakes, its that I am able to deal with them, both practically and emotionally.  Learning to deal with the circumstances of my life, whether that is the boat or the dogs or my work or family, is the part what I want to get really good at. Modern life offers so many opportunities to avoid inconvenience and discomfort that an ultimately shitty attitude develops where we imagine we can escape all of it. Where “those things” aren’t going to happen to us. But “those things” are life and I don’t want to escape. I want to do the exact opposite. I want to lean in hard to how life really is. Love, death, pain, all of it. I want all of it. 

 People often say, “I could never do what you do, I don’t know how you listen to people complain all day” and that isn’t what I do.  My work is certainly about dealing with all the stuff that no one wants to deal with – not their parents clearly, not their lovers, not their friends, not even themselves but I am not avoiding them either and I love it. I LOVE IT. I love that I am not missing the most important moments of their lives, that I get to be there as the lights turn on, the defenses come down, and they become who they actually are because in those moments they are the most beautiful people you have ever seen. Those moments are what “having a relationship” means at its very best and I think it would be tragic if I missed that. I learned that from watching my father die. Love, at its core, means not wanting to be anywhere else when tragedy is unfolding. There is nowhere else to be. Nowhere else exists. It’s exactly what Be. Here. Now. is all about. That’s what I want. I know that kind of presence and love is possible, I’ve tasted it, and I want it all the time all the way through. 

If having dogs means paralysis and being peed on and choking back tears on a regular basis both out of love and fear, then so be it. And if having a boat means banging up my shins, making mistakes both costly and time consuming, putting myself in dangerous situations, and having my stupidity regularly pointed out, then I know what I am getting myself into and count me in. I want to work with life. I want to be totally alive. Every precious element in my life is hard, messy, gross, dirty, not fit for polite conversation, and makes me better. The only thing wrong with any of those scenarios has been my shitty attitude keeping me from seeing the opportunity to become more of my potential and someone I could be proud of and impressed by. The person at the bottom of this page is so much more than the one at the top that I really mean it when I say, thank god that things have gone so wrong because I couldn’t have gotten here in my heart any other way.