About the Author

I might be what you’d consider an unlikely candidate for a classic pocket-cruiser, DIY boat work, sailing, and a mercedes sprinter van camper conversion. I am a woman. I am under 40. I am not in a relationship with or married to a boat builder, sailing instructor, yard worker or any other wildly helpful profession, nor am I in any kind of helpful profession. I did not grow up on a boat, my parents never sailed, and I am otherwise not any kind of survivalist (though that would be awesome). I don’t live in an idyllic seaside town. I live in a giant, expensive dirty city obsessed with tech and plagued by homelessness and work for a living, full time. I did not get into sailing through a man. I don’t live aboard yet, though I am working in that direction. I came in the front door, alone and unprepared and now I am making my way, little by little with tons of support from the friends I have made at the marina and sideways glances from most everyone else.

I tend to run in social circles where sailing is suspected of being obscure, elitist, gendered, racist, and classist. It is for people with time, money, and some other lifestyle that involves champagne and silk scarves. My colleagues in mental health use their free time for “self care” – which doesn’t usually mean wet, cold and perhaps a little nauseous; where having a septic system fail, ingress of water or death are not unreasonable possibilities. (their idea of a passioned discomfort might look more like answering the phones for a suicide hotline or volunteering with kids trapped in the court system and I love them for that). Meanwhile, the faces of the sailors I know will contort into something of a grand mal expression at the idea of sitting around, talking about their feelings and reflecting on the significance of their life choices. To me, when done well, both are places where I experience life in its full exhilarating potential. This blog then, is a place of exploration where I can let them be as close as I feel them.   There are innumerable ways that sailing and boats get under my skin, haunt me, thrill me, pick me up and then knock me down. It is a love affair and it is a lifestyle (though without the scarves and I don’t drink really so minimal champagne) and it is a bit of an obsession and it brings up lots and lots of feelings.

This is my little space to make sense of some of these things, both the metaphysical and the practical, which in sailing never seem very far apart. I don’t really know why therapy or why boats or why adventures of these sorts. If a person doesn’t think one is queer they will surely think so of the other or else just stare blankly and change the subject. I am used to this. I spent a lot of years trying to reconcile the facts and come up with some more cohesive narrative. I’ve chased my tail across the world and back. Now I am giving it a go of just letting the boat drift where she pleases. If she is heavy or awkward or moved by every great writer, so be it. It’s about seeing where she wants to go if I take my hand off the tiller and stop thinking that someone else knows what my life needs better than I do.

We all need  muses and for me, these are it. The more I try and whittle my loves and hobbies down this strange and complex math sets in so that the absolute numbers decrease while the time and attention needed for each of them increases exponentially…

I had a pretty hard time of it growing up but there were little blessings- patches of sunlight at just the right moment, that kept me in a kind of movement, not quite forward, but towards something. I don’t know when things started to make sense, exactly. It was always kind of a joke that I “attracted weirdos”- if there was a strange or wildly interesting person in any room in any place, they would find me without fail. It’s only dawning on me right now that they might have been recognizing me as their own, long before I could see myself clearly (and that I might be able to trust this). I still can’t quite tell if it was always like this- if my process is just one of discovering who I was all along or if I have earned my right to something more than was originally offered.

There was a rainstorm here the other day and out on the docks I ran into two people I know, both in foulies and beaming with broad smiles as if the sun were shining and someone was singing a song just for them. They stood around and chatted, helped with something awfuly awkward and heavy and waived goodbye to me, still casually standing in the pouring rain. It was simple and it was kind and it was something I might do and it is wondrous to not have to be alone.  For better or worse, I was always running along the fence lines not realizing that  the margins are just right in all of the right ways for me. I was walking around with the winning numbers for a long time before I figured out how to cash them in.

And here I am. I read the poets now like someone else might read an engine installation manual. Learning to see the orange osage alight is not unlike learning how electrical wires are connected. I do them both, side by side, piece by piece, so slow to catch on but with just enough progress to keep going, and overwhelmingly at the mercy of those that guide me and came before. So the boat is a celebration. I am celebrating all of it, really. And this blog is my devotional ode. And it is my gift to you, who might join me on the docks some rainy day. I wish all of this strange wonder for you too. A relationship with the water is your birthright, however unlikely it may seem right now.

I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff. – Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinkering Creek