Reflections

It's time for a review. It's been 5 weeks since I set sail from the uk. I would like to congratulate myself on coming this far. Over 2000 miles in varying conditions has been no mean feet for this newbie! The first glaringly obvious thing that stands out to me is that I am carrying excess baggage! A store of firewood, some plastic containers, even clothes. Some need to to be jettisoned, others need to be restowed. My navigational skills have improved, I was able to take a celestial noonday sight recently and my latitude was just 4 miles away from what the GPS told me. Good news! Another glaringly obvious issue that has come to light has been my overall attitude. As we know, expectations can be troublesome. I've read so many books that gave me the impression that long haul sailors stayed on passage for months at a time, eating up the miles whilst basking in the tropical trade wind sun. Ahem. Reality of this trip so far has taught me something different. Wind direction, weather, sea state, local conditions, all go to make a situation of variables that can make a passage plan sketchy by the least. I can certainly say that if I am going 5 knots on a beam reach on a comfortable sea, in the direction that I want to go, it is a rarity. 90 % of the time it has not been like that. The alignment of suitable variants determine a comfortable passage, alas, this is rare. I'm coming to learn that I must take each stage a step at a time and to be open minded and flexible about the result. Another aspect of my attitude which has, thankfully, come to light has been quite sobering. I have noticed that I spend a lot of time in negative projection, which certainly spoils my experience of the moment. It is a familiar dynamic to me, but has reached a sharp point of clarification. I will spend 25 miles, 5+ hours, stressing about the imminent (!) entry into a marina. I will literally be thinking about it for hours, thinking how everything is going to go wrong, I'll mess it up, the wind will blow me the wrong direction, I'll hit another boat, I'll crash into the pontoon, I'll become shipwrecked on the way in, the radio won't work, they'll be full, oh God, you name it, it will be running a tape in my mind. And of course it takes me out of the moment, 5 hours of misery. When I arrived here to Tazacorte in La Palma yesterday afternoon, I made a perfect entry and text book landing onto the pontoon where a marinero was there to meet me. 5 hours of worry for 5 minutes where nothing went wrong. Glaringly obvious that there is an imbalance there! That bought me to more reflections. There is a reason that I worry about coming into a marina. It's because I'm brand new to it! I never parked a boat in my life before a year ago, let alone doing it in an environment filled with a lot of seriously expensive hardware! And it got me thinking some more; I've only been doing this for a year! I forget it so easily and have this expectation that I should know what I am doing, to perfection. To put this into perspective, sailing alone is like jumping out of the aeroplane, once you've launched yourself out, there's no going back, you have to deal with it. You can have all of the theory in the world but practicing it is the challenge. Everywhere that I go I meet with other sailors, and I always think that they have so much experience. Another ahem. In the last week I have spoken with two long keelers who also concur that manoeuvring in marinas in a nightmare. And last week a neighbour by my berth in Arrecife actually went out to sea for the day with friends,and they ran out of diesel. And not to mention the amount of halyards I see flying in the wind,meantime to wrap them selves around something nasty. I fell asleep yesterday afternoon in the cabin. I had arrived to Tazacorte after an arduous three day passage. For two hours I slumbered and when I awoke, at about 6pm, wow, I had this massive arising feeling of vulnerability, and I was shivering with fear. It was 30 degrees but I felt cold, but more than that, I felt utterly exposed and vulnerable, so I put lots of clothes on and kind of orientated myself. I had this experience once before on a cycle trip through France so I felt a little ok with it. As I sat and processed my feelings, I realised the sheer enormity of my mission. I realised just how hard this is, what an intense and crazy learning curve it has been. And I realised that in part, it was shaking me to the core. And whilst I could write flowery blogs and take nice photos, this was the other side, the darker, but not in a negative sense, but in a very real state. So, yes, this trip is fucking amazing, and it's also fucking hard! And of course, why would it not be? I've chosen to experience something that stretches me and tests me in every area of my being. And it takes me to the very edge, and I've hardly begun! (There I go again, I've truly begun, I'm 2000miles in!) It was good to have these realisations and reflections and arisings of emotions, it's the fully fledged experience of what it is to be human, I'm finding out about me, going into the corners with the light, and ouch, it's painful sometimes, but I probably wouldn't have it any other way. So, I've decided to cut myself some slack and get real. I will try to be more self believing and positive about things that haven't happened yet. And try to enjoy the things that are happening now. Oh, and I have tooth ache, so I may need to find a dentist. Better here than weeks from anywhere.