guess my stomach had shrunk because it completely filled me and I sat dozing half the night, letting the balanced boat steer itself for hours at a time until it would wander off course and I would awaken and realign it. Just before dawn I was leaning over the side to check the fishing line (I never could believe that I could not catch anything) and had my face close to the water in the moonlight when a huge shark hit the side of the boat. I did not know much about sharks then, but I’d seen that shark attack next to the troopship. When this ten-foot shark struck at the moonlight on the side of the boat right in front of my face I thought my heart would stop with fear.
For half a beat I did nothing and then, after the shark was gone, I slammed back across the cockpit so hard I nearly threw myself out of the boat. I never saw the phenomenon again, nor have I heard of it, although a group of killer whales once got very curious about me in a boat and rose up around me and seemed to look down and study me before swimming off.
This shark terrified me for years afterward. This fear, especially coupled with an imagination driven by sleep deprivation, made me afraid to go near the edge of a boat in the dark. Some years later, in a flat calm sea, I slipped over the side alone in the dark and hung there, looking down into the black void with a diving mask on, trying to deal with the fear. I didn’t do this long and my imagination ran wild, seeing large and terrible things coming up out of the darkness to eat me, but I lasted several minutes before climbing gratefully back into the boat. I don’t think it helped me much because I still don’t like to hang in the open ocean in the dark, and as an old army sergeant once described his approach to combat, “Every chance I get, I don’t do it.”
The next morning I set the tiller and the sails and balanced the boat and went below to make coffee and eat the rest of the spaghetti, which I thought might spoil since I had no refrigeration. I also had to use the head, which was a small seat under a cushion at the front of the boat, and I was sitting there, busy, contemplating, when I heard a woman’s voice ask in a perfect English accent, “I say, is anybody aboard the boat?”
I thought I was dreaming or had gone insane. So I did not do anything.
“Hello, the boat—is anybody there?”
It was real!
I stood suddenly, smacking my head on the four-foot overhang, fell back; then, jerking my pants up, I stumbled through the boat to the companionway and out into the bright sunshine to see a small wooden sailboat floating nearby, its nose into the wind and the main pulled over expertly into a hove-to position. There was an older, rather squat woman in the cockpit. She had gray hair with bangs and was wearing a hooded foul-weather jacket.
“I’m Melanie,” she said. “Are you all right?”
For a second I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t see how she could be there and some part of my brain would not accept it. I shook my head and tried to think of something to say and when it finally came out all I could find was, “Hello. Would you like some spaghetti and meatballs?”
6
The Blue Desert
Now it is years and several boats later and I am sitting in La Paz, Mexico, in the Sea of Cortez between the mainland of Mexico and the Baja peninsula. I’m waiting for the northers to subside so that I can ride a force called the Corumel wind and take my catamaran,
Ariel
, further north into the Sea of Cortez and discover some of the sea and, more important, discover more of myself.
Melanie started the process that day. She told me where I was and gave me food and sailed near me for a day and told me more about balancing the boat. She showed me how to really use the sails. I left her and made my way back up the coast to Ventura.
And now as I sit here in La Paz, thinking of my maiden voyage, I know that my life on boats has been about this: not the sailing or the sea so much as learning
For half a beat I did nothing and then, after the shark was gone, I slammed back across the cockpit so hard I nearly threw myself out of the boat. I never saw the phenomenon again, nor have I heard of it, although a group of killer whales once got very curious about me in a boat and rose up around me and seemed to look down and study me before swimming off.
This shark terrified me for years afterward. This fear, especially coupled with an imagination driven by sleep deprivation, made me afraid to go near the edge of a boat in the dark. Some years later, in a flat calm sea, I slipped over the side alone in the dark and hung there, looking down into the black void with a diving mask on, trying to deal with the fear. I didn’t do this long and my imagination ran wild, seeing large and terrible things coming up out of the darkness to eat me, but I lasted several minutes before climbing gratefully back into the boat. I don’t think it helped me much because I still don’t like to hang in the open ocean in the dark, and as an old army sergeant once described his approach to combat, “Every chance I get, I don’t do it.”
The next morning I set the tiller and the sails and balanced the boat and went below to make coffee and eat the rest of the spaghetti, which I thought might spoil since I had no refrigeration. I also had to use the head, which was a small seat under a cushion at the front of the boat, and I was sitting there, busy, contemplating, when I heard a woman’s voice ask in a perfect English accent, “I say, is anybody aboard the boat?”
I thought I was dreaming or had gone insane. So I did not do anything.
“Hello, the boat—is anybody there?”
It was real!
I stood suddenly, smacking my head on the four-foot overhang, fell back; then, jerking my pants up, I stumbled through the boat to the companionway and out into the bright sunshine to see a small wooden sailboat floating nearby, its nose into the wind and the main pulled over expertly into a hove-to position. There was an older, rather squat woman in the cockpit. She had gray hair with bangs and was wearing a hooded foul-weather jacket.
“I’m Melanie,” she said. “Are you all right?”
For a second I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t see how she could be there and some part of my brain would not accept it. I shook my head and tried to think of something to say and when it finally came out all I could find was, “Hello. Would you like some spaghetti and meatballs?”
6
The Blue Desert
Now it is years and several boats later and I am sitting in La Paz, Mexico, in the Sea of Cortez between the mainland of Mexico and the Baja peninsula. I’m waiting for the northers to subside so that I can ride a force called the Corumel wind and take my catamaran,
Ariel
, further north into the Sea of Cortez and discover some of the sea and, more important, discover more of myself.
Melanie started the process that day. She told me where I was and gave me food and sailed near me for a day and told me more about balancing the boat. She showed me how to really use the sails. I left her and made my way back up the coast to Ventura.
And now as I sit here in La Paz, thinking of my maiden voyage, I know that my life on boats has been about this: not the sailing or the sea so much as learning
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