Monday blues
i was supposed to write a little autobio. paper on a 'life-changing' event, for english.
i couldn't think of one.. so i just thought back to the one place i love. the one place i'd learned to be me.
the sea.
you are by no means obligated to read this, i turned it in today and thought i might as well share it. it's not a very good representation of my writing or style, i never write in first person. i typed it during lunch, slacker me, i didn't even revise it, i just sat, typed, and spellchecked. you may find it entertaining.
Here I write, of June 19, 2003.
Nine knots. Full sail. Bearing 270. Thud. thud. The drumbeat began, rain softly deflecting off the deck. Drip, drip, drip, the clanking noises of rain against the stainless steel railing kept me alert. The full-out mainsail caught the rain and channeled it on to the deck, but we needed every bit of sail to catch the light breeze. My hand tightened on the tiller. I stood aft, on the deck of the cockpit, my feet sliding on the wood. "Hey, what are you makin’ down there?" I shouted toward the open cabin hatch. He didn't hear me. The aroma of coffee glided up from the cabin, mixing with the fresh rain as an answer. It was just another day, my father and I alone out on the Baltic. last i knew of, we were in Sweden, but it'd been a few days straight of sailing. "Bearing 273, I think we're a little east, I’m gunna’ take twenty west to clear that sandbar." I said. "270 by the chart, and yeah" BEEP BEEP BEEP the depth finder began to complain "be sure to give that island a wide berth." My dad now emerged standing in the hatch, steaming coffee in one hand, binoculars in the other. "Okay, spinnaker at six o’clock, barge at nine, but at least six miles off." My dad said as he conducted a perimeter check. "Alright’ I replied, my hands loosely correcting, and over correcting the rudder. It had been a pleasant day thus far, mid afternoon was never interesting. Last night's anchor watch had left me sleepless, but the freezing cold rain kept me up. The thick layers of raingear kept me dry, but not warm at all. My hair was soaked, and my bare feet sat in a puddle of icy salt water. For me, just another day.
The waves began to pick up. I didn’t notice it as much first, with the sun peaking through the clouds, the bulky raingear blocking out the wind, but not the cold. I stood there on the aft deck, glancing from the bobbing compass needle, to the waves breaking over the bow. “Uhh..” I began, and after regaining my voice, I continued “Dad, we’ve got white tips, and further west doesn’t look much good.” I heard some noise from the cabin below and heard my dad click on the radio to channel thirty-five for a weather broadcast, the crackling static voice over the radio began to spill bad news. “What’s the barometer at?” I asked unsteadily. No response. I held my course west, my hand gripping tighter on the tiller, as the rain now fell in waves, each more painful than the last. I glanced up at the tip of the mast, the miniature wind cups danced in fast little circles. And that confirmed that the wind was now blowing harder and colder in my face, it wasn’t just my imagination. Knock, knock, knock. My dad’s feet ascended the wooden ladder and joined mine in a puddle of freezing water as we silently assessed the sails. “Cut down the main to half, or less, bring in most the genoa, and start the diesel?” I asked, trying the read my dad’s mind. The wind was from the east, directly behind us, and it was getting unstable and unpredictable as it began to pick up. From my position in the cockpit I leaned inside the cabin and inspected the navigation console. The depth finder read fourteen meters, no fish under the hull. The radar was blank, covering a five mile blanket. “Hey wasn’t there another yacht trailing us a while ago?” I whispered to myself. The beautiful fifty foot pearl colored yacht we had paralleled from this morning had vanished. The radio played static, reset at emergency channel sixteen. The GPS was spewing out numbers, and I matched them with the last plot on the chart. We were probably another two maybe three hours from the cove we wanted to spend the night in. At the speed we were going, we could have made it across the Baltic in a day. Land was not far off. I looked over at my dad who had begun to unclip the rigging and adjust the sail. I and began to correct the steering once again.
My twenty second break from concentrating on our course had cost me ten degrees left. The mainsail flapped loosely due to losing its trim. I had to fight the rudder to comply, fighting against the now higher waves. The mainsail snapped back into a full bend. I saw a swell forming up head and turned into it to minimize the impact. The boat hull bucked, and leaned up, then down. My dad finally spoke: “Low pressure, there’s a cold front directly ahead, there’s been a storm warning issued for this coast. The wind’s gunna’ pick up some more, and yes, we do have white tips.” My dad pointed out to the four-foot waves encompassing the hull, the tips of the waves were white, because the wind was now blowing so hard it cut the peaks off. The main sail began to flap more violently. I stepped back, away from the boom, in fear that it might swing back into my chest and threaten to knock me overboard. I gripped tighter still on the tiller, my hand white, with rain running between my fingers. The sky had long since turned from grey, to charcoal, to black. While my dad focused on fighting the lines, I remained concentrated on my job. I stared at the compass. 270. A wave pulled the boat up, then down. 272. I turned the tiller a quarter turn. 269. Another wave. 273. I fought the wave as it passed over. The felt the boat slow as the mainsail dropped. My dad took the mainsail all the way in; the mast now a naked white pole. He began working on the violently flapping genoa. 271. I continued to micromanage the steering. 269. I looked up at the wave breaking over the bow. And then I broke concentration and looked beyond the bow. It was black. My heart must have skipped a beat.
It was as if the situation had suddenly been taken off mute. Now that I’d bothered to look beyond the compass needle and my hand on the tiller, I took in the situation. There was no longer open sea in front of me. The sky was black, the sea was blackish-green, the space in between was black. I looked back at where we had come from, and there was a grey sliver of light several miles back. I was astonished. A storm had spawned right over my head, hitting our exact position like a laser-guided weapon. And the worst of it was up ahead. I braced myself on the railing; the wind almost knocking me down. The noise of the waves and the water and the wind, and everything else all at once cut out any hope of shouting to my dad. Squinting, I saw him through the dense rain, still fighting the genoa, which grew smaller with every grinding turn. 287. I’d lost most control, as we were now drifting as much as were going forward; helpless at we were sucked toward a black something in front of us. Holding the binoculars my dad had left in the cockpit, I brought them up to my eyes, my other hand railing, with my hip braced against the tiller. I fiddled with the focus knob, and finally got a look at the black in front of me. It wasn’t a storm. Storms are spread over miles. What was in front of us was a wall. So much concentrated water that it obstructed all view. There was no way around it, and we were being pushed, by all the forces of mother nature, toward it. First things first, we needed to get the rest of the sail down. My dad struggled, fighting the single blue rope that rolled the genoa. I grabbed on right behind him and gave it everything I had. I couldn’t hear anything, see anything, I just knew that we had to get the sail in before the wind would catch it and take control of the boat. Or worse. The tiller lay limp, tapping against my hip, steering was almost pointless. I felt the rope buck like a wild stallion in my hands, winning and losing inch by inch. I looked up, and the wall still lay before us. Inevitable. I was a prisoner on death row. Gallon after gallon drenched my entire body. I tasted salt water from the waves and rainwater from the sky. The wall lay before us. The rudder had almost no control, and trimming the genoa to get us a straight path would be impossible. Even as fast as we were going, be needed to stay straight. If we were to survive what lay before us, we needed to hit it head on. Bearing 300. Not good enough. I staggered forward through sheets of grey water. I felt inside the cabin and turned the ignition on the diesel. The sixty horsepower engine whined and kicked to life. Crawling on all fours back to the tiller, I threw the throttle lever to full, and even still, I can’t even hear the engine down below. I can’t hear anything. Like a static radio, there was only noise, deafeningly loud, all around. As the waves came, and passed, I don’t even notice. I can’t hear, see, think, or move. I just grip the rail. My dad climbs back from the rigging. He jumps into the cockpit, and grabs the tiller, bringing us head to head with what looked like the end. I go limp, and find myself in the corner, crouched down, hugging my knees like a little girl, wrapped around the railing. The smooth stainless steel railing is all I feel. Cold to the touch, but not nearly as cold as the wave, after wave after wave. Everything keeps getting louder. I see the silhouette of my dad. Then I close my eyes. I feel the hull rock, thirty degrees left, then right, then up, then down. Everything happened too suddenly to get seasick. And then we hit the wall.
Everything went black. Mute. Like being 200 feet under water, the pressure beating on you from all sides. I couldn’t breathe. I was a cornered animal, helpless, and shrived up in ready to die. Black. The cold steel against my arm. The rough nylon with triple stitch edges covering my knees. Wet. Water.
Snap. What was that? I hear lashing sounds. And whipping sails. I blink my eyes open. Black.
I don’t know how long it was. But when it was over, we passed out of it just as fast. The black turned to blue. The blue became sky. In ten seconds it went from hell to sunlight. I felt no more rain. No more cold. Just breeze. I open my eyes. I saw the sun. I saw land, not two miles off. Water drips off my hair. A rope loosely whips against the mast, the hollow metal imitating a slow rhythmic cathedral bell. The genoa is a wreck. The sail flaps limply in the wind, the ropes and anchors that secured them were nowhere to be seen. I move one rain boot from under the other, put one down, then the other, then balanced my weight. Just standing up was that hard. I stood there in shell shock from what just had happened. I did a 360, slowly turning, seeing the sunny Swedish coast in front of us, the open sky and sun, and turning behind us, the black mass that spanned half the horizon. I was alive. My dad, was silent, still at the tiller. I couldn’t remember what all we said or shouted to each other to stay alive. Neither of us heard anything. I was alive. I wouldn’t call it a bonding experience, because we do that everyday, but my dad and I literally ventured through hell, in a twenty-minute dose. I looked back at him, he looked at me, we shared the same expression of nothing. We were rodents in the food chain; compared to nature. I climbed over the rigging to help him secure the sail. Land ho.
and if you're not a boat person you probably only understood half that, but it's cool you got this far. thanks for reading. now tell me what you think for a 6 page paper spewed out in an hour. if you read it please leave a comment.
thanks.
Ken
i couldn't think of one.. so i just thought back to the one place i love. the one place i'd learned to be me.
the sea.
you are by no means obligated to read this, i turned it in today and thought i might as well share it. it's not a very good representation of my writing or style, i never write in first person. i typed it during lunch, slacker me, i didn't even revise it, i just sat, typed, and spellchecked. you may find it entertaining.
Here I write, of June 19, 2003.
Nine knots. Full sail. Bearing 270. Thud. thud. The drumbeat began, rain softly deflecting off the deck. Drip, drip, drip, the clanking noises of rain against the stainless steel railing kept me alert. The full-out mainsail caught the rain and channeled it on to the deck, but we needed every bit of sail to catch the light breeze. My hand tightened on the tiller. I stood aft, on the deck of the cockpit, my feet sliding on the wood. "Hey, what are you makin’ down there?" I shouted toward the open cabin hatch. He didn't hear me. The aroma of coffee glided up from the cabin, mixing with the fresh rain as an answer. It was just another day, my father and I alone out on the Baltic. last i knew of, we were in Sweden, but it'd been a few days straight of sailing. "Bearing 273, I think we're a little east, I’m gunna’ take twenty west to clear that sandbar." I said. "270 by the chart, and yeah" BEEP BEEP BEEP the depth finder began to complain "be sure to give that island a wide berth." My dad now emerged standing in the hatch, steaming coffee in one hand, binoculars in the other. "Okay, spinnaker at six o’clock, barge at nine, but at least six miles off." My dad said as he conducted a perimeter check. "Alright’ I replied, my hands loosely correcting, and over correcting the rudder. It had been a pleasant day thus far, mid afternoon was never interesting. Last night's anchor watch had left me sleepless, but the freezing cold rain kept me up. The thick layers of raingear kept me dry, but not warm at all. My hair was soaked, and my bare feet sat in a puddle of icy salt water. For me, just another day.
The waves began to pick up. I didn’t notice it as much first, with the sun peaking through the clouds, the bulky raingear blocking out the wind, but not the cold. I stood there on the aft deck, glancing from the bobbing compass needle, to the waves breaking over the bow. “Uhh..” I began, and after regaining my voice, I continued “Dad, we’ve got white tips, and further west doesn’t look much good.” I heard some noise from the cabin below and heard my dad click on the radio to channel thirty-five for a weather broadcast, the crackling static voice over the radio began to spill bad news. “What’s the barometer at?” I asked unsteadily. No response. I held my course west, my hand gripping tighter on the tiller, as the rain now fell in waves, each more painful than the last. I glanced up at the tip of the mast, the miniature wind cups danced in fast little circles. And that confirmed that the wind was now blowing harder and colder in my face, it wasn’t just my imagination. Knock, knock, knock. My dad’s feet ascended the wooden ladder and joined mine in a puddle of freezing water as we silently assessed the sails. “Cut down the main to half, or less, bring in most the genoa, and start the diesel?” I asked, trying the read my dad’s mind. The wind was from the east, directly behind us, and it was getting unstable and unpredictable as it began to pick up. From my position in the cockpit I leaned inside the cabin and inspected the navigation console. The depth finder read fourteen meters, no fish under the hull. The radar was blank, covering a five mile blanket. “Hey wasn’t there another yacht trailing us a while ago?” I whispered to myself. The beautiful fifty foot pearl colored yacht we had paralleled from this morning had vanished. The radio played static, reset at emergency channel sixteen. The GPS was spewing out numbers, and I matched them with the last plot on the chart. We were probably another two maybe three hours from the cove we wanted to spend the night in. At the speed we were going, we could have made it across the Baltic in a day. Land was not far off. I looked over at my dad who had begun to unclip the rigging and adjust the sail. I and began to correct the steering once again.
My twenty second break from concentrating on our course had cost me ten degrees left. The mainsail flapped loosely due to losing its trim. I had to fight the rudder to comply, fighting against the now higher waves. The mainsail snapped back into a full bend. I saw a swell forming up head and turned into it to minimize the impact. The boat hull bucked, and leaned up, then down. My dad finally spoke: “Low pressure, there’s a cold front directly ahead, there’s been a storm warning issued for this coast. The wind’s gunna’ pick up some more, and yes, we do have white tips.” My dad pointed out to the four-foot waves encompassing the hull, the tips of the waves were white, because the wind was now blowing so hard it cut the peaks off. The main sail began to flap more violently. I stepped back, away from the boom, in fear that it might swing back into my chest and threaten to knock me overboard. I gripped tighter still on the tiller, my hand white, with rain running between my fingers. The sky had long since turned from grey, to charcoal, to black. While my dad focused on fighting the lines, I remained concentrated on my job. I stared at the compass. 270. A wave pulled the boat up, then down. 272. I turned the tiller a quarter turn. 269. Another wave. 273. I fought the wave as it passed over. The felt the boat slow as the mainsail dropped. My dad took the mainsail all the way in; the mast now a naked white pole. He began working on the violently flapping genoa. 271. I continued to micromanage the steering. 269. I looked up at the wave breaking over the bow. And then I broke concentration and looked beyond the bow. It was black. My heart must have skipped a beat.
It was as if the situation had suddenly been taken off mute. Now that I’d bothered to look beyond the compass needle and my hand on the tiller, I took in the situation. There was no longer open sea in front of me. The sky was black, the sea was blackish-green, the space in between was black. I looked back at where we had come from, and there was a grey sliver of light several miles back. I was astonished. A storm had spawned right over my head, hitting our exact position like a laser-guided weapon. And the worst of it was up ahead. I braced myself on the railing; the wind almost knocking me down. The noise of the waves and the water and the wind, and everything else all at once cut out any hope of shouting to my dad. Squinting, I saw him through the dense rain, still fighting the genoa, which grew smaller with every grinding turn. 287. I’d lost most control, as we were now drifting as much as were going forward; helpless at we were sucked toward a black something in front of us. Holding the binoculars my dad had left in the cockpit, I brought them up to my eyes, my other hand railing, with my hip braced against the tiller. I fiddled with the focus knob, and finally got a look at the black in front of me. It wasn’t a storm. Storms are spread over miles. What was in front of us was a wall. So much concentrated water that it obstructed all view. There was no way around it, and we were being pushed, by all the forces of mother nature, toward it. First things first, we needed to get the rest of the sail down. My dad struggled, fighting the single blue rope that rolled the genoa. I grabbed on right behind him and gave it everything I had. I couldn’t hear anything, see anything, I just knew that we had to get the sail in before the wind would catch it and take control of the boat. Or worse. The tiller lay limp, tapping against my hip, steering was almost pointless. I felt the rope buck like a wild stallion in my hands, winning and losing inch by inch. I looked up, and the wall still lay before us. Inevitable. I was a prisoner on death row. Gallon after gallon drenched my entire body. I tasted salt water from the waves and rainwater from the sky. The wall lay before us. The rudder had almost no control, and trimming the genoa to get us a straight path would be impossible. Even as fast as we were going, be needed to stay straight. If we were to survive what lay before us, we needed to hit it head on. Bearing 300. Not good enough. I staggered forward through sheets of grey water. I felt inside the cabin and turned the ignition on the diesel. The sixty horsepower engine whined and kicked to life. Crawling on all fours back to the tiller, I threw the throttle lever to full, and even still, I can’t even hear the engine down below. I can’t hear anything. Like a static radio, there was only noise, deafeningly loud, all around. As the waves came, and passed, I don’t even notice. I can’t hear, see, think, or move. I just grip the rail. My dad climbs back from the rigging. He jumps into the cockpit, and grabs the tiller, bringing us head to head with what looked like the end. I go limp, and find myself in the corner, crouched down, hugging my knees like a little girl, wrapped around the railing. The smooth stainless steel railing is all I feel. Cold to the touch, but not nearly as cold as the wave, after wave after wave. Everything keeps getting louder. I see the silhouette of my dad. Then I close my eyes. I feel the hull rock, thirty degrees left, then right, then up, then down. Everything happened too suddenly to get seasick. And then we hit the wall.
Everything went black. Mute. Like being 200 feet under water, the pressure beating on you from all sides. I couldn’t breathe. I was a cornered animal, helpless, and shrived up in ready to die. Black. The cold steel against my arm. The rough nylon with triple stitch edges covering my knees. Wet. Water.
Snap. What was that? I hear lashing sounds. And whipping sails. I blink my eyes open. Black.
I don’t know how long it was. But when it was over, we passed out of it just as fast. The black turned to blue. The blue became sky. In ten seconds it went from hell to sunlight. I felt no more rain. No more cold. Just breeze. I open my eyes. I saw the sun. I saw land, not two miles off. Water drips off my hair. A rope loosely whips against the mast, the hollow metal imitating a slow rhythmic cathedral bell. The genoa is a wreck. The sail flaps limply in the wind, the ropes and anchors that secured them were nowhere to be seen. I move one rain boot from under the other, put one down, then the other, then balanced my weight. Just standing up was that hard. I stood there in shell shock from what just had happened. I did a 360, slowly turning, seeing the sunny Swedish coast in front of us, the open sky and sun, and turning behind us, the black mass that spanned half the horizon. I was alive. My dad, was silent, still at the tiller. I couldn’t remember what all we said or shouted to each other to stay alive. Neither of us heard anything. I was alive. I wouldn’t call it a bonding experience, because we do that everyday, but my dad and I literally ventured through hell, in a twenty-minute dose. I looked back at him, he looked at me, we shared the same expression of nothing. We were rodents in the food chain; compared to nature. I climbed over the rigging to help him secure the sail. Land ho.
and if you're not a boat person you probably only understood half that, but it's cool you got this far. thanks for reading. now tell me what you think for a 6 page paper spewed out in an hour. if you read it please leave a comment.
thanks.
Ken