Day 11: Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?
July 8th, 2021
In our little bubble of the hundred of cruisers we know and have met, crossing the Atlantic isn't a particularly big deal.
But on a larger scale, few people cross oceans in their own vessels.
There is a myriad of reasons why an ocean crossing is a hard thing to do and not a lot of people do it. First off, you need a boat, a few sailing skills, and lots of time on your hands to get ready. The list of what needs to be prepared, purchased, fixed, double-checked, serviced and triple-checked is massive. The equipment needed to cross an ocean crossing comfortably and safely can also be daunting, and cost-prohibitive.
Ryan and I estimated that we spent approximately 10 000$ to buy our offshore sailing kit. That includes satellite communications, an extensive medical kit, spare parts, better sails, extra jerricans of fuel… the list is long and adds up quickly.
Getting to the starting point of an ocean crossing is an endeavor, and while we often tell ourselves that the preparation is the hardest part of a crossing, challenges do not stop once you've untied the lines.
One aspect of crossing oceans that is a lot less discussed but not least challenging is how mentally overwhelming life onboard can be after a while.
Passed the initial excitement of departure and what I call “the discovery phase” of a passage, during which the crew practices their sea legs, goes on their first watches and explored the various aspects of life offshore, time becomes long, tasks monotonous and the small annoyements that come with sailing the distance can become a much bigger deal.
After 10 days at sea, losing our satellite communications, passing halfway across and having to gybe multiple times a day and night to keep our course, we definitely hit that point yesterday.
When it comes to long and tedious tasks in general, I am a very patient person.
There is a reason why I have an inkling for endurance sports, and it is that I am very good at putting myself in a mental place where I know that things take time, and focusing on the task at hand instead of projecting myself in a more comfortable future.
Endurance and resilience are mental muscles that one can train and stretch, but I have learned that not everyone tolerates very long and tedious tasks and we all have our own lows.
After the winds picked up so much that Polar Seal was nearly uncontrollably fast, (to quote Anett, we were going "FAST AF"), the night had once again been difficult on board.
We gybed, reefed, and reefed again as we averaged speeds between 8 and 10 knots. A strong sea current had been making the sea state agitated and we were rocking and rolling in the dark.
For the crew on deck, this meant that manœuvres were made more difficult and sensitive.
How fragile Life is never clearer than at 3 AM, when exhausted and sleep-deprived, you go walk on the wet foredeck of a boat that rocks and rolls in the dark to take a whisker pole down.
For the crew below trying to get some rest, this means being tossed around in bed and most likely not getting much sleep.
While Anett and Ryan had been doing sail adjustments all night, I had been starfishing my way to more or less stable sleeping positions in bed all night long before it was my turn to go on deck.
Ryan gave me an extra hour of (ahem…) “sleep”, but I was still groggy all morning, as the waves continued to toss us around like a little pinball in the giant ocean.
At 8 AM when my watch ended, Anett came up to take over, and oh boy, she looked at least as ready as I was to go back to bed.
But such are the ebbs and flows of life onboard, and after a very quick brief, I was, in fact, back in bed.
The sun was shining and the sails were full when I woke up again at 11 AM. Ryan had changed the ship’s clock to reflect our new position and it was now 12PM and time to gybe.
“Let’s have a little team meeting and discuss the plan before gybing,” he said overly enthusiastically.
I was a bit surprised. We rarely have “team meetings”, and when we do, it usually is to discuss something onboard that needs to be improved, such as overconsumption of water, or a feeling that not everyone is pulling their weight in terms of tasks and chores.
“Ok, everyone!!” He said in an unusually cheery voice. “Let’s do this gybe, and we can continue on to have a fantastic day and sail!”
Uh… yeah?
“Where is all this enthusiasm coming from today?!” I asked smiling.
“Well, it’s been a long time that we’ve been at sea and we really need to keep the morale up.”
I know what he meant. It had been days that Anett looked a bit down, and I found Ryan to be a lot more irritable than normal.
When discussing weather-routing and passage planning for the remaining 400 nautical miles of (which we were now blindly relying on our weather router Charlie for), the two of them sounded like struck by a case of “getting-there-itis”.
“Get-there-itis” is a disease that affects sailors who, for one reason or another, need to make it to their destination preferably right now or yesterday, in order to get off the boat as fast as possible. "You gotta get there, you know..."
Symptoms are (but are not limited to): tunnel vision on the goal, an urge to speed up the boat, a magnet-like attraction to the rhumb line to destination, tendencies to challenge the weather forecasts to accommodate the need to get there, and constant desire to turn on the engine to accelerate.
Aggravating factors can be : bad sailing conditions, breakage, seasickness, growing intolerance to another crew member, etc…
Clearly, the “get-there-itis” had made its way to Polar Seal, and I was dealing with not only one, but two cases of it onboard.
We gybed, ate lunch, and while Ryan and Anett were discussing B-lining our way on the engine to Horta, I went down in the galley to pull out the big guns.
"Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?!" Ryan asked...
I baked simultaneously a batch of bacon bread, Ryan's favorite, and Tiramisu, Anett's favorite. I will also admit to having spiked that Tiramisu with a little more rum in the biscuits than I would normally use (after all, this cake was meant to be "uplifting")
This also allowed me to have a little mental space in the galley, as I didn't want to get into a discussion of "how should we make it to the Azores".
Charlie, our weather router, was recommending us to go much farther North than the Azores so that we would catch a better angle to the wind. The weather forecast, he told us, looked like stronger Westerlies would blow above the Azores, and the best option was for us to sail first up North-North East to then turn South-South East to the Azores.
For a person struck by a case of "get-there-itis", this sounded like a lot of extra work compared to a good old rhumb line straight to the destination, and Ryan was calculating how much fuel we could afford to motor the rhumb line, even into the wind.
Because we did not have the full picture (ie, an actual grib file to look at), I knew that we didn't have all the data to make a decision, and I did not feel like participating in the discussion.
Charlie had been giving us excellent advice until now, and I trusted his advice. Besides, we were still several hundred of miles away from the destination and the forecast definitely had time to change until then.
So a couple of hours later, I took the bacon bread and the tiramisu up in the cockpit, and the atmosphere onboard completely switched.
The sunset was pretty, the winds were good and we were making good speed. The bacon bread was a success, and the tiramisu *very* uplifting.
Sailing across oceans is hard. It is long, tiring and mentally draining. At some point during a passage, we have all ended up in a rut, down the drain, or stuck in a low.
It stretches the resilience muscles sometimes a little farther than they can go, and never fails to teach you a good lesson or two about who you are. And so this is what we do.
We challenge ourselves, develop strategies to continue, and try our best to make the boat a slightly more comfortable space for each other. And once on land, we draw our conclusions, reflect on the lessons we've learned, and hopefully go back at sea a little better, a little wiser.
Sailing across oceans pushes us out of our comfort zone, and what we learn there is the reason why we keep getting back to it.
And of course... tomorrow is always a new day :)
