Maps

“Yes, you can do it alone, now that you have the map,” a friend reassures mountain climber Louise Heinemann (from “Out and About in Baltistan,” in the 1992 Seal Press anthology, Leading Out).

I have at least three maps, or charts, of this marine area: Habibi’s navigation system; a boating app on the phone; and Captain Pat Rains’ paperback, Mexico Boating Guide. I learned to read maps before I hit puberty, thanks to a gloriously long camping expedition up the west coast of the U.S.A. and over to Montana and back. (Mom needed Glacier; we lived there years earlier.) 

Daily sailing lessons continue near Mazatlán, but without the latest instructor. Come to find out he ran his boat aground while sailing drunk. And a scuba student died on his watch. So I cut out the middling muddling middle man. Again. None of them were familiar with Habibi anyway, a Gulfstar 37 made in Florida circa 1979. But she speaks to me. 

Propeller, she says one day. Propeller, she repeats the next. So I freedive down and, sure enough, lotta sea flora needs to be scraped off, and a sacrificial zinc needs changing. (Better the zinc corrodes, instead of the shaft and strut.)

Navionics, she whispers three days in a row, so I break out the phone, and yes! the boating app subscription bought for last year’s sailing course is still in effect. Hello, updated and detailed charts.

Sailing uses all of me: brains, brawn, sensitivity, discipline, resilience. And yes — it is, and has been, a helluva lot of work, with many terrifying moments and injuries. But I am finally in the ocean all the time. Only hunger drives me ashore. 

Take that, all you naysayers, lousy teachers, bad romancers. The heat, the hurricanes, the bugs, the paralyzing doubt, the broken water pump, the heavy dinghy, the hull blisters and barnacles, the oglers, the mean girls, the pontificators and patronizers, the liars and cheaters, the faux friends and family, the jackasses. I am the Captain. Get out of my way.

And, yes, for every single one of those devils, seven angels eased my way. Marina managers, panga heroes, encouraging artists, writers and readers, guards and clerks — all helpful strangers. All a reminder of what I learned crossing the continent towing the tiny house on wheels: it is a benevolent planet. We are Love(d).