Comfort Zone

“Go simple. Go solo. Go now.” – Audrey Sutherland, Paddling North

I wasn’t exactly solo. I was in radio contact with a kindly buddy boat for a lot of the voyage south. But I was definitely single-handing Habibi — the only human on board. And it was great! I knew what to do and when to do it. All catastrophic thinking stopped once I hauled anchor, put her in gear, and headed for the open sea.

The first several hours I spent messing with the sails. (Why can’t you be more like the jib, Mainsail? Look at her nice shape!) Then the wind died, and it was motor city. Early the next afternoon a breeze caressed my face, and exhaustion fell away. Sails up! Five nautical miles an hour, baby!

Twenty-four and a half hours after I cranked the anchor up in Mazatlán – that’s twenty-four and a half hours on the watch for tankers, cruise ships, shrimpers, and other hazards; twenty-four and a half hours of delicious, rolling, sunset, star-filled, sunrise solitude – I dropped anchor next to my buddy Good Day at Isla Isabela, a national wildlife preserve.

Yes, I can do it.

So I jumped in the celadon sea to celebrate. And promptly freaked out. I mistook an old, rusting, abandoned anchor for my own, seemingly detached from the boat. But my neighbors assured me that Habibi was not dragging, and I realized that I was. Ha. They graciously fed me and returned me home.

Terror strips me of strength and logic. But upon meditation and reflection I remember that, yeah, so much can go wrong, but in reality, so much usually goes well. Disasters get the big press. Like the marina man who saw me carrying swim gear and just had to tell me about the woman killed by a shark while swimming around her boat. I mean, really. The horror stories are endless.

“You don’t want a boat,” said a man in Florida years ago when I expressed interest. How the hell do you know, mister? You don’t have a clue who I am or what I want or what I need. Maybe you don’t want a boat.

But I do. The ocean is my comfort zone.