Relax!

Relax already. We worked our butts off to get ready to leave. We researched and talked to a lot of people about what we will need for sailing and cruising. We put a lot of things on the Imagine to outfit her for cruising, but mostly to ease our minds and feel safe. Most cruisers will tell you to buy the whole lot of equipment. Most outfitters as well. There is a lot of.’you must have this and that’. Only few people have cruised extensively and really know. In the end, it is personal preference and what makes sense, budget and experience wise. Some cruisers prepare a lot less and are just fine. We just met a girl, who is sailing by herself down from LA and hadn’t been able to connect her fridge yet. She said she needed to get out sailing and will figure it out on the way. Others, I heard of, bought a boat and took everything off, because they felt an autopilot, hydraulic steering, radar, fridge, outboard motor etc need a lot of energy plus they didn’t want to deal with fixing it, because break it will. Instead they installed a windvane and isolated their icebox very well and also use cloths soaked in vinegar to keep their milk products fresh. They said ‘cruising shouldn’t be fixing-things-in-strange-places’.

And friend of ours, who thinks very much along the same purist lines, said ‘Fridge? Why? Reward yourself with a chilled beer when you arrive at the harbor.’ and ‘Watermaker? Learn how to catch water.’ She made one concession and installed an autopilot for her recent sail with one crew to New Zealand last year. She said afterwards that the two of them only used 1 gallon of water a day and her tank was plenty large for them to cross the Pacific and beyond. They cooked with sea water and took salt water showers. She is an old soul sailor, who has circumnavigated three times and therefore has thousands of nautical miles under her belt.
We are not that brave. We have so little experience that we feel we depend on electronics for navigation and weather. And other electronics provide entertainment, we are still so used to. When we have internet we communicate, post, email, talk as much as we can. Maybe one day, instead of updating the electronics and equipment, we will feel confident enough to take things off the Imagine again!
It took us over a year to get ready and we thought we had plenty of time to do our shake down and get back to San Diego to finish the last things. Then the weather changed and we got stuck in Marina del Rey for a week with small vessel advisory warnings. And then we were late on our schedule for San Diego and sailing down Baja California. We still have a deadline to be N of the 25° in the Sea of Cortez by June 15th because the nearing hurricane season makes it dangerous for us below.
Sailing and cruising on a schedule means a lot of motoring. We need to get places and the wind has to blow in the direction we’re heading. And the wind has to come up at the right time. Soon, very soon, we will wait for the wind, we will drift and go where the wind will take us. We will live by the wind. And relax.
Not easy that relaxing thing. As if pressure and schedules give us something to hold onto, create tension and that tension makes us feel safe. We create our own life with decisions, expectations, goals, schedules, stress. Everything seems super important like it would threaten our life, if we would have to live without it. We run to get it and run after it if it has eluded us. It seems without any comprehensive perspective. A former boss in the landscape installation business told me once ‘we are not working in an emergency room, we are only building gardens!’.
If we created it, we should be able to change it. In our new world, in which we are moving on average with 6.9 miles/ 11 kmh, marginally faster than riding a bicycle, other things are important. If the wind is coming up, the sails are trimmed well, the anchor set solidly, the tide is going out, if the current is pushing with or against us. Time has no value and schedules form according to the weather.
Yet, our minds are still full of shatter and clutter, of have-tos and plans. I will probably need to meditate for some weeks to ease into a clutter free mind, do yoga or nothing and learn to relax already.