First Musing

Currently I am sitting in Camden, ME waiting to board a 38 ft. sailboat to make my first trans-Atlantic crossing. I have never sailed before. Neither has Doug. We are accompanied by two gentlemen we met last October 2022 in Sao Jorge, Azores who have sailed before (1 gentleman is Azorean and sailed the Atlantic crossing once, 22 years ago without electronic navigation and the other gentleman has delivered boats down to Florida and has retired from the Navy Seals) and they assure us that we are in good hands. I wish I could believe them, but I saw what they bought to eat the entire 13 day journey and I just don’t trust people that eat unironic cup o’ noodles (no shade, but we’re not hungover 20 yr old’s) and raw un-toasted bread sandwiches (it’s a thing - he even put cold raw hotdogs on the untoasted bread and rolled it up into a smushed tube sans condiments). Despite their lack of culinary artistry, I do think we are in capable company (famous last words) and I am anticipating all the beautiful things we will see, smell, hear, taste, and feel that will take my art to the next level. At the very least, I hope to see a whale. At the very most, I hope that we just arrive in one safe piece. I do admit, it seems a tad bit ambitious to just SAIL ACROSS THE ATLANTIC FOR 2000 MILES for our first journey, but go big or go home, amiright? Hopefully.

We have been learning to sail (a little bit) as we’ve been here. We were supposed to leave June 5th but because of low-pressure systems in the Atlantic our departure has been postponed several times so we’ve been occupying ourselves with doing a few little sails around the harbor and cleaning the boat (her name is Rose, a New York 40 - #7 of 21 ever made. She won a few races and was owned by George Lewis.) We have had the great honor and fortune to be taught how to sail by Larry Ellison (winner of 5 Maxi Championships, winner of 2 America’s Cup races, introducer of Kite Yachting (? no clue) and America’s Cup team coach) which was pretty amazing and eye-opening. He was incredibly informative, kind, and helpful. He guided us through tacking, jibing, reefing, and spinikaring (I have no idea if that’s what it is called or that’s how you spell it). I impressed him with using the term “laminar” (I guessed and ended up being right) and really impressed him by making Khao Soi (North Thai Chicken Curry Soup) for post-sail dinner but I think that was the extent of my impression. He doesn’t teach sailing anymore and is a captain for a massive tanker ship that travels to the Gulf of Mexico to the salmon fisheries and de-lices the salmon. They do it in a very innovative way that doesn’t use any chemicals; instead they suck up all the fish in a giant tube, much like how I imagine an alien ship beaming up Bovidae. The fish get vacuumed through the tube and thumped through a 5-story pipe switchback thing that incrementally changes the water temperature from cold to hot which kills the lice! No chemicals used whatsoever. My recall and retention for all the information I learned about salmon de-licing was far greater than the sailing information.

Our second sailing excursion was slightly less informative and infinitely more chaotic. Cam Lewis (the previous boat owner and the man who owns the original Trophee de Jules Verne - sailing across the world in 80 days - literally he did it with a team of Frenchmen and then wrote a book about it) decided to join us on our practice sail around the harbor and not only would he be joining us but he would be bringing his recently widowed step-mother, Kitsy. Needless to say, we (mostly I) were terrified of the scrutiny of world class sailors on the second sail of our lives, but Cam wasn’t the problem. He was incredibly kind, helpful, pointed out things. It was Cam’s step-mother that was the anxiety inducing. She had to be at least 80 and she was a huge bitch. A teeny tiny woman, but a very large entitled personality - she was from a WASP-y OG colonizer family/$$$, attitude to match and she wouldn’t shut the fuck up about “trouncing the Redcoats at Bunker Hill”. She also was a world class sailor and let us know that over and over and over. She was flabbergasted that we didn’t know how to read the wind by it grazing our cheeks (on our second sail). She was shocked that we didn’t know what a spinaker was (it was our second sail). She thought I was an idiot for not knowing how to navigate using the sun’s angle on the horizon (I am pretty sure she didn’t know how to do that either, but I held my tongue politely). She kept screeching “Does anyone on this damn boat know how to sail?!” while just sitting next to the wheel with her little bird legs sticking straight out and giant puffy boots on, not helping, just criticizing while her three strands of wispy hair were swept wildly by the wind she insisted she could read with her cheek skin.