The Yoga of Sailing

Chapter 4

‘Well,’ Dad continued, after grabbing a handful of nuts, ‘You Buddhists get all hung up on suffering. Life isn’t about suffering.’

Emily, my eldest daughter, wandered over, cautiously curious. She grew up when I was always rushing off to another spiritual retreat or evening or weekend. Her father accused me of being selfish and self indulgent. He claimed my spiritual interests obsessively missed the point. My problems were emotional not spiritual, he’d said, and my retreats were a way of not facing them or him. Emily didn’t know what to think. Maybe her dad and I would still be together if I hadn’t gone off like I did.

My arm crept around her waist. She’s been my steady companion since the end of my marriage. Now she wants to break free and find out who she is without me. She wasn’t at all sure about the sailing trip, but at least she can fly home with Jack if she’s miserable. She listened to the conversation, soaking it up with one ear and rejecting it angrily with the other. Jack, her boyfriend, sat near the door all evening, pretty much on his own, drinking beer. Charlotte, my youngest daughter, kept him company recounting stories about drunken friends. I returned to the kitchen for more wine.

The morning of our departure arrives. One wave at a time, Tonga is 1000 nautical miles away. We have from May until November to cruise the South Pacific. The cyclone season, when most of the boat-capsizing, mast-breaking storms blow, starts in November. We motor out of the marina into the Waitemata Harbour. Emily, Jack and I are a tentative crew. We cross the Hauraki Gulf – daytime recreational waters for Auckland sailors – and head for the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula. The boat sails well, which is good. Several hours pass.

Dad points out Tryphena harbour on a chart of Great Barrier Island.

‘We’ll go in here for the night, so we can get the boat shipshape and find our sea legs.’ He hands Jack a beer and sits down with him. ‘Well, Jack, this is your last chance to leave. We’re heading straight for Tonga tomorrow. The ferry back to Auckland goes in the morning.’

Dad is joking, almost. Jack doesn’t look too good.

He cringes slightly and turns away to hide his thoughts. “Was agreeing to this trip a big mistake? Would I be chickening out if I left now?” He is only just a man at twenty-four and doesn’t know anything about sailing.

I dive into our new situation with exaggerated confidence. I cook and re-stow our stores. Dad radiates an air of global acceptance. He’s the only one with any clue about what lies ahead. Emily’s mood I hardly notice; I take her willingness to be here for granted.

On the evening of our second day at sea, the last shadows of land fade. We’re alone in the great ocean. The moody ocean is no place for Jack. Emily’s resigned – to what she’s not quite sure. Dad’s busy with the radio, fiddling the knobs. He checks the wires and connections again; all he gets is crackling and a pale green light. Auckland Cruising, a team of volunteers on shore who follow cruisers and forecast the weather, expect us to call in with our position and course. They’re our safety net.

The sea turns to glass, cheerily reflecting the stars, as we roll helplessly in the swell, rigging jangling, sails hanging loose. Not moving at all is about as bad as it gets for me. Fortunately, a new wind comes up and we’re off again.

‘Mum, I can’t eat. I don’t feel well, neither does Jack.’

Emily hands back half-eaten meals. They slouch on watch, then crumple up on their bunks. They don’t talk, even to each other. Dad doesn’t look happy either. Maybe he’s frustrated with the radio and the lack of general order?

‘They’ll get over their seasickness. Emily is normally very helpful,’ I reassure him.

‘Seasickness can be a serious problem,’ he warns. ‘I heard of one woman who was airlifted off a yacht because she was so sick.’

I’m happy to be here, doing something exciting. I left work six months ago, burnt out, all brain fuses blown, and after months of recuperating, I turned into a roving handyman, never sleeping more than a few days in the same place. I worked on Dad’s boat, helped Mum paint her kitchen and bathroom, did renovations on my seaside home at Orere Point and fibreglassed the deck of a rental property I have in town. A roving handyman is not the sort of person I want to be. Dream-maker is a haven of stability. I need to find my way back to deep stirrings that meant everything to me many years ago.

Four days of sailing and my head starts hammering loudly. I creep into my quarter berth to die, but I can’t leave Dad alone. Emily and Jack are seasick around the clock. I can’t be sick, and that’s all there is to it. I climb down gingerly in the morning and swallow two Panadol – they have no effect. Dad hunts down a triple-strength prescription pain-killer – it works.

Dad is rock-solid, good-humoured and methodical. He knows the ocean. I follow him up on deck and pull at pieces of rope with strange names like halyard and sheet. He doesn’t sleep or eat much; none of us eats much. He studies the clouds and sea, frowns and resets the sails.

After six days, we’ve covered 400 nautical miles with 600 to go. That’s slow, an average speed of 5-6 knots, about 10 kilometres an hour. Twice a day, with dividers and pencil, I plot co-ordinates from the GPS onto the chart, with small crosses close together making a jagged trail across the Pacific. The wind’s still blowing across the bow, almost directly from Tonga. We can’t hold the most direct course. If we turn any further into the wind, the sails will collapse. I don’t want to tell Emily and Jack how slow progress is.

‘Mum, what will I do when I run out of sea sickness pills?’ She rushes out to vomit over the side. ‘Jack’s headache is worse. He’s going to die. How far have we got to go?’

I go over to Jack. ‘Here’s a sleeping pill – take it. You need a break – I’ll do your watch.’

He stares back, greenish-white behind the freckles and limp movements, and shakes his head. Ashen and gaunt, he drags himself into the cockpit and slumps under the dodger to wait out his three-hour watch, every now and then hanging over the side to throw up, too despairing to put on his harness. A boarding wave could send him over as well. A wispy ghost-like voice rises up from below offering him crackers.

Day follows day in the same unhappy way. Eventually Jack confesses in a raspy voice: ‘I’m in the recurring nightmare of my childhood. In my dream I’m on a small boat in the middle of the sea. The boat is about to sink with me in it.’ He tries to smile. ‘There’s nothing I can do. My nightmare is going to come true. I know. I shouldn’t have come.’

He collapses back down to his bed.

Holding the glass of juice for Emily, I grab the end of the navigation table to steady myself. The boat plunges down, the juice lifts off from the glass and sprays over the already coffee-stained chart. My stomach lurches; I swallow hard and grab a cloth from the sink. My legs flex and wobble. I could give up, but I can’t. I lurch back into the galley, wedge myself in tightly and pour another glass. Emily and Jack would probably recover if we had a break from the movement and noise. Water sloshes around in the toilet bowl like someone’s throwing up all the time.

Going to the toilet is almost impossible in a rough sea. Emily opens the heavy teak door. It pulls free and swings wildly open and shut, banging. Gripping her knees around the toilet, elbows wedged against the walls, she pulls her trousers down. Her stomach heaves but she resists the impulse to turn and put her face down the bowl. Finally she wipes her bottom without losing her balance, crashes into the basin, and drags her trousers up with one hand. Forget about washing hands.

I jump with relief when Dad calls, ‘Alice, we have to put up the storm sail.’ I pull on my raincoat and waterproof pants. ‘I don’t think the main will hold up in this wind,’ Dad yells, almost drowned out by the wind. ‘Put on your harness.’

First I clip on my new self-inflating lifejacket, which I bought especially, and attach the ragged safety-halyard, first to the lifejacket and then to the boat. Dad uses a thirty-year-old piece of tied rope for his halyard. Fighting against the wind and spray, we drag the storm sail on deck and tie it to the boom. I release the main and try to tug it down. Then I grab clumps, nails breaking, and pull with all my weight. The wind forces the sail against lazy jacks, which are meant to make dropping a sail easy. We shackle the small orange tri-sail to the halyard. I winch it up until Dad shouts ‘Stop,’ and then cleat it tightly against the mast. This physical work of sailing is exhilarating.

I soak up the good outside sounds, like the howling wind, rising and falling, adding a piercing whistle when it finds a hole to blow through. It’s roaring now, racing the boat through the waves. The headsail adds to the symphony with a rebellious flap – it often does this because it’s old and doesn’t set well. The sea crashes and sometimes gently laps, adding a constant tenor to the chorus. Rigging rattles and chimes all the time. The different voices come together and then stray apart, crying their song to no one in particular.

After a week at sea, my rubber sea legs wobble steadily through the rolls and crashes. I decide to wash the dishes – there aren’t many, even after a week. I pump a little water in the bottom of the sink. Any more than a couple of inches will fly out in the next boat roll.

It’s time to fix the stove which is hanging uselessly in the corner – it came off its brackets days ago. Wedged into the corners of the galley, I hold it up while Dad gets in behind.

‘Looks like a screw’s come out,’ he calls. ‘Easily fixed. Can you hold it for a bit longer?’

‘Sure.’

The kettle is soon boiling and I spoon powdered mushroom soup into everyone’s thermos cups.

Dad returns to the radio. The transmitting signal is still very weak. His boat is a junk yard of old, second-hand equipment that needs constant coaxing and tweaking. He knows what to do, though. He’s from the generation that can fix anything: plumbing, mechanical, electrical or metaphysical. He’s been on the inside of all his equipment many times.

Jack’s on his bed, waiting for the end, and discards his soup after a few sips. Tightening a loose screw won’t be enough to fix him.

‘Mum, I’ve used up all grandad’s pills now. What will I do?’

‘I don’t know.’

She glances over to Jack. He can’t save her. They’ve only been together a month or two. How did she end up here with her mum and grandad on this beastly boat?

‘I’m cooking scrambled eggs with bacon for lunch.’

With Emily’s encouragement, Jack eats a little. Dad eats alone in the cockpit, staring into space.

When I was young, Dad rebuilt two trimarans from dry, rotted shells. Every summer our family sailed up and down the coast of New Zealand. I never learned to sail – I just did what I was told. Now Dad explains everything we do, slowly and clearly, until I understand. I take over radioing our position and speed to Auckland Cruising every night.

Dad looks up from studying the chart and the GPS. ‘Alice, I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but we can’t get to Tonga. The wind’s directly on the nose. It’s too hard on Jack and Emily and on the boat. We’ll head for Fiji.’ Emily and Jack look relieved. ‘However, it will take us a few more days to get there.’

The groan from Jack is long and desperate. ‘I can’t last that long. This is too terrible.’

Emily would panic if it would help. On our new course, heading as far into the wind as we can, we’ll only just make Fiji, far to the west of Tonga.

Outside, the weather is changing. The wind has settled down to twenty-five knots with a three-metre swell. We’ve crept up to a latitude of 25 degrees, so it’s warm and the sky is a gentle misty-blue. During long solitary hours on watch, I gaze into the hazy horizon where the sky and sea dissolve together. I gaze into the sky, streaked with greyish-brown, like wild geese making their way home somewhere. I melt into beauty.

My relationship to life is changing. I had forgotten this great mysterious creature, ‘life’. She is calling me. She whispers, reminding me why I came away with my father on this boat – I came to meet her. When I turn over the question, ‘What is the meaning of my life?’, she appears in my heart as a wild, gentle presence and grows outside of me, huge and beautiful. When I am alone in vast nature, slipped away from my thoughts and plans, I recognise a different kind of relationship, one that connects me to her.

I remember pencil crosses marking my journey, the way I sailed in search of her. At school, I was in love with numbers and the beauty of scientific explanations. When I solved chemical and mathematical equations, organic, planetary resonances shivered inside me. I peered into the spiral-hearts of flowers, wondering if the curves travelled inwards forever. I slipped along xylem and phloem in the quietly reverent way plants seem to do. I devoured as many textbooks as my father could bring home from teacher’s training college, where he was a lecturer. At university, I majored in botany and zoology. I was looking for answers to the ‘what is the meaning of my life?’ question. I found none, because she was separate from me, on the outside. Though the scientific descriptions of her forms were rich and detailed, I wasn’t in the picture; I wasn’t part of her beauty.

I started a second and third degree in philosophy. Thought became the next pencil cross in my search for meaning. I studied treatises of German idealism, modern existentialism, philosophies of religion and theories of knowledge. I was trailing a small tribe of children by now. I lay in the bath, infant asleep on my breast, heavy philosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer propped on my island knees. Maybe these books would show me a place to live that wasn’t in my head. The ivory tower of philosophical analysis turned into a tortured game of thesis and antithesis.

I shook water droplets from the book covers and wrapped my babe in a towel. Western academia was a dead man’s land. I did glimpse ‘her’ in some of the pages. I could tell the great philosophers were men of knowledge. They had explored far more than the logical structure of an argument. Their ideas had grown from places deeper than my teachers had ventured, but I couldn’t get there by myself.

I unrolled my chart again to find not so many routes left. I plotted my next cross: spirituality. I didn’t even know what the word meant. I had always resisted gullibility, superstition and esoteric glamour. This cross scared me. I had explored the far reaches of Western thought and found them barren – l had no choice but to head east.

My family watched me slip away. The rational cliff edge I had been standing on my whole life crumbled and I fell far away from everything I had known, into the arms of mystery. I focused my well-trained mind on the subject of experience, the ‘I.’ My feet touched solid rock. I gained a glimpse of who I was, for the first time in my life. I met truth, the promised land. There was nothing to do but put out more sail. I was sure of success, I was sure I could stay in the arms of mystery and never return. I would make this mystery my home. My heart burst with such longing I thought I would break apart.

Wind rips past the sails. I gaze into the beauty of the indigo sky. ‘What is the meaning of my life?’ I ask the question again for the first time in many years. The question breaks up in the spray, while I squirm and refold myself in a different way. I’m making a fundamental error. Salty droplets of insight land on my face. I’m starting at the beginning again, hunting life’s meaning in the wrong place, in the thinking place. This question grew from a place behind my thinking mind, and ended up in a thought. On this trip, I want to explore the subtle byways of my feelings, I want to be still and open enough to find my way into a quality of knowing that doesn’t hold onto words. I want to find my way back to her, this beautiful mysterious creature I call life. This is where my quest to bring the ordinary and mystical together will begin. I have plenty of time.