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A death at sea

I met Gideon Sillem a week ago when we pulled into Cascais, Portugal late Thursday night after an, alternately, placid and harrowing passage through the Bay of Biscay.
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I met Gideon Sillem a week ago when we pulled into Cascais, Portugal late Thursday night after an, alternately, placid and harrowing passage through the Bay of Biscay. He and his wife, friends of the Pirate Princess, not to be confused with The Princess – gratuitous reference – were going to join us as far as Gibraltar. At 62 years old, he was as anxious as a kid about to embark on long-awaited summer vacation. He’d been looking forward to this trip since his wife had first mentioned it. He had new clothes, books to read, a pre-assigned crew position, cook, and, for all I know, had name labels sewn into his underwear. He was giddy Gideon.

Having left the marina long after midnight, he returned at the crack of dawn with a much needed hose fitting – one of many holdouts in the European "Union" seem to be marinas; each country has slightly different water and power connections and the only constant seems to be no matter how many you carry with you, you never have the right one – and threw himself into the endless job of washing salt off the boat at an hour the Wizard and I were pounding back coffee and wondering what manner of crazy man this was we were about to take aboard.

After a lay day to take care of laundry, largely soiled during a gale that saw us surfing down the lee side of waves towering over our flybridge, itself about seven metres above the water, at speeds we can never reach under engine power alone, we set out provisioning for the next leg of the journey.

Cascais is a burgeoning town west of Lisbon. A sleepy, relatively unknown fishing village when I stumbled into it by accident almost 30 years ago, it has suffered the ravages of Eurotourism and is now largely a chi-chi spot for expats with a yearning for warmer weather and econotourists looking for a nasty sunburn and a cheap hotel. What used to be a sparkling stretch of white sand beach that ran almost unbroken from Cascais to Estoril a few kilometres east, is now a tawdry boardwalk with an unbroken barricade of mansions perched high behind fortressed walls, an endless promenade of hustlers hawking cheap trinkets, ice cream stands and indifferent cafes meeting the endless thirst English tourists seem to have for egg and chips no matter where they are in the world. The architectural excesses of the wealthy, and absent, McMansion owners is dwarfed by the bland tastelessness of Estoril’s public buildings, culminating in a conference centre that is a screaming, textbook argument for strong zoning bylaws. Scratch that one off the ‘places to return’ to list.

But almost as a throwback to the Before Time, a bonus for long-time residents and a tradition too valuable to be co-opted for the sake of tourism dollars, the market at Cascais still operates much as it has for decades. Wednesdays and Saturdays, the market square comes alive with produce, local bread and cheese, fish mongers and butchers. In the market, at an hour best described as the freakin’ crack of dawn Saturday morning, Gideon was in his element, racing between favourite merchants to provision the leisurely meals he had in mind for the next several days. Despite the warnings my Perfect Partner – who rejoined this voyage in Cascais – and I repeated about limited storage and the danger of soft, easily damaged fruit on a boat at sea, Gideon’s enthusiasm sorely tested our storage capacity.

When we left Cascais later Saturday, it was the kind of day a wannabe pirate dreams of being at sea. A light breeze, a gentle chop, a lazy day of good sun, good sea and good company and an uneventful hop to Lagos, on the Algarve, where we docked in time for cocktails and Gideon’s first turn in the galley. He grilled fresh sardines – the national food of Portugal – dressed pasta with his homemade cilantro pesto and served it to us with pride and gusto, toasting a successful day and more good days ahead.

All in all, not a bad last meal.

Gideon died at sea the next day. We were caught in an unexpectedly strong headwind blowing out of the east. The wind and seas were what we expected when we got to the Straits of Gibraltar but were far from the forecast we’d downloaded earlier that morning for the stretch of water we were on. By the time we realized what we were in for, we were hours from the nearest port, Cadiz, Spain, and Gideon was suffering the effects of seasickness. An hour out of Cadiz he collapsed and died. I spent that last hour with Gideon performing hopeless CPR, spelled at the end by my Perfect Partner while the Wizard and I assisted the Pirate Princess in a dangerous docking on a seawall designed for cruise ships.

I don’t know whether Gideon’s heart gave out because of the seasickness, the fear he might have been feeling as we pounded through the waves, or whether his longtime heart condition simply picked that moment to make its last stand. It doesn’t really matter. There really isn’t that much comfort to take in the manner of death, even when it comes quickly, seems relatively painless, and sneaks in while the victim is having, well, the time of his life. To say he died doing what he dreamed of doing is one of those uniquely human constructs; a salve for the living, meaningless to the dead.

The space between being here and being gone, having fun and having nothing, is razor thin. Whether the lesson comes at sea or on our mountains, as it did again this week, the lesson is always the same: this is life, boys and girls; it ain’t no dress rehearsal. Live it like it’s the only one you have… because it is. Love, play, work, love some more. Tomorrow is today so don’t wait for tomorrow.

What more can I say?