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Running away from running away to sea

There was a brief moment in my freshman year at college where I gave serious consideration to dropping out, joining the Navy, seeing the world and either losing myself or finding myself at sea.
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There was a brief moment in my freshman year at college where I gave serious consideration to dropping out, joining the Navy, seeing the world and either losing myself or finding myself at sea. I was semi-despondent over having been dropped by my girlfriend but mostly humiliated at having been replaced by a guy with one eyebrow and scabby knuckles who wanted to beat me up because I’d congratulated her on discovering the Missing Link. And I was truly despondent over the imminent prospect of losing my draft deferral because I was about to flunk Organic Chemistry, a class I’d taken after spotting the fickle ex-girlfriend at registration and saying, "I’ll take what she’s taking."

As fate would have it, I passed the exam, tricked a new girl into dating me and changed my major to psychology in order to more fully understand the power of depression to make a guy contemplate doing seriously stupid things.

But the idea of running away to sea never completely left me. It was, I discovered as life got more complicated, at least as good a solution to the seemingly insurmountable woes of adult reality as repression, which I’d learned studying psychology was not the healthy panacea I’d been led to believe it was during my formative years.

The romance of the sea, coupled with the poetic grace of sailboats, always seemed to be a perfect exit plan whenever the grim reality of realizing I’d gone to work for a bank snuck up on me. Since that grim reality seemed to sneak up eight or ten times a day, Monday through Friday, I pretty much spent my brief career in banking being snapped back to the here and now by something someone would say, to which I’d invariably respond, "Aye, matey," a response that tended to foster my image as both an eccentric and, quite likely, not executive material.

I first started to sour on the sailing away to paradise fantasy when I began crewing for a guy who raced his sailboat on Wednesday evenings. Now, I know racers are a sub-variant of sailors. And in the same way ski racers are similar to skiers, albeit lacking in the social graces, they have an innate ability to suck the joy out of what can be a fun experience. My idea of sailing involves a refreshing beverage in one hand, the wheel in the other, very few clothes, short days and long cocktail hours. The racer’s idea of sailing involves screaming at crew, everybody moving in a blur or not moving at all, no beverages whatsoever and a congratulatory après race celebration that centres around cleaning up the boat.

But racing didn’t extinguish the flame entirely and, having been invited to the maiden voyage of the Pirate Princess’ new ship, the old fantasy – grudgingly modified for a boat powered by engines rather than sails – sprung to life. Having been on a Mediterranean cruise on the Princess’ old boat and enjoyed a couple of weeks of good weather, good seas and loads of leisure time, I expected the same… only better.

As shown in the graphic aid below, I packed accordingly, loading up on extra sunscreen. Only as an afterthought did I toss in a toque and pair of light polypro gloves, just in case the Atlantic was a bit chilly.

The reality of the last month is more accurately demonstrated, again with the advantage of cutting-edge graphics, by the pie chart below. A typical day’s sailing garb included ski sox, heavy tights, rain pants, long underwear, the warmest fleece I own, a rain jacket, toque, gloves and, if I’d have thought to bring them, goggles, a helmet and mouthpiece to protect my teeth, which didn’t stop chattering until we reached Portugal.

And while I’ve finally begun to require clothing designed for modesty and/or sun protection – now that we’ve reached Sardinia, an island we didn’t plan to visit but were blown to by a gale that wouldn’t let us reach Corsica, an island we did plan to visit – I’m still having a bit of trouble living the dream. The dream, almost impossible to kill, revolves around leisurely mornings, brisk swims, short passages between remote islands, long lunches, more swims, naps in the sun, shorter passages, long cocktail hours and dinners followed by midnight swims under tropical moons.

Something like this.

But aside from the ‘unusual’ crappy weather, the repairs, the lay days hunkered down while whole towns blew by over our heads, a plague of jellyfish and a moment of utter terror when we realized we’d run out of rum, I completely forgot to factor in the single most onerous, time-consuming activity boatpeople engaged in: cleaning the boat. Because of this oversight, my reality has looked more like this.

Boatpeople are psychopathic about cleaning their boats. You’d think they were going to eat off or perform open-heart surgery on their decks. They clean them before they set out and they really clean them when they get back. Each boat owner has his or her own cleaning catechism imparted to the crew and followed as strictly as any religious dogma. Aye, Matey, there be salvation through shine.

In Mallorca, I witnessed three hired guns soap down and scrub an ‘84 yacht at a cost of roughly 450 Euros. Moments after they finished, packed up and left, it rained. When it rains in Mallorca it rains mud. The boat looked like it had hosted a mud-wrestling match. The owner looked dismayed.

But as one boat owner explained, after I asked if maybe using all that fresh water to do something as silly as wash a boat two or three times a day wasn’t the second most environmentally malevolent thing about boats, after the unconscionable amounts of fuel they consume, it’s actually a green activity. After all, the millions of gallons of fresh water they’re pouring into the sea is offsetting the millions of gallons of salty, agricultural runoff.

Most people enjoy a cigarette after a rationalization that big.