It is not all downwind sailing on a flat sea. Sometimes we love it and sometimes we throw curses at the sea and ask ourselves, why again it was that we went sailing.
On a sailing-boat emotions seem to roll in in steep waves. And on the passage from Darwin to Kupang we asked ourselves exactly this, why again it was that we went sailing.
We might have gone soft in the year we have spend inside the Great Barrier Reef, for it was with pure frustration that we met with the headwinds and swell in the Timor Sea.
‘barely making way’
Black Duck is a sturdy vessel, but with her long, wide keel and clipper bow, which pushes a mean bow-wave, she does not point high to the wind. And with the waves knocking our bow further off course, we were at times barely making way towards Kupang, but merely tacking north and south on the same longitude in an escalating emotional provocation.
We had gone to sea swayed only by the pressure of time and the readiness to leave Australia behind and finally reaching new land. But it is un-seamanlike not to abide by the weather above all else.
By the time we arrived in Kupang, we had been at sea for eight days and turned a 450nm crossing into 650.
With the pandemic, we had been caught in a mayhem of paperwork and applications, needed to leave one country and enter the other. It was hard not to be impatient. And it did not help that cyclone season was approaching. So when Indonesia finally opened their borders, we went straight to sea forgetting what it really is all about.
‘a perspective from off the boat’
But it is not the first time we have lost our temper at sea, and so we did what we usually do, we called Grant (this time on our satellite phone).
It is amazing how a few words, a perspective from off the boat, can change the sea in an instant or at least the way you look at it. For the next 6 days we broke no records but sailed with revived optimism. Maybe it was not that bad after all, at worst the trip would take longer, and for a sailor is that really anything to fuss about?
And so we continued and, like we so often do when times are testing, we discussed the way of Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail alone around the world in 1895-1898. For if you think that sailing is a challenge, remember Joshua Slocum, a man who singlehandedly faced the biggest forces of the sea and always spoke of it with an enlightening insight:
“To young men contemplating a voyage I would say go. The tales of rough usage are for the most part exaggerations, as also are the tales of sea danger. To face the elements is, to be sure, no light matter when the sea is in its grandest mood. You must then know the sea, and know that you know it, and not forget that it was made to be sailed over.”
Joshua Slocum
In hindsight, if anything, this voyage was simply good practice.
