Missed Opportunity

Day 94

Noon Position: 46 45S  47 02E

Course/Speed: E7

Wind: NW20

Sail: Big Genoa, poled out (damn but it looks huge)

Bar: 1014

Sea: NW6

Sky: Overcast

Cabin Temp: 57

Water Temp: 45

Miles last 24-hours: 159 (I set ships clock back an hour, so this was a 23-hour day)

Longitude Miles Made Good: 147

Miles since departure: 12,770

Yesterday, Valentine’s Day, my wife posted an article on this site remembering warmly how things began for the two of us and what we have in common, even when proximity is not one of those things. Meanwhile, from the other side of the planet, her adventuresome husband posted an article about … the weather.

I have made the Figure 8 as public as possible, yet I still struggle with the sharing of things I hold as private, especially those things that are difficult and private, like my feelings about being away from my wife so frequently and for so long.

She’s earned the appellation “Best Wife in the World” for letting me go because it’s the one thing no cruiser I meet can comprehend, that I am off on a solo sail *and* am happily married to a woman who is not with me. When I tell the story, I credit that we met later in life (I was 40); we had our careers and our passions in order, that we don’t have the responsibility of children, that Jo comes from a sailing family, so understands (though does not share) the desire to explore exotic places by boat, and that I talked about my blue-water inclinations on the first date.

But the other half of that story is that my wife is an enabler. For some reason I can’t explain, she believes people *should* pursue their passions, and she is quite happy to push them over the starting line–shove in some cases–even when it appears to be to her disadvantage. Who knows if I would have quit a good job in San Francisco to cruise the Pacific if Jo hadn’t, on one of our hikes, said, “Do it–or quit talking about it!    ” Or if, later, I would have launched from Mexico for Tahiti-and-beyond instead of Hawaii-and-home if, when I proposed the plan that would have me gone an extra year, she hadn’t said, “I think you should do that.”

So lucky me…I get to go. But when I go, I’m gone, and there’s the rub. Some of it is a sense of guilt for abandoning my manly responsibilities–delivering morning coffee, taking out the trash, weeding the yard, cleaning the gutters, unstopping the plumbing, jump-starting the car. But mostly it’s the company I miss, our walks, our long conversations at the dinner table, and the life we have built together that is put on hold when I let go the dock lines.

What I want to to express is simply that adventuring, for me, is emotionally complicated. I am fortunate beyond measure to be able to do what I’ve dreamed. Do I wish, at this moment, that I was at home mowing the lawn instead of watching a Storm Petrel dance at wave-top at 47 degrees south? No. Do I question my motives when there is a big blow bearing down on Mo and me that I’m not sure how to manage–when the risks of this reward loom? Yes.

And when the sea is its obsidian-blue and crashing, when trains of waves roam like immortal giants, when Orion rises right over the mast and the Southern Cross is still there to starboard, when the wild albatross glides in from afar, when the horizon is open and flecked with white in all directions, seemingly to infinity, when a day on the ocean feels like I am seeing the world truly and for the first time … do I still miss my wife? Yes.

—

Mail service being spotty mid ocean, I woke early on Valentine’s Day and pulled a card from my stash, composed a brief note, took pictures of the cover and the note, and emailed these to Jo. It was bitter-sweet, expressing affection for this woman I will not see for another six months. It heightened the sense of seperation rather than a sense of connection. But it also gave me pleasure to think she might feel warmed by the thoughts, and it fulfilled a duty that I enjoy fulfilling.

And then I utterly forgot to tell you about it.