Sailing with Starlink

We’re 20 miles offshore of Cape Hatteras, SC, an area known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. There’s only one other sailboat in view, a blue-hulled speedster that’s pulling away from us in the gusty, 15 mph winds. It’s a gray November day with choppy and disorganized swells, rocking our sailboat one way and bouncing it back. It’s thrilling to be sailing aboard Free Spirit again, southbound offshore, yet there are issues.

This is a trip I dream of: beyond a temporary disconnect from everyday life, it’s a hard reset. The vast stretches of open ocean invite my thoughts and imagination to roam without boundaries. There are no jobs to dress for, no phone ringing, and no dusty apartment clutter to distract me. I packed an engrossing novel alongside half-written books waiting for my attention  and a notebook for collecting sundry scribbled inspiration. After several days offshore there’s  nothing like the feeling of being a mole that comes to the surface, blinking, unaware of what has taken place in the world while it was underground.

Unfortunately another passenger is one I hadn’t anticipated: Elon Musk. Wouldn’t you love to read an article or column that doesn’t mention the billionaire of the moment? Me too. But along with transforming personal transportation and disrupting social media channels, he’s infiltrating my last bastion of peace and solitude: sailing.

When the captain announced that he purchased Starlink I was excited to see how it works. It’s cutting-edge for sailors looking for ways to lengthen their tethers to society. Thanks to Musk’s Starlink system, which the owner of this boat gleefully adopted and installed the day before we left, we can stay connected to the internet via Wi-Fi even when dozens of miles offshore. 

Captains looking for crew are advertising their Starlink systems in order to get the upper hand over boats that are not connected. The technology is enabled by thousands of little satellites that pepper the skies. Apparently Musk and the U.S. government have also  provided the technology to Ukrainians fighting the Russian invasion. While I was intrigued by Starlink I never imagined I’d be fighting its invasion of my quiet time at sea.

The first impact of the Wi-Fi removed the anticipatory stress of packing and planning. I  don’t have to download books to an iPad before traveling, nor do I need to lock in a return ticket home — now I can do all these things from the rocking cockpit of the boat. It allows me  to video call my grandchildren to show them the dolphins keeping pace at the bow. Sadly, I’m reporting that Starlink works perfectly along the east coast, even 30 miles offshore. It allows me to procrastinate at sea as well as I do at  home.

The uninterrupted connectivity removes one of the last links to the tradition of sailors making a leap into the unknown, crossing vast empty spaces on a sail and a prayer. Starlink’s transformative effect on sailing is underscored by my usual lack of sailing tech. This  summer I sailed my own 25-foot sailboat in Rhode Island and to Cape Cod. My boat,  Esmeralda, is a low-tech, bare bones vessel, with almost no electronic gadgets at all. In fact, an issue with wiring the boat’s single car-sized battery left me with no FM radio, navigation devices, or lights for most of the summer. I got by just fine with a battery-operated lantern and a phone app for navigating. It made me feel like a purist, closer to traditional sailing.

On this larger (55 foot) sailboat we are surrounded by wind and speed gauges, an auto pilot, satellite communications gear, and computer chart plotter, all standard equipment for sailing hundreds of miles along the coast. The cockpit feels like a NASA control room full of gauges and screens to monitor. But do we also need Elon tagging along? Joshua Slocum is surely turning in his grave.

The captain justifies Starlink as a safety measure. With it he can pore over weather maps and communicate with experts easily, routing around bad weather or staying in port to wait out storms. The boat is his home, he explains, and he doesn’t want to take unnecessary chances. Its primary use is not emergency connections, which we have Iridium and AIS devices for. He said it will help him when he’s on the hook in US ports and the Bahamas, where communications are sketchy and laborious to maintain.

Also, boats this big need constant maintenance. When I applauded the captain for replacing a bad starter engine on his generator he demurred. I’m not that smart, he said, I’m  just YouTube smart. Certainly, engine repairs or troubleshooting systems are more easily accomplished with instantly accessible online resources. The alternative is time consuming jury rigging or doing without until reaching a marina office with Wi-Fi. Perhaps Slocum would empathize. 

The captain also mentioned, with great amusement, that Starlink’s coverage is so good that another boat’s crew was able to watch the Packers game live while crossing the Gulf Stream toward Bermuda.

So, when that other speedy boat was alongside us, out here in the formerly  disconnected and  untamed blue ocean, we chatted with them via VHF radio. We asked where they were going and shared recommendations of warm island destinations for riding out the winter. The other sailboat captain confided that he has Starlink so he can continue to work while anchored deep in the Bahamas.

I’m adding my voice to those lamenting that it’s become impossible to be free of screens, email, and corporate expectations anywhere anymore (while simultaneously happy to have Starlink when we get stuck in a coastal harbor waiting out bad weather). The worst part is, during my night watch when I sneak out on deck to gaze at the canopy of twinkling stars above I can’t help wondering which of them is a Starlink satellite.

On the other hand, I can’t help wondering if I can write off the purchase of a system so I can bankroll my explorations by land and by sea next summer..

Solo sailing and leveling up

I gathered a bunch of snacks by the companionway door, put a bottle of water and a couple of store-bought iced teas with them … and a pee cup. I was off on my first solo coastal sailing trip, from New Bedford MA to Newport RI, not nervous as much as wary that I had likely overlooked a few details. Like having my handheld VHF nearby. At least I had my PFD on (for the first time on my 10 day boat-based vacation).

Sure, this isn’t the solo around-the-world voyage of Joshua Slocum (pre-1900) but it’s an important first step for me. I bought the sailboat last summer and have learned a LOT. It challenges my decision to seek experiences that expand my world and test my skills. The first step was deciding not to wait for someone to have a day off to sail with me.

When I told my yacht club’s salty commodore that I planned to sail to Martha’s Vineyard, he said, “That’s more sailing than most people in this club ever do!” But why own a boat if you don’t use it to go to the places you love? So with John’s help and support Esmeralda made it to the Vineyard in a casual, three-day trip punctuated by a moment of horror when in Wood’s Hole a megayacht’s wake broke over the cabin top. But that was soon forgotten as we had an amazing vacation: going to concerts, skinnydipping, stargazing on the deck, and biking around the island all week.

When he and Grace had to go back to work on Monday I took a deep breath and stepped up. I wasn’t going to wait for someone to meet me in New Bedford. I’d done this leg along the coast several times and it was pretty straightforward (just once with Grace on Esmeralda but many times in the past with my ex-husband on our Catalina 36, Ceilidh). In fact it was probably the best opportunity for a solo trip. And I have to thank all of those who participate in the Women Who Sail social media page that boosted my confidence.

Leaving New Bedford went like clockwork. I got my fenders and docklines stowed like I’d done this all before. I got through the hurricane barrier as the incoming tide slackened. I knew my route. I reassured myself this was just like sailing with Grace or John or Terry because I was still calling the shots. Of course I know how to sail it by myself. And nobody argued with me.

After turning into the wind and raising my mainsail, I pointed Esmeralda, my Catalina 25, down the channel toward the west end of Buzzard’s Bay. I had put a lot of thought into my route given that the NE wind that blew us into New Bedford the day before had clocked around to SW, directly on the nose. There’s nothing that can be done about the wind but to plan accordingly. I hoped to cross the bay with the wind on a starboard reach, then turn west and keep it just to port.

It was a Monday, so boat traffic was light. In fact I saw no commercial ships to speak of, just a few large pleasure craft (sailing and powering). As I neared the Elizabeth Islands I considered going through Robinson’s Hole, the gap between two of them, to get south of Cuttyhunk and make Newport more of a straight shot west. I still wish I had. Instead I stayed north of Cuttyhunk and got a bit hung up on the Hens and Chickens rocks outside of the Westport River. I just couldn’t steer southwest enough – into the wind – to clear them, so I had to tack close to Cuttyhunk to get around them. That took a bite out of my allotted travel time.

Traveling alone was pretty boring. There wasn’t much to distract me, and the coastal milestones crept by at a glacial pace. I’d avoid looking to the north as much as possible so I didn’t have to see that the same town was still in approximately the same place I’d seen it 15 minutes before. I had to remind myself that I was making progress.

The wind wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped but the waves were small. I had steered through some gusty stuff getting the boat up to 7 whole knots a few times (woohoo!), and wanted more of that to make the passage quicker. I knew the tradeoff would be more stress but once the hours started to mount I worried about getting to Newport while there was light enough to navigate. All of the currents were with me but my rig just isn’t tall enough to push my boat very fast when there’s less than 10 or 12 knots of consistent wind. I was averaging about 3.5 kts. The trip would be just about 40 nautical miles. And I was relying on my phone for the entirety of my electronic navigation.

I hated to do so but cranked up the engine before I reached the Sakonnet River, east of Newport. It was nearly 5 p.m., I’d been out there about 7 hours, and I knew I still had some distance to travel. The push from the engine, in addition to the sails, put me at or over 5 kts. I got to the east entrance to Newport around 7 p.m. with a big tanker looming over my left shoulder. It was dusk. So of course this is when my phone froze and I had to dive below to turn on my running lights. That way I’d be legal in the eyes of the Coast Guard even if I got crushed by the massive ship bearing down on me.

Then I had to find and secure my mooring in the dark. So. Much. Fun.

In the middle of the channel between Jamestown and Newport I looked up and saw a sliver of moon over the fading colors of the sunset. I had to grab a photo to remember that night. It turned out beautifully.

My daughter Paige and granddaughter Alice met me in Jamestown for a sleepover on the boat. Rowing them out to the mooring distracted me from the feeling that I still wanted to vomit from the stress of the trip.

As we rocked to sleep my headache dissipated, my shoulders relaxed, and my arms stopped aching from the day-long death grip on the tiller. I laid there feeling full – of happiness or pride or something else I’m unfamiliar with — knowing I’d done it.

Finding My Free Spirit – and a UFO?

When I heard the engine start I jumped out of bed and pulled my pants on. Stumbling around I had trouble locating my glasses. The floor was definitely moving – and no, I wasn’t under the influence.

When I arrived on deck after my brief nap the captain was at the helm. “Thunderstorms over there,” he said. I looked across miles of empty dark ocean to see the clouds flicker and go dark again.

Then he instructed me to hold the course while he went out on deck to wrestle the whisker pole off the genoa, which is the big “accelerator” sail in the front of the boat. We needed the ability to bring in that sail if the winds got crazy. I held my breath, running through the list of steps to take if he went overboard.

It was a lot to take in, especially while still waking up. Then I had to wait patiently for him to casually coil some line and secure it to the “granny bars” at the mast before making his way back. It was clearly his thinking time, when he was looking ahead to our strategy for dealing with changing weather. I wanted action — NOW! — and had to relearn that impatience is rarely the way to deal with a situation.

Crewing on sailboats is something I’ve always wanted to do. As usual I only thought about the positive outcomes or experiences. I tend to forget that failure and hardship are the best teachers – and that I would meet them along the way.

This story is not about my boat, which is a smallish 25 foot Catalina that definitely is not going to be out sailing miles offshore in the middle of the night. This is about Free Spirit, a 55-foot Tayana, which I was lucky enough to crew on. We were two days out of Stuart, Florida, somewhere 600ish miles north, 60 miles off the Carolinas in the Gulf Stream. We were heading home to Massachusetts, a trip of about 1,100 miles.

Tried fishing in the Gulf Stream, caught a lot of sargasso weed and lost a lot of lures

A few of the many lines on Free Spirit

I make ugly burritos but when you’re busy sailing they’re easy to grab

It’s not a simple boat like my Catalina 25; there are at least 6 drums on the mast

Getting acquainted with Free Spirit

At the dock in Stuart FL

Plenty of time to look at clouds and wonder — do you see the cormorant drying its wings?

There was a nice long green flash after this sunset

Not the UFO, just a sunset

That busted snatch block shows the winds and seas were nothing to sniff at.

wild ponies in Beaufort NC

A year ago I chucked portions of my life in order to rebuild it with lots more opportunities for exploration and excitement, and this was a big one. I was aware rebuilding it wouldn’t be easy, but I don’t want easy. Easy is living in Florida where there are literally no hills, no steps – life on one level! Everything is air conditioned and soft and comfortable, with few challenges, except perhaps where to go for happy hour. That’s not the life I want. Having the ability to jump into this crew position and to spend time with people doing fun and challenging things is more than worth it. I freed myself from the things that were holding me back and dove head-first back into life. I don’t regret it.

Last year’s trip to Alaska and buying my own boat were the first steps of my new life. Offshore crewing checks another box.

When the sailing was boring – just the indigo blue of the water and pale blue sky in sight – I thought about how few years I have to chart my own course. A decade, maybe two? It doesn’t seem like enough. Fortunately Free Spirit’s owner is a good role model, a liveaboard sailor well older than I am who has had many careers and is always looking for new challenges. I need to hang with more people like him and fewer who are full of negative-nanny advice while devoid of actual experience.

As my brother says, “tell her ‘no’ and she’ll do it twice!”

After just a few hours on Free Spirit I knew I could trust this boat and its captain. It’s solidly built and well-equipped. The captain, with whom I spoke many times before our meeting, is experienced and safety conscious. The boat is his home so he treats it well by using high-quality components and doing things like checking engine filters and fluid levels regularly – proactively, before anything goes wrong. I asked to crew so I could learn about sailing beyond my comfort zone, and there we were, at 3 am, many miles from my comfort zone.

While I always thought I wanted to live aboard a large sailboat, I had second thoughts during this trip. Many of the lines used to control the sails (and there are so many) mostly do not lead back to the cockpit. The drums for securing the mainsail and other components like the whisker pole are located on the mast. That means a lot of the work has to be done outside of the cockpit, even when far offshore and in iffy conditions. When conditions get concerning for a boat this big (55 ft) it’s time to listen to your gut and pull back. Still, between the captain’s calm demeanor and the ship’s sturdiness I never felt unsafe.

When he left the cockpit, the captain clipped his harness onto a lifeline and started walking (carefully) to the mast, holding onto fixed points as he went. The deck was all lit up by halogens above, on the “spreaders” that extend from the upper mast like skinny wings. The dark ocean was rushing past and we rose and fell with the swells. Lightning showed through the clouds every few seconds. I couldn’t help but think about the 84-foot mast and how we were the only boat out there for miles around, essentially a lightning rod.

Tired and wary of the pitching deck, he managed to unhitch the 8-foot aluminum whisker pole from the edge of the genoa, about 10 feet above the deck. I started breathing again when he was back in the cockpit beside me. But that wasn’t the end of the challenges. It was still the middle of the night, and the conditions were deteriorating. Ships were showing up on the radar around us. It was tense, and would be for many more hours.

Sailing can be hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. That was true for this trip. We motor-sailed a lot due to low wind, which is monotonous. Then in the middle of the second night we ran up on a couple fishing boats (seen on radar) that we had to steer around. Fortunately the captain was alert and took it all in stride.

Not long after, something really interesting happened. We both saw a red light cross our path from west to east. I was alarmed at first, thinking it was a freighter, but it was moving too fast and, as it approached, it was well above the water. My second guess was a helicopter. I said that to the captain, who agreed but noted there was no sound associated with the light.

Because it was pitch black out there, we had no way of guessing how close the light source was to us. It appeared suddenly and didn’t change size, so I assumed it was on a steady course west-to-east. Then it got weirder.

As we watched the light move across our path to the east it suddenly bounced up several degrees, bounced again, and disappeared in the dark.

We talked about it afterward, trying to figure out what we’d seen, but had no explanation. The next day got too interesting, weatherwise, to revisit the strange event, and it was forgotten. UFO? Maybe just another good sailing story.

The last time I did a blue water (open ocean) passage like this was about 12 years ago, on the return leg from Bermuda to Annapolis MD aboard a 60-foot Swan, a luxury racing yacht. We set the course in Bermuda and basically didn’t touch the sails for a couple days. Unfortunately I was on the dogwatch in the middle of the night when we approached the Gulf Stream, notorious for big waves and ocean-created weather systems. I could see a thunderstorm in the distance, and we were sailing directly into it. I alerted my crewmate who opted to do nothing. When we entered the storm and squall winds laid the boat on its side the captain emerged from his cabin in his skivvies and adjusted sail with some choice words for the crewmate who didn’t act. We continued on, that being the most exciting part of the trip.

My trip on Free Spirit offers more to remember.

Our bleary-eyed scramble to control the sail lines and stay on course was just a taste of what the day would bring. The wind and big genoa sail were overpowering the wheel: I couldn’t keep the boat from doing 360-degree spins and couldn’t understand why the compass would start spinning and I had no control at the helm. It was maddening. By 10 am, both exhausted from navigating through steep 10 foot waves and wild wind gusts up to 40 knots, we decided to head in to Morehead City NC rather than push through the unpredictable weather any longer. High winds had blown apart a heavy snatch block that one of the big genoa lines ran through. That was a sobering sight. I’ll always remember that line whipping against the deck but I had no idea of its power until I saw that broken component.

After 3 days of short watches and napping in the cockpit we were aware that we didn’t have the energy to deal with situations like that much longer. The forecast was for more of the same squally, wind-against-waves weather.

The high seas didn’t abate until we were within an hour of Morehead City, which is near Beaufort, NC. We’d made it over 650 miles. But now we’d hunker down at anchor and hope for a clear weather window to continue the trip north.

After we rested Beaufort was fun, all beaches and barrier islands and wild ponies on the shore. We spent a couple days exploring and looking for a weather window but in the end I rented a car, got on a flight, and returned to reality, reluctantly.

I had a taste of Free Spirit and will be back for more.

Sailboat ownership: the other story

On Sunday my daughter Grace and I rounded Fort Adams in Newport RI and turned up into Narragansett Bay. The weak onshore wind picked up at about the same time, giving my sailboat, Esmeralda, a nice lift. We shifted the sails to wing-on-wing and noticed the speed kick up to over 6 knots.

We high-fived.

Yes, it’s silly to celebrate moving at a pace slower than you’d normally ride a bike (6 kts is almost 7 mph) but it had been a long weekend of sailing and motoring. By the time we parked Esmeralda we’d covered 75 nautical miles in two days. Most of it was in disorienting fog that required steering by compass. And all was done without a radio to distract or entertain us.

We were also celebrating our adventure’s impending end. We were tired and bruised and a little stressed out.

Sailing is awesome. Sailboat ownership is another story.

Soon after we settled into the downwind run I needed to lift the engine in its mount so we’d have less drag. We didn’t need it on this multi-hour run up the bay.

Lifting the 100+ pound outboard engine is no mean feat. I wrap a thick rope around the handle of the bracket it’s mounted on. Then I simultaneously kick the bracket with my foot and pull up on the rope to free it from the position it’s locked in. It’s just a little sailing ju-jitsu move performed in a precarious crouch on the very edge of the stern deck over the water. If the bracket cooperates I can then pull up with the rope using all my strength, to get the motor lifted to its highest position.

Times like these I’m grateful for a low center of gravity.

As soon as the engine was moved I had lots of other little tasks to do, like wiping the shadow of winter mold off the interior walls.

Grace had spent a good amount of our voyage trying to hook up the 12 volt battery so we’d have a radio and lights, the few little conveniences (there aren’t many) this boat offers. Oh yeah, and the Coast Guard requires some of them. Unfortunately we had to do without a radio or lights on this trip because the battery and dangling tangle of wires resisted our attempts at logical sorting and connecting. She even consulted a friend with a lifetime of practical experience on boats (he was raised on a houseboat) who didn’t mind having his brain picked at 9am on a Saturday.

I think she gave up just after the time there was a “Z-z-zap!” sound followed by “oops!” I don’t know, I was driving.

So now that I own and maintain a 25-year-old sailboat the way I spend my free time has changed, dramatically.

Youtube videos are my thing now. I watch people pull their boats apart and rebuild them. I consume hours viewing couples who actually make a living by posting videos of themselves dealing with boating issues while living offshore. The former is reality TV for me, the latter is fantasy.

Mostly I spend my time trying to make money to keep Esmeralda afloat. And I’m using a lot of the F-word: “fix this, fix that.”

While I’m substitute teaching at a school this week I’m grateful for time to worry about my big expensive outboard engine. I want to keep it in good health for many years through proper maintenance. So I’m watching more Youtube videos of a large man wearing a ball cap and speaking with a southern drawl as he calmly dismantles an engine.

“Let’s just take these screws out here and pull the pump off,” he says nonchalantly. Then, “ooh, look at that, it’s the impeller, and it’s in bad shape. Look how the old one is worn down compared to the new one.”

In the man’s giant mitt of a hand are two black rubber objects, one nominally round while the other has about six little wings on its sides so it’s somewhat star-shaped. Apparently the round one used to look like the winged one, and its current condition is worse than poor. This prompts the guy to delve deeper into the problem with his outboard engine, removing more screws and dropping additional chunks of the engine off the main structure.

It all seems so ordinary – until I think about it in practical terms.

My outboard is massive. I bought it under duress, so even thinking about it stresses me out. I don’t have a spotless workshop like the one the guy in the video occupies. In fact I don’t know right now how I’ll move my outboard next fall when the sailing season is over. It’s too big for me to manage (it’s roughly my size in height and weight but very awkward to move).

Right now I have to figure out how to lift and lower it on my boat’s rear bracket without destroying the part of the boat it’s mounted on. But I’m also concerned about tiny sea creatures taking up residence in the raw water intake (which cools the engine by running through one of those star-shaped impellers).

Then I have to replace a halyard on my jib. And replace the jib. And a million other little jobs that could be easy or could bankrupt me.

Taken together, owning a sailboat is so overwhelming. There’s so much to think about, so much to stress about. Will the calming effect of sailing counteract all of the stressful parts of boat ownership?

Ask me in September when hurricanes are forming in the South and I have to find a place to haul my boat.

If I were smart I’d stick to sailing on other people’s boats!

Rinse and repeat

When I got out of the water at my dock I looked back across the pond. There was the yellow hull of my sailboat, bottom-up, rocking gently in the wind-driven waves. It wasn’t going anywhere because the mast was stuck in the mud on the bottom.

So, now what do I do? I thought. I’d tried to right it, but the wind was strong and I wasn’t heavy enough to get the mast up. No need to freak out. Sunfish are made tough, so leaving it there wouldn’t harm anything. I was glad I’d worn my wetsuit because the water was still pretty chilly and the swim home was easier with its buoyancy.

I texted my neighbor, who promised to help right after he got home from work. Then I watched a YouTube video that said I should stand on the centerboard to pull the topside of the boat over. In theory I was aware of the technique but hadn’t experienced capsizing in a long time as I’m usually on much bigger boats.

Soon I saw another neighbor, from the far end of the pond, as he approached the overturned boat and started to circle it with his powerboat.

It took a minute for me to realize he was not just checking it out. And he wasn’t trying to be helpful in righting it either. WTF? He continued to circle. I waved, sure that he’d swing by my dock to make sure I was okay, but he didn’t. I waved more, jumping up and down. He didn’t see me. He still circled the boat.

It wasn’t the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, for goodness sake.

Seriously? I got on my paddle board and crossed the pond toward the motor boat.

“Hey, everything is okay, no need to call the Coast Guard,” I joked.

“Too late,” the guy said. “I already did.”

You’re kidding, right? Who would do that? You didn’t see me turn it over and swim home? I asked.

“I’ve been jumping up and down on my dock trying to signal you,” I said. “Lots of people saw me turn the boat over and swim away.”

But his ego was too bruised to laugh off the situation. His opportunity to be a hero had been deflated.

“Would you be able to sleep at night thinking someone was under this boat?” he huffed.

I looked at the meager Sunfish hull and laughed. “That tiny boat?”

It wasn’t necessary to point out that a real hero might have gotten his ass out of his power boat and dived on the “wreck” to make sure there were no bodies floating around. He motored away. His wife looked at me from the back of the boat, saying nothing.

OK, I can’t blame him for trying to be a helpful hero but his extreme action bugged me. Was it such a big deal to flip a sailboat? If I let his anxiety bother me it will become an obstacle to taking the boat out again and that will hinder building my sailing skills. I had to get past that.

When they showed up to help my neighbors gave me a good natured ration of crap for capsizing. “I thought you knew how to sail??” one asked as he positioned his pontoon boat to make the rescue. The wind was still sending waves across the surface, slapping me in the face as I tried to tie a rope around the mast so we could haul it over. In the end, it took a 200 lb guy a bit of effort to right the boat.

Honestly I wasn’t crazy about climbing back in, sheeting in the sail and trying to get it home. Half of me wanted them to tow it behind the pontoon boat, back to shallow water. I was nervous, not wanting to flip the boat again in the unpredictable, gusty winds. Rather than round up and point its bow into the wind like the big boats I usually sail, this little boat wanted to flop over on its side. I struggled and fought with it, not wanting to sail it any further than necessary.

I realized I had a lot to learn about this sunfish, and would have to make my mistakes here in public, with dozens of homes surrounding my theater of absurd sailing goof ups. After that day I let the boat sit on its mooring for a while. I’d practice in lighter winds and build my skills slowly, I reasoned. In fact I was more than a little skittish about screwing up again.

The subconscious voice in my head that gives me all the wrong feedback needs to STFU. It’s the sort of voice that tells me that I’ll never learn, and that I should just quit. “Get it right the first time” has been drilled into my head, and it is a terrible way to think. Sure, it makes sense in life-or-death situations but it’s not how people learn. There’s far too much of that in our society, too much adulation for overnight successes and those who are “natural talents,” who excel and achieve beyond what is expected of them.

The importance of practicing, the rinse-and-repeat cycle, is under rated and should be celebrated instead. Perseverance should be valued more than luck. Think of the “10,000 hours of practice” rule popularized by author Malcolm Gladwell. He claims that the most accomplished people generally put in that much time to become the best in their fields. Being the best doesn’t matter to me, I just want to sail across the pond without a Coast Guard Jayhawk watching over me.

Just learning and relearning this lesson about learning has taken me 10,000 hours. I need to celebrate my own stubbornness and slow skill building and not listen to the critics.

Yesterday I went out and found a new trail on my mountain bike. While it’s usually thrilling to test my nerve and reactions against objects, terrain, and conditions that change every few seconds, this trail was a slog. It was full of rocks and roots, hills and sharp turns. It made me work for every foot of forward progress. It recalled for me how challenging it had been when I was starting to ride trails. Every trail used to feel this way, but over time I learned and developed my skills.

Bridges used to freak me out. I walked a ton of them before I could glide across something like this.

That learning took place a long time ago. I’d get my kids off to school and sneak in an hour or so on the trails not far from my house, then go to my office. I was just a mom looking for some fresh air and exercise away from busy roads. I was an awful, unskilled rider but obstinate and desperate for some adrenaline in my suburban life.

I loved the joy of new trails and the lush greenery all around me. That’s what kept me going back.

Screwing up on a mountain bike has earned me lots of scrapes and bruises over the years. My legs are rarely anything to look at but they sure get me places. I’ve enjoyed nearly all of my rides despite spills, frustration, and dead ends. Each of the moments I’ve spent on the trails have been for my own enjoyment, without spectators or competition for prizes. Everyone needs a pursuit like that, full of opportunities to mess up and do it over again.

It’s a good lesson for me about the learning process.

Beach day with a twist

A perfect Saturday afternoon recently happened: I had hours to myself in a beautiful part of Florida. What would you do with the time?

My plan was fairly easy. All I wanted to do was move. I chose a beach parking lot in which to leave the car and started running north along the coast road. Then I walked back via the beach. Covering six miles took the perfect amount of time, and there was no shortage of things to look at.

However.

A relaxing walk on the beach is impossible, and I’ll tell you why. That day, I got about four steps before I saw it: my first faded pink plastic bottle cap. Without anything to carry it in, I kept walking. Then I saw a white shard of broken plastic, which probably was a piece of a bucket. Three more steps and I saw a plastic fork with sand filling its grooves. Rather than a single seashell, the beach was littered with small pieces of broken plastic. It wasn’t long before I gave up trying to just walk on the beach and had to start picking up stuff. Fortunately (??) an early morning fisherman made it easier for me by leaving a plastic bag from his bait on the beach. That made a handy sack to fill with all of the garbage I found.

Sadly, there was plenty of garbage and I could have filled many bait bags. Most disappointing to me was not being able to pick up all of it. While we imagine plastic pollution being whole items like shopping bags that have blown into the water, most of what I saw was slivers of the stuff that indicated larger pieces had broken apart in the surf. It was on its way to becoming microplastics, those infinitesimal fractions that are found in every organism in the ocean. If I had all day I could have stood in one place and combed through the sand or picked through the seaweed to find innumerable pieces of plastic — or just waited for more to wash ashore.

Over time I’ve filled many bags with trash during my walks on the beaches. While I try to envision my beach time as peaceful and contemplative it usually turns out to be somewhat stressful as I go through stages of fuming about all of the trash, then anxious about the extent of the problem, to angry at people who allow trash to wash into the sea (or dump it there!) , then heartsick that sea turtles who nest on these beaches are likely victims of trash posing as food.

The new #trashtag fad is wonderful, but will people remember it next year, or even next month, when they go home from their oceanside vacations? Will it create a direct and indelible link between their habitual consumption and the world’s pollution problem? We need to do more.

[Pro tip: if you’re making a habit of scooping up beach plastic, get $1 linen laundry bags at the Dollar Store to use as they’re reusable and the sand filters out through the mesh.]

The beaches were absolutely disgusting with trash after Hurricane Irma a couple years ago, a clear indication that the trash wasn’t just from local sources. I’ve known about currents carrying pollution for several years — the scene I described in Turks and Caicos in 2013 is still seared in my memory — a remote atoll awash in trash — but I can’t stand to see people visiting the beach in Florida without bending to pick up the debris around their feet. Are we that used to it already?

Some sources say cigarette butts are the most common form of pollution but that’s not clear from what I’ve seen. Here, small clear plastic bags are ubiquitous, and they can be difficult to spot against the sand.

There’s no label on the bags to help decode the mystery of how they are washed up here, and I can’t stop wondering as they wash up by the hundreds — or thousands — whether I’m there to collect them or not. I read about a guy in the Philippines who got the attention of  manufacturers by publicly shaming them through audits of trash collected in the islands but these have no label and currents or winds may carry them some distance.

Rather than turning into a #trashtag -ging nomad, walking the beaches to collect small bits of refuse, I will do my part to reduce the plastic packaging in my life. Bringing my own shopping bags and not using the little flimsy plastic bags for vegetables at the store are first steps. I’ve also found that there are “zero waste” stores where you can buy products in bulk.

Plastic has been good in many ways — imagine the additional pollution if trucks carried heavier glass bottles of everything from laundry detergent to milk for the past several decades. But unless we’re able to actually recycle most of it (not just ship it to foreign countries to stockpile), we should use only what’s necessary.

Some ideas include:

• refill travel size shampoo and lotion containers rather than buying more tiny ones and throwing them away;
• read articles like this to get ideas, such as buying used plastic items whenever possible, including baby bottles (of course they can be sterilized), kitchen storage containers, rain jackets, and other laminated gear;
• investigate the environmental record of companies you purchase from to determine if ingredients (like palm oil) are sustainable, if the company is transparent about its record, and its commitment to limiting or eliminating plastic waste.

I’m open to ideas and suggestions about eliminating plastic from my daily diet. And I’m wondering what my local pub will say if I bring my own pint glass (or aluminum bottle) to avoid their plastic cups. Cheers.

 

 

 

 

Sail into my heart

We went out last night despite 35 knot gusts and 4 foot waves, and we got soaked. Sailing in the Old Sigh races on Wednesdays from Pocasset and into Buzzard’s Bay is my team sport. Four of us squeeze into a small racing boat, relying on one another’s skills for sail handling, strategy, and map reading to get ahead of the other four or five boats in our class.

We’d gasp at the cold slap  when waves came over the side then laugh uncomfortably as the water drained through the cockpit. Sustained wind over 20 knots took a little getting used to before we decided to use all of the sails but we settled into the angle of the boat, steadying ourselves against the opposite side of the cockpit with outstretched legs.

Later we high-fived when on a dead run with the stiff wind and our little Alerion surfed down the waves sometimes hitting 9 knots. And high-fived again when we crossed the finish line first in our class. We took on the elements and prevailed. (Photos were from a previous week with little wind and flat conditions!)

Sailing doesn’t look too exciting to most people. But when you get out there and the wind fills the canvas just right, when your bow cuts through the waves and begins a rhythmic rocking, there’s something magical about it. There are no lanes, no yellow lines painted that you have to stay within; you can point your bow across the bay or across the planet and just go anywhere there’s a little wind.

the family Winnebago (Catalina), too big for the kids to handle

We did that sort of exploring a lot when we had a big boat that was the family Winnebago on the water, but the kids had little opportunity to participate in sailing it so I dropped about $250 on a used sailboat they could handle. We lived in a town without a lake and the boat wasn’t an easy one to lift onto the roof of the van, so it sat in the back yard a lot. Still, they got out on it several times and learned a little about using the wind to get where they wanted to go. Now it’s in my backyard lake and they use it whenever they come down, bringing friends who have never sailed. Heck, even Mike, the Master of Maritime Disasters, has learned to sail in it and taught his son, too. Best yet is seeing my 14-year-old niece, a child of the big city, step confidently into the old Snark and take off across the lake.

These days sailing is probably relaxing for my daughters. They don’t know how important it was to me that they learned how to handle a boat.

I wanted them to take a little risk going out themselves, to decide autonomously how to use the wind and the canvas, to learn this mode of travel that reaches back into history, mostly unchanged. Knowing how to sail is like knowing how to drive a stick shift, or how to ride a horse: they may not use the knowledge a lot but it’s a feather in their quiver, a notch of confidence that they carry everywhere. You may stall a few times before you get the hang of it, but that’s okay. Now they can look into a harbor and know every boat is essentially the same, that they have the skills to step aboard and take any route they want to the other side of the world.

Paradise in perspective

Spend a week on this tiny Caribbean island and you’re tempted to believe that life could be a lot simpler, slower, less stressed.

that’s it, the whole of Salt Cay, a triangle in the ocean about a mile long

For a week (plus) we had roosters awaken us rather than alarm clocks, biked to the beach (hoping to see it all before we left), we siesta’d in the heat of the day, we took walks at night to look up at the stars.

    

the locals were very friendly

We’d go out for a swim and some beach combing, look for new fish on the reefs and amble back to the house for a bit. Swim, eat, repeat.

paradise

It was perfection. Except that my conscience followed me there.

Staying with a local couple, we saw up close how they carefully planned the use of food and other stores because it’s not possible to just stroll out to a Super WalMart to stock up. They have cisterns in their yards to capture rainwater for drinking. We took showers in 1/2 cup of water. Or just about.

But the beaches we visited told a story that was very different. Considering that the island’s longest side isn’t much more than a mile long, it was absolutely shocking how much junk piled up on them. Disgusting, even. And there’s no lack of irony that one of the great beach areas on the island was accessed by taking a left at the dump the locals use. Where they burn their household trash.

  This was just one of hundreds, maybe thousands of plastic jugs we saw washed up. Need I repeat that the island offers only a mile of beach to collect this trash? Where does the rest of it end up, and how much is floating out there somewhere? The organization Oceana tracks such pollution, but a peek at their web site is a reminder that the big plastic pieces are the easy ones to spot. Mercury and other stuff that are killing the reefs not so much. Think about it: our synthetic clothing (fleece) breaks down a little each time we wash it, discharging tiny plastic particles into the environment and adding to the burden. Even the founder of retailer Patagonia gets it and feels the guilt.

Snap a photo in any direction on these beautiful beaches and you get piles of fishing net, dozens of individual shoes, buckets, baby doll legs … you name it.

Yes, that’s the object (a tank that formerly held formaldehyde, we were told) that appears considerably smaller in the photo above. And that is Mike standing next to it. Something that big washed ashore. “How’d you like to hit that in your sailboat?” he asked, evoking the storyline of a friend’s book about losing his boat near the Azores (probably to a submerged object) and drifting a very long way in a life raft.

can’t say if one of the refrigerators we saw on the rocks could sink a boat, but the sight of it was enough to sink my spirits

Sure, we enjoyed our brief foray into the tropics, the feeling that a little time away from our usual schedules really puts life into perspective. We weren’t counting on the beaches putting our buying and recycling habits into perspective. Sadly, as we walked the beaches, Jack Johnson’s neo-hippie beach tunes were continually being pushed out of my head in favor of Joni Mitchell singing, “Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Write it on your heart

Are you fascinated by other people’s New Year resolutions? Naw, not me, either. But you can’t help thinking about it this time of year, can you? The media is in our faces with resolutions that are made and not kept and they’re all so predictable.

Mine is: don’t change a thing this year. I think it’s the first time ever that I haven’t had some major aspect of life to repair/renovate/retrieve and I couldn’t be happier. The thing is, I didn’t consciously make all of the changes that add up to what’s going right for me. That’s because lot of it had to do with letting go.

Four years ago we were under the Sydney harbor bridge for New Year’s Eve. I was a magazine editor enjoying a decent salary after a 20-year climb in my career but not happy with lots of things in my life. I thought I was near the top of my game professionally but was juggling like mad to deal with family stuff, never having enough time to really enjoy the fruits of my labor. That all changed a few months later as I was laid off and my magazine shut down due to the economy. For two years I struggled to get back into the game while biking, running and exploring away the unwanted free time. The tumult turned out to be a gift in disguise.

I accepted the first full-time job I was offered, and despite it being technical and tedious and having nothing to do with my career in journalism, it is the best thing that could have happened to me. It took a while to make the transition but the hardest part was shutting up and learning to enjoy the benefits. It’s work-from-home and completely flexible, allowing me to take a laptop on the road to pursue adventures anywhere, or to check in with the fish on the bay rather than being tethered to a desk just about anytime I feel like it. It has freed me from the professional aggravation of climbing a corporate ladder or sitting in an office on a sunny day that’s perfect for being outside. I’m still putting money away for retirement, but I’m not putting off enjoying life.

Emerson said, “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” And that’s what I’m doing.

Could I have made these changes consciously? Probably not. The Kool-Aid has been in my system since birth, telling me to pursue corporate success but not really justifying the servitude. Now I am learning to look at situations that we assume are “normal” and asking whether I want to take that route. It took major upheaval to alter the path of my life, but it was a good kick in the pants. I just wish it had happened sooner.

I wasn’t ready for my life’s path to veer off-track but now I am glad it did.

My road to riches

It’s easy to make January 1 a day of reflection and reassessment. We always think of it in terms of joining a gym, trying to stay in touch with friends, or traveling more in the coming year. Yesterday was Thanksgiving, another opportunity to reflect on who and what we have.

Thanks to a deep vein of attention deficit disorder, to me every day is a combination of New Year’s Day and Thanksgiving. I’m constantly reassessing, looking for new opportunities, turning over more leaves than a landscaping crew. Enriching my skipping from one activity to another is gratitude, a recent theme.  Rather than mindlessly charging into activities, the presence of gratitude has changed every run or bike or paddle, and every sunset, every kiss, every colorful flower I see.

Before you wonder if I’ve been consuming wild mushrooms, read on.

It all started last spring when I was in a hotel room in Hoboken, looking forward to a day of exploring Manhattan by myself on my old bike, following my whims and my wheels around the city. That’s when I learned that my first childhood friend, Scott, had been killed in a car accident.

I hadn’t thought of Scott much in years, hadn’t seen him in a long time. So it’s a little twisted to think of him now nearly every day. But he was taken unexpectedly in an accident on a familiar road near his home, leaving daughters about the same ages as mine. At his wake it took hours to get through the line to his wife and parents next to his casket, and I passed the time chatting with “kids” we’d grown up with, played touch football, street hockey and truth-or-dare with.

It took months for the reality to settle in that someone healthy, my age, and absolutely treasured by a loving family could be snatched from life. Somehow that horror mellowed into gratitude that has become part of my everyday thinking.

Now when I’m out on a trail and have to stop and spend a minute enjoying the way the light is filtering through the leaves or a bright bloom of color on a plant, I think of him. I think of Scott when I’m alone on the water, just enjoying the rhythm of my paddle and the ripples alongside the bow of my board. When my daughters smile or laugh it has new meaning to me.

That day in New York was all about remembering him and the way we played together as kids. I pedaled for miles, lost in memories of the years he and I spent together. He had an uncanny ability to imitate old style police sirens, so we always had to play Adam-12 on our bikes, up and down the street, investigating “break-ins” by the mailboxes and pretending the space under the neighbor’s forsythia bushes was the squad headquarters. We built forts in the woods, played endless games of street hockey and basketball, got jobs at the same place when we were 14.

At his wake I learned that he and his family had rented a house every summer in Edgartown, overlooking the area where my family frequently anchored our boat. We worked in the same industry. He had just taken his oldest to visit his alma mater, the college where my youngest are now freshmen. We might have passed each other on the street many times, shuttling our daughters to practices and to visit our parents.

Instead of a greedy pursuit of my “bucket list” items, bagging peaks or charging down a trail without taking time to look around at the beauty there, I am now proceeding through every day with gratitude. Life is precious. I plan to enjoy every moment, every opportunity, every beautiful vista I have left to see.