Capt. Marc, veteran of multiple ocean crossings, and instructional pro, invites you to join him for lessons and/or excursions under sail. By special arrangement only.
Blowback 1 – Coming Home
Blowback is the unanticipated consequences of your actions. Everything you do produces some blowback. Sometimes blowback can get serious.
This is the story of some serious blowback from living the dream of sailing away.
Stories about the trials of voyaging in small boats usually contain hair-raising accounts of life-threatening adventures and heroic deeds. Crews lash themselves to the mast during a storm. Adrift in a lifeboat, a solo sailor goes nearly mad. A night watch becomes a nightmare as the boat suddenly fills with water. And then there’s dismasting, pirates, sharks, whales, and uncharted reefs. During our voyage, my family and I certainly had our share of adrenaline pumping action, but it was the thing I least imagined fearsome that proved most daunting. Let me tell you the story of the greatest trial of my voyage. It was coming home.
In 1998 I set out on a voyage of unspecified duration with my wife, son, and pet poodle. As it turned out, we traveled for almost six years aboard our 42-foot sailboat, Songline. When I arrived back in my homeport of Santa Cruz, California in July of 2004 there were no cheering crowds to greet me. No TV helicopters hovered. No newspaper reporters vied for my story. Only the hissing white noise of industrious society heralded my return. I locked up the boat, double-checked the mooring lines, and drove the two miles from the harbor to my house. I walked in and plopped down on the couch, still rocking rhythmically as the fluids in my inner ear sloshed about trying to compensate for the motion of a phantom sea. The world around me appeared much as it had before I left. I noticed a few new buildings. Traffic seemed worse. The newspaper headlines read pretty much as they had before I left: war, murder, corruption, deadly diseases and potholes–only the names had been changed. I sank deeper into the couch as an ominous foreboding flooded over me. Welcome back to the normal world.
Over the following days and weeks, our magic carpet forlornly hobbled in the harbor, we set about the business of re-establishing life ashore. I set to work repairing the house damage perpetrated by our renter: fences, lawns, plumbing, and electrical. My wife, six years my first mate through all manner of calms and storms, returned to her old job and gradually grew more absent. My wide-eyed and world-wise son, now nearly grown, enrolled in the local high school and the local mall–finding his in-crowd.
It wasn’t long before the bills started flowing again. First came the utilities, then amenities like cable TV and newspaper subscriptions, and finally the credit card statements. So I got to work renewing my business consulting practice. I bought new computers, printers, and supplies. I networked with old clients and colleagues. Slowly, slowly, old patterns reasserted themselves. I had clients to please and deadlines to meet. Robots called my phone and automaton voices politely demanded my attention. Family members called in the markers they thought due. The garage filled with stuff. Fast food rejoined the menu. In the evenings, the sound of the television drowned out conversation and contemplation. Even the nighttime sky was bleached of once familiar stars. The wheels turned and like an indentured servant of old, I was once again encumbered by the demands of countless people and faceless institutions.
Soon after my return, people summed-up my coming-home issues as culture shock, as in, “Wow, you’ve really got it bad.” Like a case of the flu, their cliché was supposed to rein in the disease process. “Stop griping! Let it go! Get over it!”
What gradually dawned on them and me was that I wasn’t getting over it. I felt as though a voracious beast was devouring me. There seemed no end to intractable frustrations, personal insults, and petty offenses. A voice in my head pleaded, “Get hold of yourself, man. You sound like an insufferably cranky old salt. This is the same world you thrived in for most of your life. You need to get back to normal.” Should I seek a cure? How about therapy? Should I go on medication as some friends suggested–Prozac, Lithium–something stronger?
As I considered my predicament it became clear to me that although the world around me hadn’t changed much, I was no longer the same guy who had sailed away in 1998. Voyaging had seriously messed with my head. It had altered my consciousness, changing me in ways that I needed to fathom. So I began a process of deep remembrance, retracing my steps in a search for what had happened.
I stretched out on the couch, closed my eyes, and hit the replay button.