Sea and Sky Dictate the Rules
By marc • Jul 28th, 2007 • Category: All Stories and Articles, Random Images, Stories
Like Latitude, I found Bill Hinkle’s letter in the May issue - in which he stated that living the cruising life when he was young was “senseless” - to be interesting. Rather forthrightly, he gives voice to the often unspoken fears and trepidations that entrap people and keep them from taking the calculated risks that give life perspective.
It wasn’t so very long ago that the only sensible thing for a person to do was to periodically leave the comfortable confines of habitual living to taste the world raw. The Aboriginal peoples call it ‘walkabout’. It’s not just a rite of passage reserved for the young, it’s a ’stepping out of the box’ that one needs to do repeatedly throughout one’s life.
In our modern everyday existence, the opportunities to go walkabout are woefully few, and I think that we are poorer as individuals and as a society because of this. We become enslaved by conventional wisdom that defines accomplishment as going to school, getting jobs, and earning and spending money willy-nilly. We try to fool ourselves into believing that we’ve gone walkabout when we take a two-week vacation to Europe or a prepackaged eco-tour - but cavorting from hotel to hotel with a cell phone stuck to our ear is hardly leaving the box. If you take a moment to think about it, cruising under sail is one of the few remaining opportunities we moderns can seize to really break away. I suppose it could be called going ’sail-about’.
When you sail away you become sovereign. You journey beyond the bounds set by traffic laws, employment policies, entreaties to consume, creditor demands, and predigested media-think. The sea and sky dictate the rules and the world unfolds before you, raw and sensible. Cruising presents you with challenges and surprises that feed your soul and make you whole.
I say listen to your nomadic genes, and when they tell you that it’s time to break away - do it! It’s not necessary to go far or long. When you are ready to step out-of-bounds, a good boat, big or small, and a stretch of open water are enough.
My most recent sail-about was with my wife and son. It lasted almost six years, from ‘98 to ‘04, and included crossing three oceans. It was the sensible thing to do.
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