365 Days Around The Sun

Sailing

Each and every time I hear that word (sailing) I can think of two things, both equally.  Come on sing it with me, won’t you?

“Sailing…..takes me away

To were I’ve always heard it

Just a dream and the wind to carry me

Soon I will be free.”

The other is the boat I grew up on as a teenager.  Of course, I grew up in a home, with a roof over my head, and working plumbing etc.  But my mother and Stepfather loved the recreational habit of going down to Oriental, North Carolina and getting on our boat; “The Playpen.”  It had two sails, both the body of the craft and the sails were white as most are, unless you are (yacht racing) and then they could be a multitude of colors.  This was no yacht by any means, therefor she was white all around.   It was 38-feet from bow to stern and had a cabin.  The master bedroom, if you could call it that was in the bow, and the two twin beds were in the kitchen area where tables, folded down and wellah, it created two beds and you could sleep four.

The mainsail was predominantly used to get you out of port, once you got into the great blue ocean, then we would unroll and raise the jib off the mast. And off we would go, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, it all depended on the wind.  At first, I absolutely hated sailing; I thought it was dumb as I wanted to go fast all the time like motorboats do.  But it was quiet and peaceful and as I got older, I learned to appreciate the quiet.

The “quiet.”  What is it about quietness that gives us a calming affect to all of us?  We all need the quiet.  Sometimes to escape the nonsense from a workday where things just didn’t go as we had planned or something else or sometimes just to gather our thoughts; maybe both in the same.  For me the sailboat didn’t really give me any of that (escape or thoughts), you know why?  Because sailing is flat out exhausting; but it was quiet on the ocean, no motor making noise and you enjoyed the peaceful noise as the water splashed up on the side of the boat, you heard it unlike the powerful motorboats that cruise the sea at a high rate of speed. But why was it exhausting?  To keep that thing moving you had to do a lot of work. Because to turn left or right you had to adjust the boom to make the main sail go one way or the other, rope it down for a few minutes only in time to do it in reverse order, when you wanted to change course.  Rope it down only you did this again, and again and again, we did this continuously.  And let me tell you it was work, but it gave me an appreciation for work ethics and how cool was it to see the mystery of life and how we can change course.

Are you asking why the blog is dedicated to sailing?  Well, we all need to adjust our boom so we can go one way or the other.

I’ve needed to adjust my boom, now more than ever.  Is it my emotions or is it having good friends surprise you at a restaurant, where you see friends, you haven’t seen in a long time?  Well that made my boom cry a bit, it could be a multitude of things.  Is your boom right, left, or somewhere in between, eventually we all have to decide which way want that boom to go?  The boom plays a key roll in our lives, even if before you read this had no idea what the hell a boom was.

I thought my boom was broken, but I’ve learned it’s not broken it was too far to the left and I needed to get it to the middle, and eventually to the right to change course.  There is always things we can do to reverse course we just need to look for it.  For me I was trying my best to put on a fake smile and tell everyone, “I am great, and I hope you are as well.”

As you’ve read, I have never been fine after ‘The Diagnosis’ and it gets worse, day by day.  Now I find it best to be honest, and now my go to phrase is, “I’m hanging in there, I have good days and bad ones.” My SCA gets worse every day, but I am focusing on my boom and moving it in the direction that makes me happy again.

This journey.  Amazing a recreational activity, I did when I was fourteen or so for several years; would eventually teach me a life lesson in my 50’s.  SCA has changed my life forever but, with your help I can get my boom switched from one side to the other.

“Soon the wind will carry me away and I will be free.”