CLASSIC YACHT: A LESSON IN SEAKINDLINESS

"Just before 9 a.m., we headed downwind out of the anchorage flying the main and jib side by side in my favorite point of sail, wing on wing. Cara Mia, our Island Packet 380, glided over placid turquoise water. Then we rounded Sandy Cay, and things went south."

READ MORE...

[Low bandwidth pdf here]

Sailing's learning curve is a steep one, and we tumbled off it many times. Our first year we were clambering to develop processes and protocols, learning how to work together instead of at odds, but oh so often, we got it wrong. Fortunately, our most experienced crew member was on hand to show us the way.

For the real-time back story on this, here are the links to my blog posts:
OH SHEET, that windy day
REWARD FOR A JOB DONE, the details of sewing the sail, actually more interesting than the rending.


NOTE TO CARA MIA's NEW OWNERS: That rending incident was not actually a rip in the sail but in the sacrificial cloth, which has subsequently been replaced. :-)

FOOTNOTE FOR WORD PEOPLE: Seakindly is, in fact, a word. It is a nautical term for a boat with gentle motion -- as opposed to a tender one that rolls around in an unkind way. Seakindliness is the noun form, and used here for all its entendres (which, with an 's,' is not a word). Seakindly and seakindliness should probably be hyphenated, so I'll throw a few in here -----

RAFT-UP: RELATIONSHIPS ONBOARD

In the ocean, nobody can hear you scream.

At least we hope not. That would be embarrassing.

I marvel at couples who say they never fight. They're either remarkably compatible or practicing effective public image maintenance. Or are they just amazing suppressionists? (Spell-check, you've clearly never been married if you think 'suppressionist' is not a word. Just so you know: it is, and it doesn't work. )

A year ago today, I wrote about the importance of being honest about our relationships and the consequences of not doing so. Here's another dose of honesty.

Chip and I have fertile ground for conflict. I come from New Mexico and a quiet, subdued family of British and Scottish descent. Chip comes from New Jersey and a raucous, emotive family of Italian and Armenian descent. We're oil and water. Sometimes we make dressing. Sometimes one of us lights on fire and consumes the other.

When we lived on land, it was possible to tiptoe around the issues in our relationship, suppress them or patch them over with a busy schedule or a new couch. But on a 38-foot boat, it's not possible to tiptoe around. It's just not.

Onboard, we fight about ridiculous things, like unwashed dishes or the finer points of where they were left and who left them there -- or who has washed whose dishes the most. I've been known to explode about minuscule things like whiskers left in the sink.

But it's not really about the whiskers, is it? If I make the effort to self-reflect and then to be honest about it, it's about the way I felt ignored and brushed aside at dinner last night with friends, and that's because as the third of four children I often felt invisible and marginalized as a child, and, just like that, the whiskers in the sink are forgotten. Instead of kvetching about unimportant things, I've switched from cleaning the sink to cleaning out the bilge -- mine, not his.

A year ago I wrote about a book called Getting The Love You Want, a book that's taught us how to talk to each other about the real issues, how to help each other clean out our own bilge, to scrub and polish and sand off some ugly, sharp edges. It's something we didn't take the time to do until everything else was stripped away.

Out here living on a boat, our relationship is all we have.

A year later, there are still dirty dishes and whiskers in the sink, but most days I don't care as much. I don't care, because I know Chip cares enough to help me clean out my bilge, works on his own, and has deep, deep patience when I struggle with my half of the job.

And often he cleans the whiskers out of the sink.

And so far, we haven't sunk to the bottom.

Like I said a year ago, our relationship is the richest, most rewarding and valuable thing we have. It is like a big chunk of marble that left unattended might drag us under. But with a grand vision, heavy labor and hours of polishing, it can be transformed into a beautiful masterpiece for the ages. Yours can too.

Happy Valentine's Day.

This post is part of Raft-Up, sailing bloggers discussing the same topic. This month: Relationships Onboard.

WORKING IT OUT

Chip and I have lived together on our 38' sailboat for more than two years. It has never felt small, cramped or even snug. Shocking, really, eh?

But now that I've started working 4-8 hours a day, our boat has grown mysteriously Lilliputian.

First, there is really nowhere to sit that is ergonomically correct or acceptably comfortable for that long. Could somebody please invent a boat friendly office chair? (My posture in that photo is not as bad as you think! We were underway and heeled over.)

Second, we have three separate rooms, a salon (shown) and two bedrooms. Neither bedroom has seating, which leaves me to work in the main cabin where our whole life takes place: cooking, eating, playing music, talking on the phone, entertaining, being us. All of that is great. None of that is conducive to working.

I'll be deep in thought, tapping out some sentence that sounded fabulous, earth shattering when inside my brain, and Chip will, quite kindly, ask me if I'd like some guacamole. AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

Solutions being pondered. 

RELATIONSHIP WARRIORS: Exercise #5

Marathon, FL 24º42.366N | 81º5.669W

 [WORKING HEARTS]

It's work time again. Time to talk about the next exercise in Getting the Love You Want.

This one is called Parent-Child Dialogue and is a role-playing exercise. Your spouse pretends they are your parent, and you talk to them about childhood wounds and frustrations.

I have to admit, we both found this a little maudlin, so we did it our own way. Instead of role-playing, we just took turns talking about what we learned by doing the earlier childhood frustrations exercise.

While neither of us had any major blockbusters to divulge, it was interesting to find that, even though we came from vastly different households, our frustrations were similar. Could we be kindred spirits in that regard too?

Well, in case you haven't been reading this, we're going through these exercises, because we haven't been feeling all that kindred. As reported before, we started back in December and fought about the only exercise we had to do together to this point, that would be Exercise #1. We were able to maintain our air of tension through this exercise as well, trying to be kind and empathetic through gritted teeth.

The upcoming lessons will slowly move from individual work to the meatier stuff, a perfect crescendo of pressure and anxiety building. The book warns that there will be blow-ups and backsliding, repeating old patterns, you know, general mayhem. Something to look forward to.

I know there are at least 12 couples who are working with us, or 'with us', and if you want to interject privately or publicly about your progress or lack of it, please do. We'd love to hear from you.

Don't lose faith. Chip and I are on Exercise #13 and have had tremendous breakthroughs. The communication tools coming up in Exercise #8 are life-changing on their own.

March on!


Here is the book in our Amazon.com store (you pay the same price, Amazon gives us a paltry percentage):
Getting the Love You Want -- paperback
Getting the Love You Want -- Kindle edition

HAPPY WHAT? -- how this started, my original confession on Valentine's Day
Exercise #1 Don't forget to read how awesome you are, even if you don't feel it yet.
Exercise #2 & #3
Exercise #4

RELATIONSHIP WARRIORS: Exercise #4

Marathon, FL 24º42.366N | 81º5.669W

[working hearts]

Let's get back to work -- on our relationship, that is.

It all started on Valentine's Day: HAPPY WHAT? Although we got this book back in December and have been diligently working since then. (See below for links to my posts about the previous exercises.)

Exercise #4 is called Childhood Frustrations, and, fortunately, it is an exercise you can do on your own (no fighting potential). You start by making a column on the left side of a page listing your greatest frustrations when you were a child, such as not enough attention from your father or mother being overly protective. Then on the right you list how you responded to those frustrations.

For example, one of my frustrations as a child in a small house with five other people was feeling crowded and not having enough personal space. My response was to go off into my own imagination and play alone.

Your responses in the right column are labeled E.

Apparently we will use this information later, I'm guessing about repeating patterns...

Do you find it interesting that someone who grew up feeling crowded and not having enough space would move onto a small boat with another person, she says as she plays alone on her computer.

At least the backyard is big.


Getting the Love You Want
Exercise #1 Don't forget to read your list this week.
Exercise #2 & #3

RELATIONSHIP WARRIORS: Exercises #2 and #3

Marathon, FL 24º42.366N | 81º5.669W

[working hearts]

Okay, a break from sailing for another report from the front lines of marriage recovery. Since I posted that Valentine's Day message about relationship honesty, I've been surprised at the amount of traffic that post has gotten. Before long you'll be seeing it appear over there <-- on the left under most popular posts. More and more people have contacted me to say they have bought the book.

That's good news. We're all in this together, so I plan to post occasionally here about the exercises in the book we're using, Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix. Incidentally, Chip saw this week that the program is in the running for Best Marriage Workshop here. So, clearly we aren't alone!

I covered our inauspicious start with Exercise #1. It took a while to recover from that one, but perhaps Harville knew that would be the case. The next two exercises are to be done individually -- alone. You don't even have to talk to each other. Brilliant.

I suspect some people will find Exercise #2 a little weird. I thought so at first. It goes like this: Relax alone and then mentally revisit your childhood home. You imagine walking around and encountering all the people that influenced you the most as a child. As you see them, you have a 'chat' telling them things you liked and didn't like about  spending time with them. Then you tell them what you wanted from them but never got.

Yeah, a little touchy, feely? I actually found it illuminating, recognizing for the first time some influential people that had not occurred to me before. Also, this is not a program where you dwell on childhood and blame everyone else for your problems. This exercise is designed to illuminate for you the origin of your expectations and sensitivities in your relationship. Trust me, it's fascinating.

Exercise #3 has you write notes about your imaginary trip back in time but in a creative way that you won't understand until later and, quite cleverly, I think, can't subconsciously manipulate. You draw a line across a sheet of paper with a B on top of the line and an A below. Then in the B section you put all the positive traits of all your childhood people, in the A section the negative traits. This list of positive and negative traits is your 'imago.' You'll get back to it later.

Three more steps:
--Circle the traits, positive and negative, that affect you the most.
--Write the letter C and complete this sentence: "What I wanted most as a child and didn't get ...."
--Write the letter D and complete this sentence: "As a child I had these negative feelings over and over again ...."

I'm happy to say that we sailed through these two exercises pretty smoothly, since we didn't have to talk to each other. We somehow managed to maintain tension in the air even though this process has called for a temporary truce.

Keep your head in the fox hole, and soldier on.



If you want to give us feedback on your own work, you can do so publicly by clicking on the tiny 'comment' link below this post or privately by using the link under TALK TO US on the left.

AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY?

Coconut Grove, Miami, FL 25º43.533N | 80º84.321W

[two hearts]

It seems my Valentine's message struck a bit of a chord. Several readers have reported actually buying the book, and I suspect that indicates we have even more silent partners.

So, in the spirit of being in this relationship thing together, I'm going to post occasionally about the process and our progress.

First, I'd like to remind you that relationships are like houses. You can't just move in, turn on the TV and sit on the couch. Okay, you can do that sometimes, and most of us do it for the first several years, but then, the paint starts to chip, the roof begins leaking, and the grass grows up past the windows choking out all the light. You get the idea. Relationships, like houses, need maintenance, good old hard work.

Sure, you could just move to another house (the equivalent of finding a new relationship), but if you don't learn the lessons in the first house, the whole process will repeat in the next house. See, the problem is not the house. It's you. And me. So, let's get to work.

The first exercise in the book (Getting the Love You Want) is called Your Relationship Vision, which is a list of statements, true or false, about your perfect house, um, I mean relationship -- imagining you've already done the work.

Each of you makes a list of statements, such as, 'we solve our differences peacefully and respectfully, etc,' then you combine the two lists using only the ones you both agree on.

Easy? Well, we had a terrible row about it. We couldn't even agree on what the exercise meant. A classic power struggle lasting two entire days.

We toughed our way through (we had to do the entire exercise twice, once for each interpretation of how to do it) and came up with one list I now call "How Awesome We Are."

The book then suggests you read the list at least once a week to remind yourself how awesome you are, the concept being that as you meditate on what you both want, it becomes imbedded in your subconscious. In a practical sense, it is a pleasant focus on what's positive rather than on the negative.

When we first made our list, I felt like it was mostly fiction. At least half of the statements seemed fanciful if not impossible. But, you know what? As the weeks have passed, and we've plowed through the exercises, more and more of those awesome statements ring absolutely true.

It's remarkable and infinitely hopeful.

HAPPY WHAT?

Coconut Grove, Miami, FL 25º43.533N | 80º84.321W

[ heart ]

It's Valentine's Day and everyone in the world is deliriously in love, right? Well, looking at Facebook, you'd think so.

I've been thinking (yes, your cue to click somewhere else) about how we represent ourselves and our relationships publicly, serving as our own image handlers. I say 'represent,' but what I really mean is 'misrepresent.'

This thought process was prompted by a call last week from some dear friends who, seemingly out of the blue, are getting a divorce. Having weathered a divorce myself, I know it is rarely out of the blue but rather a long time coming. But as close friends why didn't we talk to each other about it before and not just after?

Why don't any of us talk readily about the challenges of our relationships? I think we are betraying each other by not recognizing and exposing how hard it is to craft a healthy relationship. When we don't, we allow each other to believe that everyone else has a perfectly awesome relationship, seemingly effortlessly. Then we harbor the very false belief that our own relationship is uniquely challenging and perhaps ultimately broken.

THIS IS SO WRONG. All relationships are flawed, because they are built from two flawed people. The only way to make the relationship awesome is for both of the flawed people to work individually and together to fix those flaws.

As part of my new campaign, I will start: Chip and I have relationship problems.

I thought our problems were worse than others until I started reading relationship books and was completely bolstered by the examples of relationships in far worse shape than my own. (I recognize this makes me a shallow person.)

What are Chip and I doing about our problems? We have been using a book Chip found called Getting the Love You Want (info below). It is an intensive program with specific exercises to help couples work through their issues. It includes a structured method for communicating about emotional topics in a calm and productive manner (amazing).

I use the word 'work,' because it is work, actually hard work. It helps you look into your own thoughts and behaviors and ferret out the ways you contribute to the issues at hand and then, consequently, avoid dealing with them. Ouch.

I am delighted to report great progress. We are only halfway through the exercises in the book but have learned surprising and liberating lessons already. We have stopped avoiding and suppressing issues (a challenge itself on a 38' sailboat!) and instead, learned a healthy way to discuss and deal with them.

So, in addition to saying, Happy Valentine's Day, I've come here to say let's be honest, and let's get to work!

Our relationship is the richest, most rewarding and most valuable thing we have. It is like a big chunk of marble that, with a grand vision, heavy labor and hours of polishing, can be transformed into a beautiful masterpiece for the ages. Yours is too.


Here is the book in our Amazon.com store (you pay the same price, Amazon gives us 15%):
Getting the Love You Want -- paperback
Getting the Love You Want -- Kindle edition

ODE TO FRIENDSHIP

Emerald Bay, Exumas 23º46.7N | 76º5.11W

Sea Gal at anchor.*

One of the great treasures of cruising is the friendships formed along the way. I've pondered why on water it appears so much easier to form lasting relationships, and I have a few theories, well, four actually.

1. Strong Characters. Cruising couples have rock solid alliances between two strong, engaged, wise and, almost without fail, witty characters. The reality of living together in a tiny space and undergoing the discomforts, travails and elations of sailing are insupportable without the ability to weather anything thrown at you while sustaining rather than turning on each other, and the utter necessity of finding the humor in all of it. Weak, humorless relationships will eventually, inevitably break.
2. Open Hearts. Cruising can be a lonely proposition. By design we have to leave behind family and friends, and no longer ensconced in our posse, like college freshmen, we are far from home and more open to embracing new friends.
3. Time to Spare. When you move at a top speed of 6 mph, life passes at a beautiful protracted pace that to me seems more grounded in reality than the "real world" frenzy fabricated by flocking humans. Out here we have time to value each other, to listen, to laugh, to tell jokes, to lend a hand.
4. Kindred Spirits. Cruisers are a tiny fraction of the human race. We have abandoned careers, cars, houses, bucked every system we can think of, hitched our wagons to bucking waves, and shaken up the very bones of life. Every day we face new challenges, push our own limits and, frankly, put our lives in our own, and our partner's, hands. It makes sense that the pool of commonality already runs deep. So does the likelihood of meeting strong characters.

That's why we rented a car today, on the strength of a two-day relationship with new friends.

Four months ago at Cruisers Thanksgiving in St. Mary's, Georgia, we fell under the spell of a British couple aboard Sea Gal. Barney and Di are just plain inspirational. They have set out a circumnavigation plan that is as quirky and imaginative as they are, a plan that might be considered fanciful if they weren't pulling it off. Not blessed with a pension, a trust fund or a huge bank account, they work for as long as it takes to build up a decent cruising kitty and then cruise on a thin penny, getting every possible ounce of distance from their stockpile. In fact, Barney and Di are the only people I ever saw actually sailing, not motorsailing, down the ICW to save on fuel.

The circumnavigation plan is to sell Sea Gal after sailing the Caribbean and then purchase another boat in the Pacific Northwest to continue their unorthodox, intermittent slog around the globe.

As Cara Mia and Jessie Marie have headed slowly south together, we have kept in touch with the even slower Sea Gal, trying to triangulate with them to the same spot at the same time, not an easy proposition.

When we arrived here at Emerald Bay Marina, we had email from Diana announcing that Sea Gal was anchored only five miles south of us waiting for the next weather window to head north again, a window looming in the next 48 hours.

We debated amongst ourselves, Karen and Dale on Jessie Marie, and us, not about whether we would see Barney and Di, but how. Five miles is such a pittance on land, but by sea, out one dangerous cut and into another one, it was not merely a jump-and-go proposition. Our solution? Rent a car.

It takes two: one to drive, one to remind the driver to stay on the left side of the road!

Communication between moving vessels is not simple when you're out of VHF range. Even our cell phones were from three different countries and apparently speaking three different languages. Instead we relied on the most modern of methods: Facebook.

Fail.

We communicated back and forth fine until the most important missive: our concrete plan to drive to see them. Barney and Di were unable to get a web connection from their anchorage, so they were unaware that we were on our way.

No worries. They told us earlier where they were anchored.

Well, one worry. They were anchored. We were arriving by car. No dinghy. No radio.

After a few missteps, we spotted their boat too far offshore to call out to -- maybe. We stood on shore yelling, whistling, catcalling, waving, jumping, all four of us.

Yoo hoo! Sea Gal!!! I'm pretty sure that catamaran had us pegged as nutcases.

Finally, we saw movement onboard, Barney and Di throwing their dinghy in the water. They came bolting across the long stretch of water to the dock where we were dancing the gratitude dance.

Dancing the Gratitude Dance.

Gratitude indeed.

An open arms welcome.

*All photos in the entry were taken by Chip.

**My column about this day and cruiser friendships in Classic Yacht magazine in March 2013.

OH SHEET

Black Point, Exumas 24º6.04N | 76º24.12W

Anchorage at Black Point Settlement on Great Guana Cay.

Sailing is a humbling occupation offering infinite ways to challenge, confound and embarrass yourself. It's like the first day of school or a new job -- every day -- rife with new opportunities to prove you're an amateur. It is not possible to be bored, because you're waiting to see what will go wrong next.

Today's forecast called for 10-12 knot winds from the northeast, dropping and shifting to southeast mid- to late afternoon. We left Sampson for a short, less than 10-mile, hop to Black Point just before 9 a.m. to take advantage of favorable winds.

Leaving the anchorage we headed southwest-ish looking resplendent flying the main and jib side by side in my favorite point of sail, wing on wing.

As we turned south around Sandy Cay, it was apparent that the wind was already shifting to the southeast, which would be, of course, right in our face on the next turn. We headed out into the Exuma Banks hoping to be able to tack back toward Black Point once we passed Harvey Cay, sailing the whole way.

We never saw the predicted 10-12 knots, rather 15 at first soon picking up to 20+ with squalls on the horizon ahead. Chip was thrilled to find he could get Cara Mia moving at almost 8 knots despite my complaints about weather helm.

This concludes the peaceful portion of the sail.

Next we had a fight about, well, we're not really sure. That's how those married fights go.

Then we decided to reef, using our new, untried reefing rig.

When we turned into the wind, the jib got away from us, flapping like a coop full of scared hens and just as noisy. The jib lines got all twangled, around themselves and in the standing rigging. You don't really notice how much stuff there is overhead on a sailboat until it all starts weaving itself around each other. That took some time to wrestle under control.

Then the new reefing ring kept coming off the new horn that was supposed to hold the now-smaller sail in place. Put it back on. It comes off again. Repeat.

Everything finally started working harmoniously, just as the wind dropped down below 10 knots right outside Black Point harbor.

That's when I noticed the the entire back seam of the jib had ripped out while it was flapping in the wind.

If you look closely, you can see
 the leech line dangling behind the jib.

We pulled in the sails and humbly dropped anchor in Black Point, happy that our boat performs flawlessly even when we don't.