I know boats…

“Je connais des bateaux qui s’égratignent un peu

Sur les routes de la mer où les mène leur jeu“

 (transl. “I know boats that get little scratches
On the ocean roads where their games lead to”)

 Mannick, Je connais des bateux

The “Idea of Self” has given me trouble since I had memory. When sailing became an unexpected reality in my life these identity troubles got complicated.

The very first time I sailed it was on a 51ft sloop with a dead engine that we took 136 miles away from departure to give her a brand new propulsion apparatus. I still remember that as no biggity, even though I should ask Fernando (the skipper) about it. All the work needed to push the boat with the dinghy through a swinging bridge in a choppy channel in front of a crowd of waterfront breakfast eaters was just new fun activity for an incompetent sailor like me.

Then there was the first dream about taking off on my own boat: it was a sailing Cayuco (dugout canoe type) from the Kuna people, my belonging stuffed in watertight barrels, coasting South American shores and pulling on the beach every night to enjoy a bonefire and a sound sleep on a hammock. No mosquitos were bothering me in those fantasies. I even dared picturing some offshore sailing in such a craft. It remained a dream when other events dragged me away from Kuna Yala before I could accomplish it.

What is left of that naive man today? Training and experience, in one word knowledge, added layers of complication to the art of sailing. The present is filled with words like safety equipment, ideal ground tackle, auxiliary mean of propulsion and proper sized elecrical wiring, as well as a lot of gadgets and products that “you can’t sail without” pushed by marketers and opinion leaders. It is extremely hard to make order in all this crap.

Since Tranquility owned our lives, I experienced shifts in what was to be expected from a boat, oscillating from “really just a hull that don’t take water in” to “safe, unsinkable, performance-oriented sailing machine”, sometimes being happy to fall in the first category, sometimes working hard to achieve the latter.

It’s hard to tell why Tranquility chose us, she won’t tell. Being far from the “perfect boat” she challenged our own Idea of Self, our needs and our goals. She proof tested our skills and endurance, she took the majority of our money, forcing us to visit places we had not planned to, before leaving us stranded in an unknown point on the chart. She made ask ourselves if we were ready and when that will be. In synthesis, she changed us.

I am happy I am a different myself, even only for the fact that there was a path in these years, any path really. I can still look behind, look at me now and think about what will come ahead. When past and present look alike, there’s a chance that the future won’t be different. So in the end I am happy about this incongruity.

I usually welcome change. Helping others going through change was part of my career back in pre-financial crisis Italy, so I can’t exclude I suffer from the prejudice that sees change as inherently good, necessary and unavoidable. Sometimes I look back with nostalgia to the man that wouldn’t hesitate to embark in an unsafe, uncertain journey on an ill-equipped vessel, and I wish I hadn’t changed.

Knowledge and experience can be a heavy and safe anchor, but when it grows too big it could block any movement at all. The restoration chapter of Tranquility has gone through the same pattern. We started performing the quickest cheapest and unfinished jury rig repairs to be able to leave before the winter gales, and now we would spend a considerable amount of time and money to make things “the best we can”.

There are definetely good learning coming from this endeavor, but the more we remain attached to a dock and in the range of hardware stores, marine suppliers and Amazon Prime, the poorer we become and the less likely we are to unmoor as the perfect boat is nothing but an illusion.

 “Je connais des bateaux tellement enchaînés
Qu’ils ont désappris comment se libérer!”

(transl. “I know so chained boats
They have forgotten how to break free!”)

Maybe Tranquility needed somebody who would give her an anti-age treatment, new life out of tiredness. Maybe she had something to teach two illiterate sailors like us, or she was looking for warmer climate to retire. Maybe it’s all or none of that, it’s very hard to get her to cough the story up. Or maybe she is not immune to different Ideas of Self battling for supremacy. She used to sail across the ocean, she has it in her bones and chances are that she misses it very badly.

I know boats that are never really finished but this doesn’t stop them from setting sail. And I have the suspect Tranquility is one of those boats.