A single cloud in the sky
Hello from the boat!
September 9, 2024, 13:19, flood tide, waxing crescent, Late Summer
High 76ºF/ Low 56ºF, blue skies, pressure 1025 mb, 3.62 feet
Yesterday I drove us out to the boat. Cypress, the ship’s cat, let out a singular “meow” at the halfway point, and otherwise was pleasantly perched atop Scott and a knit blanket for the seventy-five-mile journey. Cats aren’t known for their car-riding skills, and perhaps even less for their sailing skills, but Cypress is increasingly excelling in the former, and a master at the latter. We think she now detects that heading West takes her to grandparents, East goes to our sailboat, and South takes us to the friendly, but sometimes pokey veterinarian.
Cypress joined our crew in San Diego, three months into our 777-day sail to Chesapeake Bay. She spent the first year of her life on the streets and the next few months at an animal shelter before being transferred to the PetSmart store where we crossed paths. She lived in a room the size of a large walk-in closet with twelve other cats and two kittens. The kittens had fifty people on their waitlist and the rest of the cats were waiting alone. We put in an application, took the bus back to the boat, and returned a few hours later to take her home. Life aboard really suited her. The ship is our cozy shell that took us everywhere, a constant in continually new places. There are ample sunspots and birds to watch, and she has charmed many fellow travelers and local fishermen. She occasionally accompanied us in the cockpit for our watches, but usually snoozed the hours away in bed.
Cypress hops up when we round a bend in the road to our new marina. We turn onto the drive and crack the windows. Her head swivels quickly, taking in the changes since her last trip to the shore. We open the car door and she leaps out, sometimes taking her time sniffing around the fallen pine needles and sandy beach, other times bolting down the dock and up on deck. She spends her time as she pleases, going inside and out until we close the hatches at bedtime. Time away from the boat has made her more tentative, checking in with us frequently before venturing back to the dock. In her city life, she is leash-bound due to the dangers of cars and bigger cats who have locked down their territory around us.
Cypress has been my mirror for life onboard. She picks up on everything and incorporates it into her posture. She is unlikely to be the first to calm down, which holds me accountable to lead the way—our sea time taught us that stress rarely helps a situation.
Last July, I headed out to the boat with Cypress for a week. Hurtling down the highway at 70 miles an hour is a lot for the nervous system of a cat accustomed to traveling oceans at five miles per hour, and hearing a cat howl for an hour is a lot for the nervous system of a human woman who recently did the same. We stopped numerous times, including once at a gas station to throw away the soft cat carrier we purchased in Colombia because Cypress had chewed through it and then had an accident inside. It was a rough day, but we made it. Successive car trips have gotten better on the whole, with the culmination of this most recent tranquil ride.
We spent three days and two nights onboard putzing around, perhaps my favorite activity.
The boat seems smaller than it used to, how did we fit seven years of life and such a big journey into the confines of this hull? And yet it also lets us relax and expand as we move about the space and pick up familiar routines. It’s a comfort to be here without anywhere to go. The skies are blue with one tiny puff of cloud. We polish up our forty-five-year-old stove, wrestle it back into the galley, and make tea. We share a bonfire with a friend and add time to our calendars to return.
When we first moved off the boat, it seemed like there was an endless stream of stuff out of the cubbies and other hidey holes in the interior of the boat. We nearly stripped it bare and in doing so, Azimuth raised several inches on its waterline. In these last several trips, we’ve been bringing things back. Packing becomes easier with a second set of toiletries and a basic galley setup.
September 18, 2024, 12:44, ebb tide, full moon, Late Summer
High 76ºF/ Low 67ºF, gray skies, pressure 1014 mb, 3.5 feet
It’s about a week later and I’m on the last day of another little retreat on Azimuth.
I cut out of town with Cypress, a stack of books, and two baskets of projects.
This week the skies are clouded over with the edges of Hurricane Francine. I noticed the new weather coming in while paddling on the James River on Saturday, the breeze being pulled from the east to join the developing hurricane to the southwest. I guided the group upstream for an hour and had my best sturgeon sightings around the halfway mark. We floated for a bit, moved along by the alignment of wind and water, and two sturgeon lept fifteen feet from the group. Experiencing our surroundings with others will never ever ever get old. I wished I had a little spinnaker.
By Sunday, the clouds were whispy and settling in. We went to a friend’s birthday party on a river rock and delighted in mild temps and close company. We shared a sunset and moonrise, then hiked back to our cars in the dark.
My watch on our sailing voyage was 3–7 AM, 11 AM–3 PM, and 7–11 PM.
During those hours, I watched the sun and moon track across the sky, leaving and returning predictably and incrementally. I settled into the endurance sport of sailing, drinking countless mugs of tea and water while watching the horizon, charts, and sails. It’s a delight to access these transitional moments now with others, to feel connected under the skies instead of alone.
The weather on the coast has been rainy and mild. I stopped for ice and cat treats on the way into town and the rain just started drizzling as I put the car in park.
Once again, I packed heavy to sift through some more of my land and sea life.
I mended a sports bra and pajama shorts. I finished the sleeves of two sweaters, a book, and a knit washcloth. I scrubbed the boat in the rain and awoke to it even cleaner. I washed the sheets, blankets, and rug — my first load of laundry here all year. I cleared out some drawers, and in the process of all this, I cleared out some of myself.
It’s just about time to go home. I’ll go for a jog in the rain, shower, and load the car.
I’ve been reading The Absent Hand: Reimagining Our American Landscape, a genre-spanning non-fiction book by Suzannah Lessard. I am delighted that she concluded with some paddling elsewhere in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Her insights have been an affirming balm during this latest wave of transition back to life on land.
I’ll leave you with this:
Who is to say what nature is to us under these conditions? You go out into it and there it is, glorious beyond comprehension, spookily numinous, blowing away the intellectual plane of consciousness, transforming you in an instant as if you had been struck by lightning: that isn’t false. But it’s also true that, whatever this man-made enclosure is from which we can’t escape, nature is in there with us. It’s reduced and contained, as in a terrarium of our own making. But, on the other hand, in its new roguishness it’s more enormous than we have ever known. We thought we had conquered it: now it’s threatening us in a way that requires a resourcefulness we have not yet found in ourselves. it’s the ground beneath us out of which we arose and in which we are still embedded inextricably. And yet it is also our ward. Nature is salving still and yet it has also become inherently alarming: most of all because we know that what is alarming is our own doing. We are entrapped in nature, and also unbearably exposed there, exposed to ourselves. Nature used to be the thing outside society; now it’s inside society. So because we have so far failed as effective stewards, yet are as dependent as ever, nature also represents our ungovernedness: our inability in this very basic matter of self-preservation to take care of ourselves.
The Absent Hand: Reimagining American Our Landscape, Suzannah Lessard
Beautiful-as always!
I almost feel like I was on the boat enjoying the scenery with you!