Boating - Heightened Senses at Sea

Tuning in to your senses is a necessity - though not always a pleasure - when under sail

by Margie Smith

We had been at sea four days - long enough to be adjusted to the rhythm of a watch schedule, not so long as to be restless, yet. The sea was not dead calm, but close. Sun having just disappeared below the horizon, we were in the midst of a debate over whether we had just seen a green flash or not.

 but, nevertheless, abruptly roused from her nap. She started sniffing around, suddenly acutely alert. "She smells land," one of the guys said, though there was no land in sight. I thought of the line from Moby Dick: "At sea one day, you'll smell land where there'll be no land," Ishmael is warned, a precursor to the momentous meeting with the massive whale.

 "Does anybody else smell land?" I asked. No one did, but then there they were, the lights of Bermuda on the distant horizon. Carolina had it right, good boat watchdog that she is.

It's a feast for the senses out there on the water. Pay attention and you see the schools of flying fish, hear the breathing of the dolphins before they surface. Cool air on your cheek portends a wind shift a hair before it happens. The sky is magnificent, the sea more so. Breathtaking-although not always the stuff of poetry.

A sail south-to St. John from Newport, say-gets more temperate as you go. As the latitude drops, so do the layers of clothing. The sunshine feels so good as the Caribbean draws near, more and more exposed flesh soaking up more and more rays and, oh right, nobody's showered in a really long time. I still don't know what the aroma of land is, but the olfactory meter down in the crew quarters is spiking at funky. Let's call it "briny miasma." It sounds so much more intriguing.

Rudyard Kipling "heard the beat of the off-shore wind. And the thresh of the deep-sea rain" but what of the sea itself? "The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out," wrote Annie Dillard.

Sounds in port are more easily described than those offshore. The morning after a long passage often follows a pattern. Absolute silence is interrupted by some inconsiderate intruder. The muted sound of the VHF. The pump running. Just heard the coffee grinder go. That means the captain is up.

Here in this safe harbor, where the boat's movements are almost imperceptible, my own senses cling to that last night at sea, the undulating motion, tossing body into the hull where it settles and molds, skin pressed against cedar. Ear to plank, oh-so-close to the powerful force on the other side, splashing, bubbling, gurgling - does forward motion have a sound? Or out there, floating, are we suspended in space?

Heeled way over, my porthole, uncovered, leans down, down into the water, brimming with phosphorescence. Shards of glass, glittering diamonds stream past and then a wave comes, and we heel a bit more, and the diamond water smashes against my picture window, fantastical imagery in 3D. We are flying underwater and I sink a little deeper into my bunk and under the red blanket it is so warm.

Margie Smith is an avid sailor, a (not) frequent (enough) visitor to St. John and a regular contributor to the Sun Times. You can read her personal blog at msmargarita1.blogspot.com.

February 2010