Choices

Perhaps I will know some day. I'll know what exactly happened to me last year.

It's a question I still get a lot, but how can I tell what traveling for a year has done to me, when I'm still coming to terms with it? At first I thought, well, that's that. I'm back, and now I'll live the rest of my life.

But then, I started wondering. Do I still look at things like I did before? Thing is, I've been working on this project for so long, I've been changing along as years went by. Especially the year before I sailed off, there was so much going on, I couldn't keep track of it all. While at the same time working hard on getting everything ready, I finished a work project as I planned on taking my year's leave.

I even handed control to my successor without the slightest hesitation - which is not to say I'm not proud of it. But it's a different kind of pride. Some other could have done the same. This is not so with the sailing trip. I'm always the first to accede to the fact that thousands do this every year. I don't mind being one of many. I'm pretty sure no one did it the way I did. I find I've got something to say about sailing now, not because I crossed the Atlantic twice. It's because it all worked out, and I'm the one who made that happen.



Looking back on the things I can remember at any given moment, I'd say I came away pretty much changed. Not fundamentally, only more crystallized. Doing that has made me more aware of the amount of possibilities ahead.

Choosing one possible option is just that: choosing one, for a while.

We made it

This ocean is more than water.

When I first read the theory of how the oceans were made, it struck me as a wonderful thing. Not the continuous rain which diluted the acidic first seas, amazing and apocalyptic though it may be, but the Gaia theory in which bacteria enhanced their environment by making water.

So when I sailed the ocean it was more than transport by water. It was an ancient technique for arriving at new lands, perfected by the sailors through the centuries. The aborigines perhaps pioneered this sometime 60000 years ago, to arrive in Australia. Countless other species and tribes have done the same.

Studying charts while traversing the Atlantic ocean, one gets some notion of the unbelievable amount of water all the way to the bottom. When swimming in the water with goggles, the deep blue goes on and on, suddenly lending a very mysterious quality to ones surroundings. While the sun sends its rays through many layers of waves and water, the dark prevails deeper down.

And even though it looks like water, it's so much more. It's a collection of dreams, dreamt by people on both shores. It's planning, sometimes obsessing, about getting across. Most of all, it's impossible to imagine.

Even now, after living all of it, the ocean for me retains its violent and hostile quality, while simultaneously calming me. It's not hostile towards us, it just is. We are the ones maladjusted to its qualities. With our boats, our devices and our techniques, we are so ill equipped for dealing with it.

We master technology, but we never master more than a tiny piece of ocean at a time. We sail across, but only if our technology doesn't let us down. We cover great distances, but it's only when in harbour, protected by land, we can truly say: we made it.