Five Senses at Sea

The last three days have been wonderful. I have enjoyed swimming in the warm waters of the Caribbean, building castles on the beach, and thinking back on the Atlantic crossing. I enjoyed the crossing, but at the same time I am glad it is over. My prompt for this blog was "What was this passage like? What did it feel like? Look like?" I decided to use my five senses and create a few questions of my own.

What did the Atlantic crossing taste like? Salt, fried fish, and canned food. Salt covers everything. Ocean spray mists the deck in salt. I practically couldn't breathe without tasting salt. I am sure my lungs are now lined with salt. Besides the salt, I trolled for almost the entire passage. I managed to catch and land an eighteen inch tuna. We flash fried the five pound fish and had a delicious lunch. This was wonderful because it is hard to keep fresh food at sea since we only have an ice box- no refrigerator. As you can imagine, anything fresh tastes wonderful. It is also for this reason that the Atlantic passage tasted like canned food. We ate something canned every meal.

 

What did this passage sound like? Crashing waves, wind, flopping sails, the motor, and music. As Sila pushed through the water, waves crashed and splashed among the ocean swells. In addition, white caps often crashed right behind Sila. To join the crashing waves there was always one or more of these sounds: the wind in the rigging, when there was a lot of wind; a flopping sail, when there were light winds; and in the case of being becalmed, the motor. Regardless of the amount of wind, someone often played music on one of the two iPods. When Jack and Mama had their dance parties in the cockpit, I ran away but returned when they stopped dancing like crazy people. My favorite moment with music was when we were half way across the ocean. Mama played Bon Jovi's song, Living on a Prayer which has become our anthem for when we get half-way through overnight passages. In case you don't know the song, the most important lyrics are this: "Oh oh! Half way there. Oh oh livin' on a prayer. Take my hand and we will make it, I swear."

What did the Atlantic passage smell like? Stinky people and the ocean. Once I sponge bathed in the bottom of the cockpit. The second time was much more interesting. We swam with Africa as the closest shore… 750 miles away! I was worried about big fish (not the bottom, it was 4300 meters down). But even a day after swimming, everyone stunk. Down below smelled like feet and was really stuffy because we couldn’t open the hatches much. The cockpit smelled like whoever you were sitting next to. EEEEEEEEWWWWWWW. Thankfully, the ocean took the edge off of the stink.  If at any time on this passage you took a sniff you could always have smelled the ocean (unless you had your nose in someone else's sock, but that's not the point).

What did crossing the Atlantic look like? Lots and nothing.  In the middle of the ocean, there is the largest horizon possible on Earth. But there isn't much to see. Besides Sila, there were waves, the sun, clouds,  fish swimming around the boat, and at night the moon and stars. Even though the stars were incredible and the waves a beautiful color, the view got pretty boring after a week.

What did this crossing feel like? Gritty? Gritty is about the right word. Everything had salt on it. Toward the end, my hands began to ache because of how stiff they got from the salt. I also felt how orderly our daily lives were. There was a watch schedule so we all knew when we were on duty in the cockpit. For example, my first watch started at 8 am so I had to get up in time for that. Then I typically did the same things at approximately the same time every day. It was nice to have the same pattern for a while instead of constant change as we move from anchorage to anchorage when coastal cruising.

Each of the five senses gives you a little idea of what it was like. But taken together, you start to see why  this was my favorite passage so far.– Porter