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Sail-World.com : AFTER a long-range cruising adventure - the hard part...
AFTER a long-range cruising adventure - the hard part...
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'The voyage is over - but then what...'
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Around the Americas was a 27,524 mile sailing circumnavigation of the American continents with the mission of inspiring, educating, and engaging us all to to protect our fragile oceans.
The crew of volunteers, sailors, journalists, photographers and scientists, departed Seattle on May 31st last year in the 64ft steel cutter, and have recently finished the journey, pronounced a resounding success. However, we at Sail-World found the blogging of one of the crew, journalist Herb McCormick, particularly moving, on how difficult it is, to come back.
Many a returned cruising sailor will empathise with his tale:
It’s been precisely seven days now since Ocean Watch and her crew stepped ashore at Seattle’s Shilshole Marina to close the circle on the expedition Around the Americas, and in a lot of ways, the last week has been a whole lot stranger and more bizarre than the three hundred and eighty-two – the length of the voyage – that proceeded it. The core crew of Ocean Watch – never known or described as paragons of organization – has been a good deal more disoriented and discombobulated than usual, which is saying something.
But the truth of the matter is finally becoming crystal clear: There are no more provisions to be laid in, courses to figure out, or watches to stand.
We’re home, and it’s good to be here. Um, we’re pretty sure.
The hardest part of an extended voyage, as many sailors will attest, is finishing it. You think, feel and act differently. Your internal clock, once set by the wind and the waves and the rhythm of shipboard life, is now governed by the uncontrollable, inconvenient and external realities and pressures of a 9-5 schedule and rush-hour traffic.
You look at the world, and particularly its trials, travails and trivialities, in an altered and bemused state. Or at least you try to. The trouble with all this, of course, is that society hasn’t changed, even if you have. And if you can’t deal with it, that’s your problem, and nobody else’s.
We’d been back precisely two hours, after much attendant hoopla at Shilshole, when skipper Mark Schrader, dropping me off downtown, was pulled over by a Seattle cop because the registration tags on his Volvo had expired. Granted, being a policeman is not an easy job, but by any standards, the officer was a particularly dour sort.
Anyway, I have to say that the irony and timing of the situation, the deathly serious attitude of the totally miserable policeman – after all, this wasn’t a bomb in Times Square – and Mark’s understandable frustration with all of it struck me as fairly hilarious. Mark failed to, uh, share my mirth. Welcome back, Kotter? Nope, welcome back, Captain. Have a nice stinking day.
In any event, due to a veritable whirlwind of activity, as we got onto the business of wrapping things up, matters improved measurably within fairly short order.
And then, our official duties – presto! – were over. The Aussies have a great saying about the passage of time: From go to whoa. Suddenly, the go was gone. It was all about the woe. I mean, whoa.
Since then, we’ve been lugging gear off the boat; emptying the fridge and freezers (chicken, anybody?); hauling more stuff off Ocean Watch; trying to assimilate into some kind of routine that resembles our former lives; and ferrying tons more gear off the yacht, whose waterline seems to rise considerably with each passing day.
 | Herb McCormick - .. . |
When I sat down to write this little missive, I did so with the full intention of trying to sum up the experience of sailing Around the Americas. But…I can’t. Not yet. Like my mates and brothers in this crazy adventure, I’m still numb by all of it. Please bear with me (and us) for a little while longer.
And, you know, confused. As it turns out, the voyage was the easy part. Coming back? Well, that’s a good deal more complicated.
About the 'Around the Americas' Expedition:
Sailors for the Sea was founded by David Rockefeller, Jr. , who recruited other lifelong sailors to join the board of his new non-profit organization to focus attention on and raise awareness of ocean conservation.
David and Captain Mark Schrader have been engaged in joint sailing expeditions for two decades, and Mark proposed the concept of an Americas circumnavigation that could bring visibility to Sailors for the Sea and its mission to recruit ocean stewards. Thus, the Around the Americas (ATA) expedition was conceived.
The founders felt it was important to link current ocean science research and education to the project. Pacific Science Center was recruited to be the science and education partner for Around the Americas. They brought in the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, and the MIT Sea Grant Program.
This unprecedented expedition began on May 31st when Ocean Watch departed Seattle travelling north through the Northwest Passage, then down the eastern coast of the Americas, around Cape Horn before returning to Seattle in June 2010.
During the journey they engaged in many awareness-raising activities, drawing attention to such issues as Polar ice melt, Coral reef health, Ocean acidification, Collapsing fisheries, Ocean debris and pollution, Changing sea levels and coastal erosion.
For more information, go to the Around the Americas website.
by Sail-World Cruising/ Herb McCormick
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http://www.sail-world.com/index.cfm?nid=73039
1:34 AM Sat 7 Aug 2010 GMT
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