As many adventurers, I dream of a great sailing voyage. The longer and further, the better. With everywhere an adventure.
But how is this dream when it comes true? How is life, adventure, on board a small house of 10 meters long that floats in the sea? This is my first two-week experience on board the ship “Ya”.
New adventure
When you arrive at a new place or in this case a new ship, you are not sure what to expect, of course you have some ideas, some expectations, but you really don’t know what it will be like, you don’t know the people who are there, you don’t know their dynamics, you don’t know the space, you don’t know where to find what you’re looking for. But not knowing is the adventure. When I got to “Ya” I was a little nervous, I’m going to have to live with this person that I don’t know, every day, every 24 hours, for who knows how many months. But I was also very excited to start this new adventure, with a lot of energy and desire to sail again, I was so excited that I didn’t really think about all the other worries I might have.
The first few days were very difficult, the language barrier was higher than I thought, the technical words to refer to parts of the boat and navigation actions in English, I did not know them all, I knew them in Spanish but not in English it was a new dictionary to learn. Understanding the “Ya” configurations of sails, ropes, halyards, sheets, etc. and everything necessary to sail was another challenge. At the same time I had to adapt to the organization of the boat, where to find everything, how to perform each basic task, cooking, washing the dishes, going to the bathroom. A ship is someone’s house, only with more drawers and unexpected compartments than a normal house, it has its order and rhythm personalized by those who live in it. When you first arrive you have to understand this rhythm to be able to integrate.
The first day we went sailing in the Bocas del Toro area I felt the magic of the wind moving us, all the fatigue and overaccumulation of information I had from those days of adaptation to the boat left, at that moment I knew I was on the right track and that it was worth all the effort I was making to be there.
Integrated and… the open sea
After a week of being in Bocas del Toro, already more integrated and with better communication between me and Peter and also between me and “Ya”, we went out to the open sea to sail towards San Blas. I was a little afraid of this new dynamic of sailing in the open sea but also very excited. At a certain point the rhythm of the watch shifts became tiring, since there were so few days of navigation that I was not able to get my body used to sleeping during the day, and at night I had my watch so I didn’t sleep either.
On the night watch I enjoyed the calm and beauty of the night ocean, there was a full moon, I could see everything, the sea and the clouds almost as in the day. You couldn’t see the land, only the horizon of the sea, I could watch the moon set and the sunrise.
These first two weeks on the boat were a combination of a lot of effort, some frustration, also loneliness, but many beautiful things. Leaving our Circle of Comfort and making an effort helps us find and appreciate more the beauty.
Every day communication and integration in the “Ya” improves, always learning something new. Now looking forward to starting sailing in the Pacific. Aware that to travel on a boat and especially on a fossil free one, what you have to have is patience.
Patience, something we lack in our accelerated way of seeing the world. We go for it!
Genaro
