Captains log date, 25/07/2017 – Bittersweet feelings

I’m halfway between Mandal (NO) and Hanstholm (DK), blue skies with a little too little wind, roughly 6 m/s which gives me 4,5 knots, so the mighty Vetus is chucking steadyli in the background. Duties onboard are done/postphoned and instead my mind is occupied with how I got here.

2 days ago I was 11 days into my holiday plans of going from Frederikshavn (DK) to Stavanger (NO), the weather didnt agree so with a friend ended up going with a friend to the swedish westcoast. Sailing along the coast heading North, we eventually reached Larvik (NO). I continued alone from there on. 4 days alone and exhausted I was anchored in a small cove in Norway. Perfect place, quite, protected and a perfect postcard picture (does postcards still exists?)

Things, thoughts and everything becomes irrational and There’s alcohol onboard, and it’s tempting to drink the sorrowThen It hits like a heavy fog with a foul smell that just sinks around you and smoothers you…a panic attach, fear, anxiety and the worst of the famous of them all loneliness. Let the party begin !

“I am so alone, no one around me and there are problems and its my fault and im alone with it.”

So where does it come from? Am I over my depths in terms of sailing or is a fundamental error in my heart that right now, right here, I have no one around me. As with so many other feelings, it starts one thread and then builds another and then another and then suddenly you are hopeless and ugly as well….wtf!s away. (Now I know why some captains bans alcohol onboard)

I’ve made a lot of phone calls tonight; to speak with people who must have had the same feeling and come through it in a good way. They all seem to agree that sailing can be lonely, especially if you are alone; you are your own company. If you don’t treat our own company as another dear friend or loved one, you end up where I am now.

Maybe that’s my mistake; I never took myself out to explore the destinations, to spoil myself and my company. I just keept sailing…

Looking back

Months after, looking back, I have come to realise that there is two sides of sailing. Moving with the wind, exploring, new horizons… the glamorous picture you see in magazines! But the personal one is more bittersweet gut and heart wrinching. I am reminded of a qoute: “The first thing you meet when you venture out on the sea; is yourself”. Also there is a passage in Joshua Slocums classic book.

And it is true…you start talking to inanimate objects. The boat, the sails, the sun, the wind and in Slocums case. The lonely man on the moon.