Sailing Unplugged
by Christine Kling
It is Friday afternoon and I’m trying to gather together my rather disjointed thoughts as to what it’s been like to sail along at 4-5 knots now on a broad reach traveling ever northwards through velvety 12-15 knot trade winds on Learnativity, this 52-foot steel motorsailor. In spite of her heavy design, I’ve been surprised at how well she sails. The boat has this great easy motion and she coddles her crew behind the hardtop dodger with the easily-dropped side curtains all around. When she gets moving, her weight blasts through waves like a little mini-destroyer, but when the wind builds, she still heels over like a swooning schoolgirl. She’s rigged with in-boom furling for the main with an electric winch and a humongous single Harken 65 electric winch for bringing in the headsail.
We left the anchorage off the island of Navadra 13 days ago, and that was the last time I was able to really access the Internet. I’ve been unplugged for almost two weeks now, and I must admit that I’ve been left with an odd disoriented feeling as a result. I’m like an addict cut off from my supplier. Yes, we stopped at the island of Rotuma for a couple of days, but I was only able to get a thin connection via my tethered iPhone to send a single email to my friend Barbara who is posting these blogs for me. I don’t even know if she got the email or if the blog was posted. Tonight, I’ll try to send this post via the satellite phone connection and again, I can only hope it will travel up into space, bounce off a satellite and then go three quarters of the way around the world in mere minutes to arrive in her inbox.
Think about that for a minute. Here I am out here sailing in the wake of Captain Cook and the great Polynesian and Micronesian navigators, moving at the same speed through the same ocean, yet I can send an email via satellite. I’m a human like those who came before me, but the advent/invent of airplanes, computers, the world wide web, etc. has totally changed how most people relate to each other.
This sailing life leaves one so much time to contemplate the vastness of this blue marble we live on, and all the ways in which speed, time, distance, and technology influence how we see ourselves and our place on the planet’s surface. Sailboats move along at the pace of the pre-industrial world, the pace one human can run. Right now we are located about one degree south of the equator, and I expect we’ll cross over that imaginary line sometime tomorrow afternoon. But who knows for sure. Stuff happens when you’re sailing, and you just have to go with it. While this boat does carry enough fuel to motor all the way to Majuro, I’m certainly glad that’s not something we are doing. For the most part, we’re sailing it. There have been afternoons when we’ve been becalmed between squalls, the boat spinning without steerage, rolling and sails flapping. The ETA for our arrival as displayed on my iPad then changes from some time next week to some date in March. But then all of a sudden, you’ll feel the first little cat’s paws tickling the back of your neck, and the headsail fills for a moment before the swell rolls the wind out of it. Slowly, the wind builds and the helm starts to respond and mere minutes later, the boat is charging off again like a horse with the bitt in her teeth. Suddenly, 7 knots feels like breakneck speed.
Our plugged-in lives have made daily conversations with people all around this wide world so commonplace. Back in the shoreside life, we think nothing of firing off emails to the UK or New Zealand or even to strangers in Fiji. But try sailing that same distance, and I guarantee that you be filled with awe at the notion of this virtual world wide web spread across our planet that reduces vast distances to mere seconds of time.
This is the longest time I have been disconnected from the web since I’ve been a published author. I’ve been working on the outline for a new Seychelle novel, and I’m astonished at how my brain has changed. I’m finding that I can no longer think effectively without my Internet connection. It’s as though Google has become permanently attached to my brain as an external data source, and I can’t function without it. I manage about three thoughts before my fingers start itching to look something up on the web. If I’ve changed this much in 15 years, what will happen to human evolution? I’m thinking about the movie The Matrix in a whole new way these days.
I’m also no longer attached to my tribe, my friends, my writing community. With the web, when I think of something funny or interesting, I can send it out into the ether and soon comments are coming back from around the world in response to my random thought. I thrive on that interaction. I hadn’t realized how much my social life was intertwined with this computer portal into so many conversations be they on blogs, forums, email list serves, Facebook or Twitter. I miss that connectedness, but I also see how much I have come to rely on it in lieu of real human face to face interaction. Yes, there is lots of thought in those conversations, but there is not much emotion. The web has allowed me to become the solitary hermit I’ve been in recent years. I’m enjoying the long conversations Wayne and I are having, and I’m relearning the skill of looking a real person straight in the eyes.
With this opportunity to step back from the virtual life comes the chance to re-evaluate my own relationship to the web. I wasn’t sure I’d survive without my Internet fix, but I’m starting to think this unplugging business is healthy. My brain is stretching and learning to work off its own memory banks again, and I’m seeing the world through fresh eyes, free of screen burn. In fact, I think I could get used to unplugging like this more often.
So, Wayne, where to next?
Fair winds!
Christine
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