Following Seas

By Tom Fucigna, Jr.

2002

This story is dedicated to the memory of my friend Doug Baird. Thanks to Doug, I have been lucky enough to see some awesome sights from the deck of a sailboat, in settings only dreamed of by others. Some of our experiences together were totally comical, others were downright dangerous, and a few were simply disgusting. I consider them all to be part of my passage into the crazy tribe that is humanity. We were soaked and sunburned, tired and stinky, ogled by suspicious eyes, and even searched and wrongfully detained together, and overall it was a grand adventure. We’ll all adrift at times, and I’d like to think that each of us is capable of riding every peak that rises. 

I'd given up on paddling for position about half an hour ago, opting instead to go with the flow, and now a longshore current pushed me steadily southward. Yesterday's waves had been crisp and organized, a real swell, but today the wind had turned, kicking up a messy chop. I drifted along, occasionally encountering a rideable peak of water and catching a rollercoaster ride, but mostly I just drifted.

This was the first cold front of the season, and with it came a taste of southern winter. The air was finally cool, and the surface of the ocean had dropped a few degrees from the steady 80 of summer. As I felt the wind-driven spray across my face, I found myself thinking about another night years before.

It was that time between being very late and very early, the middle of the dark, and I was standing a watch at the helm of the 80-footer. We were carrying full sail to make the most of a good wind and deliver her from Florida to Newport with time to spare before the spring race season. We'd split our watches to two person teams, but the weather had turned ugly, and there was no reason for both of us to be wet and miserable on deck. I peered across the compass and steered our course, nothing ahead, behind or beside me but blackness, with only the sound of water sliding past the hull. 

Being effectively alone in the middle of nowhere was not necessarily a bad thing. The opportunity to make this trip had come at a good time, with a phone call out of the blue from an old friend. I needed a chance to organize my thoughts in the aftermath of a romance that had just dissolved. I’d learned that people change with time, and life is a continuing voyage of discovery, and all the other crap that people tell you when these things happen, but endings are never easy. For the moment, my thoughts had been overshadowed by entering a circus of actions and emotions involving eight people suddenly encapsulated for a week, always within spitting distance of one another. We were at about the halfway point, and I thought I was handling the scene quite well, enjoying the experience, but I couldn’t say the same for everyone. The chance to be alone on deck was a welcome respite from the psycho-melodrama evolving below, and it gave me time to think.

Steering a sailboat at night requires a tremendous amount of concentration, but the rhythm of a vessel moving through such vast surroundings can be hypnotic. I held our course the best I could as seas built on the stern quarter. A following sea is hard to steer in - an overwhelming mass of water builds abaft, shoving you along until it passes beneath you. A hill of water recedes before you, as you prepare to repeat the process. 

Mariners the world over steer through the darkness and reminisce on days, experiences, and relationships past. Loves lost, opportunities missed, and words left unspoken or unchanged haunt the night like the ghosts that they are, rolling along at their own speed, leaving us to wallow in their wake, or moving us in directions we don't necessarily want to go. They pass and we do our best to stay on course, making adjustments in the aftermath.

Like a driver on the highway lost in thought I snapped to attention, responding to some subtle cue. I paddled, 2, 3, 4… and stood, carving an arc across the face of a swell that had come to the edge of the ocean after a long journey from another time and place. I drew a breath and let out a whoop, rejoicing in the chance to be a part of the unleashed power I stood upon, and rode it to it's destiny.