52 Days/I Know the Size of the Sea

I won't die without knowing how big the sea is.

It is exactly the size of the human heart.

We sailed across the breadth and half the length of the Atlantic. Day after day, week after week, wave after wave, green flash after green flash. As fast as the wind cared to carry us.

You take on a challenge that big with your family for company and only your own skills and wherewhithal to rely on and you'll know - the world is all the stage our ambition needs. Impossibly big, but within the reach of our most serious efforts. Those most serious efforts that carry us into joy.

That life our family made for those weeks, in the odd confines of the boat. Where we lived overarched by the endless sky, while able to walk only twenty steps in one direction.

Look at that life now! It was as big as the world.

We left South Africa on August 3. We arrived in Curaçao on September 24. That makes 52 days on passage, counting the three days each that we spent in St. Helena, Ascension, and Grenada.

As always, land life has caught up with us in port, and the dream that was our life at sea fades into disbelief. We know it happened, and I look back at my journal and marvel at the scratchings there. What thoughts were occupying me, and how do I make sense of them now?

Could it really have been that good? That's the question that always stays with Alisa and me.

It used to be that we would have to put to sea again to find out.

But now we've been doing this for enough years to know.

It was.