Friday, September 30, 2016

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.


10 comments:

  1. Beautiful sentiment, beautiful photos, beautiful family.

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  2. "Now I know the size of the sea. It is exactly the size of a human heart" That quote will have to become one of the greats in my mind. I am always blown away with the literary passages as well as the oceanic ones attributed to Galactic. Happy landfall from New Zealand Maid.

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    1. Too kind, guys. (We're just trying to buy your latest book for the boys!)

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  3. "Now I know the size of the sea. It is exactly the size of a human heart" That quote will have to become one of the greats in my mind. I am always blown away with the literary passages as well as the oceanic ones attributed to Galactic. Happy landfall from New Zealand Maid.

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  4. Like you, I now know the size of the sea of sand dunes. I have travelled north and south and east and west and am back in Windhoek in a flat for a short time, I mean a bed, kitchen, living room, sort of like making landfalI. Cant say I am aborting this safari,...I have sold all the art I wanted and got the extraordinary photos I dreamed of, but am infused with greatest memories of my wanderings and best of all, I can choose to do even more. "Landfall" is just a pause. Enjoy!

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    1. Back to port in Windhoek! Fun to think of you just finishing the trip that we met you on.

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  5. To live a life that exceeds your expectations....that level of romanticism is all but extinct in the world I wake up to each morning. The occasional pleasure of opening Galactic's blog makes up for that, but really, guys, you are tops. xxx

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    1. Boat ownership, as you know, I find terribly anti-romantic. But crossing oceans? That still gets me every time!

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