The 2014 Texas 200 in a Tiny Boat
The Body
Cuchulainn came out the next morning to view the armies and display his fine noble figure to the matrons and virgins and young girls and poets and bards. He came out to display himself by day because he felt the unearthly shape he had shown them the night before had not done him justice. He held in one hand nine human heads and in the other hand ten, and he shook them at the armies - the crop of one night's warfare on the four provinces of Ireland. The Connacht women climbed on the soldiers, and the Munster women climbed on their own men, to see Cuchulainn. (The Tain, Kinsella trans.)
I have come to expect much more from my body than history would justify. At birth, I refused to come quietly and was mangled in the extraction, and since then have developed a bit more than a fair share of chronic problems - asthma, stroke, osteoarthritis, etc. But, "Good news, everyone!" I've used this faulty chassis more than many of my more robust acquaintances, and, sadly, more than most of the many young people I meet these days. So we should not always look to a problematic body as an excuse to avoid adventures. Perhaps as I do, you will develop some arrangement with your body. I have fallen short on my part of this fuzzy contract because I hate gyms. I like the idea of gyms, I like leaving the gym after a good workout, but I hate indoor exercise-judo, karate, and fencing phases were exceptions - maybe I need violent people to stick to a routine. Like everybody it seems, I have a membership at a gym, though the least disruption to routine pushes a reset button and my psyche is pushed back in time before gyms were invented. Then, "Gyms? What a good idea! Who would have thought of it? I have a membership?"
The point is, I should have gotten into fantastic shape for the Texas 200, so I renewed my routines, started getting in a good tone and then final exams to be graded, this and that, and suddenly the Texas 200. My best excuse is the haunting memory of getting into great shape for both of my attempts at the Everglades Challenge, having to drop out in 2009 because my skipper's boat sprung a leak, and in 2012, because my boat lost its rudder. Instead of being glad for the extra health, like any good American I wondered, "So what good was all that? Now I am disappointed and merely strong." But that way lies madness.
Let us posit an alternative universe in which I did prepare adequately - what did I do? Taking care not to meet myself and annihilate existence in a matter-antimatter explosion, I slipped in to eavesdrop on this alternative-universe-me, and this is what I did: I sat on an 8 inch wide board set about a foot over the floor, and then held another piece of wood to simulate the tiller, and sat with as good a posture as possible. And then I held that position for a few hours under industrial heat lamps. Sometimes I held a rope and pulled on it. These things done, I went to the locker room, striding by the grunting, sweating hordes in the gym knowing that I had done the workout designed for the task.
Really, I think a gym is a great idea; add some rope pulling, because so much on a boat involves sideways and upward pulling, and you have done all you could do excepting the thing itself-in fact that is called Plan B-sail the Texas 200 just before doing the Texas 200 if you are at all taking this seriously. Plan B has the advantage of working out your mind, which never happened at the gym. For your mind will be sweating out the hours at the helm alone ("the tyranny of the tiller" as a friend calls it), and calming itself at the sight of the bow plowing under, the sudden appearance of a rogue wave (because they do come in small sizes, sliding in at the unexpected angle like a schoolyard bully), not to mention the infinite yet significant changing tensions in sheets and halyards. And how cute when someone said sailing is so relaxing.
And yet the lesser topics of The Body are equally compelling. Food, water, hygiene, urination. Fresh home from the Texas 200, I visited the campus to impress our two administrative assistants, Jane and Andrea, with my hairy-chested-man adventure in a cramped space, and their first question was, "But how did you pee?" Emasculation, in a nutshell.
The question is honorable in the context of an 8-foot boat. Just think of it-you turn your head to contemplate a wave that seems a bit different from the 10,000 others, then the boat yaws and says: "You IDIOT! You took your eyes away from my lovely form and invigorating character, and YOU MUST BE PUNISHED!" You adjust your hat, and the movement requires one hand to leave the tiller which imparts a moment force lateral to the hull, the holistic system leaves homeostasis, and, well you know. Now take out a scrap of paper and list the various steps to pee that do not involve wetting your pants. Ah, now you understand a greater accomplishment than you have given credit for. There are many disadvantages to being a man-we lack some empathy, we're always stuffing the prisons, we do minimal work in reproducing the species-but here is where we excel: a man finds a way to pee, under fire, in space, in public, in outlandish situations after drinking too much coffee, and aboard a Duck. But be not too proud, and know that the better part of Valor is Caution. I have heard that many men have drowned falling over the side while peeing with pride. As we say in sailor-talk: one hand for the boat and the other for yourself.
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A sailor making it look easy and enjoying a much-envied apple (Michael Jackson). |
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The mystery boat relaxing on the mud beach near Padre Island Yacht Club. Little did the author know of her puzzling depth of character. |
The Shining Adventurer
He felt unclean; although this was November in the Channel he could not live another day without a bath. He threw off his dressing gown, and a puzzled and nervous seaman, in the half-light, turned the jet of the canvas hose upon him while another worked the pump. The bitterly cold seawater stung as it hit his naked skin, and he leaped and danced and turned about grotesquely, gasping. (Lord Hornblower, C. S. Forester)
Don't even try it on me, that idea you have to be dirty to be adventurous. It is enough that sailing subjects me to crushed-butt syndrome, boom-in-the face dilemma, squinty-face-in-the-sun disease, and hands-forever-on-the-tiller neurosis. These discomforts test and prove my personhood adequately. In the evening I prefer sweat sponged from the skin. All of the ancient heroes I know of were from time to time washed clean of the blood of monsters and foemen and the sweat of rowing, leaping, and sprinting. We are told by the medieval scribe that the Irish saga hero Cu Chulainn, after his mad war frenzy, appeared to the assembled armies scrubbed, ready for a tea party. Beowulf, too, frequently on a sporting wager dove into water, salt and fresh, to rid humanity of monsters; his work was inherently clean. So no reason why we lesser types can't use a few wet-wipes or a squirt from a spray bottle. A gentle mist on the face, several spritzes in the various terrains of effluence, and enough salt and grime are gone for a nonsticky night's sleep-so important for tomorrow's great deeds of concentration. A dash of baby powder here and there, and no five-star hotel has much over you. Of course, there is some danger in cleanliness. Any boat larger than a Puddle Duck can carry a big insecticide sprayer-so effective and delightful for showering that you are at risk arriving home as fresh as an apple picked in the autumn dew - and then even the most open-minded hygienist would not believe you had had an adventure.
In summary - Oh, the Horror, the Beauty
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile. (Moby Dick, Herman Melville)
Afflicted by occasional terror, grime, bruises, and the crushing frustration of doldrums, the mind dwelling at the Center of this Changing Universe must work to dredge-up and process the raw materials of beauty. I am not talking about the dawns, dusks, graceful birds, shining dolphins, shooting stars, and Milky Ways; these are the commonplaces of the lazy sailor who does nothing but wake up and stay conscious. The world turns, and the ball of fusing hydrogen will come again, and again and again, along with its fawning sycophants, the refracted photons in their party clothes, and the natural world will slavishly follow Sol. No, for the sailor-who focuses eyes endlessly on the threats, the problems, the "what was that sound?" and the "what does this wind-shift intend?" - beauty must be plucked from between ripples on the sea, the attitude of a half-buried shell, the timbre of a gull's shriek, the slow gossip of mixing clouds, or the cosmic depth of a featureless sky that forces you to confront oblivion itself. What gym for this except the thing itself?
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