Oceano - Log Day 15 - What are you sailing for?

For some people sailing is a sport. For some - a way to show off their wealth. For others - a lifestyle. For some - an escape. Sailing has a reputation of being a safe space for people who don’t fit it but at the same time is often presented as an activity that shows that you have time, money, ability to move slowly, work remotely or not work at all. It is for the hippies, pensioners and wanderers of this world but also for the rich and famous. It exceeds all social classes but also it is extremely connected with class and race. White Anglo-Saxon male is the classic sailor. He can be crazy, adventurous, Jack Sparrow style or more pragmatic and practical - but still, when it comes to iconic imagery, it is the man you see behind the wheel and the woman is usually smiling and sunbathing. Is the also the core language of yachting ads. It is easy to feel inadequate when you’re not ticking the boxes. Well, at least I do feel like that.

These are not ads designed for me at all. And though I know and see it, I love to flip through any sailing magazine - Yachting Monthly, Voiles, give me anything - and I love to look at the boats advertised and window shop. I can’t afford one. I would love to be engaged in sailing completely, to live on a boat permanently with my husband and our four cats - but it is out of my financial scope. So I fantasize. I take what I can. The image, the dream, the state of mind. I may not own a boat, but I do own a narrative. Sailing for me is not about the lifestyle of it - the clothes, the shoes, the gadgets, the aesthetic. Yes, I do love a stylish boat but it is not what is crucial, it is not the essence. It is not about being the first, the most skilled, it is not about impressing anyone, it is not about photos on Instagram, not about how your skin looks salty and tanned, not about textbook knowledge, not about eloquence in managing the gear, not even about the wind. For me sailing is a way of being. On land too. It’s a philosophy.

I am not and will not ever be the best sailor ever - I can handle a lot, but at the same time I make stupid mistakes in fair weather. I can do great provisioning but at the same time I can forget about the tea or confuse a pocket of rice with a pocket of coffee (really happened, they were disastrously similar). I can make a solid stewardess and a cook but at the same time I tend to forget that people are not obliged to like food I consider great. I will never excel at all this.

I used to beat myself about it. I used to cry in my bunk bed. But then I thought - ok, but maybe I am good enough? I really love it! I don’t want to feel inadequate all the time. I started to think - what am I sailing for? Why do I dare throw myself at sea? And then it came to me - I need this for my writing. To cleanse my palette, to find inspiration. And also - to, at a certain moment, find out how do I want to write about sailing itself.
It is not easy to figure out. Philosophy is not a piece of cake. I don’t want to create a travelogue or a collection of salty, tall stories. I don’t want it to be a book for professionals, I don’t want to sound technical nor pretentious. I don’t want it to sound like taken from great names of the naval literature genre and I don’t want to repeat other kind of books and essays that use water as a metaphor too.

I dream of translating into words this singular experience of sailing so other people could love it like I do and take it as theirs to their lives.

I believe sailing can make the world a better place, it can make us care for each other, understand, respect nature, feel like a part of it. It can distance us from our daily storms in the bathtub and our daily dramas. It teaches about the present moment and educates how not to be thrown about by winds of change and the surplus of unnecessary information.

Sailing can make you understand what do you really need, where do you want to be, who you really are. I see that we need sailing in our world right now, more than ever. We need this narrative. It is about mending what we did wrong. We can’t afford to reject it - regardless of class, wealth, race. We all have a right to it. It is so very human to be in the blue, to feel the blue like you feel the earth beneath your feet.

I don’t know how to achieve it yet, but I know I have to keep on sailing and writing to find out about it. It is the only way. You can’t always get what you want, but you just might find you get what you need - like the Stones sang in our kitchen today.

Oh, and at the very end of this very passionate entry I just really, really have to mention that this day was crowned with me trying to walk through the glass door - and then putting cold cheese from the freezer to my mouth, to numb the pain. My lips look like I botoxed them at a cheap shady clinic. Yes, sailing indeed is like philosophy to me. Mainly stoicism.

Karolina