“Oh great…so now the rest of my life is going to be nothing but watching Ted Lasso reruns in Florida.”
That was my choice snide and snippy comment to Rhett as the 2023 summer sailing season was winding down. At least the choicest one I can remember; I’m sure there were others.
While I can’t recall the precipitating events, the oath was most certainly uttered when it felt like life had ganged up on me: the wind wasn’t cooperating, Hazel wasn’t cooperating, the crew wasn’t cooperating and—most importantly—my head wasn’t cooperating.
Of all of Rhett’s positive traits, her ability to not overreact to the occasional Ahabian antics of her captain is somewhere in the top-five. She’s the oil on my oft-troubled sea.
In these situations, my mind—under self-inflicted threat—enters a zero-sum survival mode. It’s all or nothing. If I can’t sail all the time, I might as well not sail at all. It’s a dark place.
On that specific day the logical conclusion I drew is that if I’m not sailing 24x7x365 I’ll just run out the clock couch-bound with a blank stare, a remote, and the hilarity surrounding a pupal American-football coach surrounded by the chrysalis of a proper English football club.
That was my brooding six months ago as I sat like Rodin’s The Thinker, staring at the chessboard of my life. By my own free will, move by move, I had put myself in check. We were leaving Hazel and coming home.
On one hand today (in the spring of 2024) it’s the same. On the other, it’s diametrically opposite. Yes I’m still staring down at the board contemplating both the universe and my next move within it, but I’m now sitting on the other side of the table.
Last fall, when I saw I had no other moves possible that would lead to a different outcome, I toppled my king, accepted “defeat” somewhat gracefully and came home. Now that we’ve got less than 48-hours until the wheels are in the well of our flight back to Athens and Hazel (and everything that I thought I wanted)—I realize that, for the most part, I throughly enjoyed my winter shore leave: a bed that doesn’t move, no risk of the anchor alarm sounding at 2:00 a.m. notifying us that “the hook” is dragging, hot water without end, clean clothes…and—lo and behold—occasionally I sat still on the couch. As the closing credits of a Ted Lasso episode that I had seen before rolled across the screen, I had an odd feeling that I actually enjoyed the experience. The coach, sidekicks, and team felt like old friends. Over the winter I even had short-lived glimpses of a mental detente, an epiphany if you will: With an open frame of mind, all of life can be painted a voyage. The question becomes if it physical voyaging across the land and sea, or virtual voyaging in the mind, or some self-augmenting combination.
Of course, as the days count down to our throwing off the bow lines and sailing away from safe harbor, my imposter syndrome kicks-in and I’m a bit nervous getting back on the water. Will I remember how to sail? (Note to self: It’s probably best to not share imposter syndrome self-doubts with the crew. As I always say, some things are better left unsaid.)
While the term “gearing up” is a nice turn of phrase, it’s typically interchangeable with “getting ready” or “preparing.” However, for Rhett and me “gear” has meaning. We’re each checking two bags to Athens, one with clothes and personal items, the other with gear. While both of our second suitcases are full of items hard to find in Greece, mine is haphazardly stuffed with boat parts specific to Hazel James while Rhett’s is carefully organized with day to day items that make cramped life on a small boat easier.
In the early 2000s when our family of four lived in India for a year, friends back home wanted to send us a care package and emailed asking what we wanted most from the US. Instead of an expected request of exotic goods, they received Colleen’s laconic reply: Ziploc bags. While ostensibly available in India, we tried them and they were different—thinner, the zip seal lasted once or twice, and they often leaked right out of the box. Sure, I guess it helps to be open minded when traveling but sometimes you just need a bag you can trust. Fast forward 20 years and when I peer in Rhett’s gear suitcase I see…Ziploc-brand Ziploc bags. They made the list last summer after a couple failures of Grecian knockoffs in Hazel’s refrigerator led to messy clean ups compounded by limited fresh or hot water with which to do the cleaning. Perhaps the little things in life really don’t change.
Years ago, a colleague of mine and his wife took a sabbatical that included a monthlong apartment rental in Paris. When he returned and we were catching up, I was smitten by his descriptions of the two of them not just visiting Paris but, for a short time, becoming threads in the fabric of the city. As he talked, my mind painted fantastical scenes on that canvas. While the Louvre, Versailles, Arc de Triomphe, and other must-see destinations were in my frame, they were in the dappled, Impressionistic background. The foreground, in crisp Realism, was a workaday café, a boulangerie with fresh baguettes, and a fromagerie with the essence of every French cheese imaginable wafting onto the street.
Early in our relationship, I had told Rhett of this dream. She, being an all-in sucker for romance, latched on to the idea like Sunny on a bone. Long story short, in the fall of 2022 she made that dream real for us and that month of our lives together was magical.
This spring our itinerary echoes our Parisian fall. After several days in Athens to check on Hazel James, we’re off to Istanbul, Türkiye for the month of April. As opposed to our one-bedroom in Paris, we’ve now got an extra bedroom for visiting family and friends.
Why Istanbul? Why not? Like Paris, it’s a place neither of us have been. And, as highlighted in our last post, as we gotten to know Venetian and Grecian history better, Istanbul calls to us as a gateway to the East.
Our plan after that is to return to Athens and experience Greek Orthodox Easter in early-May with our fr-amily (portmanteau of friends who are family), then splash Hazel James and start sailing. While we had considered heading west this summer, laying in an ultimate course towards the Caribbean’s Windward Islands, when we looked at our last summer’s track in the Aegean Sea, we realized how much we haven’t seen. Rhett and I both turn 60 this year and know that when we eventually turn west, we’ll never be here again…at least not in our own boat.
So now the current summer sailing plan is to complete a clockwise circuit of the Aegean, beginning and ending in the Athens area—8:00 on the clock face. We’ll first make our way northwards past Mount Olympus towards Greece’s second largest city of Thessaloniki (namesake of The Bible book Thessalonians), then east along the north coast of the Aegean and into Turkish waters. Near Ancient Troy, we will turn south along the Turkish coast and finally back west returning to Athens in the fall.
Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea.
Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
…That’s the plan anyway. However, as it’s said, “Man plans and God laughs.” Or, as a nod to the ancient Greeks, “Man plans and the gods laugh.”
Thanks for reading and please stay tuned for all things Istanbul coming in future posts.
Corrections and clarifications on our last post:
Research and proofreading are Achilles’ heels for me. While I let Rhett review all draft blog post’s pictures prior to publication (it’s a southern sensibility thing, darlin’), she doesn’t read the text before posting. After reading our previous post, she astutely pointed out that I mistakenly referred to Brad Pitt’s character in the movie Troy as Hercules when it was really Achilles. Paris’ arrow stings.
Rhett also commented, that in my picture of art imitating life or life imitating art, some readers might not understand that the “woman” I’m sitting next to is a wax figure. (I was originally going so say “…is a wax ‘dummy.’”, but that would just dig my hole deeper.) Rhett pointed this out because she first noticed the art as she was checking in to the hotel. It took her several furtive glances to discern that “she” wasn’t real.
If you’re paying attention to our tracker on the HJ Sailing homepage, please disregard the long great circle hop from Athens to Delray Beach, Florida that I inadvertently added. While we were back in the US, I acquired a new communications device for Hazel and of course brought it to Greece in my gear suitcase. It uses cellular connections to automatically update the tracker map and saves the substantial monthly cost of a satellite connection when coastal sailing. In doing the shore-based set-up of the unit and connecting it with our tracking page back in Florida, I found it worked so well that it automatically updated the tracker to our location. I’ll get it corrected at some point.
