Princess Royal Sailing club, Albany Western Australia
22/12/2013 Cruising Sailing; Life is too short
My Aunty Sandra passed away this morning. I am feeling very torn
between our adventure and my Mum in her time of grief. It does make it hard, wanting to be in 2
places at once. But it also reinforces the point that we don’t know how long we
have, so we need to make great use of the time we have on this earth.
There are or were a thousand reasons as to why Leanne and I should
not have set off on our great cruising sailing adventure. From business
reasons, family reasons and definitely financial reasons, all were like rubber
bands holding us back from pursuit of our dream.
Every time we spent money on something for the boat, such as the new
flexible type solar panels, or a bigger dinghy we stressed, argued and worried
over whether we were throwing money at a pipe dream.
Even now that we have left on our adventure, and the going gets a
bit tough, we have to remind ourselves that adventure does involve getting out
of the comfort zone.
Yesterday was a case in point. We had planned to sail just 20
nautical miles from Albany to Two
With the wind came the waves and all of a sudden the swell got into
the action too. Within perhaps half an hour we now had three metre swells
coming towards us, along with 20 knots of wind just off our bows. Conditions
had gone from quite ideal to quite uncomfortable within half an hour.
After Easy Tiger was bounced, jiggled and jostled for the next three
hours as we rounded the rocky headlands and around the semi submerged reefs.
Then we finally pulled the sails down and set the anchor, it would be true to
say that we really had more than an enough for one day. That was when I did
have a cursory thought that sitting at home on the big comfy lounge chair,
watching cricket on the telly might be a better way to spend a Sunday. Surely
it has to be better than out here in choppy sea, getting windswept and
wondering if the anchor has set so that the boat won’t be blown on to the
rocks.
As I said it was only a cursory thought. Because this morning as I
put on my wetsuit, it reminded me of those constricting bands of mortgage
payments, job pressures and day to day issues that we all seem to invent and
then put on ourselves.
As I jumped into water that was so clear it was like air, it rammed
home for me that a bad day out here on our adventure is way better than sitting
home staring at a TV.
Life is too short to be sitting around watching others make the most
of it.
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| Easy Tiger anchored in another ideal setting. |
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