Passagemaking with a Sprinkle of Beauty-making

December 20 – Passage making is not my favorite but a necessary task to discover new places.  I wasn’t feeling great as we motor-sailed from Nuevo Vallarta to Chamela.  The waves were kicking us about and close together making it a choppy ride.  We sailed a little bit which was nice, but it was still bumpy and uneven which makes my stomach unhappy.  The girls didn’t seem to mind, they were painting toe nails.

To avoid being totally seasick and tossing my cookies, I lie flat on my back.  I cannot sleep but I go into a trance-like state:  trying desperately to become one with the boat and acquire my sea legs.  As I lie there, my mind has time to think and my senses go nuts.  Maybe it’s simply the nature of living on a boat.  The sounds I hear become very acute, distinct and purposeful.  It’s loud when the engine is running, yet I can still make out noises that are out of the ordinary or different.  My immediate reaction is to alert Captain Dave and see if he hears it too, or if something is off, wrong or amiss.  Sometimes it’s nothing.  Sometimes I’m right.  Other times it’s my imagination.

I wonder if other boaters have a similar thing happen to them:  my ears listen intently to all the sounds consciously and subconsciously and my mind parses it out with different reactions depending on it’s rhythm, volume or pitch.  The whirring propeller has one sound and yet another when the choppy waves kick us around.  I listen carefully, worrying at times that something isn’t quite right.  Or something is pumping and I begin to flip switches off to make sure we don’t burn out a pump.  Ah the joys of reacting to the sounds on a boat!

One Reply to “Passagemaking with a Sprinkle of Beauty-making”

  1. I’m currenly feeling under the weather with an upset stomach. I can’t imagine feeling this way along with the continual movement on a boat….my heart goes out to you.

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