A brief moment I took myself out of quiet contemplation

It has been 78 days of sleeping on the boat. When thinking about this journey beforehand I had wondered what I would do with the empty time. We have full days and nights that we are quietly moving out at sea, followed by days on days living off anchor not going to land. It is at times a very quiet existence.

Slowly against all odds and former oaths I have been cooking more and more. Even at times being proud of the outcome's flavor and experiential feeling of making in that way. Without access to my usual tools of creation, I have finally started chopping vegetables, sipping sauces to contemplate which spices need to be added to make taste based works. A far more temporary practice than what I considered my studio practice, but as the weeks go by it seems equally nourishing. I did not expect this change in my life long refusal to cook to happen in this place.

The hardest thing has been the lack of walking. When it was colder in late winter / early spring the outside deck was not at all welcoming. Now we sail open water, with no land in sight, having the kitchen doors open. The wind has finally changed its temperature. Finding movement is still the hardest part, but at least I'm not cold wrapped under 3 pairs of layers. I have been SUPing more and more. I wonder if I will embrace lap swimming in the even hotter months. How much more of me is going to change? The moments I do make it to land the earth feels as if it moves like the sea. I will have to regain my land legs come autumn.

We had a night sail from Montenegro to Greece, skipping Albania in mid April. The sea was not as it had been in my former night sailing experience. The waves were big, the boat was rocking and we had to put things away, which is not as common with the catamaran. The sea was not being as generous as it had been on all our former night sails. Ketil and I were doing our watch and sleep rotations as per usual. It was late and we were both awake talking to one another. Out of nowhere, no more than three meters from our boat, lights of a decent sized shipping container passed our side. This was not ok. We should have noticed a boat long before it got this close. We were in shock. This is the sort of thing that kills people. I was so spooked I checked all the bedrooms to see if someone had jumped abroad. I still get chills and a deep sense of ominousness when I think about that quiet moment of two ships passing far too close in the night. We have not done a night sail since. In an alternative universe maybe it didn't go as well for us.

Last night we anchored in a top 5 place we have stayed while on this journey. A small cove surrounded by wind and sea carved rock formations. The same crystal blue clear we have come to know in this sea during the warmer seasons. The rock cliffs jutting out all around the cove. I SUPed for hours around and through cave tunnels. I stayed up till 2am staring out at the dark facades of these old cliffs that kept the worst of the night's wind away from us. At sunrise Ketil and I each did yet another independent SUP journey to say goodbye to the space. We are on a tight schedule so we had to leave. We are now moving from Milos to Crete, a minimum 12 hour sail. The kind we usually liked to do at night. Seems we are still recovering from that last night sail.

I have so much more I want and think to share but I keep finding myself absorbed in the quiet witness of it all.

Night sailing is really weird.

I can describe better with some more time, but for now I am trying. It is my shift while Ketil sleeps for a few hours.

I sit inside the boat. Which looks like a home, but it is a home that wiggles and sways. My logic brain knows it's moving through water. It's got autopilot on so we can relax a bit. We have to look out at the dark abyss on rotation to check for ships.

We have been deeply deeply lucky with weather. No storms. No "old waves" as Ketil calls them. Not a cloud in the sky. It's deep dark black all around us. Fully black. With an insane milky way 🌌 above us. 2000+ meters deep below us. It's kinda unfathomable. That is over a mile deep. I still don't grasp it. Though I know if I were to jump in I would be lost to it. Then I might be able to imagine the depth below us. I do not want to learn about it that way.

Sometimes we sit and watch tv on my phone (horrible set up). During those moments I forget how wild it is to be moving while feeling so cozy. Will I ever get used to it?

We move through the dark with perhaps a single boat miles and miles away from us. The only way you can tell the sky from the water is the shine of the stars, but then they bounce around reflecting on the glass flat water. I can see why people have been enchanted with the sea since they could move upon it.

Then small waves break and you wonder what was there to make it be disrupted and there's no way to know. We are moving at 7 knots (13kms an hour). I know it doesn't seem fast but if I went into the water I'd be lost fast.

We cannot see shore in any way whatsoever. Total dark soup all around us. It's super hard to grasp it.

There's more to say. But just took a moment to get that bit out.

It's sooooo weird.

To be alone on the sea on this boat, sitting on the outside deck, in total quiet darkness, looking at that dark deep water unable to see where it separates from sky and horizon.

Part of me only wants to sail at night.

— Somewhere between Italy and Sicily, the dark between the stars

I made it to Italy.

A direct flight from San Francisco. Ketil was waiting at arrivals with a rented car and I had a list. Our first act as liveaboards was, of all things, a trip to Ikea. The fluorescent light, flat-pack furniture, endless mazed capitalism pathway eroded any energy I had. I fell asleep somewhere between the lighting section and the storage options. We abandoned the full mission and went to the boat.

This was my first time stepping aboard when it was in the water and fully ours. After all the dreaming, planning, talking and waiting — here was the moment. Here we were. It felt like arriving into a reality I never fully thought would come. I napped while Ketil puttered. The boat rocked beneath me and I had assumed I would be too excited to sleep, and yet a few hours later I woke up reluctant.

Rome was beckoning. Ketil's parents were there, waiting at a hotel. One last night of land sleeping before the boat becomes my permanent home. We ate a meat-heavy Argentinian meal, took the subway across the city to visit the family who had hosted us on WorkAway months ago — back in November and December, when we were still in the process of buying the boat and all of this felt more like a dream than an imminent reality. We had left some things with them, knowing we would return. We hadn't known it would be months later, after traveling through Asia, after so much living in between. It was good to step back into that earlier time. To feel the distance between then and now.

In the morning we said goodbye to Ketil's parents and spent the day driving all over Rome collecting various necessities for the boat. We got kicked out of the supermarket at nine in the evening. It was embarrassing, in a way, just how much we had left to do. We opted to keep the rental car one more morning for a final shop. I was exhausted with jet lag, holding a particular kind of unknowing — the uncertainty of preparing for something you have no baseline for. How do you know when you are ready for an experience entirely outside your previous experience? You buy too many things and hope.

That night we slept our first night aboard. We had power, which meant heat. It was comfortable. I was excited to get to know who I would become in this new floating home. Who would she be by the end of it?

In the morning we did one last food shop, returned the car, and got the boat fueled at the harbor pump. While waiting at the petrol dock we chatted with our boat neighbors — a French couple on a Lagoon 420 catamaran, dockside for three weeks waiting on a single engine part. They were preparing for a trans-Atlantic crossing next year by doing a Mediterranean navigation this year. We traded boat tours, curious about how each other lived, marveling at what a four-foot difference in vessel length actually means. The difference was dramatic, and likely a million dollars extra for us to experience. We said our goodbyes and motored out toward the mouth of the Tiber.

The weather was kind. The waves were gentle. We were excited in the way you are when something you have waited for is finally, actually happening.

Fifteen minutes out, one engine died.

To say the wind left our emotional sails is an understatement. We kept hoping the French couple's misfortune was not contagious. Honestly, I had no idea. All I have ever heard about boats was the same saying — "The best day of owning a boat is the day you buy one and the day you sell it." We turned back on one engine, slowly, carefully, without damage when docking. The mechanic came quickly, worked for a couple of hours, got things running. He had another small repair to make in the morning and then we would do a sea trial. One hour on the water to be sure before continuing south to Naples.

For the worst thing that could have happened, it felt manageable. We were in hands that cared and felt responsible — the mechanic had just spent a month refitting our engines. It was clear he was going to set this right fast and with skill.

These first twenty-four hours have been a lot. Things are finding their places on the boat slowly, imperfectly, with an insatiable desire to get it all done now — which I know is not possible. I have to know the boat first. Still, the coziness is beginning. So is the trust that we have to figure this out as we go, which is the only way to begin something like this.

After the mechanic left, the French couple invited us to dinner. We sat aboard their boat for a few hours, eating well, drinking two bottles of wine, talking about boats and politics. Then we dinged back across the Tiber in the dark to our own boat, our own four-foot-smaller vessel. Still it was ours.

A sweet ending to an otherwise not great day.

— Rome, the mouth of the Tiber, let's see what the future holds