Sailing through life

It’s interesting to think how one person’s hell is another’s luxury.
After reading The Life of Pi I have a new understanding of how some must view a life at sea. Granted, I am not ship wrecked, or stranded on a lifeboat with no company but a tiger. I have been sailing from before I could walk; I learnt to steer a boat before I learnt to drive a car. Some, however, have not been so fortunate. Some do not understand the ways of a boat.

They don’t know that dolphins are the socialites of the sea. That they love the sound of a ship’s motor and will swim alongside you, dancing and playing, until you cease to acknowledge them and they get bored.

They would not know that when a boat leans on its side, lying on the sea as if lying down to bed as we do, so that when you are on the inside of the boat looking out you do not see sky or land (if there happens to be any close by) but only water, as if you are swimming with the fish, that his extreme tilting of a boat is not dangerous, not something to worry about; it is natural. The boat is bending her ear to the tumultuous sea to hear it whisper and better understand its moods. A well designed boat- a graceful lady of the water- will then straighten herself with no need of help from her captain (who really serves her more than she serves him) and will carry on her buoyant dance through the sea, whom she now has a better understanding of.
No, some one who does not know boats may not appreciate that exchange.

Just as they may not know that there are fish with wings- rightfully named flying fish. This sounds like a fairy tale now but it is the truth, which only someone who sees them in action would believe. They breach the waves and spread their wings, not covered with feathers but with scales, and when they catch the wind just right, like the sail of a boat, they fly alongside a 50 ft Beneteau with ease, clearing the length of the boat and then some before closing their wings and ducking their heads and diving back into their watery home.

Likewise, one who does not appreciate these things may not realise that there is a special moment when you are lying on the bow of the boat with the wind coming at you and all around you, when the hull hits a wave in that moment where you are pointing to the skies, before the boat comes down on the other side of the wave when, just for that brief moment, you feel this is the closest you will ever come to flying; like the fish beside you and the birds above you, this is the only time you can know what it is like to have wings.

No, someone unfamiliar with sailing not privy to the ways of the water will never know these small blessings of the sea. I am fortunate and I am in awe; open water is a world in itself.