Wait, something doesn’t compute, I live in the mountains of Vermont and use a board to slide down a mountain covered in frozen water, but sailing? Wait, I windsurfed and kiteboarded a little when John was alive, but sailing??
A friend introduced me to the phrase, 'Bloom/grow where you are planted', recently. Years ago I learned a saying attributed to Confucius, which could be taken to have a somewhat similar meaning, 'Wherever you go, go with all your heart.' I think in all the times I have been 'transplanted', I have done fairly well to go with all my heart and to grow as best as possible no matter where. Sometimes, this has meant that the blooming I did before I was transplanted has become but a faint memory, and there were 30+ years of growing and blooming before I moved to Vermont. Sailing, like so many things in my life, it seems, is something I did for quite a number of years and with great enthusiasm, until I was transplanted, and new adventures took me into another environment.
Sailing would not have been an obvious hobby to pick up in Würzburg, Germany, given that the nearest large open bodies of water, either the North Sea or the Baltic Sea, are a good six-hour drive away. But my mother has saltwater in her blood having grown up in the north of Germany and having spent much of her childhood holidays by the Baltic Sea. She used to sail in her youth and her father used to own a boat at some point. We too would spend vacations by the Baltic Sea, but they didn’t involve any boats, just sandcastles and walks on the beach.
It was not until I was 11, when our family was on vacation in the alpine foothills of Bavaria, near lake Chiemsee, that my father scouted out a sailing school in Prien, the Chiemsee Yacht Schule, at the suggestion of my mother, and signed us all up for a two-week sailing course for the following year, the summer of 1989. And thus the passion began. In my diary, I wrote that it was the best experience of the year and my detective work so far, would suggest that I went back every year until 1997. Initially, I would take courses as a participant, but as the years passed I started working in the kitchen during any vacation time that was not otherwise planned out. It has been 18 years now since I last visited 2003, and I have to close my eyes and dig hard to try and remember the sounds and smells of the place. But I loved it. Every time the vacations were over, I’d cry as we left and I couldn’t wait to come back.
As I have been putting these memories together over the last few days, I have been asking myself why my time at the sailing school felt so special. I discovered that it is difficult to put my finger on any specific reason. The lake is in a beautiful part of Germany, and on a day with good visibility, the beginnings of the mountains can be seen on the horizon. The largest island on the lake, Herreninsel, is the site of an unfinished palace of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, which you can catch a glimpse of when sailing past, and the second-largest island, Fraueninsel, is the site of a small village and a Benedictine convent, the nuns of which make the most delicious marzipan. Visiting the island and procuring blocks of marzipan was always a big highlight of any week at the school. Other than the local attractions and the scenery, the camaraderie at the school was always fun and the joint goal of being there for a purpose, to learn to sail or help others learn to sail, was a great motivator.
The wind was not always spectacular and at the end of a sailing day, you’d often see a motorboat pulling everyone back to the school, one boat tied to the next like a string of boat beads being pulled across the glassy, mirrored surface of a lake undisturbed by wind. On other days the wind would be strong enough that the trapeze vests would come out and we got to hang off the side of the boat as it was leaning hard in the wind. I was always very excited to get a chance to use the trapeze and watch the water race by underneath me and get splashed by the flying spray.
The recent surge in popularity of sea shanties, especially ‘The drunken sailor’, has reminded me of the wake-up calls at the sailing school. Every morning at the same time, the person on watch would recite a wake-up call over the loudspeakers which would be followed by music, and often it would be sea shanties that would be played.
It goes without saying that sailors like to drink and on a fairly regular basis some unfortunate participant of a course would have to be admitted to the hospital, conveniently located right next door, to get their stomach pumped from the excessive consumption of alcohol. Thankfully, this is not something I ever experienced. But some of the memorable stories from those sailing days do involve a certain excessive level of alcohol and those are the ones I’d rather not memorialize in a blog.
After 8 years of learning to sail small boats, on a land-locked lake at the foot of the alps, I graduated to cruising on tall ships in the Baltic Sea and around the Canary Islands. The first of three such trips happened in 1997 when I spent two weeks exploring the western side of the Baltic Sea from Kiel in Germany all the way up to Kristiansand in Norway on the schooner Johann Smidt. I remember getting on board in Kiel and seeing a phonebox on the quay where the boat was docked. I remember thinking ‘I should call my parents before we leave.’ But I got so absorbed into the excitement of the upcoming trip, getting the boat ready, meeting the crew, and settling in, that I just didn’t get around to it. I guess I figured there’d be other opportunities on the trip but there were not, or at least I did not seek them out if there were. For two weeks, I was MIA in the Baltic Sea and learned later that my parents were ‘somewhat’ concerned and tried various ways to reach the ship to make sure I was on it and all was well. Those were the days long before the smartphone. It was not until I was back at the train station in Kiel two weeks later, that I called my parents and told them what train I’d be on and when to pick me up, and only then did I realize that not calling for two weeks had caused a bit of a ‘stir’, 😬… Sorry, Mom!
In 1999 I participated in another week-long cruise on the same ship in the Baltic and in 2000, I ventured all the way to the Canary Islands for two weeks, sailing from Tenerife to La Palma, Gomera, and Gran Canaria. The last trip was on a bigger ship the brig, Roald Amundsen. I loved almost everything about these trips. Being up in the middle of the night on watch, climbing into the masts to set and pack up sails on the square rigs, cooking, cleaning, you name it. Just give me something to do! The teamwork, the joint effort, and purpose was the best part, and there was always something new to do or learn!
On one of the trips, a fellow sailor taught us how to make decorative knots for keyrings, etc. I soaked it up! Though this skill is very rusty now. On another trip, everyone got a stomach bug in the form of diarrhea and so there was some extra cleaning duty to be done on the toilets. I remember noticing, as I was cleaning, that the toilet brushes were really gross and I questioned how you could clean a toilet properly with a dirty toilet brush, so I volunteered to disinfect the toilet brushes … Really, just give me something to do, I’ll do anything 😁! The trips were always a lot of fun. Once I kissed a fellow sailor, who was at least 30 years my senior … 😬 … yes, there was some alcohol involved. For a while, I was fascinated by tall ships and when they came to Greenock in Scotland, just after I had moved to Edinburgh in 1998, I took a trip by train, across Scotland to see them.
After my little excursion into sailing on tall ships, I went off to study oceanography in Southampton. As part of my Ph.D., I got the opportunity to participate in a research cruise from Scotland to Iceland in November of 2001, on the RSS Discovery. Boy, was it a rough trip! I remember a stretch of the trip when we spent a few days just hove to, riding out a storm. The weather and waves made work was too dangerous. It was supposed to be a 7-week cruise, but the organizers figured it would be hard to find enough crew who would agree to be in the North Atlantic for 7 weeks in early winter and so they broke the cruise up into two legs, of which I was on the first. I would have done both, no bother!
It really is something unique to be out in the middle of the ocean, confined to a small space with a fixed group of people completely at the mercy of the elements. I think what I also really like about it, is that life becomes quite simple. There are little distractions and you really can't escape the fact that your main goal and everyone's goal is to make the purpose of the journey and the day-to-day operations onboard run smoothly. Everyone has a part to play. I helped with CTD (Conductivity-Temperature-Depth sensor) operations and Niskin-bottle water samples. I carried out oxygen titrations, processed data, and, yes, ate lots of marmite on toast late at night.
It is lovely to revisit and remember all the positive experiences I was fortunate to be a part of, as I think back on these trips. There was the occasional sea-sickness, one somewhat unpleasant part of the trips, but it's nothing that 24 hours of vomiting won’t fix, and after that, I was all set.
The reasons why I did not continue to work in the field of oceanography after the Ph.D. and working at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod for three years are not simple, but I do feel that, had I not just been stuck behind a computer for most of my day to day work, there would have been at least a somewhat better chance, that I’d still be doing that work today.
After my progression from small sailboats, to bigger sailboats and then to a large research vessel, I went to the other extreme and learned to windsurf and later kitesurf, but that’s a story for another day. In the end, living in Vermont put an end to my sea-going adventures, at least for now. My mother has invited Klara, Matt, and me to cross the Atlantic on the Queen Mary II in November this year and I have all my fingers and toes crossed that we get to make this journey together, it would be a fantastic trip down memory lane, with a stop in Southampton. It would be very exciting!
So, yes, bizarre as it may seem now, sailing, going to sea, and being active on the water, was a big part of my life for a good 20+ years. But I am adaptable, and sliding down a mountain on frozen water has also been a blast since moving to the mountains. No doubt, that too will come to an end at some point. The big mystery is … what will be next?
Images:
1. Me at the helm on the Johann Smidt. - July 1997
2. Chiemsee Yacht Schule, CYS - Summer 2003
3. Brig Roald Amundsen with the mountain Teide on Tenerife in the background. - March 2000
4. In the mast on Roald Amundsen. I am second from the right. - March 2000
5. Disinfecting toilet brushes. - March 2000
6. Approaching Iceland on the RSS Discovery. - November 2001
7. My father and I, having lunch at the Southampton Oceanography Center during my parents' visit for my graduation. The Queen Mary II is docked in the background. - August 2004