July 10, 2010

By David M. Lawrence

I fell asleep just after midnight with the sound of the engine providing a soundtrack to my oncoming dreams. I woke just after 0600 hours with the sound of – nothing.

Not quite nothing. I heard the faint rumbling of a generator as well as to the less faint sounds of people setting the tables in the main saloon for the first breakfast sitting. Nevertheless, the difference in the sound of the ship fully under sail versus the sound of the ship motoring are striking.

It's also hard to describe without slipping into worn-out cliché. Motoring is like driving down the West Side Expressway in New York City at rush hour – aggression fills every available space. Everyone is in a hurry, no one is getting anywhere, and there is little opportunity for reflection and serenity. By the time you get to where you're going you're wrung out from the stress.

Sailing is like standing on the crest of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Colorado after a long, steep hike up from the Huerfano River. You're above treeline and can see for miles to the east out onto the Great Plains, and miles to the west across the Great Sand Dunes and San Luis Valley to the San Juan Mountains. You may be physically tired, but sun, the wind, and the view – which includes nearby Blanca Peak to the south – fills your body and spirit with inspiration and the energy to climb even higher, assuming there were more of the mountains for you to climb.

A more concrete difference is in the effect on your body. When motoring, the SSV Corwith Cramer (and any other ship, for that matter), crashes through the waves. As it does so, you (at least I) more often than not crash your way through the companionways and cabins. Some of us have mysterious bruises popping up on our bodies from some of the impacts.

The Cramer rolls under sail, too, but the rocking motions are more gentle, usually leaving you time to steady oneself with a hand on a bulkhead or railing. It doesn't always work – such as when I reach out for a bulkhead and find the empty space of an open door instead – but your body doesn't get beaten up nearly as much from the "routine" activity of walking from one part of the ship to another.

We spent most of the day under sail, but as the evening approached, fading winds and developing squalls forced us to strike much of our sail and switch back to the engine.

The hard rocking and rolling is back. Ben Schellpfeffer and I are sitting in the library – something I've begun calling the sweatbox – working on our respective projects. Ben is editing a video, and I am trying to finish tonight's posts for the Plastics at SEA Web site. We keep our minds focused on our work, despite the movements of the ship and the need periodically to catch equipment that tries to fly off a desk or a bench. I catch my camera in mid-sentence. Ben catches the Pelican case with his computer and some video gear without dislodging his head phones. We quietly mutter various curses to ourselves, but the distractions don't slow us for long.

I think we'd rather be sailing, but motoring is what the conditions demand. Such is life at sea.