Another Place Solitude on shore can be elusive for sailors. The minuscule events of our land-based surrounds soon entwine us wherever we search. Our society of sensate immediacy, our own restiveness, desire for companionship, and need to be busy, repeatedly tempt us to flee solitude as soon as we sense it. We discover reasons to visit, talk, read, listen, and tend to our boats—no room for silence. Pretexts not to be alone. Our reluctance for solitude proves as strong as our yearning for it. Another place is needed.
At sea, beyond the land-linked pretexts, out of the market places of our business world, away from the surface narratives and monologues with their staccato stutter, we find quiet contentment, and a place of healing for hurried, harried souls. The sea, with its inveigling allurement, invites us to a letting-go of landsider outer voices that offer a short-lived sense of inner well-being. The sea provides all a sailor in quest of solitude seeks.
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Free from shore side intrusions, the minutes, hours, and days stretch into horizonless hours of solitude and surprise, where we discover we come closer to knowing the truth about the nature of things. Our boat makes deeply contended sounds and a gentle wind caresses her sails as together we slip mile after mile over a lazy ocean. The waves doff their whitecaps and ripple and rhythm against her hull as we romp along among them. A matchless miniature rainbow appears dancing on her bow wave, one we have never seen before, or will ever see again. Astern we watch a long white sparkling wake, until it disappears into the splendidness that surrounds us. We know then our boat’s kind angel is present. We read it into the sea.
This other place, out of sight of land, is a hallowed space to discover authenticity and solitude. It is a place and time where the outer quietude gradually prevails over the inner restiveness, and leads to a private silence. A growing trust in the inner voice that reveals our true kind is nurtured. It calls us to untie ourselves from the supports of daily life and asks if there is something there that can stand on its own.
It invites us to let go, and not continue to depend on the help of others. To experience solitude at sea, in a small boat, is as close as we will come to a surrendering to the authenticity of our being, to trusting in a greater power, and an embracing of the gifts of solitude.
Swells and Solitude No two swells are the same. Each swell has a different shape, size, and poise. Dawn swells appear persistence, perpetual, ever majestic as they march from night’s dark shadows to salute the shimmering spectre of the sea. As sunrise’s enormous yolk of energy spreads to take over the day, its early light falls softly and brings out the shy strength of each swell through which the luminous depths of the awakened sea glisten. It is a place and time where the sea praises the steady wind in a constant hymn of wave. Dawn swells and their accompanying seascape contain immense presence. It is a vibrant and ever changing seascape. A theater of fluency that delights the mind, as if during the darkness, an omnipotent surrealistic, creator laid down the whole powerful panorama.
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Noon-time swells, with their gentle constancy and distant origin, are alien to the brash immediacy of much modern encounter. Their endless movement and cobalt reflections sparkle forever in the brilliant sunlight. When the mind is entangled it is kind to sail in such swells, to let the rhythm of the sea inside us. Such solitude disentangles the knotted mind. Body and spirit loosen and come back to their natural rhythm.
Night swells, bring a different kind of solitude. Their unseen, unleashed strength can also carry aloneness. We and our boat journey in darkness over every large swell. Together we shudder when struck abeam by a solid wall of black water. We voyage in a place where time slides slowly. Portentous swells raise us high to where we envision countless others marching ever forward, yet to arrive. Then down again into a watery, windless world, neither above or below the water, but in it, and of it. Such a sea creates its own cadenced solitude. It leaves its immutable imprint. There is a quality to being alone here that is incredibly precious. There is a special welcome for us at the heart of this solitude. It is wise to know it, and not seek to dismiss it too hurriedly. Like the swells, it too will soon be on its way elsewhere. Aloneness falls away when the heavens peek open to reveal the miracle of the birth of a new day. Now aloneness no longer escorts night time swells. We come into rhythm with the unseen sea, our boat, our own self, and a knowing of a special solitude.
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Sunrise and Solitude Sunsets at sea are always striking. For sailors seeking solitude, sunrises can be more lingering, beautiful, and filled with a sacred silence. Sunrise over a kind tropical sea is the most splendid spectacle. The soft blackness of night disappearing through veils of paling purple, elusive rose, replaced with fiery red flashes over seas of nickel, and ocean as unfathomable as the dark sky ebbing between the still visible stars, are the companions of a sailor’s sunrise solitude. Here sunrise displays its indescribable beauty. Its very richness of color, vast presence, and newness bring wonder, delight, and a gratefulness to be its special spectator. We witness the miracle of a new day with great hope and the singular delight of self being in communion with sea, knowing solitude.
Night Sky and Solitude On calm, clear nights under a star-studded heaven, being at sea is a profound experience that can be purifying, and beautiful beyond description. Simply being there is to enjoy a private sky. Life is framed by a horizon and a celestial sphere upon which the stars appear fixed, yet wheel in their patterns overhead—the majestic constellations. The naked beauty matches the unpolluted air. With a strong boat as sanctuary, night sky and sea awaken deadened senses. Navigating under sail at night does extraordinary things to our view of the world. It is more than merely finding our way—it is an extension of our minds into the heavens, and into the past, so that for a while we are contemporaries of the long gone.
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Keeping watch alone draws out reflective faculties, and gifts time to let the mind drift to the spectacle above. The visible universe is pricked by the white light of a trillion distant stars. In this vast cathedral of silence and speckled light, there is one spiralling galaxy of stars embossed more than others
—Ursa Major, the Great Bear, the Big Dipper.
Beneath Ursa Major, and Merek and Dubhe, its ancient pointers to Polaris, we watch but one part of this cosmic universe, just those few stars and galaxies, visible at precisely this time, on this night, only from our present position. What we see is one of countless comparable or greater galaxies in the total universe. We are filled with awe and wonder at the immensity of which we are but an insignificant part. Here we find a munificent solitude. We also discover our own “thin place” where we become diaphanous with spirit, and there is pure joy. We find there the wisdom and refreshment that brings new vitality.
Endless Time Time in this splendor, appears to be but an infinite succession of heartbeats that extend from our present moment into the past, and into the future. Of this endless expanse of time, all that is reliably known is a few thousand years behind, with only hazy and uncertain conceptions of what is ahead. How man “struts and frets his hour on the stage” in the few seconds that are allotted to him. Isolated from our engrossing, illusory, time-devouring, land-based impedimenta, we experience the timelessness of the sea.
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Our pace slows and perceptible pauses are created, for which we can be grateful. The silence in the pauses calls out in mystical-like tones, akin to the pauses in song that create rhythm. Without them the harmonious arrangement of voices that make up song is merely noise. It’s the pauses that birth tunes and rhythm. The same pauses give a sense of rhythm that creates the natural music of the sea. An ancient exchange has continued between the rhythm of the sea and solitude for millions of years.
Entrained by this exchange we become mindfully aware of the soulcraft of solitude and sea, and in some indefinable way we come home to ourselves. We feel fortunate to be part of this great mystery. A sacred silence again pervades before the wonder of it all. The invitation to savour surrounds. Savoured, it reveals not our own insignificance in the mystery, but our significance to its generous creator.
We are reluctant to surrender our watch. We do not seek sleep. We are not a mere spectator of solitude and sea. We are the gracious recipient of their precious gifts. We emerge renewed from their joyous embrace.
