Obelisk Circumnavigation '08

 

"I dislike feeling at home while I am abroad."  -George Bernard Shaw

Can we really sail around the world?  Yes we can.  

These are the first two thoughts that passed through my mind before I signed on to be a part of this incredible adventure.  However, my thoughts soon moved from the "can" to the limitless possibilities ahead.  From the time when I was eight years old, pointing to the map above our kitchen table and stating firmly that one day I would set foot on each of the continents, I have needed this trip.  It is the trip that my dad longed for but was never able to take, and it it the trip that so many people will never have the desire to undertake--a trip to see and understand the world, not from 35,000 feet or the beaten path, but from a more personal and involved perspective.  Too often, the world is condensed, processed and packaged into "digestable" material by media filters, stereotypes and politics--though we live in an increasingly global culture, diversity abounds.  Before it's a thing of the past, I want to see the raw materials and form my own, experience-based conclusions about the individual cultures of world.  What better way than cruising slowly at sea level?

As a child, I had a fixation on modes of transportation.  I played with train sets, toy cars and especially small boats.  The boats were always my favorite; the trains only went in straight lines and the cars quickly sank to the bottom of the tub.  The only limit to a boat's freedom, I concluded, was the size of the bathtub.

While my affinity for water-borne methods of transportation was taking root, so was my love of adventure.  As I ventured further out from my rural Louisiana home, my permanent fixation for venturing over the next horizon solidified as a defining aspect of who I was.  When my teens came around, I took up SCUBA diving, an activity that has taken me around the world several times already and still never fails to keep the wanderlust running strong.  Today, I find myself working on a much larger boat, with goals as big as I can dream.  More important than the boat or any plans, I have the cooperation, encouragement and similar aspirations of four friends that are equally as excited by the vagabond nature of this endeavour.  We are an untested crew, and difficult times are ahead.  I know this and snicker at anyone that thinks of taking on a goal of this magnitude as frivolous or luxurious affair.  Though technology is busy shrinking the world around us, the oceans have never seemed larger.  The goal is lofty, but we are able.

In the cabin of my late grandfather's fishing boat hung a small brass plaque:

Oh God, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small.

I first noticed it when we got caught out late one night in a bad squall.  The lightening-lit waves and the crashing darkness outside the cabin crowded with frantic mothers and terrified children brought the first mortal fear into the innocence of my childhood.  I did not understand my beginning, my birth - I felt as if I had always been.  But I learned something that night about endings, and in the midst of the confusion surrounding me I read those words; and everything about the moment, even a watery ending, seemed apropos.

I am older now, yet that night still roars in my memory and calls to me.  I will go back to the water, to the waves and the sea, and learn anew what I already know. 

The sea is so great, and my boat is so small.

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