Partners approach it from different directions
Issue 86: Sept/Oct 2012
When we mess about in boats, most of us enjoy the company of others. When I sail, my preference is to meander about, exploring the islands, relaxing in the cockpit as the sun goes down, and relishing the experience of the day. On a sailboat, it doesn’t take much to make me happy and I’m content to enjoy the experience alone. Therein lies the proverbial rub: this adventure called life is not just about me.
Quite often I am alone at the beginning and the end of the day. A conflict of schedules, other responsibilities, or the weather can render me solo. It’s second nature for me to paddle my kayak out to the mooring in Maine’s Rockland Harbor, haul it aboard my 1980 Cal 25-II, Holoholo, and be sailing within minutes. Try that when you have another person along. The tender gets bigger, there’s more stuff to stow, cockpit seating must be assigned (with a tiller that’s critical), and the question of lunch arises. Lunch? Who stops for lunch when you’re locked on to a steady breeze with the sails balanced and the tiller tied off with a bungee cord?
While I love to sail by myself, I have fond memories of exploring the Chesapeake with friends back in the 1970s on a Morgan Out Island 41. The space on deck and the roominess below (read: headroom) remain with me as a reminder of the advantage of size. The spacious cockpit, a wheel instead of a tiller, a proper galley and a usable head — all of these become important when there is more than one person on board. That’s especially so when cruising and, ultimately, cruising is my goal.
Marriage makes two
The shelves in my office are full of books that support and refute my idea of the ideal cruising sailboat. What’s important in the end is that it fulfill my needs.
But wait a minute! It’s not all about me. I have a partner and hope to spend some quality time in the coming years sharing my dream with her. So whose dream is it?
We have all read the books about courageous cruising couples who have challenged every aspect of the cruising life and remained happy. It’s in a book, so it must be true. Wannabes are warned of the risks, but then there’s the picture of a boat anchored in a remote lagoon with the sun dropping into the azure sea. Who can resist? Challenges can bring people together, but there must have been a starting point that helped them get headed in the right direction. How did they remain friends after being isolated as a couple so much of the time? Where are all the stories of the failures? There must be 10 or more of those stories for every successful cruising couple. Maybe I have chosen to read about the successes, ignored the rest, and now hope for the best.
Two different worlds
I dream, but so does Nancy, my wife. Call me a romantic; I can’t imagine a day without thoughts of cruising into the sunset. Does she have the same thoughts? Not a chance. Nancy owns her own business and has her own distractions to occupy her mind. She’s not dreaming about how to attach the staysail on a boat crashing through building seas. She’s not imagining the thrill of anchoring in a shifting tide in a strong onshore wind. That’s my department.
So I contemplate how to engage a somewhat reticent partner in the process of getting ready to cruise. I’m lucky to have had the promise from her to at least “give it a try.” She has spent extended periods of time on the water and they have been mostly positive experiences, but does that mean she’s ready to spend months on a boat alone with me or to cross the open ocean?
I believe that most of us dreamers are in the same boat, excuse the pun. Until we actually have the opportunity to try and see if it works, we hope for the best while doing everything we can to appropriately handle the details over which we still have control.
When I ask her which sailboat accommodation details she considers important, Nancy tells me she wants a workstation for her sewing machine, a comfortable bed, a large-enough head with a shower, and a galley that allows for food preparation just like in the real world. I’ll admit that the last two were not high on my priority list, which leads us to the word “compromise.” I’ll compromise on anything that makes her happy as long as it doesn’t compromise our safety. Safety at sea should be the primary goal of every cruiser. Compromise is the primary goal of every partnership.
Another detail has to be considered: what if she has to sail by herself after I’ve clocked myself on the head? This isn’t something she wants to discuss. If the time ever comes, she’ll manage. She has taken classes taught by women in order to learn about those possibilities. (It has something to do with my stature as an instructor and wanting to preserve our marriage.)
I find it’s hard work visualizing the juncture where our dreams converge onto the same path. It’s romantic to think we can choose “the path less traveled,” but darn it if there aren’t a lot of highways to travel first before we even get there.
I have to face it: women and men are just, for lack of a better word, different. While I’m making plans for our first trip across the Gulf Stream in, say, two years, she’s looking at my project boat: a land-locked bare hull 40 miles from the ocean. She asks, “And how are we going to afford this adventure?” While men are looking at the big picture, women concentrate on the little details.
While she is elbow-deep in dishwater, I try to engage Nancy in a discussion about how big the sink on the boat should be, and she looks at me across the top of her glasses and says, “Oh, this big is good enough.” In reality, while the most important thing to me at that moment is that sink, she is thinking about dinner, shopping, tomorrow’s appointments, and wondering if I’m ever going to get a haircut. Women can multitask. Men would crumble under the weight of multiple simultaneous thoughts.
Who has the map?
I have spent 30 years learning about our differences the hard way. Remember all those highways? I went down all of them and refused to ask for directions. Nancy had the map. But now we are getting close to our destination. The focus is narrowing and soon we will put our relationship to the ultimate test. It started with a dream and will end with an understanding. An understanding born out of all of those compromises we have made for each other along the way.
To my benefit, I get credit for including her in the process as I designed our cruising boat’s interior and dreamed of tropical anchorages. The process taught me that our dream doesn’t depend on me alone. By including her and getting her approval every step of the way, I have tried to keep her intrinsically connected, and perhaps (I continue to wish) she will find herself dreaming along with me. It is one more step toward finding success at the next stage of a lifelong partnership.
No matter the outcome of these dreams, the relationship will endure. In the event Nancy doesn’t take to crossing the open ocean and that part of cruising doesn’t work out as planned, it won’t be for lack of trying. I can still sail the boat by myself. We’ll still be together; she’ll just fly down to meet me.
Carl Hansen spent youthful summers sailing a Penguin dinghy his father built. He graduated to cruising sailboats and now sails his beloved Cal 25-II on Penobscot Bay, Maine. For cruising to new horizons, he is restoring a 1976 custom-built 40-foot center-cockpit sloop, a design attributed to Philip Rhodes. He has worked as a musician, European-car technician, home designer/builder, and cabinetmaker. He also dreamed of writing, and is completing his first novel, Destiny. He lives in Sandwich, New Hampshire.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
