Future Plans

After hyping up the Velux 5 Ocean race to my class (I tie the solo, round-the-world sailing race into Earth Science somehow) and showing the documentary Deep Water about the first solo, round-the-world sailing race, my students asked me if I was ever going to do the race.

Although I won't rule it out, I don't think I could be away from my family for that long, well, maybe if I'm 90 and I outlive Tony and my kids are grandparents, I could bear ten months away to do it. But, just like in triathlon, when I get close to race day, I try, for the first time, to look beyond my next race to see what I will be training for when I achieve the goal directly in front of me. For the first time this week I have been trying to find the next logical step after a 4-day single-handed sail with stops near land each night.

I think I will have to wait another three years at least before I can steal away, I have to give some rest to my support team between trips. I don't want to ask too much to often of them. They could tire easily of my journeys, what, with my husband Tony having to listen to me talk his ear off with a long litany of, for him, meaningless details, and my kids having to miss me while I am gone, and my parents who lend child watch services while Tony works so I can concentrate on sailing and not worry about the safety and happiness of the children.

Maybe in three to five years I could do a Newport, R.I. to Bermuda passage; five to nine days alone with no stopping on land would be a good stepping stone. And then a TransPac, from Long Beach to Hawaii - two to three weeks alone- sounds interesting and enticing. Maybe in seven or eight years, when the kids are in high school and would be more than happy to get rid of me for a few weeks.

I am sure some Type 1 Diabetics have done it before, but it would be pretty great to be the first at something. I wonder how you go about finding out if any Type 1's have done a TransPac or a Newport-Bermuda before. Do you know of any?

An Aptitude For Solitude

On my way to Back to School Night, the horizon peeked out through the open car window. I smelled the ocean and pictured myself for a moment out on that ocean with nothing surrounding me but the sea, watching the sun rise and the sun set for four days in a row.

I realized how much my soul needs some version of extended solitude. Some people are made for that kind of thing, some think it torture. For some it cleanses their souls from all the sludge that builds up on land and brings them back more ready to attack life, for some it drives them to madness.

I am a member of the former group. I have always had an amazing aptitude for solitude. It is what often has made me forgo going out with a group of friends to finish a project at home. It is what allowed me to survive one very lonely freshman year of college where I would go for days on end without talking to anyone except for the guy who made my sandwiches for lunch.

It is, also, what has driven me to plan this solo adventure, to push the boundaries of what is thought possible for a diabetic, and what has caused me to spend countless hours planning and arranging and seeking out sponsors to get it off the ground.

Many people have asked me why I couldn't bring someone else along with me. A few were concerned for my safety, a few trying to solve the problem of finding a boat to charter from companies that seemed to outlaw solo sailors I tell them there is an extreme difference between sailing solo and sailing with crew. It's in the freedom to indulge every whim right when it hits. To go out as far from land as I want without having to consider another, to see what I want to see, to stop where I want to stop, and to drive on when I want to meet a goal.

It is so unlike my life on land, where it is always a compromise, when I am pulled in a million directions other than the one I truly want to go. Work pulls. Bills pull. Even having to choose a place to eat involves balancing the needs and wants of everyone else. Tony needs to eat clean foods and needs to eat in the next fifteen minutes. Shea won't eat meat. Eli will only eat foods that involve begin dipped in ketchup. I need to sit in a place that involves direct sunlight on my face and all of this has to be done for under twenty dollars.

But, it is not so when you are solo. It is all me. It is simple to balance the things that I want. One opinion to sway the vote, one need to satisfy, one desire to fulfill.

It's not just about indulging my will, though. It's about testing myself without having any fallback. No one else to confer with or lean on when things go wrong, no one to brainstorm with if something breaks, no one to choose a course or to figure out where we went off course and what point on the chart that huge tower actually is. It will just be me.

When the wind picks up or the boat gets grounded, I alone will have to fix it. If you want to know yourself, to truly know of what you are capable, you have to put yourself in those situations where there is a chance that you are in over your head. It is only then that you can find the outer extents of what you are capable of. If you never get to the end of your rope, how can you ever know how long it is?

I hope I am able to find that point so that I can come back knowing that I can handle anything this pedestrian, land-locked life can throw my way. We will have to wait and see...

Practical Dreams

Sometimes I dream big, owning my own private island with a dock out front and at least four boats tied up to it right next to a perfect right point break and a private tutor to come school the kids for six hours a day while I write and sail and surf everyday. Sometimes I dream a little more practically.

Owning a MacGregor 26 is more of this kind of a dream. It's got an affordable sticker price, can be trailered so I don't have to pay slip fees, and it is virtually maintenance free if you don't count scrubbing jelly off the deck from my kids peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

And it is the perfect boat for my Florida trip. It can sail in just 12 inches of water, it has solid

foam flotation so that even if you drill a hole in the bottom it won't sink, not that I'm planning on doing that, and it is totally self-righting so in the rare chance I might be knocked over by a rouge wave, it will pop right back up. You can throw a motor on the boat and go so fast that a harbor would be within minutes if I got word that the weather is making a turn for the worse.

As I was perusing the MacGregor website, as I do on a regular basis, I noticed that Captain Mike Inmon who runs the MacGregor factory has an offer for a free DVD if you go visit the factory. Maybe it was all of the old books I had read or maybe just my imagination, but, I was always under the impression that all the boat builders were in some old wooden garage somewhere tucked away on the East Coast. So when I found out MacGregor was only a 45 minute drive from my house and that I was more than welcome to stop by at any time and learn how they made a boat out of rolls of fiberglass and resin, I put a visit on my calendar.

Last Friday I made the drive up to Newport Beach and paid a visit to Captain Mike. He greeted me with warmth like a proud papa excited to see me and show me all that his factory held. We started where the boats start with rolls and rolls of fiberglass. As we walked through the factory we followed along just as a boat would from fiberglass and resin to full completed boat ready to be shipped anywhere in the world and I watched as all these pieces were slowly and masterfully worked into a piece of art.

Every hole was cut with precision and every piece perfectly cut to line up with the plan exactly. And it all made for a boat that was precise. One that was exactly as it had been designed to be with no room for human error.

We walked into the room where they poured the resin and I at once felt at home. I have spent countless hours bathed in the smell of resin and fiberglass while fixing surfboards over the last twenty years (ok, that just made me feel a little old) and it's a smell that, to this day, reminds me of having the space and time to think. Fixing surfboards was a great excuse to get outside in a place where others would be driven away by the smell and how, while my hands would work the glass, my mind was free to wander.

I think solo sailing has such a strong pull on my life for the very same reason. With days on end without another human for miles, my mind can drift on the wind, finding new places to go and new solutions to years old problems. It will be a time to sift over the pain and friction Diabetes can inflict on a life and try to draw some sense out of it all. To find a purpose in all of it and then to turn that purpose into a life story to share with other people who have Diabetes or the ones who love someone with it or those who deal with the kind of friction that comes when a body can't provide as much as the mind wants it to.

I knew with that smell that I had been joined to these boats, hopefully, starting a long relationship with one of them that will carry me through my journey and provide the place I need to make sense of it all. We finished our tour and as we sat in Captain Mike's office chatting for a bit, once again I realized how this trip has opened doors to share with people what little I have figured out about the technology of my disease and living with it and how common it is for people to be affected by illness.

I left with my promised DVD in hand and a better view of how big this trip can be and how far it can reach and I have Captain Mike Inmon to thank for that.