Transitions

Received 3/30/10 from Jon Glaudemans


Transitions

Macaroon, our dive master for the day, before he briefed us on our day's dives, asked: meters or feet. There were five of us: three seriously hung-over Argentine young professionals, Jennifer, and me. One of the Argentinians - a lawyer it turned out -- had just been on the phone with his doctor, who ruled out a dive that day for him. Not because he and his two friends closed the local bar just 5 hours earlier after 4-5 Long Island Iced Teas and several parting complementary shots of tequila from an obliging bartender, but because of a recent pneumothorax. He had a hole in his lung. No diving for Alfredo that day. Augustine and Leo did dive, but not without incident beforehand as their stomachs rebelled against their decision to be on a rocking and rolling boat. Food for the fishies.

I was fine with either feet or meters, but candidly would have preferred feet, as my ears are sensitive to depth, and I'm reasonably in tune with my need to clear my ear canals at various depths (measured in feet). But Macarron took me at my word that I was good with either, and briefed the dive in meters. We were diving to about 20 meters (65 feet), but then another choice presented itself. Our air pressure gauges were configured in two distinct ways: Jennifer's measured pressure in pounds per square inch (3000 was a full tank) and mine measured in millibars (200 was a full tank). It's no good to be caught 65 feet (20 meters) below the surface without air, and it's imperative that each diver be able to signal to other divers the status of their tanks using clear hand signals. I needed to learn the convention for millibars, so that when I wanted to indicate my tank was half-full, Jennifer would understand. For PSI, it's simple: one hand displays the thousands, and the other hand the hundreds. One finger plus 5 fingers equals 1500 PSI. For millibars, it's different, and even though I was stone-cold sober, I still got my signals wrong when we were underwater. Happily, Macaroon anticipated that, checked my gauge, and we were good for another 10 minutes of diving.

Traveling in other parts of the world, with other conventions and systems of measurement and language requires a lot of on-the-spot transitional activity. A taxi in New York City stops, and the meter is preset at something like 4 dollars; in Puerto Ayora, the main town on the island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos, 4 dollars buys you 20 minutes in a taxi - enough to travel every street twice. Paying by time and not distance was not that difficult, but I still wondered whether we were being fair. Again, Macaroon came to our rescue when we ended our dive and dashed off to buy produce and some extra bottles of water. He assured us that our payment would be seen as fair.

When we left Puerto Ayora on our 44' catamaran "ile de Grace" on that Wednesday, Jennifer had just returned from a week in Denver, helping our daughter re-adjust too academic life after a major surgery; she left the day after a spring blizzard dropped a foot of snow on the foothills of the Rockies, and arrived in the Galapagos where the daytime lows never fall below 80 degrees. Let's not talk humidity. Making the transition both physically and emotionally was difficult for Jennifer; she enjoys the cold, and leaving your daughter confined (temporarily) to an arm sling, virtually immobile, was not easy, but talking about it helped us each understand each others' perspectives. As noted in an earlier post, we're working on linking our complementary perspectives on life: Teflon and Velcro to oversimplify a complicated symbiosis.

We had been at anchor in the harbor for 20 days; the waterline of the boat was thick with a yellowy-green scum, a slimy mix of algae, diesel exhaust, and grime. There are a lot of boats in one of only two protected anchorages in all of the Galapagos, and the warmth and fecundity of the water, coupled with the sheer numbers of boats, made for an interesting, far-from-hydrodynamic surface coating. I spent the morning of our departure in a mask and fins, brushing the hull clean. In cleaning the hull, I was helping an inanimate object make a transition: from rest to movement. I had been monitoring the growth, and had even hired our favorite taxi driver, El Gato, to help clean the hull mid-stay, but it needed a final scrub.

There are many chores associated with simply maintaining a boat on the water; even more associated with getting a boat ready to leave for a 3 week trip at sea. Many of these preparations occurred in our fitting out of the boat, but many are repetitive with each successive passage. Deflating the dinghy is an example; on short hops and in harbors, it hangs from our stern arch, beneath 4 solar panels and our wind generator. At sea, we can't risk having a following sea drop 500 gallons of salt water at 8+ pounds per gallon into the dinghy, so it gets deflated and stowed. Stephen helped with that, and Guita helped with other pre-passage chores, including helping replenish our ship's stores, and pre-cooking some meals. Together, they refilled our tanks with water from the purification plant ashore, as I had mistakenly left open - for the second time - the valve to our tanks. To say my shipmates were understanding would be an understatement; no recriminations, and offers of help to remedy the situation timely. Adjusting expectations and being resilient - an important part of transitions.

We needed fresh produce, bread, and refills for our snacks. We needed to check the various lines and sails for chafe. We needed to stow the various items that inevitably accumulate on the deck, in the cockpit, and in our cabins. Catamarans are more stable left to right than monohulls, but clutter is clutter, and clutter is dangerous if you need to find something fast or move quickly across a deck or cabin. To me, there are two types of clutter: hardware and boat equipment, and clothes, food, and bedding. For better and worse, I tend to focus on the former. I'm OK with the other kind of clutter, at least for a few days. Jennifer focuses on the latter kind of clutter; unless we're ship-shape all around, she feels as if the boat's not ready. And if the boat's not ready, sometimes she's not ready.

We need to make sure our ditch bag is complete. In the unlikely event of a catastrophic event at sea, we would deploy our life raft, and grab our ditch bags - bags containing survival gear for the crew, should we be forced to live in the lifer aft for 2 weeks. For most sailors, but especially for catamaran sailors, the life raft is truly a last resort, with ditching the best option if (and only if) the boat is actually sinking. Examples abound of sailors ditching their non-sinking boats, only to have the boat survive the storm afloat, even as the crew struggles (sometimes unsuccessfully) with surviving in a tiny life raft. For me, the biggest fear is fire; our vessel can be filled with water and it will still float. It can turn upside down, and not only would it float, but two escape hatches on the bottom would allow us to re-enter the boat and in effect, live in the space under the now overturned hulls. Fire is the real threat, and for that, Stephen inventoried our bags, identified missing items, and helped complete the checklists.

We left on a Wednesday; our visas had run out, and while we could surely have stayed an extra day or two, we were all anxious to get to the Marquesas, our next stop. Stephen and Guita will be headed back home from there, and we want to arrive in time for them to visit the beautiful islands that make up the eastern edge of French Polynesia. As a result, several passage-related chores were left undone as we lifted anchor, among them the de-cluttering of the clothes, food, and bedding, and the completion of our ditch bag preparations.

We took care of these remaining items on our second full day out. After a few days at sea, our transition to passage-making was complete in both the physical and mental aspects. Leaving harbor for sea requires adoption of a different mindset: being alone on an ocean, self-reliant in the extreme, is much different than being able to hail a water taxi for something left ashore. There's a new way to think and act when your watches come and go throughout the day and night. You sleep when you can. Meals become a logistical challenge, when some are awake and some asleep at any point in time.

Our rush to leave left some things undone, and in retrospect, my lack of appreciation for the impact of these undone chores on our collective ability to make the mental transition to passage making made the mental process of transitioning to passage making more difficult for us all. I assumed everyone could throw a switch. Unlike Macaroon, who promptly checked my gauge after my missed signal, I didn't check my shipmates' gauges until the third day. That's when we cleaned up the clothes and food and linens, and that's when we completed our ditch bag preparations. That's when we began, as a group of sailors, our passage to the Marquesas - not when we left the harbor.

Transitions. Whether its feet or meters, or harbors or passages, they all require a certain sobriety and flexibility, an awareness that it matters whether a single finger on a forearm means "I'm OK on air," or, "I'm low on air." Resiliency, and the capacity for adjusting expectations. Being aware that different people and different cultures undergo the process of conversion differently. I tend to make the mental switch from harbor to passage with the seeming flick of a switch. I've been to sea many times, and have made that mental and physical conversion many times, and to me, it's just that: a flick of the switch, and I'm in passage mode - or so I delude myself. In truth, I need time as well, time to accept the fluidity of an existence where mutuality is the key to not just harmony, but possibly survival..

Being aware of transitions - and more importantly, respecting others' needs for appropriate transitional environments, milestones, and benchmarks, and helping others transition at rates and rhythms they are comfortable with -- are key attributes of leadership in any situation. Macaroon taught me several lessons that day of diving, and I'm working at reading others' gauges as they make transitions in the nautical environment. I'm working even harder at measuring my own gauges accurately. I have patient shipmates and a candid co-captain to help me. And as fond as I once was of them, the dive reminded me of another lesson: I'm glad I no longer drink Long Island Iced Teas.