In Which Home is the Sailor.

The last time I posted, I was at the eve of a two-week stint as volunteer crew aboard the tall ship Hawaiian Chieftain, in Gray's Harbor, Washington. Somewhere in there, two weeks turned into four, and when I cast off mooring lines last Saturday afternoon and watched my ship sail away without me, I knew that even four weeks was really not enough.

I've been dreading the writing of this blog post, because I feel both the urgent need and the utter inability to explain how and why this sailing thing has captured my heart. I want to record every moment, bright and dark, before it slips away. But how can I describe the deluge of new information, the tide of challenges, the all-consuming submersion into this new life, how it battered and buoyed me? How can I explain how much it changed everything, how much it changed me?

There's so much. Sail stories will be leaking out of me for the rest of my life, but today I don't even know where to begin. So I'll just tell you this:

You know how sometimes your subconscious plays this trick on you where you hear someone's voice so clearly that it wakes you out of sleep, even though no one is there? This happens to me a lot. Yesterday I took a nap after lunch (oh naps, how I missed you!). I was awakened by the voice of my captain, calling out the command to cast off mooring lines: "Take one! Take two!" and, fainter, the subsequent cry: "Haul away one! Haul away two!"

I rubbed my eyes: I was home, in my own bed, very far away from the Chieftain. I rolled over and looked at the clock: 2 p.m -- the exact time the Chieftain leaves the dock daily for her afternoon sail, the exact time those commands were being given in Westport's harbor, and exactly 24 hours from when I heard them last.

* * *

At least I have pictures to make up for my lack of words. Here are some great photos taken by my crewmate Ian's dad, and captioned by Ian himself. His feelings at parting with the Chieftain were markedly similar to my own. And here are some crappy pictures taken by a radio station that chartered the ship for a movie-related contest. Definitely not as highly recommended, but they do show me at the helm, as well as some off-kilter shots of the drawbridge I got to pilot us through in Aberdeen.