Middle to late November always leaves me thinking about being at sea. It’s the season for southbound sailboat deliveries on the Atlantic coast of the US. Delivering a sailboat from, say, Montauk to Tortola … is kind of like being a New York City cop. It’s 98.5% of the time just doing your watch, fixing the mechanical problem of the moment, eating (DEFINITELY NO ALCOHOLIC DRINKING), reading, reading, more reading, cooking and bread baking (for me), writing, listening to Herb (weather guy @1500 hrs), sleeping, checking way points and keeping a weather eye on the radar and the GPS, and then …. the other 1.5% of the time can be sheer terror. There is no lonelier feeling than being at sea, especially on a sailboat less than 3o meters, out on the big bad blue, in the middle of a full blown storm: not a gale, but a rip snortin’, I-want-to-make-you-puke, hear-it-in-the-stays storm. You feel very,very small and very, very alone. Over two hundred miles offshore, no one is going to fly out to rescue you; 500 miles or more offshore whatever happens, you’re sticking with the boat.
The image above was from a day cruise across the bay off the coast of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on arguably the nicest, finest, power yacht I’ve ever been on: the Machiavelli. The occasion was a good friend’s 45th birthday. His bride, my good friend, flew 26 of their closest and dearest down for his birthday celebration from NYC. And without going into details, it was a glorious day. As we crossed the bay, whales were breaching, and the weather in late January was extraordinary. The inside of the vessel smelled wonderful: it smelled of well oiled teak, salsa, Mexican chicken, fresh green salads, perhaps a little of spilled tequila that we had for lunch, and of course the sea.
I made a lot of exposures that day. A couple of them were all right. My friend who was celebrating his birthday handed me his digital camera; I’m not sure what it was, I think it was a Canon, and I loved the instantaneous aspect of it. I became a shooting fool as we returned back to where we had departed that morning. I stopped and looked over my shoulder. I saw the mist filtering the coast astern, and I picked up my Hasselblad for one last exposure. Topside, it was getting chilly as the sun set in the west. Someone buddied up next to me, and he had a large pour of Tequila in one hand for me. I smiled, actually, I laughed, tossed it back and felt the warmth swim through my belly.
I watched the light change over the coast behind me. I thought about Edward Weston sailing to Mexico from Southern California in the mid 1920’s on a slow tramp steamer with his 8×10 wooden camera and his girl friend Tina Modotti. I kind of nodded at the misty coastline behind me. And then I thought about my days and nights, and sometimes, weeks at sea delivering sailboats. It always feels good to have water under my feet.
