We are off the ground with a quick whoosh, up following the path of all the planes I've seen leaving City Airport over the last few days. There below is the lough, looking strangely empty & forlorn with the ships & people gone. There's time for 3 quick pictures: this is where we were. Then it disappears into cloud. It's not as bad as looking down & seeing the ship still there, I guess. They are already off. I wonder where they are, & what the weather is like.
The flights go ok, except for arguments with airport security people over x-raying my film. They hassle just because they CAN.
I don't want to go home; every mile is farther from the adventure. The map on the seat-back display is interesting & I'd like to look at it, but can't make up my mind whether I want to see the little plane getting farther & farther away from where it was. A 6-hour flight; and how very, very strange to think that in 6 hours I will be on the other side of an ocean it took 3 weeks to sail across.
You come away from such an adventure with an even greater respect for the sailors of centuries past, for those who struggled aloft in 40-foot seas and screaming gales of rain and snow to furl a torn and flapping sail, with no safety harness, rain gear, or shoes. You think about eating beef and peas and dry biscuits for months on end. Our water tank sprang a leak, and we flushed the toilets with buckets for a few days. Two hundred years ago, their water was in wooden barrels and it went green and slimy in no time. I had to sleep between my suitcase and the wall to keep from rolling out of my bunk on the worst days. Two hundred years ago it would be a hammock with less than two feet of space and fellow sailors bumping you from either side. My cabin had beetles. They had lice & fleas, & used urine on their laundry to keep the vermin down.
You come away from this with respect for those who man the ships today -- it can be exhausting, & it's a young person's job -- but you also begin to realize that seafarers in the age of sail were far tougher creatures than we.
Strangely though, there is more to the romance of sail than can be explained. It's the thing you can't explain that stays with you. It's the salt or the sea air that gets into your blood and stays there, unseen but always felt. You forget the bruises, the lack of sleep, the rotten weather, and you remember the adventure, and the sense of connection you felt to all the seafarers who went before you. You remember the friends you made, and the day you looked at one another and said, "We've crossed an ocean."
If I have to explain it to you... then I can't explain it to you.
Outside, the rain is softly fallin'
In the distance I can hear a foghorn sound
I pull my blankets just a little closer
My mind is on a ship that's outward bound.
On a voyage through a memory, sailin' on a silver sea
The moon and stars above now brightly shine
The wind that fills the sails is a lullaby that tells the tale
Of all the things that I was glad to leave behind.
The ocean has always been a part of me
I can feel the salt water running through my veins
I think of all the places where my ship will take me
But the thought of your gentle whispers gives me strength.
...
But when I rise, look out my little window
A wall of grey is right before my eyes
I can see a clock where time is slowly tickin'
How I wish that I could make my life here fly.
On a voyage through a memory, sailin' on a silver sea
The moon and stars above now brightly shine
The wind that fills the sails is a lullaby that tells the tale
Of all the things that I was glad to leave behind.
