6/23
Finished with another week. The schedule has been insane. We get up at 0715 and are on deck and working, for the most part, until 2100, with at least a 90 minute anchor/dock watch interrupting the night’s sleep. I end each trip exhausted, thankful for the quiet days of maintenance at the dock.
However, in no way do I loathe the time out with the kids. It’s the exact opposite. I love it. Last week we had kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and I saw a lot of my kids from Chicago in them.
The program they were in was phenomenal. It was everything that INTRSCT would have loved to do had we had the financial connections and staffing, and it showed in the kids. I was sad to see them go because they had so much potential, and their school was clearly showing them how to grow into the best men and women they could. It’s always exciting to see kids that pliable, with that much potential, and showing them how to unlock it. Had we had them all summer, I think they would have learned some powerful and unique lessons. They sure seemed ripe for it.
Our last night of the voyage we were planning on sailing through the night, but an incoming thunderstorm, coupled with the so many of the kids’ predisposition to seasickness changed our minds pretty quickly. So instead we ducked into a cove on Fishers’ Island and were soon joined by the famous Schooner Amistad, on her way back to Mystic Seaport.
The night was nearly biblical. It started at sunset. The neon orange sun was setting behind thick, purple cumulo-nimbus thunderclouds and looked like a watercolor painting that had bled through. At twilight, the fireworks shifted from celestial to electric, with spirals and spikes of lightening coursing through the clouds. The kids cheered and hollered until we sent them below for safe shelter as the storm moved closer. The winds howled steady and we were pelted with cold bb’s of rain for the better part of two hours before it had passed overhead and left behind it a calm, cool, windless night. For a minute though, it was the kind of apocolyptic display that makes Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins drool.
In what little spurts of free time I’ve had, I’ve been reading some fantastic books. Before heading off for the Gamage in May I made a run to Borders and dropped $150 on some books I’ve wanted to read for a while but haven’t gotten around to. I started out the summer with Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, moved on to Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, and am in the middle of On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. Though my writing time has been virtually nil, my reading time has been legendary. 30-45 minutes here or there doesn’t lend itself to much of a creative process, but it’s been working out perfectly for cruising through other people’s work. And besides, they say that one of the best ways to become a better writer is to read, read, read. So at least I am learning from some of the masters of our century.
I suppose I could say the same of my sailing endeavors as well. It’s a fairly invigorating thing to be learning from the best in the things that make me catch fire with ambition and desire.
We are docked back in New London for the weekend. As soon as we finished our day’s work today the Prince William, the same from Charleston and my 2004 Voyage of Understanding, was hauling tight her dock lines at the same pier, a few hundred yards away from us. Better yet, one of my crewmates from the ’04 voyage was onboard as crew. Hopefully this weekend we can get some catch up time.
That’s it for this week. Prayers to the O’Sullivan’s, and drinks to life and loved ones all around.
Peace and Much Love,
Ben