I was thinking the other day about my home confinement, which led me to think about my sailing trip around the world.
There are so many situations from my sailing days that give me an understanding of what to do while staying home amid COVID-19.
The first one i thought about was our trip from the island of Gran Canaria to Martinique in the Caribbean was to be around 22 days depending on our winds. Funny thing about sailing boats, they need wind to get to where you want to go!
Gran Canaria is one of the largest islands of a Spanish island group (The Canary Islands) off the coast of Morocco.
We sailed south / south-west from Gran Canaria to just west of the Cap Verde Islands where we turned pretty much West into the Atlantic and headed towards Martinique.
It was somewhere around half way across the Atlantic that the wind disappeared…gone. What was more unusual was that the seas died down and were almost flat. This is an unusual experience for any sailor and for told a number of days ahead without wind.
There we were, hundreds or even thousands of miles from anywhere, what was a person to do?
Much like in today’s world, once the shock of having to be at home, we got to work. There were chores to do on the boat, like sanding/varnishing, taking care of the sails, taking care of the winches, and anchor winch. There was a lot of maintenance of the boat and ourselves. This maintenance keeps the boat ready to go when the wind does come back, and it will as does taking care of ourselves both physically with good food and exercise as well as mentally. We would have daily radio schedules with boats going the same way and also to land based radio operators in England and the Caribbean. (Skype or Zoom today?) We also read and listened to Radio BBC on the radio! All to keep us up to date on what is going on and keeping ourselves fit mentally.
All that we are doing today, because we will be free one day of the stay at home orders. We will get back to work, doing what we love, and taking care of our families.
What we must do is look forward to be ready for that time by what we do, think, and plan for today.
n the end, we were full becalmed for four and a half days, which compared to now, but many of the things we did on the boat when there was no wind, is what we are doing now when we must be at home.
It is all about being positive, loving one another, and doing our part to get ready when we reenter the world space.
And make no mistake that day will come!
Now is the time to get ready for it.
When you are ready to travel back into the South Pacific maybe for 2021, then let’s start. Let make this fun! For this day will come.
Stay well and safe,
Kleon
