Atlantic (Personal Essay)

I turn off all of the instruments that are obscuring my vision so that the only way to know we are on the right tack is the whistle of the wind across the bow. Captain McCormack informed us this sound means we were traveling at a 10-knot pace; however, with she and the rest of the crew sleeping below deck, the whistle helps remind me that we are even moving at all. We have to remain on the mark of two distant lighthouses off of my starboard bow; by daybreak we should reach Block Island, the first land we will have seen in several days. Occasionally I tire, and the sails slap the mast with slack, so I adjust my wheel and the boat lurches sideways once again, the whistle of the wind confirming we are back on my indolent pace. Aside from these sounds, it is the most silence I have ever experienced. Nothing about human life has prepared me for this absolute soundlessness, aside from skiing in the backcountry of the Rocky Mountains moments before a snowfall, when even the animals hush and the cold becomes too heavy to carry noise. However, here, in the Cimmerian shade, in the middle of the ocean, the feeling of pressing solitude echoes even further. And the stars. Their pure white reflection on the ocean surface extends me into space…

And with that crew too? Won’t you be lonely? They were surprised when I told them I was living on a sailboat for the summer. But I felt lost this year. There, constantly observed by competitive peers, the loneliness was infectious, internal. But here, I am always alone, so there is no one to watch me and wonder if I am lonely. For a couple of weeks now, all I had to do was simply sail a seventy-foot yacht through the Atlantic. Right now, I am the watcher. It is my watch, alone, at the helm, in control. I observe that the sea is calm, and because darkness is everywhere, it is light, so the large vessel and I float through.

It feels like several moments, or hours, or one hundred years, into this solitude, and I am brought back to where I am. The water enveloping me momentously erupts in emotion. Water slaps the hull, with large crashing sounds breaking the otherwise calm ocean, but the crew remains fast asleep below deck. I am not afraid, although it would have been plausible were I to be. The moonlight shows before me a pod of dolphins; there must be hundreds. As far as I can see in the darkness, the water is full of life. As some of the fins cut through the surface of the ocean, a trail of phosphorescence follows like a comet. Whether they found me, or I found them it doesn’t matter. In this moment, my moment, we are here, playing in each other’s wake. I think about calling for my first-mate, but I never do. Something about the majesty of this sight makes me understand that it shouldn’t be witnessed by humans. I am witnessing something truly wild, in an ocean I shouldn’t have been in, on a vessel that doesn’t belong to me. Yet I am here, and the only one here. It is a gift; the world took the opportunity to tell me this secret.

As suddenly as they appear, they leave, and I am left alone in the middle of the ocean.