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MBCC Cruise Sunday 14th November 2010 – Noxious to Bertaggia.

Thanks to Linden Labs creating a new channel linking the continents of Corsica and Nautilus, it has now become possible for us to complete a cruise I’d been hoping to do for months. Previously I have been searching for an easy(ish) route further west, but banlines, ill-placed buildings and security devices made such a cruise impossible for all but the most suicidal of sailors. Things have changed now though and an easy route now exists, I only hope that the way remains clear of buildings & etc….

Note: This installment of Cruising comes without photography.  I was doing this cruise solo, and mostly on a semi-spur-of-the-moment, to clear my mind about some things, and only decided to write about it later.  But, as you shall see, it needs a return trip and I’ll remember my camera that time.  So the below is all from memory… but sometimes, words speak louder than pictures.

I don’t only sail.  That might come as a shock to some in the community; the purists of sail canvas and the wind.  I freely admit to driving what some would generally dismiss as stinkpots, steel and fiberglass atrocities that lack the grace of swans.  No– sometimes, I want to be graceless.  To shove the world aside and charge through, temporary escape from whatever is around me, until I can calm down and settle my thoughts.

In addition to a menagerie of conventional boats, I also am a happy owner of a purple and white Seawolf SW-320 named Skuld, named simultaneously after the Norn who embodied desire and need for the future, as well as the anime character.  Most of the time she floats quietly at my private dock next to my boat yard, and mostly serves as a place to sleep or eat quick meals when I’m too busy working to trek or ride all the way home.

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Has tragedy befallen the crew of the good ship Amaya?  Did a rogue wave overturn the happy little boat?  Did Elisha and Indigo get abducted by pirates, lawyers, or worse… politicians?  Will the Amaya continue on her merry way around the waters of Sansara?

No, no, no/no/no, and probably.

We’d set out from Mowry, fully intending to make a circuit of the Adriatic, and perhaps some poking up the rivers to see what’s where.  As readers are doubtless aware, we made it as far as Orwood, dropping anchor there, with the full intent to pick up after a good night’s sleep.

Well… it’d be nicer to say we were asleep for a very long while (months!) but… even as a cat, that’s pushing things a bit.

What happened was… the world.

Around the time Amaya took its voyage, Indigo was beginning to plan a new sailing-friendly community on the East River, just over the hills from Mowry.  Well, we were awoken early the next morning by her phone ringing (ringtone: Inno Di Mameli), and the ensuing phone conversation indicated that our cruise would be cut short.  She vanished in a cloud of pretty sparkly lights, heading off to finalize the land deal.

I could have weighed anchor on my own, raised sail and turned toward the rising sun, but…

I am a cat, and we’re known for curiosity.  I followed.  I can’t say it was a mistake, given all that has transpired yet, but… poor Amaya, lingering there in the Mallard, until I sent someone to haul her out and transport her back to Mowry.

And, in the months that followed, I lurked around while the Free Town of Helvellyn and the East River Community took root.  I moved Paklena Sailworks there.  The list goes on and on.

In short, I wound up taking a very significant vacation from sailing in order to assist with some good community building.  I mean… as much as I love the water… everybody needs a welcoming home port to come back to, right?

(I eventually did sail Amaya back down to the Adriatic, then on down the East to her new home in Helvellyn harbor.)

If you haven’t noticed, there has been a little bit of trouble with large portions of our sailing world.  (I am hereby nominating myself for the understatement of the year award.)  Enough has been written about root causes, costs, legalities and moralities and whatnot, both here on slsailing.com and elsewhere, that I don’t think it necessary to bring the situation up in those terms again.  There are others much more qualified than this cat to do so, anyway.

What I think the bigger issue, and fear/anger/despair, is the sense of, they’re taking my home port away. My friendly waters, my familiar coastlines.  You sail in an area, you get used to it.  You know it.  It’s how I was with Mowry; it’s how I’ve become with Helvellyn.  It’s why this extended shore leave was necessary for me… building a new home port, dredging channels through new waters.  Not just for me, but for all who have come after.  We have a few townsfolk; we have even more business owners in town, and thanks in large part to people like Manul Rotaru and the sailors of the Mowry Bay Cruising Club and Free Adriatic, we have sailors who are passing through and taking in the sights, if not actually calling Helvellyn harbor home.

But you know, I don’t really want to make this an ad for Helvellyn.  I’m only using it because it’s the place I’m most familiar with in this regard.  I’m sure, if this article were being written by another, they would use their own familiar home port as an example as well.

We need our home ports.  We need ports, period.  Even in the openspace sim crisis… any port will do in a storm.  But it’s always nice, and welcoming, and heartwarming to be returning to YOUR port, with that silly lopsided buoy at the entrance to the channel, the waves breaking on the seawall over there… knowing it’s a place you will fight for until you can fight no longer, and when you can’t, you know you’ll move on and find a new place to fight for.

Because that’s what homes are for.  Even if your home is the sea.  Especially if it’s the sea.

We lifted anchor in the predawn darkness and raised the sails, turning Amaya around. It was chilly. I had fur at least. The sky was unusually bright, and the water sounded somehow muffled past the hull. Indigo was stretched out on the port bench, fiddling with her camera.

“You know, I know it was only one night, but it seems like weeks since we’ve been here last,” I chuckled. “Look how much things have changed.”

Indigo looked up. “What do you mean, cat?” She was eying my tail. She wanted to pull that. Why did she want to pull my tail?

I nodded, tacking the boat back downriver, into the wind. “Look, the one galleon is gone and they’ve completely rebuilt the Black Spot.”

We circled Treasure Island in silence, then turned back out towards open water. Sails trimmed, Amaya skimmed along the blue-green Adriatic, mist flying, the furry and the redhead sitting up on the port rail. I was excited to see the sunrise. I love sunrises. I have a good reason to love sunrises… but that’s neither here nor there. I was rambling about my first sail and pointing out one of the buoys when I realized Indigo was gone.

Panic, barely restrained. I turned into the wind, then kept turning, leaving the jib slack, then bore back over towards where I thought she’d disappeared, letting more and more sheet out until Amaya crept to a virtual stop. No Indigo. I brought down the sails and crawled up to drop anchor…

“What was that?” said a voice from behind me. I jumped, fur fluffed. But it was only Indigo.

“Where were you?”

“I was right here, You were silent.”

We eyed each other warily for a moment, then I restowed the anchor and quietly paw-over-pawed the halyards, turning us back onto the reach towards Caddo.

“Doesn’t it seem weird how fast we’re going? I can’t feel wind.”

I froze at her words. I’d been too distracted fighting the bit of odd lee helm that Amaya seemed to have, and watching the lemon sherbet sky brighten in the east, to notice the motionlessness of my fur and whiskers. I stared at the sails, shimmying and full. I looked at the waves. Flat as glass.

Open your eyes, girl…

“This is too weird.” I deliberately turned Amaya into irons and brought the sails back down. No wind. None. The sun began to peek out over the edge of the horizon…

I raised the sails. No motion. I lowered them. It felt like hours….

“Motor?” Indigo suggested. I nodded. Calms were… possible… but I’d never, ever experienced one. I coerced life into the lawnmower… what was the other nickname I’d heard? Iron spinnaker? Well that was about right:

We flew.

I held on for sheer terror for a few moments, claws digging into the wood of the rail and the tiller. The sky was a uniform shade of milk white (what happened to the sunrise?) and the sea was a blur. Sails in the distance. Only survival instinct made me cut the motor and yank hard on the wood in my paw to avoid plowing into the docks ahead as we swerved crazily, in a fashion no boat has any sane reason to do so. The world was acting weird, going black in spots, like I was fainting… Amaya looped erratically around onto the landside basin of Suz’s docks….

“Aren’t we going unnaturally fast?” Indigo’s voice sounded distant and flatly calm. I turned to her…

The world went black.

I woke up, heart racing in the darkness, hanging half off my bed. What the…

The phone rang. I picked it up, staring out my bedroom window at the night-darkened countryside.

“Hi, Elisha. It’s Indigo. Are you ready to go sailing?”

(a cat’s SL-flavored mishap in sailing, based on a true story)

“Is this Amaya?” she asked.

I nodded, crossing my arms as I stood on the Scafell stone dock, watching the wavelets ripple against Amaya‘s green hull. For this trip, a sort of zig-zag around the inner seas of Sansara was the general idea (we had no idea exactly what places we would visit while there, neither of us having explored the coasts at great lengths), and I was looking forward to having Indigo Mertel along with me to take over the photographic duties as well as give me someone to talk to other than just the mast and my paws. We also knew this wouldn’t be a trip we could do in one shot… no, this time, we’re planning on doing a bit of aimless wandering once we reach the Adriatic, and given the size of the water there and the sheer amount of what might be down there… no, this would be bigger than one trip. Or even, bigger than one article. And, as we were still in Scafell, on the shores of Mowry Bay… we’d have to get to the Adriatic in the first place. We had the boat. We even had matching wetsuits from Shark, we were that ready.
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