Sea Time - 1969 and then Some - page 131

Sea Time
ZEN TEACHERS SAY age thirty-five delineates the two primary phases of life, the formative years
and the person defined. Age thirty-five is the minimum advised for sitting seishin , meditation
lasting three days or ten.
Sunrise on my thirty-fifth could not delineate sea from sky but pitched into gray scud on
twenty knots gusting to forty under dark clouds bruised purple. Cross-seas banged heads as
the harbor at Canna Screws shrank and sails went up a mile into Monterey Bay. With the en-
gine cut the fifty-foot racing sloop Whirlaway fell off and heeled, bearing 240º south southwest,
twenty-four hundred miles to go.
Many people declined the heavy-weather-at-sea phase of the Grand Tour and lived rich,
full lives all the same, satisfied with loose reference to maritime scenes, like Stephen Still's
fantasy lyric peppered with nautical phrases, like following seas and tradewinds, running
downhill to Papeete on the outside, loving you and the Southern Cross , which was the name of
the song. On the outside? Outside of what? Outside of the boat? Outside of the ocean? That
was the problem when 60s rockers dabbled in imagery foreign to their experience; it came out
silly or worse.
Southern Cross attempted the rolling rhythm of the best decade, and we did wear bell bot-
toms and loved to love each other in every way. But the lyric made a salty dog wonder: what
the hell was he talking about?
Back on the real ocean, blustery, swirling skies and waves breaking over the bow were back-
drop on a birthday boy moaning to inboard then rolling to port for the ho-heave over the rail.
The four grand option money paid back in cash twelve hours before departure allowed a grand
for groceries, two grand for beer and liquor and a grand for cocaine to celebrate, because fail-
ure to celebrate small victories could doom a life to no celebration at all.
A yacht in the tropics made sense as a reality of choice. So a momentary setback, with its
puking, pain and hopeless odds, was only purgatory. Steve Miller capped it one more time with
a biblical reminder that purgatory is prerequisite to heavenly ascension.
You got to go through hell before you
Get to Heaven
Of historical note is that cocaine got cool in the 70s—Johnny Carson asked Maurice Chevalier
if WWI prisoners actually got cocaine from the guards. “ Mais oui , but it was a different time,