Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
sailing had he come to realize that, misfortunes aside, he could still make the choice to be
happy. He had followed that revelation for the rest of his life, creating and controlling his
environment, living for sailing. He worked as a captain and sailboat rigger and had lived
on a boat since he was a teenager. The Pirate King had chosen his destiny.
Watch was also a time for gossip. Ships run on gossip, and it is the most reliable way to
spread information among the crew. Boredom creates such a powerful suction in the mind
for anything interesting, anything new, or anything related to your situation—the situation,
that is, of being marooned on a small, steel island. Night watches, when the rest of the crew
were sleeping, were especially productive. Entire shifts were spent reenacting the captain's
social gaffes and speculating about whether Mary's goals for the voyage were achievable.
We wondered how long the voyage would be, and mused about what, exactly, we were sup-
posed to be doing.
The space between conversations, normally reserved at sea for quiet reverie and com-
munion with the mysteries of the deep, was instead filled by Gabe, who for the duration
of the voyage maintained a running series of food fantasies. Night and day, becalmed or
in high seas, Gabe would welcome us into his inner restaurant, a sensual wonderland of
Thai green curries and simmering stews and
more
green curries—always with the green
curry—and hot liquored drinks to ward off the cold air that chased us almost all the way to
the Gyre.
At times it seemed Gabe had no other way to approach the world. Once, during a dis-
cussion of the myth of the Garbage Patch as a “plastic island,” I caught him staring into
space, licking his lips.
“It's more like…like a thin minestrone,” he said.
Oh, and then you also have to steer the boat, taking turns at the
Kaisei
's tall, spoked
wheel. You can pull off such feats of steering as you've never imagined: driving without
being able to see in front of you (thanks to the masts, and the structure of the upper lounge,
and whatnot), driving in the dark without headlights, driving in the dark without headlights
while looking backward, with your hands off the wheel, drinking coffee, and telling bad
jokes. These maneuvers and more, I personally executed.
All this is made possible by the absence, on the high seas, of anything else
but
the high
seas. There is nothing to steer around, nothing to crash into, indeed no
things
whatsoever,
except for you and your ship. If, within a ten-mile radius, so much as a rain squall or a tall
wave threatened to violate our monopoly on thingness, the radar would sound an alarm.
All that mattered when you were steering, then, was the heading, which would be
provided by the watch captain, in our case the Pirate King.
“One-eight-five,” he would say.
