Cruising Blues

[Guest]

I remember reading this somewhere years ago, just found it again on the internet and thought I'd share it.

Interestingly the author is the guy who wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (if you haven't read it do so immediately - it taught me how to deal with diesel engines), he bought a Westsail 32 and cruised for many many years after his motorcycle journey.

 

Cruising Blues and Their Cure

 

By Robert Pirsig

(originally published in Esquire, May 1977)

 

 

Their case was typical. After four years of hard labor their ocean-size trimaran was launched in Minneapolis at the head of Mississippi navigation. Six and one half months later they had brought it down the river and across the gulf to Florida to finish up final details. Then at last they were off to sail the Bahamas, the Lesser Antilles and South America.

 

Only it didn't work out that way. Within six weeks they were through. The boat was back in Florida up for sale.

 

"Our feelings were mixed," they wrote their hometown paper. "Each of us had a favorite dream unfulfilled, a place he or she wanted to visit, a thing to do. And most of us felt sheepish that our 'year's escape' shrunk to eight months. Stated that way, it doesn't sound as if we got our money's worth for our four years' labor."

 

"But most of us had had just about all the escape we could stand; we're overdosed on vacation. Maybe we aren't quite as free spirits as we believed; each new island to visit had just a bit less than its predecessor."

 

"And thoughts were turning to home."

 

Change the point of origin to Sacramento or Cincinnati or any of thousands of places where the hope of sailing the world fills landlocked, job-locked dreamers; add thousands of couples who have saved for years to extend their weekends on the water to a retirement at sea, then sell their boats after six months; change the style and size of the boat, or the ages and backgrounds of the participants, and you have a story that is heard over and over again in cruising areas - romantic dreams of a lifetime destroyed by a psychological affliction that has probably ended the careers of more cruising sailors than all other causes together: cruising depression.

 

"I don't know what it was we thought we were looking for," one wife said in a St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, harbor after she and her husband had decided to put their boat up for sale and go home. "But whatever it was, we certainly haven't discovered it in sailing. It seemed that it was going to be such a dream life, but now, looking back on it, it just seems . . . oh, there have been beautiful times, of course, but mostly it's just been hard work and misery. More than we would have had if we had stayed home."

 

A husband said, "We find ourselves getting on each other's nerves, being cooped up like this with each other day after day. We never realized that in order to enjoy being with someone you have to have periods of separation from that person too. We sailed on weekends and short vacations for years. But living aboard isn't the same."

 

Statements symptomatic of cruising depression vary from person to person, but common to most are long periods of silence in a person who is normally talkative, followed by a feeling of overwhelming sadness that at first seems to have no specific cause, then, on reflection, seems to have many causes, such as:

 

Everything is breaking down on this boat. Everything is going to hell. Considering the number of things that could break down, the attrition is actually quite normal, but now there isn't the time or tools to make major repairs, and the costs of boatyard labor and overhead are out of sight. So now every part failure - a pump that won't work, a loose propeller shaft, a windlass that sticks - looms up as a catastrophe, and during the long hours at the helm while the problem remains unfixed, it grows larger and larger in the mind.

 

Money is running short. Most of the big supermarkets are too far from the boat to walk to. Marine stores seem to overcharge on everything. Money is always running short, but now that fact, which was once a challenge, is a source of despair. A serious cruising person always seems to find the money one way or another, usually by taking short-term waterfront jobs, and taking them without much resentment. His boat gives him something to work for. But now the boat itself is resented and there is nothing to work for.

 

The people are unfriendlier here than back home. Back home people seemed friendlier, but now cruising depression has put a scowl and a worried look on the sailor's face that makes people keep their distance.

 

All this is just running away from reality. You never realize how good that friendly old nine-to-five office job can be. Just little things - like everyone saying hello each morning or the supervisor stopping by to get your opinion because he really needs it. And seeing old friends and familiar neighbors and streets you've lived near all your life. Who wants to escape all that? Perhaps what cruising teaches more than anything else is an appreciation of the real world you might otherwise think of as oppressive.

 

This last symptom - the desire to "get back to reality" - is one I've found in almost every case of cruising depression and may be the key to the whole affliction. If one bears down on this point a little it begins to open up and reveal deeper sources of trouble.

 

One first has to ask where those who are depressed got the idea that cruise sailing was an escape from reality. Who ever taught them that? What exactly do they mean? Scientists and philosophers spend their entire working lives puzzling over the nature of reality, but now the depressed ones use the term freely, as though everyone should know and agree with what they mean by it.

 

As best I can make out, reality for them is the mode of daily living they followed before taking to the water; unlike cruise sailing, it is the one shared by the majority of the members of our culture. It usually means gainful employment in a stable economic network of some sort without too much variance from what are considered the norms and mores of society. In other words, back to the common herd.

 

The illogic is not hard to find. The house-car-job complex with its nine-to-five office routine is common only to a very small percentage of the earth's population and has only been common to this percentage for the last hundred years or so. If this is reality, have the millions of years that preceded our current century all been unreal?

 

An alternative - and better - definition of reality can be found by naming some of its components ...air...sunlight...wind...water...the motion of waves...the patterns of clouds before a coming storm. These elements, unlike twentieth-century office routines, have been here since before life appeared on this planet and they will continue long after office routines are gone. They are understood by everyone, not just a small segment of a highly advanced society. When considered on purely logical grounds, they are more real than the extremely transitory life-styles of the modern civilization the depressed ones want to return to.

 

If this is so, then it follows that those who see sailing as an escape from reality have got their understanding of both sailing and reality completely backwards. Sailing is not an escape but a return to and a confrontation of a reality from which modern civilization is itself an escape. For centuries, man suffered from the reality of an earth that was too dark or too hot or too cold for his comfort, and to escape this he invented complex systems of lighting, heating and air conditioning. Sailing rejects these and returns to the old realities of dark and heat and cold. Modern civilization has found radio, TV, movies, nightclubs and a huge variety of mechanized entertainment to titillate our senses and help us escape from the apparent boredom of the earth and the sun and wind and stars. Sailing returns to these ancient realities.

 

For many of the depressed ones, the real underlying source of cruising depression is that they have thought of sailing as one more civilized form of stimulation, just like movies or spectator sports, and somehow felt their boat had an obligation to keep them thrilled and entertained. But no boat can be an endless source of entertainment and should not be expected to be one.

 

A lot of their expectation may have come from weekend sailing, whose pleasures differ greatly from live-aboard cruising. In weekend sailing, depression seldom shows up, because the sailing is usually a relief from a monotonous workweek. The weekender gets just as depressed as the live-aboard cruiser, but he does it at home or on the job and thinks of these as the cause of the depression. When he retires to the life of cruising, he continues the mistake by thinking, Now life will be just like all those summer weekends strung end to end. And of course he is wrong.

 

There is no way to escape the mechanism of depression. It results from lack of a pleasant stimulus and is inevitable because the more pleasant stimuli you receive the less effective they become. If, for example, you receive an unexpected gift of money on Monday, you are elated. If the same gift is repeated on Tuesday, you are elated again but a little less so because it is a repetition of Monday's experience. On Wednesday he elation drops a little lower and on Thursday and Friday a little lower still. By Saturday you are rather accustomed to the daily gift and take it for granted. Sunday, if there is no gift, you are suddenly depressed. Your level of expectation has adjusted upward during the week and now must adjust downward.

 

The same is true of cruising. You can see just so any beautiful sunsets strung end on end, just so any coconut palms waving in the ocean breeze, just so many exotic moonlit tropical nights scented with oleander and frangipani, and you become adjusted. They no longer elate. The pleasant external stimulus has worn out its response and cruising depression takes over. This is the point at which boats get sold and cruising dreams are shattered forever. One can extend the high for a while by searching for new and more exciting pursuits, but sooner or later the depression mechanism must catch up with you and the longer it has been evaded the harder it hits.

 

It follows that the best way to defeat cruising depression is never to run from it. You must face into it, enter it when it comes, just be gloomy and enjoy the gloominess while it lasts. You can be sure that the same mechanism that makes depression unavoidable also makes future elation unavoidable. Each hour or day you remain depressed you become more and more adjusted to it until in time there is no possible way to avoid an upturn in feelings. The days you put in depressed are like money in the bank. They make the elated days possible by their contrast. You cannot have mountains without valleys and you cannot have elation without depression. Without their combined upswings and downswings, existence would be just one long tedious plateau.

 

When depression is seen as an unavoidable part of one's life, it becomes possible to study it with less aversion and discover that within it are all sorts of overlooked possibilities.

 

To begin with, depression makes you far more aware of subtleties of your surroundings. Out on a remote anchorage, the call of a wild duck during an elated period is just the call of a wild duck. But if you are depressed and your mind is empty from the down-scaling of depression, then that strange lonely sound can suddenly bring down a whole wave of awareness of empty spaces and water and sky. It sounds strange, but some of my happiest memories are of days when I was very depressed. Slow monotonous grey days at the helm, beating into a wet freezing wind. Or a three-day dead calm that left me in agonies of heat and boredom and frustration. Days when nothing seemed to go right. Nights when impending disaster was all I could think of. I think of those as "virtuous days," a strange term for them that has a meaning all its own.

 

Virtue here comes from childhood reading about the old days of sailing ships when young men were sent to sea to learn manliness and virtue. I remember being skeptical about this. "How could a monotonous passage across a pile of water produce virtue?" I wondered. I figured that maybe a few bad storms would scare hell out of the young men and this would make them humble and manly and virtuous and appreciative of life ever afterward, but it seemed like a dubious curriculum. There were cheaper and quicker ways to scare people than that.

 

Now, however, with a boat of my own and some time at sea, I begin to see the learning of virtue another way. It has something to do with the way the sea and sun and wind and sky go on and on day after day, week after week, and the boat and you have to go on with it. You must take the helm and change the sails and take sights of the stars and work out their reductions and sleep and cook and eat and repair things as they break and do most of these things in stormy weather as well as fair, depressed as well as elated, because there's no choice. You get used to it; it becomes habit-forming and produces a certain change in values. Old gear that has been through a storm or two without failure becomes more precious than it was when you bought it because you know you can trust it. The same becomes true of fellow crewmen and ultimately becomes true of things about yourself. Good first appearances count for less than they ever did, and real virtue - which comes from an ability to separate what merely looks good from what lasts and the acquisition of those characteristics in one's self - is strengthened.

 

But beyond this there seems to be an even deeper teaching of virtue that rises out of a slow process of self-discovery after one has gone through a number of waves of danger and depression and is no longer overwhelmingly concerned about them.

 

Self-discovery is as much a philosopher's imponderable as reality, but when one takes away the external stimuli of civilization during long ocean hours at the helm far from any land, and particularly on overcast nights, every cruising sailor knows that what occurs is not an evening of complete blankness. Instead comes a flow of thought drawn forth by the emptiness of the night. Occurrences of the previous day, meager as they may have been, rise and are thought about for a while, and then die away to return again later, a little less compelling, and perhaps another time even weaker, until they die away completely and are not thought of again. Then older memories appear, of a week past, a month past, of years past, and these are thought about and sometimes interrelated with new insights. A problem that has been baffling in the past is now understood quickly. New ideas for things seem to pop up from nowhere because the rigid patterns of thought that inhibited them are now weakened by emptiness and depression. Then in time these new thoughts wear town too, and the empty night dredges deeper into the subconscious to tug at, loosen and dislodge old forgotten thoughts that were repressed years ago. Old injustices that one has had to absorb, old faces now gone, ancient feelings of personal doubt, remorse, hatred and fear, are suddenly loose and at you. You must face them again and again until they die away like the thoughts preceding them. This self that one discovers is in many ways a person one would not like one's friends to know about; a person one may have been avoiding for years, full of vanity, cowardice, boredom, self-pity, laziness, blamingness, weak when he should be strong, aggressive when he should be gentle, a person who will do anything not to know these things about himself - the very same fellow who has been having problems with cruising depression all this time. I think it's in the day-after-day, week-after-week confrontation of this person that the most valuable learning of virtue takes place.

 

But if one will allow it time enough, the ocean itself can be one's greatest ally in dealing with this person. As one lives on the surface of the empty ocean day after day after day after day and sees it sometimes huge and dangerous, sometimes relaxed and dull, but always, in each day and week, endless in every direction, a certain understanding of one's self begins slowly to break through, reflected from the sea, or perhaps derived from it.

 

This is the understanding that whether you are bored or excited, depressed or elated, successful or unsuccessful, even whether you are alive or dead, all this is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever. The sea keeps telling you this with every sweep of every wave. And when you accept this understanding of yourself and agree with it and continue on anyway, then a real fullness of virtue and self-understanding arrives. And sometimes the moment of arrival is accompanied by hilarious laughter. The old reality of the sea has put cruising depression in its proper perspective at last.

[Guest]

Found this too

 

Zen and the Art of Sailing

It didn’t take long after I began reading through my new Yanmar diesel shop manual that I found myself thumbing through my old dog-eared copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the classic philosophical novel written by Robert M. Pirsig and first published in 1974 (complete title: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values). The book chronicles his motorcycle journey with his son from Minneapolis to San Francisco as the backdrop for a discourse on the metaphysics of quality—what he describes as a “Chautauqua“ on which he digs deeper into old thought processes.

 

It is the same book that provided me with the insight and ability to repair a 35 mm camera by completely disassembling and then reassembling it years ago when I could not afford to pay to have it done by professional technologists. So it only made sense, then, to resurrect the book in respect to the diesel because whatever it is—motorcycle, diesel, camera, boat—it is a machine, and as Pirsig wrote: The real cycle is yourself … the machine ‘out there’ … and the person ‘in here’ grow toward quality or fall away from quality together. And that principle holds true whether you are maintaining a diesel, polishing the brightwork, or sailing a course to a distant shore.

 

It only made sense that when Pirsig returned from the high country of the mind, he would settle on the sea, and in 1975 he purchased a cutter rigged Westsail-32 which he christened Arête. He gave some hint of his predilection toward the sea when he wrote near the end of Zen:

 

Coastal people never really know what the ocean symbolizes to landlocked inland people—what a great distant dream it is, present but unseen in the deepest levels of subconsciousness, and when they arrive at the ocean and the conscious images are compared with the subconscious dream there is a sense of defeat at having come so far to be so stopped by a mystery that can never be fathomed. The source of it all.

 

 

 

 

 

The autumn voyage on which he moved his boat from Bayfield Wisconsin on Lake Superior to Florida through the Great Lakes to New York City via the Erie Canal/Mohawk River Route of the New York State Waterways and the Hudson River provides the backdrop to Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, his follow-up novel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig then cruised the U.S. Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Bahamas and the U.S. east coat before crossing the Atlantic to spend years living aboard in the England and the Scandinavian countries before returning stateside. Although he still has and sails Arête, now in his 80s, he makes his home in rural New England after having sailed, lived, and explored that great distant dream, unstopped by the mystery that can never be fathomed…the source of it all.

 

In a later interview he says that if the two books are read 100 years from now, Lila will be regarded as the most important. If that is true, I don't know, but the older sailor in me enjoyed the later sea voyage as did the younger artist of my youth relish the cross-country adventure.

[smithy09 50]

Haven't read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. I think I skimmed through it in a bookshop when I was 18 or so and found no sex, so shelved it..

I'll have to grab it. A goody for long haul flights...

[wheels 543]

Apparently smithy, Books without those kind of pictures, Also have some good articles.

[Guest]

It's a great book, I've had my kids read it now.

[unpc 5]

Very interesting posts. I read Zen .... a couple of times. Suspect one gets more from it with rereading. Can't say I liked the other one and can't remember anything much about it.

The piece on sailing I have read before and has some apt observations. Timely to reread it for me anyway.

Getting my cruising boat after a very long wait was a buzz. I even survived all the work, learning about deisels electrics plumbing etc and dollars more or less. Being under sail was great as was my first anchoring in Fitzroy Te Kouma etc.

I think there is a big difference between something as a relaxing break and an ongoing thing.

Now I find doing 2-3 knots in light wind an irritation and am not so sure about spending a length of time in say Tonga or the BOI for that matter.

I think I need at least some periods of stimulation. Conversation over a few rums. Countries perhaps in Asia that offer some diversity beyond sun and solitude.

Perhaps this is accentuated by singlehanding. Maybe it is a phase.

[Guest]

I guess I better read it.

[Guest]

Some of you here have longterm sailing exp.

I've heard that the longtimers can spot the ones it ain't gonna suit from the other side of the anchorage.

Is it a matter of having a purpose of some kind?

The aspiration to get all the way around, or doing one man/family aid work as you go, or whatever.

Is it just a choice where you don't want the modern consumer lifestyle, and living in some backcountry hut would be just as satisfying.

[Guest]

I probably qualify as a long term cruiser by now, so let's see.

 

Some who aren't going to make are really obvious (the guy who swears at his wife coz the anchor won't set), but some unusual ones make it as well. Cruises fail because of crew more often than not, type of boat etc is far less of an issue than attitude and state of mind.

Alcoholism is rife among cruisers.

 

Having a purpose would be a great thing, I just don't have one. After 7-10 years I get a bit bored and feel like doing something else, after a couple of years of doing something else all I want is to go cruising again.

 

Shunning the modern consumer society is a part of it, not all of it, otherwise a backcountry hut would be OK, but any house is just a sorry excuse for a boat.

[unpc 5]

I think Persig's point or one of them although he would not put it that way is that contrast is necessary or one becomes satiated. So the extrovert needs some quiet, the introvert needs some arousal.

For many it seems that idyllic palm covered islands provide an alternative to bleak winter weather (YES) and work. I suspect that sailing a month to the Galapagos from Panama say still fits into the isn't this an adventure and this isn't so hard maybe a bit boring - have we any more books?

The process I suspect of getting there is partly anticipation and partly simply keeping going. I doubt that most are going oh wow another wave - I am sailing.

For me I suspect what happens at the destination is actually important (as for many women tho I ain't one).

For some I suppose getting on the piss does it or discussing the trip with fellow milk runners. I know some are impressed by visiting the islanders with some kava. I just need to go to my local dairy where they are stoned from kava most of the time.

However emerging from the metro to see the Arc de Triomphe or staying in a ryokan or being in Tokyo rail station at rush hour. Unforgettable.

Interesting observation that most cruisers are alcoholics. I wonder why. A bit of booze or kava kinda numbs the brain. Self medication maybe. Different strokes.

[Guest]

Um, I didn't quite say that most cruisers were alcoholics, but certainly a lot are, AA meetings in cruiser hangouts are more the norm than otherwise.

[wheels 543]

Some who aren't going to make are really obvious (the guy who swears at his wife coz the anchor won't set),

Certainly not suggesting I am experienced in replying here. But my comment is very similar to what Squid has already said, but the opposite view or view point perhaps the better word. The person/s that do make it tend to be a bit more laid back as in, they tend not to stress. That's not to say they are not concerned or even scared in some situations. They are good managers/organisers.

[Atom Ant 0]

AA meetings in cruiser hangouts...

What? Where? Have I missed something?

[Fogg 427]

sh*t. Reading this post just ruined my long-term cruising plans.

[smithy09 50]

Having a purpose would be a great thing, I just don't have one. After 7-10 years I get a bit bored and feel like doing something else, after a couple of years of doing something else all I want is to go cruising again.

I can identify with that. Lived on board for 3 years in my 20s cruising from Brighton in the UK down to the Med and as far East as Syria, then back. Both myself and the girlfriend got bored with it. Gosh look, another 2000 year old mosaic in those deserted ruins with only us to see it. Another perfect bay with only us there, etc etc. Yup, great for a few months, but longer term I think you have to have a plan and a purpose.

 

I always liked Rod Hiekel's cruising technique. He wrote Greek Waters pilot and then did Turkey, Italy and heaps of others that became the bibles for Med cruising. He cruised, but made it a job of sorts and every port visited was part of his job. Nice.

 

Everyone is diferent though, and like Squid says, you can spot the ones that are not going to make it from across the bay.

 

unpc did a good summary.