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Authors: Hester Rumberg
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make brownies for her, and perform several sea chanteys. They belted out parts of “Popeye the Sailor Man” and “Jamaica Farewell,” and Mike even managed to sing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. ” Then one last thing, the recitation of a small portion of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner :
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
’Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath, nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
Ah, the doldrums. Many folks think of it as a state of mind rather than an actual area. If you’re at home and you’re in the doldrums, you might be down in low spirits or listless. However, if you’re at sea, near the equator, you might be trapped in the doldrums, where the prevailing northeasterly trade winds of the Northern Hemisphere meet the southeasterly trade winds of the Southern Hemisphere and they neutralize each other. Most cruising sailors try to prepare for these windless days by storing additional provisions and water, bringing interesting books to distract them from the anxiety of the lack of any progress, and attempting to sail a course close to a longitude where the band of the doldrums is somewhat narrower.
If you ever want to feel entirely alone, sitting on a boat in the midst of a becalmed sea is the way to do it. As the narrator in Moby-Dick remarked, “The horizon floats,” and it is an apt description. You feel as though you can see to the ends of the world, and you’re the only ones in it. Everything shimmers in the heat and stillness. The days can multiply without a breath of wind.
In 1988, when John and I were becalmed for some days near the equator, I was absolutely mesmerized by the silence, enthralled by the beauty, and peaceful—not anxious—in the tranquillity of it all. At my suggestion, to abate his restlessness, John was wrapped up in one of the only mystery novels he ever read, one in which, unfortunately, the detective passionately describes another cold beer or ale every few pages.
I was making lunch and threw the onion waste overboard. In less than a minute a shark, with two remoras attached, shot up from the deep. The shark got bored with us fairly quickly, but not before quelling our desire to cool down with a swim. We hung a line over the side to measure the depth of its reflection in the water as it appeared smaller and smaller, and we were sure we could still see its diminished form at seventy-five feet.
Several hours later, John threw our dinner overboard, for simple entertainment value, and the same shark torpedoed back up, the remoras still attached. At the time I didn’t realize I would soon become accustomed to swimming among sharks in the many anchorages we visited. They would hang around, uninterested, until they smelled the blood of a fish on the end of our speargun.
The doldrums are more properly called the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. The convergence of the prevailing winds of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, as well as the intense heat in this area, can result in totally unpredictable weather, from the calms to confused seas and countercurrents. On that crossing in 1988, John and I, both pollywogs, dressed up in our two lightweight, colorful spinnakers and beseeched King Neptune to let us enter his domain. We were swept into a wind tunnel before we could properly stow our initiation garb. On a second crossing in 2001, we encountered only thunder-storms and lightning, with skies black day and night, and no chance to celebrate the equator’s charisma.
Fortunately for Mike and Judy and the children, their crossing was uneventful, with light winds
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
’Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath, nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
Ah, the doldrums. Many folks think of it as a state of mind rather than an actual area. If you’re at home and you’re in the doldrums, you might be down in low spirits or listless. However, if you’re at sea, near the equator, you might be trapped in the doldrums, where the prevailing northeasterly trade winds of the Northern Hemisphere meet the southeasterly trade winds of the Southern Hemisphere and they neutralize each other. Most cruising sailors try to prepare for these windless days by storing additional provisions and water, bringing interesting books to distract them from the anxiety of the lack of any progress, and attempting to sail a course close to a longitude where the band of the doldrums is somewhat narrower.
If you ever want to feel entirely alone, sitting on a boat in the midst of a becalmed sea is the way to do it. As the narrator in Moby-Dick remarked, “The horizon floats,” and it is an apt description. You feel as though you can see to the ends of the world, and you’re the only ones in it. Everything shimmers in the heat and stillness. The days can multiply without a breath of wind.
In 1988, when John and I were becalmed for some days near the equator, I was absolutely mesmerized by the silence, enthralled by the beauty, and peaceful—not anxious—in the tranquillity of it all. At my suggestion, to abate his restlessness, John was wrapped up in one of the only mystery novels he ever read, one in which, unfortunately, the detective passionately describes another cold beer or ale every few pages.
I was making lunch and threw the onion waste overboard. In less than a minute a shark, with two remoras attached, shot up from the deep. The shark got bored with us fairly quickly, but not before quelling our desire to cool down with a swim. We hung a line over the side to measure the depth of its reflection in the water as it appeared smaller and smaller, and we were sure we could still see its diminished form at seventy-five feet.
Several hours later, John threw our dinner overboard, for simple entertainment value, and the same shark torpedoed back up, the remoras still attached. At the time I didn’t realize I would soon become accustomed to swimming among sharks in the many anchorages we visited. They would hang around, uninterested, until they smelled the blood of a fish on the end of our speargun.
The doldrums are more properly called the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. The convergence of the prevailing winds of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, as well as the intense heat in this area, can result in totally unpredictable weather, from the calms to confused seas and countercurrents. On that crossing in 1988, John and I, both pollywogs, dressed up in our two lightweight, colorful spinnakers and beseeched King Neptune to let us enter his domain. We were swept into a wind tunnel before we could properly stow our initiation garb. On a second crossing in 2001, we encountered only thunder-storms and lightning, with skies black day and night, and no chance to celebrate the equator’s charisma.
Fortunately for Mike and Judy and the children, their crossing was uneventful, with light winds
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