I’ve tinkered with the idea of writing an article titled “All I’ve ever wanted to know, I learned from sailing.”
Tongue-in-cheek, partly, but also for reals. Learning to sail has changed my life, and not just in the obvious ways. The lessons I have learned since I started to sail have taught me how to live better in all aspects of my life.
When I started this blog, I simply wanted a place to capture all I was learning about sailing. I’ve learned how to sail, yes, but I’ve also learned a lot about:
- Tides and currents
- The Washington state marine park system
- Anchoring in Puget Sound
- Diesel engines and marine electrical systems
- How to cope in tough weather
- How utterly amazing Puget Sound and the Salish Sea is
What I didn’t expect, though, was that my experiences on S/V Polaris would inform all parts of my life.
The first time I step foot on a sailboat was when I was 38 years old, newly divorced with two kids, and fairly certain about what I was good at and what I wasn’t. Learning to sail in mid-life definitely took me out of my comfort zone and I am so glad for it.
Sailing continues to teach me how to screw up and get back up again. How to be patient. How to be a better teacher and parent to my kids. How to cope when my plans go to shit. How important nature is to me and all living beings (and how, I firmly believe, we would all be better if we spent more time outside). How to dig deep and get a really tears-inducing frustrating job done. How to keep going when I’m tired. How to really, truly rest.
In short, sailing has taught me how to learn and to be OK with always learning, with not knowing the answer and being totally OK with that, too.
All those other things belong on this blog, too.
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here. That’s OK. Life has been crazy for us for the last two years. We bought a house, put our kids back in school, resumed splitting time between boat and land and have had to endure a lot of ups and downs along the way. But I’m ready to share what I’m learning again, and I hope that maybe, you’ll learn something, too.
If you aren’t interested in that other stuff, you can still find my sailing- and sailboat-only content here. But if you are a curious type, and I bet that you are if you still are reading this post, you can start finding that “other” content over here.