Mike’s Crossing
As I stand here and look out over Buzzards Bay, I’m thinking not about sailing in these familiar waters, but about our nephew Michael Mooney, who’s sailing on a fifty foot catamaran from Bermuda to the Azores.
“500 miles down,” his WhatsApp text this morning.
We’ve been watching his progress on one of those marine trackers.
“Can you see any of the other boats?” We ask.
“Not since the first day,” he tells us. On the YB tracker, the boats look bunched up, like you could just shout over to one of the other thirty crews crazy enough to make the crossing.
I can’t fathom being in his shoes — on a small vessel floating atop this great ocean. But Mike’s an adventurer. For me, Clevelands and back in our Herreshoff is an adventure.
“What do you do out there all day?” I ask Mary.
“You slow down,” she says, someone who’s experienced months at sea on a small sloop. She sailed for half a year on the Pacific when she was just out of college. “We had to spend time navigating, plotting our course. These new boats have electronics to do that for them.”
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Mike has travelled the world. Has led trips. Has bought an open ended plan ticket for a year long adventure to countries I’ve only seen on a map. He’s lived abroad. Has walked fifty miles in a day. Has prepared for this his whole life.
“Make sure he has his crew sign the wall when they arrive in Horta, all the crews who’ve made the crossing do.” Hasty says to me when we chat in the driveway off South Road where we both live, each of us down on Wings Neck for the first time this year.
As of today, Michael Mooney’s a quarter of the way across an ocean I sailed once before, when I was five. Our family on the cruise ship *France*, on our way to live in Paris. I don’t remember much about that five day crossing, other than wanting to swim in the ship’s salt water pool.
“Not for kids,” the answer we got from our parents after we begged them to let us.
There’s no salt water pool on board *Rock Steady*, Michael’s transatlantic ride. No pool, nor casino, nor entertainment other than the few birds following them.
“New bird following us today,” Mike announces. “Old one was a tropicbird. This new one is black.” Mike announces, piquing Mary’s interest.
“Could be a petrel, or a great shearwater,” she says, thinking about what’s native to those waters. “Bermuda petrels are rare, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t one.”
While the two of them go back and forth trying to identify various pelagic species, I’m left thinking one thing: What’s it like? To let go, and trust everything’s going to be OK. Not to worry about how long it’s going to take? To just be?
I stand here at the end of the jetty my grandfather and his friend George Jenkins built in 1947, so Wandell Mooney could cast for striped bass. I imagine Dell standing here at dawn not thinking about much other than if he’s got a nibble on his line. Now I stand here in the wind, thinking about Mike and his fabulous voyage, and about he shear size of the swells he’s encountering while our cute little Buzzards Bay chop crash over the rocks at my feet. Good luck Mike, and thank you for sharing your trip with those of us who may not soon follow in your wake.
