coffee – On the Horizon Line

A dozen pounds of drool

“This baby is a daily reminder that I can’t control the universe,” said my friend, Hilary, last week as she frantically jiggled the newborn slung around her chest.

I nodded. It’s humbling, we agreed, to give up control. To say goodbye to who we were and hello to the new person named ‘mom.’

“I just wanna get drunk again,” jokes another friend, downing her coffee. Yup. Me too.

I started a coffee group a few months ago to get Talon and myself out of the house. A revolving group of new mamas meets weekly to remind ourselves that sleep deprivation, poop explosions, and sore boobs will pass. But for now, they are the new normal.

Without these friends and my super-supportive family in town, I wouldn’t feel whole these last six months. They are the backbone and muscles that keep me strong when things seem to slip out of joint.

Returning from our travels left both Rob and I in a bit of an abyss—a wide space where anything might happen, but nothing feels concretely possible. Should we stay in Montana? Find salaried jobs or strike out with our own businesses? Will we ever sail again? Can we live the life we planned now that a kiddo anchors us in new ways?

Sometimes, too many possibilities are crippling. A privileged first-world problem, for sure, but one that can cause real stress.

The most interesting part about giving up control to a dozen pounds of drooling, squirming baby is that it limits the stress of endless possibility. Parenthood undoubtedly brings different kinds of stress, but it also gives clear direction on which way to point the sails each day: care for the child. For now, I can smile at the baby, feed him, change him, and try to loosen my hold on the existential questions that I sometimes grip too tightly.

kung fu ninja kick on the horizon line blog rob roberts

Dance and Yoga, Sailing

Magic Mood Mixture (nope, no illegal substances included)

I know many of you who followed our voyage across the Pacific are secretly asking yourselves this very important question:how the hell did Bri and Rob keep from losing their minds during while bobbing around the ocean blue for a whole month?

First off, don’t kid yourselves: we definitely lost it at times. Second, we each quickly learned what would bring us back from the brink of insanity, and what would keep us as pleasant as possible during the crossing. For me: 1) music 2) exercise 3) caffeine 4) naps. Most of you know that this is the exact same mixture that keeps me sane and bearable on land, too. Just give me some espresso, a dance class or bike ride, and some good tunes to sing along to and my bad mood usually lifts.

Napping is new, though — I’ve always hated that groggy post-nap disorientation, and feeling like I was missing out on something exciting. Nothing like a weird night watch schedule to change my tune about the value of naps. Plus, watching Rob’s impressive cat-napping ability inspired me to follow suit. Rob’s magic mood mixture is about the same as mine, if you double his nap quotient and replace caffeine with mini-projects (fixing broken binoculars, rigging fishing lines, inventing a way to detangle all the ropes at the mast, etc.). Here’s some details on our passage sanity formula:

1) Music: Me playing the shitty nylon-string guitar we bought in Panama City (thank god we found it), and Rob learning how to play his first-ever song on the guitar. Either of us zoning out to favorite tunes with headphones blasting to cover the fact that you’re sharing a very small space with 6 other people, 3 of whom are bickering brothers. Me dancing as best I can, using the stays and shrouds as my partners as I kick, spin, arc, and flail to the beat of a bass. The whole crew singing to Johnny Cash as we cook dinner and do dishes, walking around the tilted cabin like drunk sailors (who haven’t seen a drop of alcohol for a month).

2) Exercise: A fascinating, innovative, hilarious endeavor given the motion and lack of space. I exercised a few times a day, although the definition of “exercise” is totally stretchy compared to what I’d do in regular life. Squats, lunges, pushups and crunches were ubiquitous, along with some fancier strength training moves that required holding on for dear life to something bolted on the deck. I tried out various creative cardio routines, consisting of jumping jacks, running in place, can-can kicks, mountain-climbers, and pretending the single step on deck was a stairmaster. Yoga stretches were a mainstay, of course, throughout the day. The end result? I’m more toned than I’ve ever been in my life, but a dying tortoise could beat me at a 100-yard dash. It’s tough to maintain any sort of aerobic activity when you can’t really walk without falling over.

3) Caffeine: What I would give for an espresso machine … sigh. Next time, I’m bringing lots of good teas and coffee. This trip, though, we made do with crappy instant (Buen Dia!), and some sketchy tea bags that barely tinted the water after steeping. I horded the one tin of stellar green tea, meting out one bag per day when at my crankiest.

4) Naps: Learned to love ’em. Not only do they refresh after getting up in the middle of the night for watch, they also make time go faster, provide an exciting position change from sitting on your butt, give you some alone time, and offer relief from intense midday sun. Rob brought napping to a new level, sleeping sitting up, in the cockpit, splayed out on the yoga mat, or folded into weird positions. While I couldn’t quite match his napping enthusiasm, I’m definitely a convert to taking one per day.

The biggest challenge was trying to add something new or creative or interesting into each day. Something that differentiates it from all the other rolly blue sameness. For me, even a new dance move or a new ingredient to spice up a coffee drink could push me over the edge from a low to a high. Rob and I both learned (and continued to re-learn) that there’s a very fine line between despair and contentment on a boat out at sea.