Crew Blog

Out of Body!

17 April 2008

Followers of this Blog, as I was not that long ago, are inevitably caught between a strange sense of attraction and an equal amount of apprehension about a long distance sailing race like Clipper. There are multiple reasons, all of them valid, to feel the call for the seas: the challenge of ocean crossing, the adventure of the unknown, the great sailing, and the camaraderie developed with your shipmates to achieve a common goal. But we also all fear our ability to overcome the physical and mental barriers needed in the less than comfortable conditions in which we necessarily operate. But there is one fascinating process which I think helps us and may help you readers to undertake long distance sailing, one that provides the subconscious underpinning to complete them successfully.

Behind long voyages at sea there is what I would call, for lack of a better way, an “out of body experience”.

Getting into the routine of life aboard is physically and mentally equivalent to leaving your body and getting into a new one. The new one is aptly prepared to do things that the old one wouldn’t, this transformation although not without pain is quite unique and probably one of the lasting memories of our time at sea. Not something you can buy in your local department store or get in internet.

First, the space conditions which we inhabit are transformed into a combination of extreme openness on deck and nearly claustrophobic conditions below. Two opposing extremes in which to conduct our daily lives.

Second the physical laws that govern our everyday existences are also changed by life in a fluid state. This in turn changes the effect of gravity that governs our normal world. In a boat, gravity is compounded by both lateral and upwards movements of a totally unpredictable nature, similar to that experienced by under water divers, astronauts and air pilots, but experienced over considerable longer periods of time. As the picture shows there are some extreme cases of this anomaly, but fortunately for us most are more subtle.

Thirdly, we need to add distance and isolation as key factors of the experience. Days pass without a single sign of life. Oceans are indeed very wet and very large desserts. Add to this a substantive and prolonged disconnect from the multiple and ever-present information flows with which we are permanently inundated, and you start to have the psychological base for a change. We now need to focus our info interests very narrowly: weather, temperature, daily menu and the race positions. Not much really, in comparison with the outside world. These conditions in turn help us develop very quickly other senses, like balance, eyesight and direction which are needed onboard.

Fourth, the watch systems that we religiously follow to keep the boat moving day and night, introduces an additional critical element in our transformation to a new body. After a short period when we overcome the sleep deprivation phase we lose the sense of time. There is no separation between work and play, between one hour and the next nor any distinct feature to separate days of the week. Everything is intermingled in a continuous cycle. This loss of the sense of time makes us believe that the hours pass very slowly, but that days move fast and the weeks even faster.

Finally, the separation from the people that we have as a social reference, families, friends, colleagues, is one additional and most important aspect of the out of body experience. We can’t have their contact nor can we give it and we are abruptly and totally engaged with a new group with which you develop interdependence and support. These new ties overcome the normal cycles by which we develop human relations, sometimes taking years, and become strong emotional ties very quickly, providing us with a mechanism to satisfy the basic human need to belong and be appreciated and valued. To achieve this, another precondition has to be met. We need to be ready to let go of our identities. What you are, your successes or failures don’t count on board. You are in ground zero. Your identity on board is fully dependent on what you do and how you do onboard. The past is irrelevant.

Having either lost or dramatically changed our sense of space, gravity laws, time and social references in conditions of isolation and information scarcity and with a brand new identity, we are still the same individuals that boarded our vessels weeks or months ago but our response system to pain and pleasure as we once knew them are transformed allowing us to enjoy our life at sea.
This explains what makes ordinary people, with the wits to try, do extraordinary things, as the Clipper motto so correctly describes.

(TO THOSE SAILORS THAT ACROSS TIME UNDERTOOK THE SAME PATHS AS WE DO TODAY UNDER CONDITIONS THAT WILL MAKE US LOOK AS WIMPS)

Emilio