In the Stillness Between Two Waves of the Sea
Imagine you’re at sea. Surrounded only by water. Swept by the wind.
This is the space to which we are confined. Fifteen crew aboard the Avontuur. At present, we are anchored off Veracruz, Mexico. Unable to go ashore due to port closures, we will not set foot on land until we return to Hamburg in Germany, where the vessel is flagged. This could be sometime in June or July. If all goes well.
We are isolated from the world. But we are not alone. We could go anywhere. But we would not be allowed ashore.
We have been at sea for a long time: Jennifer joined the ship in its home port of Elsfleth, Germany at the start of January. She intended to disembark at Marie Galante in the French Antilles after two months. Christiaan boarded in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canaries at the end of February to make the three-week Atlantic crossing and disembark in Marie Galante as well.
The Avontuur is a hundred-year-old, 44-metres long, two-masted schooner. She is operated by the German shipping company Timbercoast. This enterprise, founded by Cornelius Bockermann, sails with a mission: reducing emissions from maritime cargo transport to zero.
We are here to support this mission, but the voyage has gained greater meaning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now confined to life at sea, we are wondering why we’re here beyond the cargo run we’re completing.
The world we’ve left is no longer the same. We sailed from the Canaries just after Carnival. No curfew hampered the festivities of one of the world’s largest carnival celebrations. They stretched throughout the city of Santa Cruz for days. Costumed people danced and drank, hugging in the streets. Social distancing didn’t exist.
We have not been on land since we left Santa Cruz on March 1st.
Since then, we took on a cargo of coffee in Puerto Cortés, Honduras and cacao in Belize. Here in Veracruz, Mexico we have taken on more coffee. None of these ports permit shore leave, let alone crew change. Repatriation has not been permitted.
We have no curfew. But we are confined to our ship. We have travelled to these places. But we have only been at sea.
Countries are in lockdown. Borders are closed. But the sea has no borders that can be closed.
We do not hear warnings or news of infection rates and casualties. No television reports. No rumours. Our communications beyond the ship are limited to when we’re close to land, beyond the occasional email from the shipowner over a very expensive satellite connection. With no Internet, we are disconnected from the world when at sea.
The COVID-19 pandemic feels about as real as the formation of new stars in faraway galaxies. We can imagine the noise on land about the COVID-19 pandemic must be deafening. But we hear no such thing.
What we hear is something quite else. We hear a constant cadence of wind and water surrounding the ship. These sounds never stop, but they’re not intrusive. There is no silence, but no noise either.
The sole exception is our diesel generator. It runs from time to time to top up the solar and wind-powered navigational equipment and water-maker. Much like the hum of the city or the twitter of social media, you only realise how intrusive it is once it stops.
It may stretch one’s imagination to understand the life we live aboard.
The weather is an unpredictable force to be reckoned with. The wind can be forceful, fair, or absent. The sun can be so strong that every cloud and night hour is sheer bliss. Squalls come and go with little warning, especially at night. And the swells can throw us about relentlessly. “Weather is neither good nor bad,” says our captain. “It just is.” And we learn to read it, to anticipate.
We live in close quarters. The fo’c’s’le, an open space below deck at the bow of the ship, houses 10 low bunks. We share one seawater pump toilet and a single sink. There is no hot water. We take seawater bucket showers and wash our laundry in a bucket on deck. Fortunately, we have a well-provisioned galley for great cooking and bread baking.
We sleep with the sound of the sea against the sides of the bow. By now, we can guess the speed of the hull with reasonable accuracy by merely listening to the wake.
Sharing our common confinement with fifteen aboard is intense. We’ve only known each other for months. But it feels like we’ve already had years of friendships. And tensions.
Social life aboard follows clock time very rigidly. Our days and nights are punctuated by a watch system. The crew is divided into a three-watch system of four hours each. Which means we’re four on, eight off. Every twelve hours. Each day. Without respite.
While we move freely through the water, we are constrained by the force and direction of the wind.
Life ashore, in contrast, seems to have gone mad. People have been, so we hear, locked up in their own homes. The winds and swell are undeterred by curfews.
In our sea-bound confinement, we are learning to listen and begin to understand the interplay of water and wind. By listening to these sounds – patiently – we start to realise why we’re here.
We are beginning to take on a different pace, a different rhythm that may help us to slow down collectively.
The sea is a vast open space the imagination can bathe in. While confined to life on water for the foreseeable future, we have turned to tuning in to subtle changes. Far from the noise of social media, we are listening in to the sea around us, more deeply into ourselves, and to each other. And it feels as though we are starting to remember to listen.
Like sailing, listening takes time. But perhaps we can begin to hear beyond the human-only conversation. And in listening, maybe we can engage in the most subtle, but most powerful, form of social engagement: letting go of the noise to show that living a simple life with our natural world is possible.
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Co-authored with Jennifer Corcoran. Originally published on Ocean Archive – where 12 accompanying images by Christiaan De Beukelaer are included.