Into the Blue - Dreams, life, and a little blue sailboat

[travisgriggs]

Day 0 -- “Dreaming in blue”

It was about five years ago that I started dreaming about sailing.

It was summer, and I was standing beneath the scorching sun on a parade deck at Tyndall AFB, Fla. getting screamed at by a guy wearing one of those smoky-bear hats. I can’t remember exactly what minor transgression invited the verbal flogging and the flying droplets of spittle that were raining down on me, but, luckily, I was wearing my blue Air Force dress uniform, so he couldn’t make me do pushups.

Instead, he just went off on one of those rants like drill instructors do, loud enough for everyone to hear, telling me how miserable I was, how I didn’t deserve to wear that uniform, how I’d never make it through the next few weeks of training, etc., etc.

I just did my best to tune it out.

Tyndall AFB is in Panama City, Fla., right on the Gulf of Mexico. No part of the base is far enough away from the ocean to be outside the sea breeze. It was always there, gently blowing through the future airmen standing in formation, and providing the only relief from the July sun above and the hot asphalt below.

I felt it blowing across my skin even as that drill instructor took a deep breath and started into a new string of insults. But by then, I wasn’t hearing him anymore.

Standing at attention, my eyes fixed straight ahead, I stared across the parade deck, which ended abruptly at the dunes. Just beyond them was the beach, then the Gulf. The screaming seemed fainter as I watched the sea oats swaying in the breeze. Then I caught a glimpse of something else.

Just beyond the dunes, a flourish of color was illuminated from behind by the sun, as it slowly sank lower in the afternoon sky. It was the top of a sail, bobbing and dipping in irregular motions as an unseen boat cruised near the surf.

Then it was gone -- an unseen tack or a gibe concealing it again behind the dunes. I only saw it for a moment, but it never really left me.

For the rest of the day and into the night, when the lights were out and the incessant chaos was finally still, I dreamed of setting sail.

The clicking of a block and tackle as the sheet is pulled tight. The surge of forward momentum as the boom crosses overhead and wind comes back into the sails. The splash of water against your skin as you lean out over the upwind rail. The feeling that for hundreds of years, sailors have felt the same thrill as they struck out toward the horizon, fueled only by the wind and the call of the sea.

I’d sailed before, but I dreamed of sailing again. Life got in the way for a while, but for five years, I continued dreaming.

Then last Monday, I bought a boat.

Let’s go for a ride.