{"id":1824,"date":"2018-03-12T12:33:09","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T19:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/?p=1824"},"modified":"2018-03-12T12:33:09","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T19:33:09","slug":"the-lure-of-sailing-an-inner-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/general\/the-lure-of-sailing-an-inner-look\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lure of Sailing: An Inner Look"},"content":{"rendered":"

This writing is a reflection more than a praxis on sailing.\u00a0 Sailing is more than just know-how, though know-how is utterly important.\u00a0 I would find it interesting to hear others\u2019 inner thoughts about being on the water.\u00a0 To love what you are doing is to find inner balance, which, in itself, is a corrective measure.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The San Francisco Bay and beyond to the Pacific off-shore is never quite still, but always moves in its own cadence, showing nature at its best, or at least most magnificent, while luring us to a fuller life.\u00a0 The marine environment is obviously alive, in comparison to some of our own lives, which are often without any cadence.\u00a0 The sea becomes a magnet; it is from where we all originate and leads us into a relaxing yet vigilant state of being.\u00a0 Yes, even in a storm one relaxes in order to find the right path.\u00a0 To sail is to be one with this energy, while never really finding yourself alone.<\/p>\n

Sailing is a lure for a number of reasons, but one is often the attraction to what we are not about in this distractive world, that is a life force that vivifies.\u00a0 There are so many distractions in our life styles that deaden us to the senses; the sea awakens the senses. \u00a0The splash of salt on the face awakens something within, which is beyond language itself yet is manifest of a grandiose spirit.<\/p>\n

Those of us who are lured by sailing, here at Tradewinds, start with the Basic Keelboat, and as we sail within the initial assigned boundaries, we look out to the Bay and we are lured more, so we enter Basic Coastal Cruising, and then make our way to the boundaries of Raccoon Straits or the Bothers, but boundaries often disappear upon arrival; then new boundaries emerge. \u00a0We are often magnetically pulled towards the outer boundaries of the Bay and take Bareboat; upon finishing each boundary we kind of enter a sublime state of vastness, if only for a moment or maybe more.\u00a0 We accomplish sailing the Slot and under the Golden Gate Bridge but the Farallones lure us on.\u00a0 The lure continues, so we take Advanced Costal Cruising and sail on.\u00a0 For some a boat eventually becomes home and the sea just a platform to sail anywhere on which you are in command but never quite in control.\u00a0 It is all a kind of therapy, and when sailing in a club like Tradewinds we reflect off each other.<\/p>\n

To maybe get this feeling about the magnetic sea, upon which I am trying to expound, let me quote from Herman Melville\u2019s Moby Dick<\/em>, in which he comments on the many people in 19th<\/sup> century Manhattan, where:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026commerce surrounds it with her surf.\u00a0 Right and left, the streets take you waterward.\u00a0 Its extreme down-town is the Battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land.\u00a0 Look at the crowds of water-gazers.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

So even driving our vehicles to go sailing we experience traffic, smog, and often-ugly sights of commercial signs while maybe listening to repulsive radio, of which we turn on so time goes by.\u00a0 Yes, \u201ccommerce\u201d yet surrounds us, but as soon as we see the bluish Bay from the vehicle we drive, a placid smile comes to our face and we have to stop staring at the water so that an accident does not occur.\u00a0 That placid smile is a sign of consciousness.<\/p>\n

To sail that Capri is to feel the wind first hand, almost shaking hands with the breeze itself.\u00a0 To eventually sail that thirty-footer is to feel and understand the currents, almost as a dance, and to sail that forty-two-footer is to take you to a different world altogether, almost as if on a cloud, but really you are now at home, being part of the sea.\u00a0 You then relax and an emptiness comes yet a fullness takes over.\u00a0 There is balance within, almost a kind of yoga, which, from the Sanskrit means union or connection.<\/p>\n

Such insights, as stated above, are possible feelings of which we have but are not quite aware, or maybe we are well aware?\u00a0 To be sailing is an elixir from civilization, but at the same time it is a mini civilization of its own kind.\u00a0 Sailing is an order that brings about a freedom of soul while erasing the toxic self.\u00a0 For that reason it is never lonely to sail.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This writing is a reflection more than a praxis on sailing.\u00a0 Sailing is more than just know-how, though know-how is utterly important.\u00a0 I would find it interesting to hear others\u2019 inner thoughts about being on the water.\u00a0 To love what … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":429,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1829,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions\/1829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}