Afloat at the Dawn of Corona

Prized rum, pictured above, carefully tailored for Team Get Kraken by a most thoughtful and generous neighbor (P.A.), who epitomizes the Day Islander community spirit (no pun intended).

Wait, isn’t this blog about some rookie training for the Seventy48?

Yes, this blog is about my training for the Seventy48, as Team Get Kraken (N = 1). And, yes, this particular post does stray on a tangent, as my local communities unceasingly succumb to the realities of covid-19. Bear with me. This post is not about doom, gloom, fear, or foolishness. It’s not misinformation, disinformation, or big data. It’s about the simple power of human connection at the dawn of corona.

How’d we get here?

It was Monday, March 2, only a few days following my much-anticipated annual trek to the Northwest Flower and Garden show in Seattle. With my enthusiasm for gardening still fresh on my mind, my husband began his urgent campaign to get our small family of 3 onto our boat and back into our life afloat for awhile, driven by his increasing concern over the rapidly spreading new coronavirus.

Knowing my penchant for data, he backed up his passionate insistence on social distancing with statistics and epidemiological analyses, ad nauseum. Life was otherwise still very normal and I was resistant to losing our healthy routine with a hard tack to the boat. Plus, spring break was only a couple weeks away. As a compromise, we agreed to pull our daughter out of school that week to keep her safe from the specter of the corona virus (and thus, by proxy, her beloved grandparents safer in kind). Once Della was home from school, I figured, who couldn’t use a little spring-break boat time anyway? It would at least lighten up our watchful, news-obsessed waiting.

Kaahblam!

Within days, the transmission curve began to swing upwards and our land-based community began to lock downwards. Fast. Schools closed. Restaurants closed. Social gatherings were verboten. That was enough. We loaded my rowing boat aboard Awesome, threw off the dock lines, and headed off fully-stocked to favorite harbors in the South Sound to do our part to flatten the curve.

And that’s where the similarities between all our past carefree cruising days and our current life aboard stopped.

As the news has continued to cascade in with alarming stories of covid-19 expansion and containment failures near and far, isolation grabs hold, anxiety hangs like humidity in the air, and genuine fear for the safety of family and friends creeps into the quiet spaces between tasks. The unsettling sense of foreboding from the news of healthcare system collapse in Italy has been hard to shake. It’s like an unsolvable problem with a ticking countdown clock or an upcoming bad turn of events you can somehow taste in advance. A rogue wave on it’s way and no means to head for higher ground. Like holding your breath, wondering, worrying, how will this unfold for everyone you know and love? I’m not so fearful for our health now, but the wider sphere of everyone we know. How am I going to hold the line with strength, for Della?

Then, with your mind nearly defeated by what-ifs, the answer comes: keeping human connections in whatever form we can. Video conferencing. Phone chats. Gentle texts out of the blue asking how things are. Conversations boat-to-boat, dock-to-dock, and inbox-to-inbox. While nothing beats face time (the real deal, not the Apple product), placing greater emphasis and energy on reaching out to family and friends through various techy avenues has defused anxiety in what can’t be controlled and strengthened my acceptance of physical distancing. This brings to mind one of my favorite adages, long adorning the portside wall in my berth: You can’t change the wind, but you can adjust your sails.

Since my humble and perhaps-obvious epiphany, I’ve savored more interface with family, friends, and colleagues and my spirits have been lighter. The gray perma-cloud has lifted from the crease worn between my eyebrows and I’ve looked up to see my daughter taking this all in stride with joy: her new first-grade online coursework, the novelty of video conferencing with her little peers, the clams squirting-up a fountain show at low tide, the swing set all to ourselves in a remote harbor, and the resolute belief in her parents that we have her, and all those she loves, as safe as we humanly can as the corona dawn breaks.