Raft-Up: Keeping My Head Above Water

(photo by www.photositesag.com)

Sundowners aboard Juffa, a Fountaine Pajot Lavezzi, parked across the fairway from us at the Marina Santa Marta. Great conversation, great stories, a tour of their boat, and some great advice (Thank you, Caroline and Bill, for your hospitality). Eventually, we had to bid them good night. We had many garments to dry before we slept.

They had pulled into their slip bow first, starboard side to the finger pier. On their cat, just as on ours, the swim platforms at the stern end of the hulls are almost always the best boarding and de-boarding points. They were tied not more than 2 ft. (about a half meter) from the pier. Jane went first: grabbed a stanchion and swung/jumped off the boat onto the end of the pier. My turn. No life jacket. I'm so used to this feeling, the pressure in my chest, the buzzing in my ears, I hardly notice it now. More, I notice how embarrassed I am by it. I handed Jane my empty beer can, grabbed the stanchion, sat on down at the edge of the swim platform, stretched out my leg as far as I could and slid off, closing my eyes at the last second, hoping that I'd correctly gauged the gap. I did. The pier wobbled a bit under my weight, but I was OK, safe. We walked back to JOY, parked stern to, the bottom step of her swim platform not more than 8 inches (.2 meters) from the dock. Still, as I stepped across the  chasm, narrow as it was, there was that familiar moment of apprehension when I was more aware of the blackness that separated ship from shore than how easy it would be to step over it.

This month's "Raft-UP" topic is "fear" and when Jane and I discussed which one of us should take it on it was no contest. Jane is singularly unqualified to talk about fear; she doesn't have any. She is, with the exception of adolescent boys overstocked with testosterone, the most fearless person I've ever met. It is so annoying. That's not to say she doesn't get afraid in scary situations; she just doesn't have any abiding fears. Fear isn't something she has to negotiate with on a daily basis. Me? Yeah, I'm not like that.

I'm not saying I'm riddled with fears, that my life is ruled by them. It's not. It's ruled by only two. The lesser of which is a--fear doesn't even begin to cover it--dread terror of an accidental encounter with water. Nah, go ahead laugh; it IS funny in an absurd sort of way. I think it's pretty funny, too, when I'm not scooting around on my butt and remembering the occasions when I've gone under, the terror of flailing helplessly, sure that I was about to die.

I am often asked, as you might imagine, how I ended up being a cruiser when I can't swim and have an aversion to water. I've been asked this so often that now Jane and I respond in unison. "Well, first I (he) couldn't swim, then we bought a boat." More inexplicable yet is that this whole sailing around the world idea was originally mine. I can't imagine what I was thinking, really. Maybe I was just kidding.
At this point, you are probably getting ready to skim the rest of this post so that you can get to the comment box and offer the advice that you know will help me get over my fear. Before you do, please know two things: One: I very much appreciate your sympathy for my predicament and your desire to ameliorate it. And, Two: I have heard it all before. Yes, I have tried swimming lessons, several times from both swim instructors and well-intentioned friends. They're fine for teaching folks who don't know how to swim but aren't afraid of being in water (which seems like an oxymoron to me, but I hear it's possible). For people like me though, who literally lose their minds in water, they are decidedly unhelpful.

Be they friend or professional, everyone who has tried to help me has used basically the same strategy for getting me over my fear. The key, they believe, is to prove to me that I can float. This, for some reason, has always involved having me walk with them over to the chest deep area of a pool (holding their hand, of course) where they lift me and hold me face up in the water, their hands under my back. In this way, so they think, I'll know that I can float. At times I have even been convinced to let them pull their hands away ever-so-briefly in order to demonstrate that it's really me floating and not them holding me up. It doesn't work. All I am convinced of is that I don't weigh very much in water. (I'm always far too terrified to wait for the results of the "no hands" experiments). If I haven't given up by then, step two involves having me hold my nose while I jump above and below the surface. I never make it to step two.


Imagine falling off of a high-rise building. The terror you imagine you'd feel at not being able to do anything to save yourself is the terror I actually feel in water. What my instructors didn't understand and the reason their efforts were doomed to failure is that it isn't about swimming, not really. It's not even about floating; it's about knowledge and control. It's about knowing what to do and doing the things that cause floating and swimming to happen. Swimmers don't realize that it's having the knowledge and control of their situation that enables them to feel comfortable in water. It's so natural for them that they never think about it. What none of us understood is that it's not water I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of not being in control of my situation in water. I don't know what to do in theory or in practice to make my body keep me alive.

The bright spot in this story, as in most of my stories, is Jane. A fearless (so what else is new?) swimmer herself, she still somehow manages to conceive of what it's like to feel completely helpless in water. Between knowing we would be moving onto a boat and actually doing so, I decided to learn how to swim. I wasn't aiming to do laps around the boat for exercise, just improve my chances if I accidentally went overboard. It was Jane who, by dint of her relentless Amazon.com searching, introduced me to the only other swimmer I've "met" who gets it. Her name: Melon Dash, and I cannot recommend her book "Conquer Your Fear of Water" highly enough. She understands that it's about knowledge and control. Her 105 step program (yes, 105), is designed not to teach afraid people to swim, but to feel in control of their bodies in water. Any depth of water, anywhere.

So gradual is her approach that students/readers complete the first 22 steps before they get anywhere near a pool, one step of which is pool shopping. Not all pools are created equal, you know. List the things that make you comfortable, she instructs. Warm water? Quiet music? No kids, No other people? Once you have your list, make a site visit to all the pools that are reasonably near you and pick the one that most closely matches your list. All common sense things, but common sense is typically in short supply when one is preparing to do battle with one's deepest fears. My list ended us up at a health club about a twenty minute drive from our house.  Most evenings, we timed it so that we had the therapeutic (90 F, 32 C) swimming pool to ourselves, interrupted if at all, by a few senior citizens who noodled around at the deep end for a little while. Jane dutifully accompanied me almost every time, boring as it was for her. She was there to see me stick my head under water on purpose for the first time in my life at the age of 49. After a couple of months, I didn't need her anymore. I was a long way from swimming, but I had mastered the art of not doing anything that made me feel out of control. Hours and hours of holding onto the ladder as I slowly put my head under water and then came back up again. Hours more of holding onto a step as I pushed my legs out behind me, floated face down for a few seconds and then tucked my knees to my chest to step down on the bottom of the pool and stand up. The pace was so glacially slow that much of my progress was due not to an increased sense of confidence as much as mind-numbing boredom (not an appropriate source of motivation according to Ms. Dash, by the way).

If I'd had another 3 years or so, I have no doubt that  Jane and I would be snorkeling buddies. But neither of us were enthused about putting off our lives for that long. I vowed I'd continue my lessons off calm beaches around the world. So far that hasn't happened. Oceans and seas, even at their edges are pretty daunting, I've discovered. But I haven't given up hope that I will muster the courage some day. In the meantime, I wear my life jacket ALWAYS when we're underway, both on JOY and in the dinghy. With the exception of times when she's fractured a body part, Jane does all the nighttime sail handling. Instead of lifelines, JOY has stainless steel tube rails between the stanchions. That was one of the reasons we bought her and it has helped to make me feel a little safer when walking fore and aft. My life jacket (which theoretically inflates on contact with water) doubles as a harness and we run jacklines entirely around the boat when we're underway with tethers at the ready should I ever need to leave the cockpit in high seas. Even our decision to buy a catamaran in the first place was based in part on my fear. I've been on monohulls when they are heeled over and it scares the crap out of me. A total deal breaker.

In nearly a year of sailing, the only time I've been underwater was when we were beaching our dinghy in Matthew Town. I was on land, but slipped and fell just as a huge wave broke over the shore. Thanks to those seemingly unending hours spent with my head in a pool, I had the presence of mind to speculate that the water washing over me would go away eventually and I wouldn't die. I didn't cough afterward, which according to Jane means I didn't breath any water into my lungs. I don't know if I remember much or very little about what was actually happening during those few seconds; what I do remember with complete clarity is the familiar sensation of having no control, of utter helplessness but for the first time mixed with glimmer of hope that I would survive regardless. The next thing I can recall is Jane's voice telling me to let go of the painter and run and somehow I found my feet and did, eyes closed. So, mission accomplished in a way.

In all honesty, there is, I suspect, a more probable threat to our sailing career than my actual drowning, should I ever go overboard. Assuming Jane were able to fish me out, I'm not sure I'd be willing to  risk it a second time. Even if I thought I could get over the experience, I have to wonder what I'd do in a panic situation. Would I, in effect, be useless as crew afterward?  

Having read all this, you may be wondering about that other, even greater fear I alluded to earlier. Poor guy, you're thinking. How much worse can it get? What could suck more than living with the constant fear of drowning? Just this: the possibility of not getting to see the world before I die--whenever that happens. It is only this that makes the effort of living with my number two fear worthwhile. So a few heart palpitations a few times a day in exchange for a few dozen stamps in my passport. Now really, what's a little dread terror compared to that?

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