Filed under: Adventure
Yesterday night I was thinking back to Costa Rica last summer. Today I received an email from the friend who went with me to Costa Rica last summer (She’s located in Portland Oregon) . We were both thinking about Costa Rica yesterday night. What Costa Rica represents is our yearning for adventure.
Reading her words takes me back to those 8 days last summer:
“The local restaurant with the stern-looking but unsuspectingly friendly owner/chef, the beautiful landscape with Anna breathing down my neck about snakes chasing us in the dark night of the rain forest, Anna’s tough bargaining skill for her hammock at the market, our romantic candy-making session and missing our flight whilst getting stuck by a 20 foot truck, Anna’s nonchalance at my insurmountable fear of 小強, and ah, the flattering attention from local men and boys…how unfortunate that Adern had been missing from all of this (especially when we were dueting in the car).”
and
“Btw, my email never seemed to have reached spaghett-sauce-name boy, but I tried. If I remember correctly, I wasn’t the one with a semi-shady hairy-chested man stalking me from one city to the countryside. But then again, your charisma on the dance floor was transformational. For a while I thought I’ve lost you at the club. Little did I know you WERE the vixen and hot tamale doing crazy spins. “
For a couple hours on that dance floor under the glow of the cheap disco light on that hot summer night in Costa Rica, I was not the girl who carries a heavy red backpack to library everyday and who constantly readjusts her glasses on her nose. I was a salsa queen.
Filed under: Adventure
As CM brought to my attention the news about the 16-year old girl Abby Sunderland’s quest to sail around the world nonstopped and unassisted via Cape Horn, I am back at admiring videos of my heroes.
Looking it fills me with anticipation and longing, I look forward to that one day when I have the resources to be part of this.
Filed under: Adventure
The sheer beauty of nature is awe-inspiring. Watching this left me with goosebumps. There’s no question about it: next spring or summer, I’m going to be surfing! YESS! Any takers?
Filed under: Adventure
In the Northwestern Sailing Center, they keep a wind record of your sailing or windsurfing days. This is such that you can record your experience, and can prove that you can handle difficult wind situations. Today’s wind is our (my sailing partner and mine’s) personal best. (The yellow and blue flags were hoisted — that means that sail at your own discretion, and if you need to be rescued, then your all the previous record would be erased)
The amazing thing about these sea-wind sports that keeps drawing me to them is this: every time you step into the ocean/lake, you face a different environment.
The ocean/lake is a constantly changing animal. East wind, West wind, North wind, South wind — they all have their unique characteristics. Sometimes, you can have extremely wavy conditions on the water, yet little wind. Sometimes, in reverse. Even as you are in the water, the wind would change direction on you.
That’s why, everytime I enter the water, I always feel in awe of this fickle animal.
For example, today, the water was extremely choppy AND the wind was gusty. We thought the waves would get smaller as we sail deeper into the lake, yet they only grow bigger and bigger. (Not a single motor boat is found in sight….however, there were several windsurfers and sailboats) At some point, there were about 15 ft tall! As we were getting out of the shore, the waves, one after another, smacked at me right in my face. It just kept coming, and coming.
(Let me pause here to note the analogy to my recent life: the wave just keep coming and coming)
At first we thought we might have a moment of peace once we are farther out, but it was only worse. Several accidental jibes (not my fault, I wasn’t the skipper), which caused me to scream at my skipper. They say that in crisis people show their real nature. Well, today in the lake, I think I showed my bossy nature to my friend, who is the skipper. Basically, I was screaming directions and questions at him.
The fortunate thing is that the skipper and I (I just controlled the jib) made a great team.
Okay, this might sound kind of self-congratulatory: but the skipper did compliment on my contribution to our survival (without embarrassing capsiing), and let me just arrogantly say that, I do know I have an above-average seamanship due to all the “experience” I had at sea (all the bruises, crashes and burns are not in vain):
“You are one brave lady.”
“I honestly couldn’t have come back without you on the boat.”
Woohoo!
I love sailing! When I am old, I will sail across the world!
Last summer, I spent a couple days of refuge at the library of US International Trade Commission (to avoid some unpleasant distractions in my office). During those couple days, I would be the sole wanderer in the narrow aisles of that stuffy and small library. Always having this natural attraction to old books and manuscripts, I sought out the oldest looking annual reports of US international Trade Commission. And from those aged and untouched pages, I learned the little known fact that the US international Trade Commission used to be called US Tariff Commission, and it was sometime between 1970 and early 1980s that it changed name. What a funny change, I thought to myself then. It is a totally trivia knowledge. That is, until yesterday.
So a professor in my school is looking for certain old tariff data (around World War II), and while the post 1980 data is widely available, he thought that he had to march all the way to Washington DC to US international trade commission in order to photocopy the 1947ish old data from hard copies manuscripts. Having spent some wonderful memories in the USITC library, I just thought that it probably ain’t worth that effort to go there for those manuscripts. So I did an advanced search in my school’s library for “International Tariff Commission,” which should be the author of periodicals dating back before 1970s. VIOLA. Found. They are located in a dark, dark corner of the basement of the library.
In the dim light, I saw that on the rack is an amazing array of tariff schedule manuscripts. Some dating back to Civil War!
And so that’s how it went.
The last 2 weeks were series of sport stimulated memories. Before Olympics watching took over my life (I am glued to the TV every night until 1:30am), I had spent several nights satiating my voracious appetite for sailing books. A couple years agp, I randomly picked up a book named “The Godsaken Sea” which documents the 1996/1997 Vendee Global Sailing Race, where one competitor lost his life. Ever since, I have been somewhat obsessed with the Vendee Global. In the last 2 weeks, I followed up with reading Peter Goss’ “Close to the Wind”, and Ellen MacArthur’s “Taking on the World.”
Every 4 years, in this seaside village in France held the Vendee Global– solo (SINGLED HANDED ON A 50-60 boat!), non-stop, unaided, sail across the world. The duration of the race can be from a little over 3 months (the fastest), to 5 months. The rule is that the boat should be AT LEAST a certain distance for land. The sailor cannot dock on the land. Even if the boat is damaged and the sailor need to repair the boat, he/she can only do it on the sea, with his/her creativity.
Itineary: The boats leave France and sail South down Atlantic Ocean, until they reach Cape Horn (The south most tip of South America), they turn toward Anartica, and the rest of the 60 days or so are spent in the Southern Ocean, along Anartica, until they circle around the globe, and return to France via Atlantic Ocean again.
The Southern Ocean is the MONSTER in sea. As wiki says it: “Cyclonic storms travel eastward around the continent and frequently become intense because of the temperature-contrast between ice and open ocean. The ocean-area from about latitude 40 south to the Antarctic Circle has the strongest average winds found anywhere on Earth.”
In the 1996/97 race, such a cyclonic storms occurred while several sailors were sailing in this part of the world.
The boat of Rafael Dinelli, one of the competitor, was damaged so severely during the storm that it sank. Photos showed him standing at the tip of a rapidly submerged boat. He was out there in the Anartica for 3 days, and was going to die in that peace and quietness of Anartica had not PETER GOSS came to the rescue.
Peter Goss was a competitor from UK who was about 160 miles ahead of Dinelli when he received the call to rescue Dinelli. To backtrack 160 miles, he had to AGAIN go through that typhoon occurring in Southern Ocean.
Being the honorable person that he is, Goss turned back.
“Godforsaken Sea” narrates the whole Vendee Global 96/97 race from the point of view of a journalist who is observing from France.
Peter Goss later writes about his experience in “Close to the Wind.” The book is about Goss’s journey to the starting line of Vendee Global, to the finish line. After reading it, one may think that the journey to the starting line could be as hard, if not harder, than finishing the Vendee Global! To get to the starting line, one requires much perseverance to secure sponsorship.
This book is different from Godforsaken Sea in that Peter Goss had a first hand witness of that terrible Southern Ocean storm. He said that waves had hit the height of a 6 story building, at about 80 feet.
I can so imagine it.
I can imagine that the boat would be surfing on the tip of the 80 ft wave, only to crash down to the trough. And Peter Goss would be in the cabin (autopilot on outside), and adrenaline rushing in anticipating of hitting the trough. If he was at the cockpit he’d see that 80 ft tall wave coming in, only hoping that Agua Quorum (The boat’s name) would hang on.
After suriving the storm, Peter Goss probably sighed in relief. Imagine only when he decided he must turn back to rescue Raphael Dinelli, only to go through that storm again!
Vendee Global is truly the pinnacle of human adventure and perseverance.
In the 96/96 race, about 20 something boat set out, only 6 finished the race.
Fast forward 4 years later in the 2000/01 Vendee Global, amazingly 24-year-old Ellen MacArthur finished 2nd! And she is amazingly only 24 years old!
She documents her journey to the starting line and then to the end line in her book “Taking on the World.” Her sailing journey shows that she is an enormously passionate person. Her passion drives her to do great things. But I feel that she had it so much easier than Peter Goss, who really really struggled financially to get to the starting line.
Ellen MacArthur has the state of the art sailing equipments, so her victorious 2nd place finish is less glorious to me than Peter Goss’ 5th place finish — although I am still amazed by her!
(Before reading the book, I was a BIG FAN of Ellen MacArthur, but now my admiration is more qualified because Ellen MacArthur is so….whiny! My heroine cannot be so whiny!)
(Unfortunately, real life indeed does not give good ending to good people. While Peter Goss got the highest level of honor by France and UK, his sailing career sort of died later. He had this ambitious project to build the largest catamaran, spending millions. But the boat was shattered INTO PIECES in a trial race!….millions gone in seconds! Meanwhile, ELlen MacArthur went on to break several world records and became ever more successful)
So where do my memories come in all these sailing races?
When I was 16-year-old, I went on this 2-week long bootcamp-type summer camp in Hong Kong. The program is called “Outward Bound”. Evidently, the HK Jockey Association frequently send their riders to train in this program. I had 2 jockeys in my 9 people team. They were short but really really tough. In this camp, we spent a week camping and hiking across mountains, and another week sailing.
We sailed on a 60-70 feet boat (I forgot exact dimensions) to the South China Sea. The farthest we went was Phillipines.
As I read the part in Peter Goss’s book about the 80 feet waves during his storm, flashes of memories of my time in the South China Sea came back to me.
It was about the 3rd day in the sea. Around the afternoon time, a storm came. The boat was diving into waves after waves. While the waves were not 80 feet tall, I remember it being at least 20-30 feet. The 60 feet boat was dwarfed by these waves. Most of the other people (30 or so) were getting sea sick from the storm and hiding out in the cabin.
But not me — Anna the Amazing– for I grew up by the sea and alway go on boatrides with my Dad. In fact, I took my harness, walked to the bow of the boat (the very front part of the boat– imagine Titanic, the scene where Jack and Rose stood at the bow, except in this case it is with wind, rain, and waves in front of them), and clipped the harness to the rail, and ride the waves! The thrill kicked in particularly when the boat surfed on the top of the wave and got ready to dive down the 30 feet waves!
Anyway, Peter Goss’s ‘Close to the Wind’, and Ellen MacArthur’s “Taking on the World” remind me of these moments 10 years ago.
The urgency to take back those adventures in my current life increases. (I added an “Adventure” category” to this blog just for this post, with the incentives to add more adventure in my life in the coming years)
I need to plan my future adventures.
COFFEE & BISCUITS 