PERFECT COMFORT

(From MAGIC HARBOR by Don Berry)

 

 

 

Three times in my life I have had a night's sleep that was at least as memorable as any waking experience. All have been on the water.

Twenty years ago I was sailing down the Lesser Antilles, from Martinique to Bequia, in a fat little 30' sloop named HORNPIPE, skippered by a world-class single-handed ocean racer named Tom. I had hitched a ride down-island with HORNPIPE, partly becau se I wanted to go down-island, partly in order to have the privilege and education of sailing with Tom. I'd brought my sextant aboard, and Tom was going to give me his techniques of getting stable noon sights.

When we cleared the mouth of Fort-de-France on Martinique, the wind was rising. In the middle of the night, when I came on watch, I was astonished at the size of the seas. They were enormous, gigantic. The tops were all breaking higher than our mas t. Not white-capping. Breaking. Tom was at the helm, contentedly puffing on his pipe. As far as Tom was concerned, he was just cruisin' down the bay.

"Tom, what are these winds?"

"Well," Tom said, looking around thoughtfully, "'bout Force 9, I guess."

I just shook my head. I don't think I had ever seen Force 9 winds, much less sailed in them. I stood my watch, and actually enjoyed the steering rhythm when I wasn't terrified.

After my watch I went below and wedged myself tightly under the saloon table, between the center post and the bench. Totally immobilized, my body couldn't move, and the only sensation I had was the motion of HORNPIPE.

I dreamed. I dreamed I was a porpoise, lunging and turning, rising high and diving almost in free fall.

With Tom's sure hand at the helm, it was one of the most ecstatic physical experiences I've ever had. It was, and is, an indescribable experience of another world. My conscious mind, that pesky bane of my existence, was turned off, and there was onl y the movement of the sea, and the skill of a helmsman who understood it better than he understood the flow of his own blood.

The second time, on the schooner SOUTHWIND, we were crossing the Anegata Passage in a gale. It was so dark the only time you could see the shrouds was when the lightning flashed. And in those stroboscopic flashes, the surrounding sea was a churning mass of white, and you'd almost rather be sailing blind.

There were three helmsmen: Captain John, Sunshine, and myself. We rotated back through the skipper's cabin, with the crewman whose watch was coming up sleeping the last four hours in the aft cabin where he'd be easy to reach if the on-watch helmsman g ot too tired. (We weren't into seaborne ordeals, and we'd just change the watch if anybody got too tired.)

Once again I was wedged in, behind the chart table, with my back horizontal on the bench and my legs hoisted up on the table, facing fore and aft. Once again sleeping, but without dreams, my body was purely given over to the rise and fall of the sea. There must be some archetypal world where this ecstatic motion is the only kind of experience. Perhaps that is why the porpoise wears his enigmatic smile.

The third time, in Eagle Harbor, was less dramatic, but as memorable, and perhaps more instructive.

I had brought ADRIANA down from Bellingham in the middle of December. I had to leave her anchored while I returned to my apartment in Seattle to finish working on a film -- my last gesture in the land life before coming back to the water.

When I returned to Eagle Harbor a week later, the boat was frozen, my engine wouldn't start, and my dinghy had been stolen. In addition, the temperature had plummeted to near zero in the phenomenon we call the Arctic Express.

 

ADRIANA was not set up for living when I bought her. She had only a little catalytic heater that might have been all right to warm your hands on a cool June evening. But it was no match for the Arctic Express. Coming aboard in these miserable condi tions it felt as if I were inhabiting a solid block of ice.

When I was back in Seattle in the working interim, a huge package had arrived. My friend had sent me a leaving-land gift: a white goosedown comforter.

Now, on this cold and miserable night, with a broken engine, physically weaker than I had guessed, tied up crippled to a public dock that didn't want me, I knew I was looking at a long uphill climb.

But tucked in a flannel sleeping bag, with the mysterious and magical lightness of the comforter over me, tucked around my neck, and with my cheeks stinging from the cold, I suddenly found a position that was totally, entirely, completely comfortable. I could not feel the muscle strains of the day, the fatigue of my discouragements, the doubts about my own ability to deal with this transition.

In drowsy sleep, my mental monitor affirmed with great clarity:

"This is my perfect comfort."

And during the night, every time I switched over, and came back to that exact position, my monitor said it again:

"This is my perfect comfort."

And that is the third of my memorable sleeps. May all creatures, whatever their destiny, find one position of perfect comfort, and know that they have found it.

end

 

Perfect Comfort
©1995 Don Berry