Does anyone know
Where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours
Those lyrics from Gordon Lightfoot's famous ballad "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" were passing through my mildly seasick brain as the predicted 3-foot waves were clearly significantly higher.
Moving our boat from New York City back to Chesapeake Bay involved 122 miles of open North Atlantic Ocean, and I had waited patiently for a benign weather forecast. On the day of departure my many weather apps predicted light winds and less than 3-foot waves. No mention of fog.
Naturally the fog hit about 30 miles out, and so instead of 28 miles per hour we had to slow to six. The fog would lift intermittently, so I would boogie a few miles until the visibility made it unsafe. During this time the seas were building, the watery terrain looking like spooky rolling hills in the mist. I would look at my chart plotter screen and couldn't believe we'd only gone a mile since I last looked.
Being unable to see the shore, or much of anything in the fog, feeling like the waves are clearly more aggressive, and realizing that there were another 90 miles to go, I felt a familiar sensation. I tried to identify it.
And then I knew. Bleeding. Encountering bleeding in a surgical procedure, maybe from a gunshot wound or a car crash injury, puts you in the moment like nothing else. You know that you can't sit still, call timeout, take a minute, or come back tomorrow. If you don't stop the bleeding your patient is toast. You are toast.
On the ocean, in the waves, in the fog, in the wind, you've got to get out of the situation, or you are soggy toast.
That's when the minutes turn to hours.
The most lethal reaction in any tense situation is overreaction. I wasn't taking on water, and the boat didn't seem too worried, despite the deluge on the windshield and the slamming in the wave troughs. So there was no need to start jamming clamps into the incision that might tear things and increase the bleeding, to extend the metaphor.
I kept the boat pointed south, ticked off the miles one by one, and finally figured out the best speed to match the distance between the waves. Most importantly, I employed my self-talk bleeding voice.
"Slow down, be deliberate, put your finger in the hole, and be chill."
Now I'm sure some old salt mariner would have scoffed at my concern. Boats half the size of ours scooted past us into seas all the time that we are running away from.
What is stressful is different for all of us. The effective response, however, is more universal. Minimizing panic and emotional reactions is critical. Don't be jamming clamps into the wound. Put a finger on the bleeding artery and get yourself calmed down.
When adrenaline goes up, turn your thermostat down. When angry words fly, press your lips tightly together. When it's foggy or icy or snowy or generally ambiguous, slow down or stop. When you can't decide, don't.
We plugged away, mile after agonizingly slow mile, wave after bouncy wave and arrived at Cape May, New Jersey, just as the winds died, the seas calmed and the fog lifted. We could have water skied the last few miles.
The marina guy asked us about our journey. I recounted towering waves and howling winds and fog the density of clam chowder.
He turned, looked at the window at the blazing sun, the mirror-like seas, the limp flag.
"Sure," he said. "Whatever."
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