THIS TOO SHALL PASS

Wendy and Garth in Nuie

Wendy shares her experience of coming home to Seattle after a 7 year, 34,000 mile voyage of the Pacific.

BY WENDY HINMAN

In 2020, when so much has been thrown at us at once, life feels overwhelming. I feel a familiar sense of despair that reminds me of another difficult time I overcame.

When I returned from seven years and 34,000 miles of voyaging around the Pacific, I descended into a deep melancholy. As my husband Garth and I began that journey, I never considered what life might be like after our return. We spent years sailing our 31-foot boat, chasing the horizon, and discovering the wonders of nature, always moving onward. Each day was punctuated by new and exciting events—so many different countries and cultures, grand vistas, waterfalls, and obstacles to navigate. We lived in the moment and overcame countless challenges. I was honing my skills and pushing past fears each and every day. But when we returned home, I felt as if I’d returned to a past I’d outgrown. I felt adrift amid the frantic pace of modern life, so obsessed with schedules. Everyone had somewhere else to be, something to accomplish, and no time to linger. Fresh from a world of timeless possibility, I felt irrelevant, like I didn’t belong.

I was bereft that the exploratory lifestyle I adored had come to a close and I wasn’t sure what I’d do next. I felt as though I’d lost what had come to define me. Several other factors created a “perfect storm” that exacerbated my sense of loss.  When we first returned, a severe shortage of moorage space meant we could not find a place to safely keep our boat. With our boat at anchor as fall storms raged, we didn’t feel as though we could leave the boat unattended to visit out-of-town family who we hadn’t seen in years.

It was a dark time for me. Landlocked, I felt trapped. I spent long days in despair, sometimes barely able to get out of bed.

Our arrival back in Seattle coincided with one of the wettest, coldest falls on record when mudslides shut down roadways and rail traffic. Our bodies, fresh from the tropics, were ill-equipped to withstand frosty temperatures. Our eyes were unaccustomed to short, gray days that felt like twilight all day. We were forced to bail icy water out of the dinghy and row ashore in pouring rain. The boat was bitter cold, since our heater had stopped working from lack of use in the tropics. I could see my breath inside the cabin and olive oil solidified behind the stove—one of the warmest places aboard. It was dismal.

Long anticipated family holidays turned into gut-wrenching disappointments. Instead of the happy reunions we’d imagined, we found ourselves unwelcome guests at a holiday celebration with mostly strangers. Our participation was cut short when one of those strangers objected to including nonfamily and we returned to a frigid boat on Christmas Day amid sleeting rain.  It was devastating. As frozen raindrops struck the deck inches above our heads, I sobbed, wondering why we’d ever come home.

Then Garth got a job, leaving me alone aboard a chilly, moist, dark boat. Not only was I coping with what was surely Seasonal Affective Disorder and a life without clear purpose, I had lost the 24-hour companionship of my best friend when I needed him most.

It was a dark time for me. Landlocked, I felt trapped. I spent long days in despair, sometimes barely able to get out of bed. One of my oldest friends didn’t grasp why, from the depths of my despair, I couldn’t make more effort to improve my situation. Being around others might have helped me, but I spent all my time alone. My friend didn’t understand. When I could hardly stand to be around me, I thought, why should I inflict myself upon anyone else?

It was my sailing community that threw me a life ring that helped rescue me. Invitations to go racing regularly prompted me to muster a smile, throw on some foul weather gear, and get back out on the water.  Scheduled races forced me to pretend I was OK, and going through the motions lifted my mood. The camaraderie and challenge I found buoyed my spirits. I remembered my sailing skills could be used for more than just navigating across an ocean. 48 North magazine asking me to report on the races added focus and a practical application for both my sailing and writing skills. 

Memories of a passage from hell between New Zealand and Fiji offered a lesson. We’d faced 30 knots on the nose with steep waves making the boat shudder and forcing water to cascade over the dodger.  Cold saltwater splashed inside our foul weather gear and wormed its way into the boat’s interior, creating a fetid mildew factory. Growing weary of my own misery, the absurdity of our situation struck me. Though our vagabond sailing life might seem romantic from afar, at that moment the reality was not so wonderful. The writer in me found the humor in it and reframed that grim reality into a funny story. I spent the next eight awful sailing days imagining how I would write these horrors on the page. Though I couldn’t change the situation, changing my attitude about it made the next grueling days much easier.

Humor and stories have often helped me cope.  If I can shift my thoughts from the morose to the humorous, even briefly, I can put things in perspective long enough for my situation to improve, or glean the lessons it offers. Playing with words lightened my mood and helped me endure an otherwise discouraging situation.

People who’d enjoyed that update and others I wrote during our voyage kept encouraging me to write a book. And so I began sifting through memories of our travels to find the meaning in it. Revisiting our adventure deepened my appreciation for the priceless opportunity we had to explore the world under sail.  Though initially I’d felt only loss when it ended, my memories began to transform into something even more valuable.  As I began to write, I realized that without the lows, we take the highs for granted.  What makes life precious is the knowledge that it is limited, that each moment is unique.

When we moved into our house, I positioned my desk below where someone had painted, “This too shall pass,” because it made me smile. During a pandemic, as I sit through yet another Zoom meeting at my desk, I see its reflection. Its message seems more pertinent than ever as days blend together and events that once marked the passage of time seem absent. Now, housebound amid a pandemic, feels similar to those days when I was stuck on a boat plunging into waves in horrible conditions, or landlocked and unsure what came next. But then, as now, I have a choice to embrace the moment for what it is and seek the lessons it offers. And to remember:

This too shall pass.

FROM WOMEN WHO SAIL NEWSLETTER | ISSUE 5. | DECEMBER 2020.

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wendy hinman

Wendy is an adventurer, speaker, and the award-winning author of two books: Tightwads on the Loose tells the story of her 34,000-mile voyage aboard a 31-foot sailboat with her husband.  Sea Trials details the harrowing round-the-world voyage of a family who must overcome a shipwreck, gun boats, mines, thieves, pirates, scurvy and starvation to achieve their dream. For more information, please visit: wendyhinman.com.