February 2015

When our gaggle of friends visited Costa Rica, Lindsay opted for a berth at our boat-el, rather than the all-inclusive hotel. And we were so glad she did.

Lindsay is the type of person everyone yearns to call their friend. She is empathic, encouraging, and fun-loving. She finds joy in simple moments and is able to support others through difficult experiences with perfectly timed, mildly inappropriate humor. She’s the first to stand up against injustices and, with the purest of hearts, she truly embodies the adage that is tattooed upon her foot:

PEACE IS THE WAY.

We met nine years ago in graduate school and have shouldered the trials of academic life together, celebrated the many personal and professional accomplishments over the years, and survived a “near” plane crash in South America.

Among other memorable moments during her stay, Lindsay braved a heavy surf when we launched our dinghy beneath only the light of the moon, and she laughed her way through an aft-of-the-boat bath, wherein she demonstrated a strong aptitude for long-term cruising by consuming barely over a liter of water. Read on and enjoy her amusing recollections of her time aboard…

Ever since Jess told me about how she did yoga on the bow of the ship, I’ve yearned for more time to have meditative moments aboard Neil and Jess’s The Red Thread. And sure enough! The trip I made to Costa Rica allowed me a few more priceless moments with that enormous, shifting body of bittersweet below the boat. I felt as though I had revoked a long lost rhythm I used to have with a mother ocean. I intuitively, intimately knew forever in a timeless realm, as she rocked me into cozy sleep for the few nights I stayed aboard. Of course, the cozy bedroom was helpful in this regard too 🙂

Jess and Neil are hosts like no others. From the sharing of recently obtained Mexican coffee, to the cocktail hour of mixing a-la concha style, to the please feel free to walk into our bedroom at night to use the facilities [err…our main cabin head was broken at the time], to the rustic-style bathing on the back of the boat…please forgive that I forget the boat terminology.Although there were nights when I awoke in a panic, utterly convinced that the sounds of the boat and the sea were surely the sounds I would hear if the boat were being invaded by robbers (or pirates?)….I was thoroughly pleased with staying on the boat as opposed to the fine hotel establishment the rest of the crew was bungalowed in. Not that I minded too horribly the one night I stayed there.

Being on the boat this time felt quite different. Neil and Jess were notably interlinked with the boat; their home had become part of them, and their lives thrived based on one another, a ménage-a-trois of a very unique kind!!

Wrestling with the nonchalant prowess of the sea is no small undertaking. She seems to kid and play games at the most inopportune times! What a sport for her! I will surely NEVER forget the time Neil and Jess and I spent one evening, trying to deduce a reliable wave rhythm that might allow us to get back to the boat in the dingy, without injury or a frightening battle with undertow. I understand more fully why a “dingy” is called just that! And yet, how much more impossible things would have been without that little Miss what’s her name 🙂 SassyPants, was it? Just when it felt like the pattern of the waves had been uncovered, an unforeseen breaker smashed down in the water at our feet, as we (or I?) stood shivering in the dark night, longing for bed. I began to be aware of a few of the details involved with the difficult duties and learning curves of what my dear friends had been undertaking…and I felt pride well in my heart for them…tempered somewhat by the thought that they might also feel embarrassed that as hosts they could not provide me with a calm sea, that it did not roll it’s watery runway out before me to glide in on. But we made it in….quite seamlessly, from what I understand 🙂I am so happy in my heart and beyond, that I was able to re-encounter my friends (what once was one that then was two and now had become three) on their journey to ever-new-waters. Jess had transformed into Boat Barbie, with her tanned and toned skin and bright blonde highlights a-la-Neil. Neil was like to any sailor I never knew…and I envisioned him at least a couple of times with a volleyball he called “Wilson.” His curly, freely growing beach-bum hair was an envy to me!

I am yet connected with the red thread to this voyage of spirit, and feel the sea undulating in my dreams, whether I am conscious of it or not. Namaste my friends. Namaste and may you feel my love with you, all the journey through…

Always,

Linds