Fixed Boat, Switched-On Body

I love sailing. I truly do.

But I’m beginning to understand something I hadn’t fully recognised before: alongside the joy, there is also fear. Fear of things breaking. Fear of a difficult passage. Fear of what might happen when I’m out at sea, alone, with problems I cannot simply walk away from.

I didn’t expect to discover this while sitting in a marina on Réunion, waiting to sail to South Africa.

A week of making things happen

Things always break on a boat. On my last passage, two essential things broke. Luckily, I was heading to Réunion, not South Africa.

Once here, I depended on other people’s knowledge and goodwill. On whether the problems could be fixed at all, and whether the parts would arrive in time for my next passage.

So I got to work.

For a full week, I stayed on top of everything. I chased solutions, coordinated repairs and made things happen. After a week, Loveworkx was ready to sail on. Under normal circumstances, the repairs might have taken two or three weeks.

The boat was ready. I wasn’t.

I was still switched on. But I didn’t notice it yet.

What I slowly started to notice

I’ve recently returned from ten days of Vipassana meditation. I don’t think it made me more sensitive. Rather, I seem to have become more aware of what’s already happening inside me.

I’m noticing things I might previously have moved straight past. That is one of the things that 100 hours of observing my thoughts and physical body brought me.

During the repair of my windvane, the man helping me started talking about the difficult passage to South Africa. There had been one setback after another. The windvane still wasn’t repaired, more parts were needed, and my departure kept getting pushed back.

Suddenly, I had tears in my eyes.

I was surprised by how emotional I felt. But instead of pushing the feeling aside and getting on with things, I noticed it.

I love sailing. And I’m also afraid of what can go wrong.

Perhaps I’d been so busy making things happen that I hadn’t fully noticed what it was costing me.

When doing becomes a way of coping

When uncertainty builds up, I feel it in my body first. My neck tightens. I become more easily overstimulated and emotional. I feel anxious, and sleep becomes more difficult.

It’s as if my body stays on watch, even when there’s nothing I can do at that particular moment. And that is even literally what I think at such a moment.

And then I work.

I start a podcast. I edit videos. I see therapy clients. And work on the list of boat jobs. I look for the next thing to create or organise.

These are things I genuinely enjoy. I’m creative, curious and entrepreneurial. I don’t want to lose that part of myself.

But I’m beginning to recognise that working can serve another purpose, too.

When I’m busy, I have something to focus on. Something I can influence. Something I can get done. It gives me direction at a time when other things feel uncertain.

Stopping means there’s space to notice what I’m feeling, including the fear I cannot solve by doing something.

Perhaps that’s why I sometimes keep going even when I want to stop.

Sometimes I work because I love what I’m doing. Sometimes I may be using activity to manage a tension I haven’t fully recognised.

From the outside, those two things can look exactly the same.

Chocolate, restaurants and a way off the boat

I’ve also noticed that when I’m in this state, I tend to eat out more and reach for sweets and chocolate.

Comfort food. A little pleasure. Being away from the boat for hours.

But there’s more to it than that.

The boat gets incredibly hot. Yesterday was cloudy, and I spent the day on board, cooking, reading, making music and having lovely conversations. I felt good.

Today, it’s only 9.30 in the morning, and already it’s scorching hot, even in the cockpit. Inside, temperatures can reach 35°- 40°.

Of course I want to get off the boat.

And then another thought appears: eating out costs money, and that worries me. I saved money to sail around the world in three years. And I am currently in my fourth year with much more boat repairs and expenses than I budgeted for.

It’s interesting to observe how quickly a simple need can become complicated. I want somewhere cool to sit and read, but I also start questioning whether I should spend the money.

Not every decision to leave the boat is an escape. Sometimes it’s simply too hot to stay. But I’m beginning to see how physical discomfort, uncertainty and my thoughts about money can all influence how I feel.

What brings me back

Breathing exercises, playing the ukulele, singing and chanting help me settle.

I’ve been doing these things at sea for a long time, often twice a day. I knew they helped, but I hadn’t consciously thought of them as ways of regulating my nervous system.

I simply did them.

Now I’m beginning to understand that they may help me shift out of a state of alertness and back towards calm. Slow breathing, the rhythm of a chant, the sound of my own voice: these give me something to return to, something other than the stream of thoughts about what might go wrong.

Vipassana is helping me notice the process earlier.

Not just the tension in my neck, the tears in my eyes or the urge to keep working, but the connection between what happens around me, what I experience in my body and what I do next.

I know I can stop. I can sit in meditation for hours. I can spend a quiet day reading, cooking and making music.

The question isn’t whether I’m capable of doing nothing.

It’s what happens inside me when uncertainty makes it difficult to let go.

The boat is ready. Now what?

I’m beginning to see that being prepared for a passage and feeling safe enough to rest are two different things.

I can arrange repairs, check equipment, prepare for the conditions and make careful decisions. These are things I can influence.

But I cannot guarantee that nothing else will break. Because things will break on every passage. I cannot control the weather or know exactly what a passage to South Africa will bring. Although I am monitoring other sailors closely to learn from their experiences.

There will always be a point at which preparation ends and uncertainty begins.

Perhaps I’ve been trying to manage some of that uncertainty by staying busy, without realising it.

And perhaps this is what I need to learn now: not to become less capable, less ambitious or less engaged with life, but to recognise when doing is useful and when I’m simply finding it difficult to stop.

For now, I’m still on Réunion. The boat is ready, but the heat makes it uncomfortable to spend the day on board. I have work to do this afternoon, and I’m also watching my spending.

I don’t have a grand solution.

I just notice that, when the conditions allow it, what I actually want is surprisingly simple: a quiet day, a book, some music, good food and good conversation.

I don’t need to turn that into another project.

Perhaps the practice is to learn to carry the uncertainty I cannot fix, without automatically turning it into something else I need to do.

And to notice the moment my neck tightens.

Before I switch on again.