#10 WHITE HORSES

“The cure for anything is saltwater – sweat, tears, or the sea.”
– Isak Dinesen
R/V Knorr
Friday, July 06, 2001
11:35 ship time (GMT-2)
19'01" N
54'52" W

White horses.

I don't understand the connection. They are numerous, as I gaze out on this 180 degree vista of seascape, hundreds, thousands fleck the jumbled tossing heaving horizon. Chaos of form, chaos of motion. Broad stocky mounds of water weighing tons, step into the path of the ship.  Unlike any sweating fire stoked linebacker, there is no digging in to push, no spikes clawing at the turf, no vain search for traction as the shoulder slams.  This is the Zen sumo wrestler spinning through space whose only power is mass and velocity.  No comprehension of duty, purpose or reason.  Just some Newtonian actualization of m & a & F.  F=ma if my physics memory serves me right.  Force = mass x acceleration.  Our blind Zen sumo, with no consciousness of speed/direction, tumbling blissfully along the surface of this insane, heaving, pulsating monster,  suddenly plays a tragic heroic sacrificial role. With no comprehension of any gain or loss, our wrestler silently gives its own acceleration and velocity to the mass of the ship.  As its power is diminished, the speed of the ship declines, the whine of the twin 1500 hp motors decline slightly. A strain is subtly telegraphed through the hull to all aboard. The plate steel deck vibration changes tempo ever so.  A loose hatch cover, previously silent, now begins a buzzing.  One can feel the torque throughout the ship as the strain of the load magnifies in response to our wrestlers might pushing against the 2500 tons of steel.  A beautiful dance ensues as the wrestler and the ship step hand in hand in a slow motion kendo roll with the transferring of the force from one body to the other. F=m/a In an exquisite harmony, force is preserved as one body's acceleration is given to the other's. 

And thus we have plates of food sliding around on the table tops, objects slightly and mysteriously rearranged in one's cabin (I thought I hung that jacket up on that hook?) the staggered, drunken sinusoidal wave of progress as one weaves one's way down the corridor, bouncing from one wall, gripping the opposite railing and shouldering once again into the first wall, the mad grab for the screwdriver as is begins it's slow slide at the top of the lurch, the comic metronomic flopping of heads in the library as the occupants of the chairs, deep in a trance of their own readings, slowly tick back and forth, laundry on the line on some fine quiet country spring morning.  
I have not yet understood the connection to white horses, but maybe that's because the wind has yet to gallop.

My eager expectant scan of the horizon has long been set aside.  I've lost my youthful anticipation of seeing a ship on the horizon, of seeing dolphins, whales, birds, etc.  My expectations now are of a unburdened horizon, of sky, waves, and possibly clouds. Sun or moon, stars and black or pale blue of day. I no longer come on deck with the thought that even if the crew no longer looks at the horizon, I will and I might see something there. It only took a week of experience to shift my expectations. Not that I no longer look. No, hours are spent with my attention oriented overboard. A fine meditation of looking, gazing. No expectations of the unusual or heroic remain. A new understanding of waiting. A slowness, a patience. Of being.  Amid the white tops, a movement, glancing up and over, a white bird gliding without wingbeats floats up and disappears, up and over the top and back into the trough. Endless flight, searching the surface for fish, two days still from Barbados and the first sign of life above the sea on this side of the Atlantic. 

On signs of life.   
As we neared the 1st major station, we began to notice vapor trails and
saw transatlantic flights.  Two nights ago we crossed a shipping lane that transects from Venezuela/Lower Caribbean to Gibraltar. One watch reported a fishing boat, (no contact was made) but no transatlantic shipping. So far for the crossing, I've got one pod of whales, and two seabirds.  A rather dearth reporting on non-water life, a function of our being really out in the middle of nowhere.

As always, 
From the edge of nowhere,
David 


(Writer's Note: I've since learned this...  White Horses in the Sea. Poseidon, King of the Sea, one day created the Horse. Breaking waves are referred to as the white horse as the crest of the mane can be seen as the mane of the horse and if you listen closely the faint booming of the waves crashing sounds like hundreds of hooves thundering along the ground.)
Not sure if these are photoshopped or not



Not that our slopping from side to side was anything nearly as dramatic as this scene, but I couldn't find an appropriately representative video.

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