Once Upon a Gypsy Moon: An Improbable Voyage and One Man's Yearning for Redemption by Hurley Michael

Author:Hurley, Michael [Hurley, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781455529346
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2013-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

A Mystery Unfolds

The most beautiful thing we can experience in life is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: for his eyes are closed.

—Albert Einstein

One should be careful when listening to Van Morrison songs. Like the carriage that turns into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight, in the blink of an eye “Crazy Love” can turn into just plain crazy.

It would have been easy to dismiss what I was feeling for Susan after just one weekend as I sailed south from Charleston—if not as crazy, then as simply foolish. But to dismiss such feelings is to be dead to the possibility of mystery. I don’t presume necessarily to understand my life as it occurs, but I know that I must experience it in real time, not in hindsight. Grace often comes to us as an angel in strange disguise, and we must have the courage to welcome the stranger.

At six in the evening on my first day at sea, after leaving Charleston, I sat down to write Susan a letter. All was quiet, the new winter sun had already set, and in the soft glow of the cabin where only two days before we had danced and talked long into the night, the sense that my life had just changed greatly for the better covered me like a warm blanket.

“Like a child at Christmas,” I wrote to her, “I may not know all that the future holds, but I have a childlike sense of wonder, awe and excitement, and an innocent faith that what waits for us is something beautiful to behold.” I think this may have been what Mr. Einstein was trying to tell us, and it is definitely what I believe.

As I wrote those words I was already far out of sight of land. An unseen school of fish—perhaps tuna or mahimahi—went rushing under my keel, setting off the depth alarm and reminding me that there were forces busily at work beneath the placid surface of the ocean. The same was true of my thoughts, which raced expectantly beneath my calm exterior. Big changes were on the way, and I was about to make them.

In the hours I had spent trying to evade Charleston two weeks earlier, I had gained a greater understanding of the operation of the Monitor self-steering wind vane. Though the electronic autopilot had since been repaired, I now used the mechanical wind vane for self-steering exclusively. With nothing but wide miles of ocean between me and the Berry Islands, I had unfettered, quiet hours to fill with thoughts and written words.

I made good time, covering 115 miles in the first day. In that distance I saw not one other vessel on the open sea. I also remained out of communication with land. Cell phones and VHF radios cannot receive a clear signal farther than twenty-five miles from shore.

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