Weather Is Part Of The Course
Spray over the deck, soup from metal bowls, and a much calmer head by the time we reached the harbour.
The most useful lesson of the second course was simple: weather belongs to sailing. Wind and waves were the material we had come to work with.
The sail loaded, the bow punched through water and the deck collected a fresh layer of the gulf every few seconds. There was plenty to coordinate and no spare attention for private catastrophes.
Hot soup eaten from metal bowls on a moving boat achieves an unreasonable level of importance. It may have been ordinary soup. Context promoted it.
Later came dry land, grilled meat and the harbour at sunset. My body was tired and my brain had finally been exhausted in the correct direction.
By the harbour, everything in my head had been demoted to its proper size.