Last wednesday I finished my 55 day long sailing to the southern hemisphere, but my blog is not about how " I" felt ! this time its the other way. We started our journey back to India from Port Louis , Mauritius on the 26th of April 2010. Although it was a planned trip according to our schedule, we were directed for another task; this time its an Anti piracy support duty to one of our small sailing yatch on which one of our bravest officer is doing a circumnavigation around the world and he's on his last leg from Cape Town to Mumbai....a gruesome stretch of 4500 miles....Phew !!
It might sound very easy for anybody to think when you come to know that its a voyage , suypporting somebody to reach safely. But believe me, it takes a huge toll on the psyche of a sailor. for the first time in my career I could not plot a track or predict a course to steer for almost 2200 nautical miles ( eh...that is almost 4000 kilometers) at an average speed of 6 knots (10 kilometers/hour). As days passed by the frustration was building up, i almost finished my movie collection (Indian, Hollywood & pornos).....what a misery!!
Now, as an officer its a duty with paramount importance to keep the morale and motivation of the sailors high , at all times. The game comes where oneself is actually going through the same situation. If one could press "PAUSE" in the remote button of life and watch the frames with scripts projected in front, one can see how sensitive the life is , like a tight rope walk between sanity and insanity. There have been cases where people have become completely crazy. So (coming back)...I , instinctively started a different approach. My plan was to make them dream , make them hope, no matter how late we go back home, how rough the seas become...i made them dream.
It was very simple, I asked them "What would they do once you reach your home port?"......The fun is here folks ! I got such answers which made me laugh, some made me think, some made me sigh, and some made me sad, and last but not the least some made me totally blank ! If i take an average around 40 % told me that they want to have food...some wanted to go and watch girls (eve teasing & dropping..oops),....some wanted to simple spent time with their wives (ooooh...i never questioned them much).....some wanted to drink sober and booze out !
And i continued my mission, stopping every passerby in the alleway of my 85 meter ship , shooting them questions and receiving it. The results were amazing , within days of the initiation of the plan i could find people actually waiting for me to appear in front of them and there it goes. Usually i like to listen to people, a lot, well i was living my passion there at that moment.
I dont know whether it gave them hope, peace or solace....but i'm damn sure, that it did give them a bit of happiness at that moment !!
Well things are not over yet, as soon as the ship came alongside after a single stretch 16 days journey out of which 14 days were of no hope !,finally we were back in the home port. Now the twist comes here.....all those things said and done were forgotten in an instant . So the moral of the story is 'Hoping for the happiness'....no matter its for a second or a day or a week or so on.....its just the hope for happiness, let it be that solo circumnavigator, or my quartermaster who got married just 3 months back terribly missing his wife, or the biggest drunkard of our mess....it was hope ...everywhere !!
