The month of August has seen me racing on a classic sailing yacht in New England and mostly away from my studio space. To supplement my time away from the physical studio space I hoped to use my time 'at sea' as a way to journal, document, observe, and find material for my visual work. As part of a racing crew of about 12, with a female captain, the working dynamics onboard the boat were often very agreeable. Still, having a very mixed gender crew like ours was not the norm with the other yachts in the circuit and the time made for some interesting observations. While out racing, and especially along the Maine coast, I kept my eyes peeled for a type of landscape I would like to replicate in my sketchpad. The heavy fog we encountered in Maine made for surreal sublime seascapes which never really made us feel at ease onboard even with the latest technology. At one moment. a yacht about 40ft larger, popped out of the fog without any warning and crossed about 10ft off our bow, releasing a fog horn once their midships were at our bow, hilariously for insurance purposes only.
I took those feelings of unease and excitement and journaled about them in my small portable notebook. Not really giving myself more rules than just letting my thoughts of the day's sailing flow on the page with accompanying sketches of the day's scenes, I decided to fashion the journal similarly to those of captain's wives who went to sea in the 19th century. These journals varied, some wives really disliking the whole endeavor while others really took to shipboard life, completing navigational tasks or sometimes taking over because of their husband's health.
It was good to be apart of a crew again, learning new things and gaining confidence in myself. That is the interesting thing about the ocean isn't it, it rewards us with confidence for our abilities to manage it while also making us extremely humbled by its voracity and power. Now in the UK, preparing to sail again, I look forward to keeping the journal alongside the goauche sketchpad to document what the ocean makes me feel based off these experiences of confidence and anxiety.
