I love you too, John.

Sitkalidac Strait, Kodiak Alaska, 25-JUN-2020 — I’d never made an actual, conscious decision to convince someone to stay with me. I’d fallen in love before and been in long term relationships but it was never quite as conscious. It was emotions and lust and love and confidence in the world.

But with Jennifer, I was older, over 50. I’d been in love and lost, been in love and destroyed the relationship, been in love and been loved by someone who should have known better, as should have I.

I remember the moment where I made my pitch; it was only a single sentence. It was in the living room of my house. On the wall was, and is painted a red circle, a blue square, and a yellow triangle. They had been there for years overlapping, and somehow incomplete. Two or three years later Jennifer would contribute an oval mirror and the wall would be complete. It is still there now.

I don’t remember what couch we sat on. The couch that is there now I hadn’t yet acquired, the other couch in that room is, in fact, Jennifer’s, so it wasn’t that one. It might have been the love seat.

On my calendar is a date from that year that says that Jennifer broke up with me. So, I expect that the relationship had been at a temporary end and somehow I had gotten her to come over to the house. To pick up something, perhaps.

The pitch was simple, ”We can build something.”

I know I explained a little more, and we discussed getting old together, and I spoke about the reality that at some point in our life together one of us would most likely be taking care of other. And I, probably, since I tell this line to almost everyone, said, ”Every relationship ends in pain. It is the cost of entry. There is only one relationship that will not end up that way and that’s only if you die first.”

We are motoring down the coast of Kodiak Island, slipping through passes between the smaller islands off the coast, and at this moment have the open ocean to the left of us and a Kodiak Island peninsula to the right. Further offshore it is blowing 20 knots, but close to the shore it is often like this: no wind at all, slow langarous, flattened ocean swells slowly rolling. The water is beaten pewter, but the period of the waves does not yield the shapes that we see in all of the native art east of here in the inside passage.

Jennifer and I were talking, marveling really, about how we got here.

We were recounting to each other the trips we’ve made and how far they are outside of how we saw ourselves.

I tell her, though it’s not true, that I promised we would build something together. I didn’t actually promise anything. I said we could build something. I said I promised we would build a life together. Even that’s not true.

But it has come to be the folklore that we build our life together upon.

Alone, neither of us would have done this. I sailed, entirely day sails in Long Island Sound. Jennifer said she didn’t like day sailing anymore and wanted to go places, but so we started.

A start is all it takes, like the start of an oak tree, or a popular, or maple tree. Put the start in the ground and time and the world will take care of the rest.

Tomorrow, at 5:00 in the morning, we’ll start heading southwest across 175 nautical miles of water to Chignik. It’s been a little less then 2 years since we were last there. It’s unlikely that the harbormaster will remember us, but we were just in from Hawaii traveling with the sailing vessel Robusta who was just in from Japan. So it’s possible.

It’s where we met Tim Gervais, and his child. Both of whom became good friends and are close to me.

We’ve been doing day hops, averaging probably 40 miles a day. 175 miles is 5 days at the rate we’ve been going and gets us further down the chain.

This afternoon I will set up the windvane to steer us, rather than using the Raymarine electric autopilot; we’ll return to the magical silence of sailing. The trip should be somewhere around 35 hours, perhaps faster, perhaps slower. We’re on a sailboat, we have a destination not a schedule.

I say, ” I love you, Jennifer.” Jennifer often looks at me quizzically when I say this. Today she responds, ”I love you, too, John. ”
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