People say that nature is wild, but they say it just for the sake of saying it, they do not know what it is to live between the untamed and the pristine. They have not experienced firsthand how wild the sea can be. You see it from land with the innocence of a child, thinking that nothing bad will happen when you enter its waters.
Only a few of us can call ourselves men of the sea, not everyone abandons the land to go to sea. Setting sail towards a fixed destination without knowing exactly if you are going to arrive. There may be any technological gadget such as radar or electronic charts, but when you are battling the storm in the middle of the ocean, there is no instrument that saves you from the brutal waves that lash the ship.
The worst is a shipwreck, with no rafts, no rescue boats, no SART or EPIRB to locate you. Standing in the middle of the night watching the stars shine as they have never shone before, but feeling millions of fish eating your limbs dims that feeling that you will be saved. You pray to the Lord to help you, even if you are the most atheistic of atheists, faith is the only thing you can hold on to keep your sanity.
I have not named hunger, nor thirst. Two things that in the wild sea will cover you when you capsize. No matter how many preparations you make, no matter how many provisions are provided, no matter how many preventive measures are taken in case of emergencies, no matter how many routes are planned to avoid storms, you will not be able to fight against the unpredictability, against the beastliness of the sea. There is no time to prepare, no matter how many drills are carried out. The conventions are not prepared for the sea.
In the end, only the scars of the experiences remain. Physical scars and those that weigh the most, those of the soul. The pain of losing a companion, the pain of losing your most precious belongings, the pain of losing a limb, or the pain of not doing the same thing again. It eats away at you little by little to the point of madness.
The sea is so wild that you survive, you return safely to land, but your mind belongs to it. You long to return to the adventure and receive the suffering of loneliness.
It's rare, they call us masochists, but sailing at sea is indescribable. Even much better than going by plane. Even if it takes days to see the blue of the sea or a simple coastline, it is worth it. Despite its brutality, the sea is my home.
I knew it from the first day I set sail. When my legs stepped on deck and I felt the air on my face I knew it. There was no need to sail, although sailing is the best thing to do. Uncertain, but you think you own that wide sea, more wrong one cannot be, but that does not make us human, that makes us living and thinking beings. For thinking that we can dominate the wild, but the wild is indomitable. It cannot be changed, it cannot be altered, no matter how hard you try, it is unalterable and I would like to think that it is enduring over time, not like us who have an end to our masochistic history.