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The Sea Air

I’m really enjoying this. The sea air is good for you, I hear. Spending summer after summer of my youth at the Navy Pier, attempting pikes and Gaynors to impress the girls, horsing around with the neighborhood gang. I’ve definitely developed a love of water. But Lake Michigan water and Atlantic Ocean water are very different. The salt of the ocean permeates the olfactory. You can smell it in the air and on your clothing, in your hair and under your finger nails. The ocean spray sends misty bursts of flavor into your mouth, should you be lucky enough to forget to breathe through your nose. Even in the cold of the Atlantic coast in early June, I relish in the cool, salty vapor coming up over the side of the boat. Each time the boat rises up and claps down on the surf, I can’t help but laugh. It’s the same laugh that leapt out of my mouth at the pier; uncontrolled and genuine. I wonder why the rest of the guys aren’t smiling as much as I am. I wonder how much more pleasurable is the ocean experience without the rumbling engine and the diesel fumes of the Gray Marine.

While I’d prefer sunshine and seventy degrees if I was back at the pier, this weather is fitting, considering the circumstances. In fact, I think I’d be disappointed by anything else. There is a certain relationship between the Atlantic Ocean and overcast skies. I cannot imagine the Atlantic without grey skies and unsettled waters; without temperatures below fifty degrees. This day is certainly living up to my expectations. The air is cool and damp with the salty mist. The sky is memorably grey with a dark, burnt around the edges quality. Some would see this as a foreboding but for me it’s a satisfying fulfillment of my own imagination. Stevens and Lambert complained as we set out that we were all going to be soaked in the ocean spray, catch pneumonia, and die. Kopshinski laughed at them, “Pneumonia’s the last thing I’m worried about.”

I feel now a closer relationship with the ocean than I did upon our first trip. Our initial journey across the Atlantic was in an imposing and impersonal ship. The feeling at that time was more that we were in a ship on the ocean. This moment I am alive with the notion that I am on a boat in the ocean. Here I am close to the sea; an inhabitant. If I pull myself up, I can look over the side of the boat and watch as we motor through the water and I know that the water moves around us much more aggressively than we move through it. The sea allows us on this day to move through it and I am thankful for the passage.

If I have one complaint about our voyage, it is the floor of our craft. As we’ve made our way, frigid sea water has collected and soaked our feet. And although our feet are freezing, crinkled, and aching, what’s worse is the sea water and vomit slurry that washes over our boots. There is no odor known to man as recognizable as vomit; and none so contagious. I knew as soon as I saw the look on O’Keefe’s face when we set out today that he was a puker and sure enough, the first set of whitecaps set him off. Powdered eggs are disgusting enough without being partially digested and muddled up with coffee, apple juice and bile. Moments after O’Keefe’s launch, Jackson lost his breakfast. And so it went. Thirteen of thirty six men threw up this morning.

Soon the Higgins driver will clear the door and we’ll run out of the boat onto foreign shores. I bet O’Keefe and Jackson and Lambert and Stevens will be happy to be off of the boat and out of the water. Not me. I could go another couple of hours motoring about, but I don’t have a couple more hours, so I’ll take in the rest of the ride until then and I hope my time in France will be as relaxing.