A fine wind from the east. The wrong direction for making any ground eastward. A lie-in, breakfast, and around eleven, with the tide in our favour, slip the lines — sails up while still in the harbour, and out under sail. No destination, round the buoys off Borkum, dodging the commercial shipping and the fishing boats again and again, a reef, gybe, trim, tack, gybe, the tiller in my own hand, simply: sailing.
I don’t know whether I’d have gone out at all today if Martin weren’t aboard. Martin, with whom I’ve often been out in the mountains over the past years, and with whom I last spent eight days on the Haute Route in April, arrived in Vlieland on Monday evening. After a relaxing day with the bikes and on the island’s beach, we went over from Vlieland to Borkum yesterday under engine as there was no wind at all. The contrast from the Netherlands to Germany, from Vlieland to Borkum, was harsh. I don’t want to carp about Borkum. I think it’s enough simply to note, once more, that Vlieland is just a good place.
In any case, after yesterday’s dreary day of motoring, I felt an urgent need to go sailing with Martin; to feel the wind, the swell, the movement of the boat. What drove me was the wish to show Martin Koraki under sail. But while we were out sailing on the North Sea, it struck me once again that this freedom from constraint, this being unbound by time and destination — that the playful, quite simply, all too readily gets short shrift when I already have the destination harbour, the planned arrival time, in view. Ultimately: when the plan robs the present of its potential for fun.
We’ll see whether I can carry more of exactly that fun into tomorrow’s planned leg from Borkum to Brunsbüttel.