Waiting for a rush

Waiting is the hardest part. The anticipation reverberates throughout the boat like a manically strummed song at too-high decibels. We can hear the whine of something in the air (the drop in barometric pressure, the eerie stillness of the water, the crystalline clouds far up in the sky giving way to puffy nimbus to horizon hiding downpour) but we continue with our day swatting at the expectations of the night circling like a gnat around our heads.
We were on hurricane watch, now tropical storm watch, now what?

We wait and read and eat chips and drink chocolate banana milkshakes and wait. The satellite is down so we depend on intermittent internet reports and Iphone apps to tell us where Earl has decided to go. We dropped 250 feet of chain in the lee of North Haven this afternoon, watching the white dacron of daysailors glide by in light winds and glassy seas.
We are in the lee for now.
The boat is starting to rock and the rain is audible through the thick portholes a few feet above the dappled water. On my anchor watch at midnight, the eye of the storm will be just about parallel with Long Island. I will check the GPS, check the radar, check the decks and the anchor. I will be in jeans and a tshirt.
I will think about heavy weather I've endured on other boats in full foulies and boots and a harness to keep me in the cockpit. And a huge smile on my face when I got into the rhythm of the waves, the yawing of the hull, the pounding of rain or seawater on the teak, of running to the bow pulpit to unhank a jib or bracing myself against the mainmast in the slamming pop of confused seas.
I'm reading WAR by Sebastian Junger. I'll probably finish it in the wheelhouse.
I find it somewhat ironic that his other best known book is about a traumatic battle of sorts at sea (The Perfect Storm). I was hesitent to read this book. I am basically a pacifist. I know that sometimes war is necessary but I don't really understand, at a gut level, why. I just cant imagine intentionally harming another human being.
I can't put this book down.
Granted he is an amazing writer and I have admired his various journalistic endeavors and remarkable talent for storytelling even before I borrowed this hardback. Maybe its the way he describes the adrenaline rush of a firefight or the isolation of being stationed at a remote outpost or the inability (or difficulty at least of) adjusting back to civilian life after being in a survival situation, but I get it. I've never been to war, never shot at anyone and certainly have never had anyone shoot at me (although there was a close call at my middle school one sunny afternoon when a fellow 7th grader pulled a handgun on another kid right in front of me. I didn't see the gun until my friend Joey intervened and told the kid to put it away, but if he had shot it the bullet may have made quick work of the guy in front of me and made a second home in my torso. So I guess, in a sense, I have been in an urban warzone.).
Yet having lived on boats, on the sea, at the mercy of Mother Nature (yes a cliche but yes true), I know what it is like to wonder if you will see the next sunrise, to be gripped with fear but then act anyway- throwing yourself into wind and waves and onto slippery decks and swinging booms. To be terrified one minute and exultant the next. To feel like you would do anything for your shipmates to make sure they are safe. I would much rather go balance on the bowspirit precariously unhanking the jib from the stay as whitewater slams through the teak at my feet. I'd rather be the one in "danger" rather than imagining someone else drenched and grasping at rusty clamps in the dark in fifteen foot seas.
I miss being on that bowspirit.
I miss that adrenaline rush.
I am glad I was not killing people but defending the life of my boat, my crew.
Was I ever in a truly life threatening situation? When are you not?

The storm is drawing closer, the decks are wet, the whitecaps are shortening their intervals past my porthole. It may not get above 40 knots tonight, but on a boat on anchor on the sea, anything can happen.
(Knock on wood and turn around twice while throwing salt, well, everywhere. We sailors (like soldiers) are a superstitious bunch and as much as I crave an adrenaline rush, wishing for problems is just plain stupid)