DOWNSHIFTING TO SLOW

The other day, I found myself hauling too much gravel in our small pickup truck (nearly 1.4 tons).  It was for our driveway in the mountains.  In order to avoid breaking an axle, suspension system, or ruining the tires, I drove 15-20 miles an hour for 14 miles – very slowly, very carefully. When you’re used to driving this mountain road at 40-45 mph, it seemed excruciatingly slow.  Gave me some time to think. 

Eventually my head turned to Azure Wind and our upcoming experiences on the water, beginning in November. 

Slow:  I’d better get used to it.  Marney and I are about to move into a world where:  (a) we won’t have a car; (b) we might buy a couple of bikes, but not right away, (c) when we catch a ride with a bus or taxi, the fastest they will go is 25 mph, and (d) under the best of conditions, the speediest our sailboat will travel is 8.26 nautical miles per hour.

I’ve owned a car continuously since 1967.  None of them  have ever been a speed demon, but I’m used to having this part of the American Dream – a motorized vehicle to take me where I want to go, when I want to go, if not always as fast as I want to go.    We’ve never lived and worked in a city where public transportation was a reliable alternative.  So, to think about life without a car is both a little daunting and frankly, amusing.  For my sailing sabbatical in 2006, I spent eight weeks without a car and walked a lot, lost weight, and only took a cab to get the groceries back to the boat.  My work for the church always relied on a car.  I made lots of visits to both near and far churches and I lived a fast paced life, even if some work days were spent entirely in the same building, rushing from one meeting or conversation to the next. 

In the islands, we might buy a couple of bikes to get around.  But that is not likely immediately.  Bicycles and pedestrians in general fall into second class citizenship on the island roads.  Even if the majority of the population walks, you are constantly listening for that break in the silence as a car or truck approaches.  Edging off to the side ditches for safety.  And then there’s the question of where you store your bikes on the already crowded deck of your boat.  Bicycling?  Well, maybe.

Taking a cab or bus won’t increase your speed by much.  The experienced drivers won’t go faster than about 25 miles per hour  because of the frequent speed bumps, potholes and poor conditions of the roads.  And because most of these islands are volcanic, rather than built on flat coral, the land is hilly, very steep in places, with lots of inlets and valleys; the roads twist and turn and rise and fall in rather precipitous ways. In fact the roads are engineering marvels!  While for most of us in these United States, twenfy-five miles per hour is reserved for the traffic jam on the interstate.

And when we’re out on the water, the fastest our sailboat will go either under power (two diesel engines) or sail is its hull speed.  Marine engineers use this formula to calculate hull speed:  Hull speed in knots equals 1.34 times the square root of the boat’s length at the waterline.  Here’s how it works:  when a boat moves, it’s pushing water out of its way.  As a boat begins to move, it creates a wave at the bow and another wave at the stern.  When a boat is moving fast enough, the two waves become one long one.  That’s when the boat reaches its hull speed.  And unless your engines and sails can push the boat onto the top of the bow wave (it’s called planing and many smaller boats can do this – think ski boats), the fastest your boat will go is its hull speed.  And that would be under the best of conditions.  In our case, the length of our boat at the waterline is thirty-eight feet, one inch, so the hull speed is 8.26 knots.  To reach hull speed is a thrill ride – at 8.26 knots (or 9.505 miles per hour). 

The first boat we ever owned was a daysailer we kept in the garage, all 17 feet of it.  I’d come home after a 60 mile per hour day and relax into a thrill ride at 5.5 knots.  That’s part of what undergirds my love of sailing.  It SLOWS ME DOWN.

There’s time to think, sort through, reflect, listen and with them, comes all kinds of good gifts.  For the time we’re away, we won’t be accomplishing as much each day (not when you have to walk or take the dinghy to do your grocery shopping and laundry), and we won’t be traveling as many miles, and  the miles we do will definitely be in slow speed.

I’m trusting there’ll be some good gifts ahead.

Dave

Theological Footnote:  Our image of Creation has always suggested that God created the world in six action-packed, high speed “days and then God finally “rested” on the seventh.  As though God slumped into the lawn chair at the end of the week with a glass of iced tea or a cold one.  Might it be that a different reading of the Scriptures would suggest that our God is a slow moving God, that a “day” is a decade, or a millennium, that the Creation was a slow-moving act, and that in our moving slow, we creatures come to know God the Creator all the better?