Between sofa and sea
In five days, I’ll be leaving the comfort of city life to go back to Capsula (our sailboat) and start our next adventure.
We’ve been preparing the next leg of our journey for months. If all goes well, Capsula will carry us along the Viking route, from Edinburgh to Canada. We have studied charts, currents, and weather patterns. I’ve bookmarked idyllic anchorages and historical harbours, dreaming about former Viking settlements, spectacular sea cliffs, puffins, whales, coves, white beaches, and, of course, the ice of Greenland.
But this morning, sipping my coffee from the softness of a sofa in a friend’s apartment, I started to wonder. Why am I doing this? Isn’t it nice here? No cold, no seasickness, no fear, a supermarket five minutes away, plenty of coffee shops, and friends close by. Here, storms are just a spectacle behind double-glazed windows, not a threat to our home. Glaciers are beautiful images on screen, not gigantic monsters releasing blocks of ice that could crush Capsula in no time.
I know this hesitation is temporary. Not that my fear, seasickness or exhaustion will vanish, but what I love is out there, not in the daily routine of my life in Zurich.
I am longing for the unique way the world looks when I arrive after days (and nights) at sea. It is a sensation not unlike reaching a summit after a strenuous hike. I have been to Amsterdam several times, by plane, car, or train, but I never felt so in love with the city as when we arrived with Capsula, after battling a storm in the North Sea. It is as if the beauty of the destination increases in proportion to the effort required to reach it (it turns out this isn’t just romantic nonsense - a recent Stanford study found our brains are wired to value rewards more when they require effort).
This is not the only reason why I am ready to trade comfort for the unknown. There is so much awaiting us: the Neolithic remains in the Orkneys, the remoteness of Fair Isle, the puffins and ponies of the Shetland Islands, the cliffs of the Faroe Islands, the whales along the coast of Iceland, the majestic glaciers of Greenland…
Very soon, the Swiss apartment will just be a fond memory nagging me in the middle of a night on Capsula, my waterproof jacket soaked, my feet frozen and my eyes riveted to my watch, waiting for my turn to go to bed.
