How are you?
I’m sorry it didn’t work out between us. I really am. This morning Ross and I talked about our time with you. I got all choked up while making my lunch and had to do deep calming breaths so my make-up wouldn’t run. I thought I was over you, but I guess I’m not.
The thing is, I miss you. I miss your shining wood, your pointy bow and the promise of adventure your sails held.
Here (in NZ) the sun is low in the sky and already the one side of the street is constantly damp and slippery. It’s now so chilly I’ve had to dig out my thick black tights and cover my pinkie beige legs up until November. Yep, that once- in- a -lifetime tan I developed on your teak deck has GONE.
Are you safe on your mooring in Tobago? Is your new owner kind, does he polish your woodwork the way I used too?
I guess I owe you an explanation.
Before I met you I was happy, I had a new baby, a good job, friends. I felt like I had place in the world and that I created some golden comdey moments in my real hot bitchin dance troupe way. 
But then we met and got to know each other and I was given a good old fashion slap across the face by the existential obstacles and distractions of meaning, loneliness, freedom and mortality.
Yep, I know, clichéd as all hell, but I think I had a bit of an early mid life crisis (I say early because I can’t bear to think at 37 I am middle age). I knew it would be a constant visceral, taxing, spectacular challenge but the closest I had ever come to that was a few five-day tramping trips. I came to realise THAT is nothing like being on the ocean for days on end, with a toddler. NOTHING like it.
To be honest I don’t know how I found the time to ponder “Why am I here?” “What the fark am I doing with my life?” “Am I really cut out for motherhood?” and the big one, “Does anyone actually give a shit about anything?”
I wasn’t like I sat there all day gazing at my nicely bronzing navel, these thoughts were just always at the back of my mind. Cramping my nautical style.
Something about being so far away from land made all of these intensely human concerns intensely B.I.G.
I blamed you Te Ikaroa, I did. I admit it. You see the thing is, I believe that it is up each of us to give our lives meaning and to live that life passionately and sincerely (Søren Aabye Kierkegaard did too) and I try to do this. But living on you made it really hard, I’d even go so far as to say a ‘real challenge’. As we all know, relationships are meant to make us feel better about ourselves, not worse.
If I was a phone, I’d say you pushed my buttons. At first it was fun, your stern cabin was wonderful, it was all Adventure with a capital A! Then, as I realized that the seasickness was never going to go away and that your engine was totally shot, it was hard to say chipper. Sometimes, while I was on night watch and your stays were singing in the wind I would take my eyes of the compass rose and dwell on the contradiction of being so utterly free in the middle of the ocean and yet feeling so claustrophobic and trapped. Luckily I’m not a philosopher eh? Imagine the depths I could’ve gone too…
Anyway Te Ikaora, I didn’t want to get all D&M on you. I just wanted to say hi, sorry, it wasn’t you, it was me. Well actually it was you, but, also a bit of me.
I hope barnacles aren’t corroding your paint work, that weeds aren’t chocking your through hulls, and that your anchor chain it biting hard into the Panamanian mud.
We had a good time.
See ya round.
The First Mate x
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