krista schlyer
conservation writing & photography
COVID Dreams
It’s a COVID miracle. Maggie May’s bottom is finished.
In some universe, the Sailing Vessel Maggie May was launched by now. Not here.
On February 8, our friends and neighbors gathered at Red Dirt Studios in Mount Rainier, Maryland, to bid us farewell. I’ve never been married, but I imagine this is what one’s wedding would feel like, an overwhelming feeling of love at a moment of great transition. Friends from our 20 years in the Washington DC area, many we hadn’t seen in more than a decade, and some family making surprise journeys from far away places, came together for chili, home-brew and music and to wish us well on this journey.
Our dear friends in the arts community of Mount Rainier also organized a fundraiser around the party event, gathering enough money to buy us a life raft–in hopes we come back safe even if the Maggie May does not. Thank you friends, we’ll carry your love and goodwill around the world with us…if by great fortune we set foot on a boat, in the water, ever.
Captain Bill with our new life raft. Our friends and family donated the funds to buy this important piece of survival equipment. One of our good friends named the raft.
A few weeks after the party, we moved out of our house, which we have rented for the next two years to a delightful young couple Cassandra and Mark and their dog Colby. We moved in with our friends Dave and Kendra on March 1. The plan was to be here for a few weeks until the boat was finished.
Photo by: Margaret Boozer-Strother
Enter COVID.
It was about a week after we moved that the coronavirus started gaining attention in the media. About a week after that its official name was changed to COVID-19 and Maryland was on lockdown. Dave and Kendra had to start working from home. Bill and I could no longer go work on the boat. Shipments of important boat components languished in warehouses. And our contractors efforts slowed to a painful crawl…along with everything else. The boat project, which was supposed to take 2 months, is going on 5.
Our window to escape the hurricane belt before the storm season begins is winnowing. Our years of planning and organizing our lives around this idea, locked in limbo.
A part of my mind says well boohoo, you can’t get on your sailboat and travel the world chasing a dream. Krista, your problems are ridiculous in the scope of what’s happening right now. The truth of this is indisputable. Yet here I am, feeling trapped and helpless.
The deck is still in disarray, but this is the last major project before Maggie May can be launched.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to practice patience, fighting with despair, feeling guilty about my discontent. I should be grateful at this time of unimagined uncertainty and grief, grateful that I am healthy, have shelter and food, a healthy family and friends and all of the things that so many of us either lack or take for granted. Plain and simple I should feel grateful. But should doesn’t always work in a stubborn mind. And so I look for reasons why I can’t let go. Why I can’t just be content. And I know, pretty quickly or at least in moments of clarity…it’s because I feel this dream slipping away from me. I’ve fought so hard to keep us on track despite so many pitfalls and derailments, and I’m starting to lose faith. Unbidden by me, my psyche returns to previous battles, where I tried so hard to make something happen or not-happen, something much more grave and important, and despite every effort I failed and in the end swallowed a living mass of acrid loss and self-doubt. The mass has knife-edges and it lives somewhere in my stomach, forever reopening wounds of inadequacy, hopelessness and grief.
This boat trip is in part geared toward dealing with that stomach-mass, blunting its hard edges by accepting my failures; Maggie May is transport toward healing some wounds. And within this overwhelming viral cloud, what I’m feeling is a malevolent echo, encouraging me to believe that this too will end in failure. The aperture through which I have envisioned this journey for more than a decade, narrows to the point that any possible success seems far more distant than it actually may be.
Working on some boat carpentry while Maggie May is self-isolating in the shop. This piece will be part of a hatch frame.
In fact, it may be quite close. As of last Friday, the biggest part of the project, the complete redo of Maggie May’s hull is finished. The entire boat bottom was blasted off down to the bare fiberglass; new fiberglass and epoxy was applied; and a new kind of long-lasting, less-toxic bottom paint covered all.
The rest of the boat project, which over the past 7 years has included a list of no less than 1000 items, has narrowed to about 20, most of which Bill and I will do. The one holdup is the redo of the previously redone decks, the lingering bane of Vilkas. But we are expecting to see this finished this week, at which point the boat can go outside, get her mast back on, and get in the water as soon as our marina gets an opening in a backlog of boat launches.
We’re so close, closer than we’ve ever been. But given all the stumbling blocks that have arisen and the incredible uncertainty of this moment in time, I don’t think I can muster any excitement until Maggie May is placed back in the water where she belongs.
6 Comments on “COVID Dreams”
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Read more about Krista and Bill’s previous journeys with the Original Maggie May
Where in the World is Maggie May?
krista schlyer 
No words of wisdom to offer, just thanks for sharing these eloquent thoughts. You’re such a good writer and an even better soul. I love you, friend, and hope you and Capt. Bill will soon be sailing into the sunset. xo
Thank you dear Kristen. Love you too.
Krista, I was moved by your feelings of inadequacy, helplessness and grief, and your feeling that this dream is too far out of reach for you to experience excitement right now. This is a hard time to sustain excitement about anything. Isn’t this particularly true of people capable of great compassion? Maggie May has great meaning for you. You can issue her a new meaning at any time, and perhaps this global crisis will call you to do so. Did the 14th Dalai Lam write this for you?: “When we feel responsible, concerned and committed, we begin to feel deep emotion and great courage.”
Thank you so much Gillian.
So relieved to read this update. You have a way of writing about the world that at once exposes the sheer desperation of it all, and illuminates hope. Hope! Whatever this adventure is/ becomes, you will tell its story. Praying (in my way) for you and Bill and Maggie May!
Thank you so much Jess. If we can get the boat in the water and the world stays closed, we may need to head north instead of south. A silver lining would be coming to see you!