Into the Light! (eBook)

When All Else Fails, Follow The Fish

Sandra CH Smith (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
328 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-9128-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Evading pirates and drug dealers at sea, plowing through monstrous storms...all play key roles in this second book of Sandra CH Smith's memoir trilogy about her seven-year 4,000+ mile spiritual odyssey sailing the vast Pacific. Continuing her mostly solo sailing and landlubber adventures which began in OUT OF THE FOG!, her rebellious teenage daughter now joins her occasionally as crew. Mother-daughter relationships and spiritual growth are at the heart of Smith's poignant and intensely personal story of triumph over adversity. Kind Mexican fishermen help her, 12-Step recovery friends encourage her, and even perfect strangers teach her invaluable life lessons. All together, a must-read for those seeking self-awareness and personal confidence through Smith's daringly adventurous travel narrative.

Sandra CH Smith is a born adventurer. From exploring dungeons as an 11- year-old American student in Scotland, to surfing, parachuting and solo European travels as a teen, the author jumps into life with both feet, eyes wide open to experience her reality. After a successful journalism career, Smith leaves a long, abusive marriage, buys a large sailboat, and teaches herself how to sail. Eschewing all modern navigational aids, and with eight years of sobriety tucked into her new 'life jacket', Smith sets off with just a compass, a chart, and a prayer. Her spiritual odyssey becomes a voyage of self-discovery, as she sails over 4,000 miles of the Pacific, mostly alone, sometimes with her rebellious teenage daughter, and always with her faithful Chihooahooa. This exciting and sometimes terrifying journey brings self-awareness, confidence, and strength to mother and daughter alike. Attending 12-step recovery meetings from anchorage to anchorage, Smith and her daughter become attuned to the indigenous peoples they meet along their way and to the kind Mexican fishermen who provide help, gentle companionship and life lessons. In our divided world, the author and her teenager become part of a larger Community that helps them to grow and heal with grace and gratitude, one day, and one wave, at a time.

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Second in Smith's memoir trilogy, INTO THE LIGHT! WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, FOLLOW THE FISH! continues the first book, OUT OF THE FOG! , recipient of the Non-Fiction Authors Assoc. recent "e;Gold Award"e; and many five-star reader reviews. In this sequel, INTO THE LIGHT!, Smith continues to amaze and astound her readers with the faith, hope and courage she acquires during her seven-year 4,000+mile spiritual odyssey sailing mostly solo in the Pacific, sometimes with her rebellious teenage daughter, always with her faithful Chihuahua. After escaping from a 16-year emotionally abusive marriage, Smith buys a 35-foot sailboat and teaches herself to sail. She celebrates her 43rd birthday, then takes off for ports unknown using just a compass, a chart and a prayer and with eight years of sobriety tucked into her new "e;life jacket"e;. INTO THE LIGHT! finds the author and her daughter leaving the San Benitos Islands some 400 miles off the coast as they hurry back to the Baja to beat a life-threatening storm. Readers who enjoy travelling and adventures will sail right along with her down the Coast of Baja California, Mainland Mexico, and Central America. Book-lovers will meet wonderful Mexican fishermen, locals who don't speak English, and even perfect strangers, who offer help, friendship and companionship to Smith and her teenaged daughter all along the way. The friends they make at recovery meetings they attend prove invaluable. The two realize how small and communal our divided world really can be. They become part of a larger Community that helps them grow with grace and gratitude, one day at a time. This heart-warming true story offers hope and healing to all.

Textauszug

PROLOGUE

For more than three generations, all the women in my family have been leading ladies in an ongoing Greek tragedy.

On my mother’s side, my Scottish great-great grandmother broke her neck and died when she was flung off her horse. My great aunt Helen was blinded at youth. My grandmother burned to death in a freak rubbish-burning accident when her clothes caught fire. My mother’s sister, Aunt Margaret, was blinded in one eye as a girl by a youth throwing lye at her and died many years later when her sailboat’s galley stove exploded in her face. My mother (at 80) was paralyzed from the waist down in a botched laminectomy, dying five years later of ensuing complications.

On my father’s side, my German Aunt Liselotta (father’s sister) died of leukemia at age 15 and my German grandmother died alone of dementia or, more likely, alcoholism. This proclivity for tragedy engulfed me as well --- my first daughter died in the womb, and my only other daughter, at age 23, suffered a tragic fate.

I am the last of our women and I refuse to be cast in that tragic chorus. And to prove it, I am a survivor of many wild adventures, including seven years spent sailing much of the time alone in the Pacific!

As far back as I can remember, I flirted with Death as she raced down the dark mountain on her black stallion, wielding a double-edged silver sword in her hand, always pointed in my direction. Life was a non-stop adventure which challenged my every thought, every action.

As a teenager, I loved racing my sportscar on perilous roads winding high above the Pacific overlooking Big Sur. All my winter free-time was spent snow-skiing the avalanche trails in the highest mountains of California, Vermont, Austria and the French and Italian Alps. At 16, I was packing my own ’chute and skydiving in Calistoga, the first girl surfing off Santa Cruz, and scuba-diving in the kelp beds of Carmel Bay and the deep dark waters of the French West Indies. At 18, I was hitchhiking alone through Europe. Travelling by myself, I was the only American passenger on the last trip of the original Orient Express, getting on in Northern Greece, then continuing on through Bulgaria and the then Yugoslavia to Trieste, Italy. Soldiers would stop the train in the middle of nowhere, jam bayonets into passengers’ luggage, but never into mine. They’d often, pick male passengers off, leading them to the woods but the men never came back. It was so scary, I pretended the soldiers were only teaching those lost souls “target practice”.

I loved the thrill of the challenge, relished the danger, but trekking all over the world, I still couldn’t find Zorba’s little blue stone. Instead, I found loneliness and gnawing despair, never fitting in anywhere, always an outsider. As an adult, I defied Death by trying to drink and tranquilize myself out of existence, and finally, by trying to escape it all in the oven of the gas stove. That was the first time I had a hint that maybe God loved me after all.

After a miraculous recovery from alcoholism that had plagued me mildly for years until the last few months in my 30s when I hit bottom, I began to see there was more to life than merely tempting the Fates. Nevertheless, I continued to taunt Death.

Taking up flying came next, learning how to fly a Cessna 152 and its four-passenger version, taking off and landing on an Arkansas runway dotted with cow puckies. I took weekly lessons for six months then gave it up. The pre-flight checks and adjustments took too much time, and then, once on board, being cooped up in a tiny space was too constraining. On longer flights, I couldn’t even get out of my pilot’s seat to pee or to make a cup of joe!

Then came spending endless days alone riding various horses (borrowed from local Baja ranchers) across the Baja desert. One day, I decided to ride up to the top of Baja’s highest mountain—I had heard there were pine trees and a freshwater lake up there. It was a very narrow dusty trail only wide enough for me and the horse. After hours of slowly climbing up the mountain, at sundown, I tied the horse to a tree, hung up my hammock, and went to sleep. Got up the next morning with the sun and carried on.

That day, at about noon, I entered a small chasm between two rocky walls. Halfway through, the horse freaked out, backed out of the chasm, turned around and started galloping full-speed back down the mountain on the treacherous trail. I held onto the reins until they snapped off, probably old ones the rancher had put on the horse years before. I then dug my knees into the beast to stay on, but knew I couldn’t dig in long enough to make it to the bottom of the mountain. I chose to dive off the horse into a patch of green weeds I saw ahead.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t calculated on the speed of the horse and dove off too late, missing the patch and landing farther down on my head atop a huge boulder, hurting my neck, having my upper teeth realigned far to the right in my mouth, one finger pulled out to make like an extra half-finger, and a very bad bruise on my head.

By now, the sun had long since gone down and it was a moonless night...the worst conditions for walking down a mountain alone in the desert. Took me four hours of stumbling to get back down to my van parked at the rancher’s gate. Then it was two+ hours driving alone to the nearest hospital for help.

The emergency room doctor simply said, “Hold tight”, and he pulled my finger out as hard as he could and the half slipped back into place. He didn’t even xray my neck, but did say I needed to have all my teeth pulled as they were all out of alignment. Thank goodness I sought a second opinion the next day from a dentist who said all I had to do was to go back to my boat and rest for some days and the teeth would go back to where they belonged. He was right…they did.

Almost a year later, back home in the U.S., I was suddenly unable to move. I tried physical therapy, but it didn’t help. An MRI showed I had fractured three vertebrae in my neck. They wanted to do surgery but I had already bought a ticket to fly to Ecuador in five days for a very important “anniversary” date, so refused surgery. I followed the regimen of cortical steroids and used some New Age techniques as well. Had a grand time trekking all over Ecuador…but that’s another story! I’ve never ridden another horse since.

Finally, at age 43, I bought a 35-foot sailboat, taught myself how to sail in the tempestuous waters of Monterey Bay, and then took off for far away ports unknown. I spent seven years on what would be a Spiritual Odyssey, sailing in the vast Pacific, sometimes single-handed, other times short-handed.

The first few years of learning to sail and making it down the Baja are described in my prequel, Out of the Fog! A Story of Survival, Faith and Courage. The adventures continue in this sequel, Into the Light! When All Else Fails, Follow The Fish. This final four-year leg of the voyage south, from San Diego to somewhere below the Equator between the Galapagos and Easter Island, was another life-threatening adventure from which I barely escaped.

I managed to survive all the escapades and tragedies, and in the painful process, learned a lot of life lessons… mostly more about myself and what I needed to do to become fearless and courageous. As e.e. cummings wrote, “death (having lost) put on his universe and yawned.”

Drunk or sober, no matter my age or circumstance, I always seemed to find myself at the seashore, afflicted with Masefield’s “Sea Fever”. One such experience is especially memorable. As a teenager, I was marooned on the Canary Islands during a month-long Christmas break from my studies back at the University of Grenoble in France. Unfortunately, I didn’t know until arriving in Las Palmas that I had been swindled of all my vacation money paid in advance to a dishonest travel agent in Barcelona…arriving with no 21 nights paid hotel room; no credit for all meals at the hotel; no return ticket on the banana boat back to Barcelona. The Canary’s Director of Tourism was doing his best to get my money back, but it was on Spanish time…poco a poco.

Sitting on a Las Palmas beach on Gran Canaria two days after arriving there, I was happy yet broke, acquiring a gorgeous tan, surrounded by a gallimaufry of wandering bohemians we would call, The Family. We all had been the only passengers coming over on the banana boat. I was also wondering how I would ever get back to France in time for finals for my master’s degree…especially, without a boat ticket back.

I definitely didn’t want to wire my father in California for more money like so many spoiled American girls did. Dad had asked me to come up with a budget when I started at Grenoble, and I was determined to stick to it without ever wiring home for more cash. He had been generous to allow me to study abroad. It just wouldn’t seem ethical to ask for more money since I was the one who had initially determined how much I would need.

That afternoon, John Smith arrived in Las Palmas on a small boat from Morocco. He wandered down to the beach and we invited him to join us, figuring...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.2.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-9128-4 / 9798350991284