The Far Garden

Sailing against the wind

After messing around with canoes, currachs and different boats peripherally over the years I finally decided last year I’d like to learn to sail. My brother in law agreed to take me out on the water initially to literally show me the ropes and it was with him that I first experienced the strange harmony of a boat sailed properly.

I’d never given much thought to how a sail boat gets around and vaguely assumed that the wind pushed it and that like skiing it was basically a one way street except that in a sail boat you had to zig-zag laboriously to get back to where you started. As I learned, the reality is that sail boats are pulled by the wind better than they are pushed and that (to a point) you can sail in the direction of the wind pretty quickly. So far so counter-intuitive, but it clearly worked and I accepted it. My brother in law let me helm the small dinghy and we settled into an upwind course which I concentrated on maintaining. Now here’s the thing; maintaining the correct course involves constant minor adjustments - exactly like riding a bike and at a certain point you literally feel the boat slip into a groove where the many, many forces acting on it (and you) are momentarily harmonised. While I glimpsed this for a few seconds on the first day I’ve since come to know it a bit better and it intrigues me no less.

I acknowledge the physics at play here; of course we are propelled by forces harmonising every time we walk, cycle, drive or indeed trip. In the way that the architect’s drawings or the golden mean as used in the composition of paintings contains the mathematical principles underpinning what’s happening  - the reality of actually engaging with the harmonising forces can be disarmingly vivid. The balance achieved has a quality and character in itself, separate from its parts. In the case of sailing the presence of the very alive variables of wind and water also deepen the sensation of harmonising with the elements themselves which was something I wasn’t prepared for.

What I’m getting at here is that there is an inherently deeply satisfying quality when we encounter this harmony and it occurs in unexpected places. Artists and designers do like to claim ownership over the aesthetic experience but anyone who appreciates say Lionel Messi (he of the “beautiful game”) or the driving say of Aryton Senna, understands that when a human through skill and talent attains a degree of harmony with their environment and its forces the result can undeniably be called beauty. At this level the harmony is not a zone or plateau - it’s a knife-edge and our sense of the fleetingness of the balance makes it all the more beautiful.

Every creative endeavour is a search for its own natural resolution which in the arts the designer or artist recognises immediately as the work being “finished”.  The design has achieved the optimal balance between the internal forces of form, light/dark, colour, texture etc. The finished work might not be “harmonious” (it might be a wall of feedback or a flayed canvas) but its internal forces ARE harmonised. It has fulfilled its own promise and answered a question only it could have asked. It has been true to itself and resolved its interior demands.

That this should happen is one thing but that it should affect us immediately and intuitively - impressing us with a sense of “this is how it should be” is what surprises me. It seems we are constantly moving towards or away from the perfectly balanced moment. The difference is that, sailing against the wind in a boat - you really know it when you get there.