Brendan O’Byrne served in Battle Company with the 173rd Airborne in Afghanistan in 2007-2008. He is a two-time Outward Bound alum. We have come to know Brendan as a kind, compassionate, reflective, and thoughtful person that possesses a seemingly endless reservoir of empathy for those who have been challenged in their transition from the military to civilian life.

More importantly, Brendan believes in the power of wilderness to offer peace in the face of the storms that sometimes plague us all, leaving us searching for the safety of a quiet harbor.

“Without the Outward Bound sailing experience, I may have never found sailing and unleashed the passion for wilderness that I didn’t even know existed within me.” -Brendan O’Byrne

This year we are proud to once again publish our 2016 Outward Bound Veterans winter schedule on Veterans Day. We are more than proud to do so while also sharing Brendan’s powerful story about sailing and the peace of mind that comes while falling asleep to the gentle rock of the ocean, under a blanket of stars that fade off into the horizon.

Peace on the Sea

“Do you know a cure for me?”
“Why yes,” he said, “I know a cure for everything. Salt water.”
“Salt water?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, “In one form or another; sweat, tears or the salt sea.”
-Isak Dinesen

It was 2010 and my life was in shambles. My father had died suddenly, my marriage was falling apart, and I was battling with alcoholism. My life had no direction and a smile hardly graced my face. Sailing has always been a means of discovery. Whether looking for new land, fish to catch, or a fight to be had, sailing is a search for something. In my mid 20’s, I was in search for peace in my heart.

I was invited to go on an Outward Bound sailing course for seven days at the end of August in 2010. We would sail in the Penoboscot Bay area in the Maine coastal waters. I had never been sailing and didn’t even know if I would enjoy it. I only agreed to go because I needed a break from my life. Being on the ocean, away from phones, TV’s, and an angry wife seemed perfect. I went on the trip with little expectations.

There were 7 other students and 2 Instructors. We sailed out of our base camp in a sailboat called Sharpie. It was a 30’ Rodger Martin design, with double masts, an open hull, and fiberglass construction. The boat only had sails and 13-foot oars, no engine. It had a not so private bathroom and each person had a small storage area underneath their seat for all their gear. At night, we created our sleeping space with boards that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle on top of the seats we stored our gear in. Above us, we strung up a tarp that acted like a tent, protecting us from the rain and wind. Everyone slept side by side, rocking together on the ocean.

Each morning we woke up at five o’clock and began disassembling the sleeping area and tent. We put away the boards back in their spots, we rolled up the tent and got ready for the day. We all jumped in the 50-degree water to “wake” up and clean ourselves. Tasks and jobs started to be delegated out. The cooks started breakfast. The navigator started to find the next destination and route. The rest of the crew scrubbed the boat down.

After breakfast, we headed out for our adventure of the day. We sailed all day, the Instructors teaching us the entire time. They explained everything: from how much sail you wanted up in a certain wind speed, or how much keel should be down with the different direction you traveled. They explained term after term that I had never heard before. I realized the first task was to learn the lingo – aft, port, mast, boom, luff, sheet, halyard, dingy, and on and on; the foreign language of the boat.

Some days we sailed to islands while other days we sailed along the coastline, hugging it, learning how to use features on land to find our location on the chart or map. Lighthouses, small islands, houses, and roads were land references to know where you were. Floating in the water were buoys, channel markers, nuns, and cans, which gave you even more clues to an exact location. I was hooked.

“The entire trip awoke something ancient in me. When we were sailing, part of me felt like I had returned home. I never expected that. On the water, I felt comfortable. I felt calm there. Something in my heart needed the chaos of the sea to balance my mind. There was a freedom that I found in sailing that I didn’t feel anywhere else, a space to detangle the problems created on land. On the sea, there is no past or future. You are only dealing with the here and now.”

Two years later, I moved to an old fishing town on the end of Cape Cod, Provincetown. My marriage had ended dramatically and I desperately needed a project to take my mind off the pain I was feeling. I decided to restore a beat up, 16 foot, O’Day sailboat as a summer project. Maybe by the end of the summer I would have her on the water and have my first sailboat.

When I first got her, she was just a hull. The paint was flaking off, the wood was disintegrating; there was no mast, boom, and no sails. There was no tiller, no stays, and the center board needed work. The boat was in rough shape. I started by stripping the boat of all the broken things. Broken wood. Rotted planks. I sanded down the outside of the boat to get rid of the flaking paint. I pulled off the last remnants of the previous name, Shearwater. The “S” and one “R” were still clinging on, while the rest of the letters had fallen off and left only clean outlines to show where the letters once were.

My friend Gordon, an old, crusty sailor, helped supply me with gear. We rigged the boat up with old sails. An aluminum mast and boom were salvaged from an old Sunfish sailboat that was long gone. We found stays to hold the mast in place, which we had to cut and make fit. The center board was refitted with a new rope to raise and lower it. I built a tiller from spare plywood and referenced a design on the internet. The hull was repainted. Suddenly, after weeks of work, the boat started to gain life.

We finished the work and I took her for the maiden voyage on an almost windless day. I sailed her back and forth, fifty yards from the shore, just in case the work I did wasn’t to par. The water stayed on the outside of the boat. The mast remained upright. And the tiller steered me to where I wanted to go. I was over joyed. I had my own boat.

One problem though: the boat was still nameless. Naming a boat is tricky. You want a name you can say with pride but not one that tempts the sea to swallow you and your pride whole. I have heard that Portuguese fishermen think the sea is female and never name a boat a female name, or else you risk making the sea jealous, and she will take you. There are other traditions that tell you never to rename a boat; it is bad luck. Some men name the boat after their wife or children. An animal or a celestial name is a safe bet.

I spent many days and nights working on a name. One night, I was watching a history channel segment about our universe. Laniakea is the name of the super cluster of galaxies our own galaxy, the Milky Way, belongs to.

“It is a Hawaiian word that translates as “immense heaven.” Laniakea describes how I feel about the sea and sailing. It is immense heaven. It was a perfect name for the boat that had helped me keep my sanity. I named the 16 foot O’Day, Laniakea.”

That summer, I sailed Laniakea all over the Provincetown Harbor and some of the Cape Cod Bay. She was a fine craft and after the summer was over, I realized I wanted a bigger boat. I sold Laniakea to a friend who was just beginning to learn how to sail and would continue the work on Laniakea that I had started. I went searching for a bigger boat.

By chance and luck, as I searched for a boat I found a perfect option for 300 dollars. A 25 foot, Macgregor, swing keel, trailer-ready beauty. She has a large cabin for living space. The ceilings are low so you hunch when walking inside. There is a table and two benches for a dining space. The table also serves as a place to lay out your charts to find out where you are and where you are going. The very front of the boat is called the bow. Inside the cabin, the bed, or berth, is located in the bow. The berth is shaped liked a slice of pizza and you sleep with your head towards the center of the boat, feet facing the bow. The boat can easily sleep four people. Her name is Irish Mist.

I launched the Irish Mist in the Provincetown Harbor during the beginning of the summer of 2015. I had to find a place for her to live inside the harbor and that meant finding a mooring. A mooring is a large block of concrete weighing a thousand pounds on the sea floor, anchoring your boat in one place. There is a thick chain attached to it and the other end connects to a buoy on the surface of the water. From the buoy, a tough, elastic line is attached to your boat. My mooring was right behind the west side of the breakwater. The breakwater sheltered me from the waves and wind. This was my boat’s new home. It was a safe place for my boat.

The Mist needed some work, like a leak at the bolt that attached the keel. I decided it wasn’t that bad of a leak and kept her in the water. I worked on her every day, fixing the leak, cleaning the years of neglect off the boat, and making her sea worthy. I would sleep on her when I didn’t feel like rowing back in to shore. Sleeping on the boat took a while to get used to. The movement of the water was unsettling at first, as if someone was jumping on your waterbed. Once used to it, I never had a more sound sleep. Rocking back and forth, like a mother rocks her baby to sleep.

The noises kept me awake, as well. Noises of waves slapping the boat or the clink of the halyard- the rope that raises the sail, tapping against the aluminum mast. Tink, tink, tink. Later, that clinking was a natural metronome, keeping rhythm with the wind and the waves.

I spent a lot of time in the cockpit of the boat at night. Staring up at the stars and the moon. I spent time trying to learn new constellations and recognize the ones I had already learned. On the breakwater, the seagulls and cormorants made their noises. High pitch shrill calls from the seagulls. A low belching from the cormorants. They ate, slept, and bred out there on those rocks. When the wind was coming from the south, you smelled them more than you heard them. I’d rather hear them.

As I lay on my boat, the town was drowned away by the sea, the wind, the cormorants, the seagulls, and the slapping of the waves against my boat. But, on a northwest wind, the wind brought some of the town’s noises. The most frequent noises that were brought to me on the wind’s back were a tourist’s laughter or a cheer of joy. I was content with them enjoying the land while I enjoyed the sea.

As William G.T. Shedd said, “A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”

There were so many good sails on the Irish Mist those first few months. Most of the time, it was just my dog Brandy, and I sailing to nowhere in particular. Just sailing. Leaving the crazy rules of land behind us. There were long moments of complete idleness and then there were bursts of chaos. All of life’s emotions were magnified and chopped up and recreated in a single sail. Of all the beautiful sails, one sticks out in my mind.

One hundred forty seven degrees is the reading on the compass. That’s roughly southeast, the direction of my destination, Pamet Harbor in Truro. I left my mooring in Provincetown at midnight and started the ten-mile sail. It is my first night sail. I cannot see where I want to land, I am hoping my map reading and compass direction are correct. Tomorrow a few friends and I will pull the Irish Mist out of the water for the year. She needs one last good sail before she is stuck on land for the year.

The wind is west, a perfect wind for the direction I am heading. Though I cannot be totally accurate, I would guess the wind is 12-14 miles per hour. During the day, a sailor can get a roundabout estimate on the speed of the wind by the white caps or lack of white caps on the sea. It is called the Beaufort scale. According to the Beaufort scale, if I could see the ocean, there would be 2-3 foot waves with some whitecaps.

Below me is the sea. Dark like black ink, hiding its secrets. The waves slap the side of the boat. Once in a while, a bigger wave lifts the bow up high and we slam back down as the wave passes. It is dark out and I cannot see the waves so I cannot react to them. The boat and I just feel the waves. I am trying to read the waves in the darkness, read their movement so I can find the best direction of sail to minimize the effects of the bigger waves, yet still stay on course. It is a fine balance of sail position and rudder position that takes experience. The experience that I am still honing.

As I sail, I am thinking about a lot. I am thinking about the west wind, a perfect direction. It is coming across the starboard, or the right side of the boat, almost perpendicular to the direction of travel. This is also known as a broad reach. The only faster way to sail is straight down wind. My sails are full, pushing the entire boat to heel over on its side. I can feel how far we are leaning; it’s the perfect tilt.

I remember that a strong gust of wind can put me too far over very quickly. A strong enough gust can push you over and possibly sink your boat. I have to be constantly reacting to the wind, hand on the tiller. The easiest way to deal with the strong gusts is to turn into the wind, allowing some wind to spill from the sails.

I make my way southeast using the few things I can see and hear as reference. I hear a bell buoy off the starboard side of my boat. I know that buoy marks the end of Provincetown Harbor and the beginning of Cape Cod Bay. At that buoy, the land on my west ends. I see the occasional flash of light from Long Point Light House that marks the very tip of Cape Cod. The wind picks up and the waves get larger with no land to stop their intensity and growth.

I am thinking about the ocean below me. How deep is it? My chart inside the cabin could tell me the depth but that means getting up and leaving the tiller, which I can’t do. What creatures are swimming or crawling under me? There have been recent sightings of great white sharks in the area due to the increased seal population. Are they underneath me? I am not fearful as I think of the depth of the ocean below me, the creatures that are under me, or the vastness of the sea.

“Mostly, I feel like I am visiting someone’s home. I am a guest, this is their home, and only they truly know it. I am here because the sea, the wind, and the weather accepted me as a guest, I remember to respect it.”

Above me there is a clear and beautiful sky. The lights of town are far behind me. The stars are not competing with human’s artificial light out here. They rule the sky. La Luna has not yet risen but when it does, it will be an orange, red sliver in the sky. Rising behind land as an amber glow then within thirty minutes, high in the sky over Truro.

As I get closer to the Pamet Harbor, I ready my anchor. I am gauging by the clarity of the lights on land how far we are from shore. In the Cape Cod Bay, the depth of the water can go from 100 feet to 10 feet quickly. You must know where you are so you do not run aground. With some guess work and a little hope, I throw my anchor out and wait for it to catch. Then with a slight jerk, the Danforth anchor has hit the sandy bottom and caught. It is a big relief and I can leave the tiller for the first time in two hours. The boat swings around so we are facing the waves and the wind. I begin the work of stowing the gear and getting ready for bed.

Right now, the sky is dark except for the glow of millions of stars. That cloudy band in the sky, known as the Milky Way, is as clear as I have ever seen it. The milky part is just millions upon millions of stars overlaid on top of each other. Like a city in the distance, you do not pick out individual lights, all you get is a hazy glow.

There are all the constellations up there, like a road map of the sky. Cygnus, Orion, Cassiopeia, Ursa Major and Minor. They kept me company as I sailed through the night. Polaris, the North Star, at my back. And now, they watch over me as I sleep.

Those stars and I have something in common. We both are just specks surrounded by the endless and the immeasurable. My boat and I are floating along in the vastness of the sea while the star is floating along in the vastness of the universe. On the sea, I am in good company. On the sea, I am at peace.

***

Outward Bound thanks Brendan for sharing this impactful story and urge other service members to experience an expedition for themselves on one of our free programs for veterans. As Brendan states:

“Sailing with Outward Bound opened my eyes to more than just sailing. Finding out that I have a passion for sailing has taught me that there are many things I haven’t experienced in life. Regardless of where you are in life there is a whole world of experiences and passions to discover!”

To learn more about the Outward Bound Veterans program and the courses that we offer, visit: www.outwardbound.org/veteran-adventures/outward-bound-for-veterans