Kedging

October 2019, in the Chesapeake Bay

“Kedging” is the term used by my friend Kim’s friend Chris (Crowley, author of the “Younger Next Year” series of books) for a way to motivate yourself to get out there and do things. Big things. Scary things. Boats - especially old sailing boats - use kedging as a technique to move themselves out of a dangerous place - shallows where the ship is aground, for example. An anchor is tossed (or, preferably brought in a smaller boat) out in the direction you need to move the ship, and then everyone pulls on the anchor rope to move that way. Repeat as often as necessary. Crowley writes it is “climbing out of the ordinary, setting a desperate goal and working like crazy to get there. To save yourself.”

I figured this out years ago. Back in the 1980s I took a number of Sierra Club backpacking trips out west, and for each of them I trained. Especially after the first time. It was clear to me, the better shape I was in, the more fun I would have. Or, alternatively, the less miserable I’d be. I have continued to use this technique, from signing up to run a 10K to backpacking in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. My next “kedge” adventure is coming up - in just sixteen days!

I’m going sailing! On the world’s most beautiful ship, the Pride of Baltimore II! Offshore! From Baltimore to Bermuda!

I’ve sailed on her before, but never offshore. So I have some idea of what to expect. But it will be physically challenging - even if I don’t get seasick. The only absolute requirement is to be able to climb up and down the ladder from the deck to the main cabin. But the better shape I’m in, the more I’ll be able to do, and the more fun I’ll have. Or, the less miserable I’ll be. 

I signed up for the trip less than six weeks before departure - the day it became available. So not a huge time to prepare for it. But not nothing, either. Knowing my propensity to go all in on something, often followed by burnout, I instead set myself a couple of reasonable goals. I had already been exercising more than during the winter, walking more, and working out with my trainer via video once a week. I upped the sessions with the trainer to twice a week. As she is heavily pregnant, this made her very happy, thinking of building reserves for the time off she will have when the baby is born.

I looked at how much I had been walking, and I decided to aim for a twenty percent increase in my steps. That is a fairly dramatic increase from the baseline, but my baseline steps this year have been very low. So the absolute number of steps is not that many. Of course, the first day after I signed up, all jazzed and excited, I walked my feet off and doubled my baseline steps. But a couple of days later, it rained on and off all day, and I barely left the house, with only a tiny number of steps. So, twenty percent more steps is actually a very reasonable goal, but one that I have to keep in mind. With long evenings and nice weather, I’ve been out there pretty late, up and down the steep hills that make up my immediate neighborhood. Still, I’ve also had some very low energy days, and it will take work to meet the goal, measured as the average for the month of May.

So two things I’m afraid of: seasickness and migraines. I have never been actually sick from motion, but I have felt nauseous. So, I have my wrist bands, and ginger candy, and over-the-counter medicine, and the super duper anti-nausea stuff I got last year when I had vertigo. The medicines make me sleepy, so I hope I don’t need them. If I get a migraine, I’ll take my medicine for that and just hunker down as much as I need to. 

The cruise is a one-way trip to Bermuda. I’ve got an Air BnB for a couple of nights when we get there, and then a flight home. I like traveling alone, but it takes what I think of as “gumption”. I imagine I have a “gumption reservoir” and doing things like finding a restaurant and dining there alone uses up gumption out of my reservoir. I figure I’ve got about two days worth. There is also a good chance other guest crew members will be lingering in Bermuda, so perhaps we’ll do things together and the total gumption need will be less. But I’ll certainly be ready to come home!