The Seventh Degree of Freedom
“Curl up in the genoa,” my father said, nodding at the big sail piled on the foredeck, its folds dim in the yellow glow of the anchor light high on the forestay. “It’s what sailors have done for thousands of years. Arabs on dhows. Polynesians on outriggers. Middies on yawls.” He said good night and went back aft to join my mother in the cockpit. I nestled into the fabric, facing skyward, glad to be out of the stifling cabin. A breeze that might have been born in the Bay of Bengal breathed over me. The anchor light swung in small arcs across the sky, a metronome for a secret lullaby. Schools of stars shifted back and forth as the boat paced on her anchor line, running through her routine of movements, a subtle version of the six degrees of freedom: heaving and swaying, rolling and yawing, surging and pitching, lulling me with her gentle restlessness. A creak, a tap, a swish, a steady lapping…sounds ghosted past me as I settled within the wings of the sail. The wings stretched out across the stars, flapping in silence, and began carrying me aloft, higher than the anchor light, higher than the spreaders and masthead. The wings bore me upward till I, a vessel making its own passage, climbed to the heights of the constellations. I looked back down on the cove to see our boat at anchor, the anchor light a yellow planet receding from me as I ascended through my own six degrees of freedom, freer than ever, now reaching the seventh degree, soaring, lifted on the wings of the sail. Crossing thousands of years, I became one among the countless sailors to reach the seventh degree. I let the sail enfold me, and soared away into the night.