Doing Limited the Dangers of Thinking
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Almost everything I read is fiction, but not A Marriage at Sea, though it reads like fiction. It is based on the true story of Maralyn and Maurice Bailey who were ship wrecked in the Pacific Ocean in 1973 after a forty-foot-long sperm whale hit their thirty-foot-long boat.
The whale caused a hole near the ship’s galley. It was below the waterline and large: eighteen by twelve inches in size. As a result, their ship went down leaving them adrift in a dinghy and a life raft.
All of this happens in the first chapter.
They did not know it at the time, but it would be 117 days until they were rescued.
For those thinking the couple could just put out a call for help, let it be known that they had no radio transmitter or other electronic devices with them because they wanted to “preserve their freedom from outside interference.”
And for those wondering exactly where they were, “using his compass and chart, Maurice estimated that they were 250 miles north of Ecuador and 300 miles east of the Galapagos.”
There are so many fascinating things about this book:
- The details of their daily survival at sea
- The backgrounds that caused them to sell their house, buy a yacht, and live on it
- Their actual rescue by the Korean ship, the Wolmi 306, which had been at sea for two and a half years catching tuna
- Not to mention the state they were in upon rescue and their rehab back to health
- And their life as celebrities after they were rescued and wrote about it
Though all of this was engrossing, the most interesting thing to me was how they occupied themselves and kept positive thoughts through all those days adrift.
Silly as it sounds, many of my baby boomer friends are in a similar boat so to speak. Retired and trying to find meaning to their days. They can identify with what the author tells us:
“The day, like the ocean, opened out around them, empty and formless.”
From the get go, it was Maralyn who really kept them alive with her positive attitude. After crying over the sinking of the Auralyn (a combination of their names) Maralyn knew in her soul what they needed to do. “Establish a routine. Maintain order. Don’t let the structures dissolve.”
In Maralyn’s view, they were meant to survive or they would engineer their own survival. This plan necessarily left no room for failure as she had to defend herself against Maurice’s gloom. “In a situation in which believing in the possibility of survival, however unlikely, was the key to survival itself, Maurice’s pessimism was like a weight dragging them down.”
Maurice agreed with this evaluation. He says he did all the flagging as Maralyn did all the bolstering. But eventually, he realized that her plan for action was important: “Doing limited the dangers of thinking.”
Indeed, that is an important lesson from this book, but not the most important. That honor goes to the image of Maralyn’s positivity when life couldn’t be any bleaker. What an amazing takeaway for all of us!
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