The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck, Richard Astro

porpoises swam near and looked at us and swam away. The watches changed and we ate our first meal aboard, the cold wreckage of farewell snacks, and when our watch was done we were reluctant to go down to the bunks. We put on heavier coats and hung about the long bench where the helmsman sat. The little light on the compass card and the port and starboard lights were our outmost boundaries. Then we passed Point Sur and the waves flattened out into a ground-swell and increased in speed. Tony the master said, “Of course, it’s always that way. The point draws the waves.” Another might say, “The waves come greatly to the point,” and in both statements there would be a good primitive exposition of the relation between giver and receiver. This relation would be through waves; wave to wave to wave, each of which is connected by torsion to its inshore fellow and touches it enough, although it has gone before, to be affected by its torsion. And so on and on to the shore, and to the point where the last wave, if you think from the sea, and the first if you think from the shore, touches and breaks. And it is important where you are thinking from.

    The sharp, painful stars were out and bright enough to make the few whitecaps gleam against the dark surrounding water. From the wheel the little flag-jack on the peak stood against the course and swung back and forth over the horizon stars, blotting out each one as it passed. We tried to cover a star with the flag-jack and keep it covered, but this was impossible; no one could do that, not even Tony. But Tony, who knew his boat so well, could feel the yaw before it happened, could correct an error before it occurred. This is no longer reason or thought. One achieves the same feeling on a horse he knows well; one almost feels the horse’s impulse in one’s knees, and knows, but does not know, not only when the horse will shy, but the direction of his jump. The landsman, or the man who has been long ashore, is clumsy with the wheel, and his steering in a heavy sea is difficult. One grows tense on the wheel, particularly if someone like Tony is watching sardonically. Then keeping the compass card steady becomes impossible and the swing, a variable arc from two to ten degrees. And as weariness creeps up it is not uncommon to forget which way to turn the wheel to make the compass card swing back where you want it. The wheel turns only two ways, left or right. The fact of the lag, and the boat swinging rapidly so that a slow correcting allows it to pass the course and err on the other side, becomes a maddening thing when Tony the magnificent sits beside you. He does not correct you, he doesn’t even speak. But Tony loves the truth, and the course is the truth. If the helmsman is off course he is telling a lie to Tony. And as the course projects, hypothetically, straight off the bow and around the world, so the wake drags out behind, a tattler on the conduct of the steersman. If one should steer mathematically perfectly, which is of course impossible, the wake will be a straight line; but even if, when drawn, it may have been straight, it bends to currents and to waves, and your true effort is wiped out. There is probably a unified-field hypothesis available in navigation as in all things. The internal factors would be the boat, the controls, the engine, and the crew, but chiefly the will and intent of the master, sub-headed with his conditioning experience, his sadness and ambitions and pleasures. The external factors would be the ocean with its bordering land, the waves and currents and the winds with their constant and varying effect in modifying the influence of the rudder against the changing tensions exerted on it.

    If you steer toward an object, you cannot perfectly and indefinitely steer directly at it. You must steer to one side, or run it down; but you can steer exactly at a compass point, indefinitely. That does not change. Objects achieved are merely its fulfillment. In