Hobe Sound to Lake Worth, FL

15.8 nm
Wind: SW 10-15 knots
Seas: Moderate chop
Maximum speed: 6.2 knots
Average speed: 3.8 knots
Latitude: 26°46.40’N
Longitude: 080°02.45’W

I’ve been trying to reconcile myself today with being a German peasant wife. Well, not exactly German, since I have little German ancestry, but Greek, or Scottish, or Polish, as Karl is. My sister bestowed upon me the latest New Yorker Style Issue, and its advertisements have been haunting me. I am not Kate Moss, sporting a giant Dior bag. Nor am I even a girl capable of wearing a bikini. I wear a perfectly modest one-piece, and as I get closer and closer to the climes of sand and sun, that fact begins to wear on me.

It could have to do with my upcoming thirtieth. I think to myself, as I sport my electric-blue TJ Maxx special: was this bathing suit designed for me? For the going-on-thirty gal not comfortable with the two-piece? Then again, I’ve never been comfortable with the two-piece, even at the age of fourteen, when every girl without knowing it is at the Platonic ideal of femininity. But we don’t know, so we miss it, and we spend the rest of our lives pining for the Platonic ideal of fourteen.

I think this to myself every day as I sprout hair in ever more Mediterranean places. The form God is trying to make me into is that of a robust Greek matriarch, which is my true heritage. I thought that last night, as I was baking my hearty peasant bread. The thing is that hearty peasant food is not designed for the likes of Kate Moss. Kate Moss eats cocaine and not much else. If I want to look like Kate Moss, as told by the New Yorker Style Issue, I, too, need to eat cocaine and not much else. Instead, I’m living a robust peasant life, eating peasant bread and sausages and garlic and preserved vegetables and legumes. Robust peasants do not look like Kate Moss.

So I’m trying to reconcile myself with that. I hope Karl will still be happy with a peasant wife ten years from now, instead of a fourteen-year-old Kate Moss substitute. I keep being confronted with my femininity on the boat, and I find myself wondering what it means to be feminine. Does it mean to shave my legs and my bikini line? Does it mean impeccably plucked eyebrows and perky boobs? Or does it mean the prehistoric mother goddess, with her swollen belly and her ponderous breasts? I try to see myself as a prehistoric mother goddess, or at least following in those lines. Because maybe that is true femininity. But it’s so hard to believe that when one is told by all the perfume and fashion ads differently.

Maybe this is inappropriate content for a boat blog. But I think about it all the time, so maybe it is appropriate content for my blog, and for any women out there reading it. How can I be true to myself, and still true to this obscure vision of beauty I possess in my subconscious? Or is that vision of beauty all a myth? Or am I just rambling, no longer coherent? I try to love myself. I try to sit here, on my boat, and accept myself as I am and accept my journey. But I find myself longing to be all these things other than myself--the perfect Florida trophy wife, for instance, who we keep running into, who has Botox and silicone and not much else to recommend her. Can I, myself, a 29-year-old Greek peasant, hope to stand up to her? I don’t know. I try not to care.

In the meantime, on the boat, we’ve made it to the Lake Worth inlet, and we’re anchored just this side of it, hoping to go outside tomorrow and sail for the first time since the disaster. Sailing will make me beautiful, right?