SARGASSO
I’m fascinated by the Sargasso Sea. We used to get a ‘taste’ of it when we were young and fished offshore of Port Aransas. We’d navigate offshore to the blue water - as far out as fuel and courage would take us.
Often out there we would find great patches of Sargasso Seaweed (Sargassum), all yellowish-orange floating on the cobalt blue sea. Compliments.
When the day came that I scooped up a net full of Sargassum, I was flabbergasted by the amount of life living in the clusters - little Sargassum fish, shrimp, crabs, even seahorses, strange little creatures, translucent little Sargassum berries - all in a universe of their own, adrift in a great blue sea.
The Sargasso Seaweed is born in the great Sargasso Sea, between the Bahamas and Bermuda, is ubiquitous and drifts all through the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
It is seemingly an inconsequential organism as it is only a ‘weed adrift.’
This then, is how Arlene and I think of ourselves, a bundle of weed adrift - no different than anyone else, unimportant, and yet, an interesting and rich world within (if you come to know us.) So, we thought, are we not simply Sargasso, adrift in the world? Now you know how we came to name the boat ‘SARGASSO.’
Jackson Ehrlich
OUR NAMING CEREMONY
Sunday, May18, 2014
“You are a good ship and you are our home. We feel that you love us and have waited all this time for us to come to you. We feel this in our bones. So, we’ll call upon the sea and the many mysterious gods that below it’s surface there be to favour us, as, we are one.
We’ll only give you the name that speaks of sea and sky and wanders along - alone.
So now you shall be ‘Sargasso’
and we shall drift together
upon the blue and orange
between sea and sky
between the dream of yesterday
and the dreams of today
upon the wide sea, ‘Sargasso’ and we”
North: We humbly supplicate the four great winds,
and the four cardinal points of the compass,
East: the winds of the Trades, steady and true
and the great ocean currents which carry fish
South: turtle, and weed upon it’s bosom, and the deep
and mysterious gods and goddesses of the sea
West: all these we ask for their blessings on our ship
and us, and those who sail with us.
