A dip at Sailors Grave

It is not surprising the cove holds such a name. The terror in the eyes of sailors yearning for land as their ships met the sharp rugged rocks on a stormy night is easily conjured.

Over a hundred years after the shipwrecks of SS Auckland (1871) Park Ridge (1878) and Albert San (1915) I find myself at the Sailors Grave yearning for the water. I just cannot resist. Albeit the rocky formations, this little cove is protected from the open ocean offering a perfect excuse for a winter dip.

Sailors Grave, Cape Conran, July 2021

I was not brave enough to venture further out.I was unfamiliar with the waters and the intricate intertidal rock formations, home to many little creatures by day and larger ones at night, like the Maori Octopus.

So I just dipped. There is something precious, a sense of reverence for such spaces and their endurance through time. A cove that has seen endless lifecycles, the change of formations over hundreds of years, the never ending arrival of waves from other lands. And here I was, finding this place for the first time, a drop in its existence if that. A context I manage to loose so often in my day to day life, is offered to me again as a gift, as a realisation in this little cove, as refreshing as the waters I am now neck deep in. Not so much in words but rather as an overwhelming sense of how gracious and larger the world is outside my bubble, how insignificant decisions I toil over are, how futile some of my struggles have been, and how malleable my future could be. How my endless pursuit of happiness kept me too busy and distracted to see what was always in front on me, simply available for me to choose.

All this in a dip, on a winters day at Sailors Grave.

As we make our way back for the cabin to warm up, knowing this cove will be here after I am long gone brings me freedom.