Location: Somewhere In-dian Ocean
Our engine has been off for four days! So much wonderful sailing. After hauling across the equator at 8 knots (fast), weathering nightly squalls with 40 knots of wind (also fast) and sheeting rain, and surfing swells as big as Vela (big waves), we are settling into passage life. Our lives have shifted into a bizarre contrasting predictability compared to the first thirty days of the voyage. Everyday is now structured around the pattern of watch schedule, new study habits, and the rhythm of the sea. It feels good. The comfort and connection we feel with each other has only been accented by our disconnect from everything else in the world. We are a family.
Daily sail raises and adjustments, post-meal jobs, and watch team rotations have given us the opportunity to become a competent and tightly knit team as well. While we can all recognize the immense weight of our experience, it is difficult to articulate just how much we’ve grown individually and how much we’ve all grown closer. Looking back on the past 30 or so days, we learn to trust that our future reflections will reveal the greatest changes which we are currently experiencing. Woah.
I started the day on 4am to 8am watch, my favorite shift so far. The grogginess of sleep clouds us while we stagger around our cabins in the red light putting on our PFDs and finding our headlamps. Like jumping into ice water, the magnitude of the night sky shocks us awake as it comes into view out of the companion way hatch. The comfort of sleep still holds on, but I am the most alert and alive I have ever been. It is the strangest mix of empowering humility (or humbling empowerment?) to be smashed between the endlessly sprawling entities above and below. The Sea and Sky holding you on the surface of their mysterious depth. How can two things so powerful and indifferent create such a profound feeling of belonging? Millions upon millions of stars. The dark expanding space between. Never ending waves. Ever transforming currents of wind. All seem to whisper to us. Secrets about ourselves and life.
That piece of time feels frozen into my memory. As the sun begins to touch the horizon it feels like I’m coming out of some trance. The light paints everything in view. Everything was black as night, now it’s all color. Gratitude strikes heavily in moments like these. It seems as though this is how all days should start. With the day rolling, we then get to share breakfast with the sunrise, the sea, and our lil boat family. And everything is great.
Off to bed for some precious precious sleep.
Sending love and fair winds to everyone following along on our journey.
Photos:
1: Almost whole crew as we wait for dinner to be served
2: Ian, Mo, Henry, and Emily stoked about dinner
3: Carly, Zac, Daner, Seth also stoked about dinner.