Location: Underway
It was hard to top yesterday when we woke up at the end of a double rainbow, but waking up—from frantic, sweaty sleep, PFD scraping the last of the skin off my sunburned nose—to sperm whales leaping and spouting right off our bow comes pretty close. That seems to be the way things go on Vela: whatever amazing thing you just saw that youre sure youll be talking about for the rest of the trip is immediately supplanted by something even better. The pitching and rolling as the sea tosses Vela back and forth corresponds almost incredibly to the swings of life aboard Vela. We go higher and higher, from steering at night by the placement of stars to a dolphin mere feet from our speeding dingy; we go lower and lower as we try to balance down below, face the squalls, and spend moments heaving over the low side. But, like the waves, the ups flow seamlessly into the downs: last night, as we washed dishes in the dark and wet, clipping ourselves onto the deck for dear life, all I could hear was laughing. James sang a shanty to the people donating their meager saltine dinners back to the sea. We work, but we enjoy it. We fall, but we pick each other back up. Today, exhausted, we finished our passage into Dominica, swam, waited for and dragged ourselves, dingy-load by dingy-load, to immigration appointments that authorities decided we didnt need, and finished our squeeze (whats something unexpected you learned about your crewmates? What would you name a band?) just as the rain began, the rain which has traded off with sun with the regularity of watch since we anchored. Now, as I write this, I hear music in the kitchen as another clean-up begins. Another day on Vela: high and low, back and forth, ceaseless like the rain and sea.