What a Difference a Day Makes

Back in Business

What a difference a day makes. I should remember that next time I feel like throwing a hissy fit when the wind evaporates abandoning me to the mercies of the swell.

All day long we’ve been doing an easy 6 or 7 knots chewing up miles in an hour or two that we struggled all day yesterday to get. It’s been so slack aboard that I sidled up to Salty for a nap.

Conditions down south continue to concern me as there looks to be no break in the series so swirly red monsters parading their way down to the Cape. For now, however, all that may as well be a world away. I am here, they are there, and that is

Last night, I duly recorded having sailed 5000 nautical miles in 40 days in the log. That’s a little less than 1/5 of the distance I’ll need to cover. I’ve been slowed this past week or so with light and contrary winds so I’m feeling pressed and expecting to make better time down south. On the other hand, I’m being careful about driving the boat too hard. I’ve got a long way to go.

It is strangely desolate here. There are few, if any birds. I last saw a pod of porpoises 8’days ago and they were headed the other way. The flying fish that seemed to leap out of every wave face only to crash land in the next are no more. Yet all around me is pristine.

I wonder if it is something we’ve done. Nani tells me that Henderson Island, an uninhabited desolate coral atoll that is part of the Pitcairn Archipelago, has one of the highest concentrations of plastic detritus in the world. Some 13000 pieces find their way there every day. And the only ships I’ve seen since San Francisco are three Asian fishing trawlers in the past 5 days. They have numbered names that have ended in 122, 68, and 73. I ask myself and wonder in what far away remote places the others are plying their trade.

But for now, we sail fast still pointed at the Horn. And still hoping it is looking elsewhere.

Follow my tracks in real-time:
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