Well, this is a little embarrassing. I'm still not there. I'm less than sixty miles out, though, so I should be there by Christmas.
I have lived the woes of the sailors of old, having run out of fuel save for a few gallons rationed for entry into the harbor, several days ago. Then, calms. The fabled horse latitudes. Calms. Calms. Calms. I'll probably get there on Wednesday, I said...Well, Wednesday night, but it should be easy to get in after the sun, so no need to get worked up... Damn that confounded air- Ok, Thursday, I told myself. I'll get there on Thursday for sure, just in time for a little Thanksgiving celebration... Ah, well, Thursday night, that's okay.
Then, I let go of that idea and stopped making predictions, right around the time I doused all sail and went to bed, floating about 150 miles north of North Cape. Two days of nothing. Happiness was keeping the bow pointed south; ticking off two minutes in an hour was efficiency. Again I rigged the spare mizzen as a staysail. Then I rigged a bed sheet as a bonnet under the main. A blow came through every so often. Six knots, maybe eight, the direction decided by a roll of the dice. I ate potatoes. I ate beans. I waited. I watched the horizon. I tried to distract myself, but then I would find myself sitting again in the companionway, watching again the horizon, searching for ripples, wavelets, trying to read the clouds. I've a contusion under my fingernail from flicking the barometer. My palms are ripped and chapped from hauling halyards. Up. Down. Up. Down.
Yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, there were two, then eventually three, rainbow runners, big fish in the tuna family, I think. They followed my boat. It required very little effort on their part. A small shark joined them for a while. They swam just off the transom. I could have gaffed them from the deck, but the bigger one probably weighed forty pounds, maybe more. The smaller ones were still too much for me to eat and I wasn't in a killing mood. Besides, they liked my boat, so I liked them and they followed me and I watched them for a long long time. I thought about getting out the bow and shooting them; it would have been easy- I had fishing arrows, they were swimming on the surface. I didn't though. They were my friends, I couldn't have killed them. I taped my camera to the gaff hook and stuck it under and got a little video of them, though. I'll try to post it when I get to New Zealand. Check back in eternity.
Right, well, it's been a hell of a lot slower passage than I had expected. I've been at sea two weeks now. I'll chart out the daily positions from my logs when I arrive and see, but it's already clear that I'll have well under a hundred-miles-per-day average. Hell, I've floated without sails raised for at least a day's time. The calms are challenging psychologically, more so than any bad weather I've ever experienced, which isn't to say I'd prefer the fifty knots, ten meter breaking seas combo that hammered boats and gobbled up Windago a couple of weeks ago. Thirty knots, though? I'd pay good money for that. Gusting to forty? Meh, well, yeah, I'd still take that. I think I'd be more comfortable and the boat happier hove-to in forty than flopping around like a Mexican jumping bean in the belly of a seizure patient lying on the floor of a BART train screaming through the trans-bay tunnel at max speed. Who knows, though? Who knows.
I won't lie, I did my share of yelling at the ocean. At one point, I was sure there was an echo out there. I tested it for a while and I'm fairly certain I could hear it. I think the air was so still for so long that it developed a stubborn resistance to any kind of movement; as such, the sound waves emanating from a one heavily bearded, half-naked man standing on the back of a large, well-adorned tupperware were simply returned-to-sender. If you've got the right image in your mind, you should be thinking to yourself that this man may need to be admitted, and you're right.
Really, though, I might be there soon. Maybe even tonight, very late, but tonight. I expect the wind will die, though, and I'll be forced to endure another night alone with the frigid airs of 35 degrees South and the sound of snatch blocks whipping against combings and braided lines squeaking tight on their cores. I don't mind much, though, I suppose. What's the rush? I say this, but there's a breeze now. I've been scooting along at four-and-a-half knots all day, so my spirits are up again and I'm happy at sea when I'm sailing.
Nevertheless, it can't be long. I'll post when I'm arrived. Until then, the happiest of Thanksgivings to my family and friends and any other readers content about something or another and indulging in a sumptuous meal. As for me, well, it's Friday already. Yesterday my feast was not one but two packets of shrimp-flavored Mama noodles and tonight... well tonight is the holiday in the mother-land, so I might just help myself to a few slightly squishy potatoes and the last two onions, which I've been saving for a special occasion. Eat well, my friends, and enjoy one another.
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