ISOLATION
The past decade saw me spending over 300 days sailing at sea alone, however the time spent at anchorage with myself, would account to years. During an interview in 2016, I was urged to define “to be alone”, or aloneness, and to that I faithfully claimed being the absence of human influence, rather than in the absence of humans. At sea, lost in an “ocean” of mesmerizing natural beauty, one is also lost in a “sea” of literature, arts and cinematography.
BREAKING FREE
DAY 9 – Sunday, September 24th Started making good use of the sat-phone. Some revealing information from Bob MacDavitt’s WeatherGram. ITCZ is much lower than normal, which answers the abnormal head winds experienced and abnormally high amount of rain spells. On sat-phone’s Saildocs, I also found a little trick to get information on currents, which will allow us to be sitting on the South Equatorial Current, tailing a 2.7 knot flow all the way to the Marquesas longitude and possibly averaging a mind-blowing 250 miles per day.
HARD TO WINDWARD
DAY 2 – Saturday, September 16th Fluky winds prevailed through the night and exhaustion slowly caught up with me to an out-cold collapse at 4 am. In what it seemed like 10 minutes, I was once again awake except 4 hours later, to a familiar buzzing sound, dangerously too close: Ship! A clumsy dash to the cockpit, still half asleep, revealed a freighter some 4 miles in the distance. The humming noise however, came from the sails, now filled with wind and just asking for some trimming.
DEPARTURE FROM PANAMA
Friday, the only day a sailor should never leave port, along with a boat’s name that should never be changed from its original launch day. Stories of catastrophes are countless, and through personal experience in the Pelican voyage, the subjectivity of superstitions is a real fact. I question how many of these abstract concepts, are active in our lives. How many of these traditions, gifted by those who preceded us, impedes us from creating a new life of our own.
LAST SUNSET IN PANAMA
Hard to believe it is already mid September, exactly 364 days from the departure from England. When I flew out of NZ this May, I thought arrival back home would be sometime around September. It’s been more complicated than I visioned. The heat this year has been stupendous. The passages from Sint Maarten and from Aruba were by far the most uncomfortable ones to my experience. Makes me even question if it is not the reason for IRMA being such a phenomenally-powerful storm.
TOURIST GO HOME
Article in ABC NEWS Australia Thirty years ago, affordable travel to the proletariat implied a 2-hour road trip, by bus or one’s own vehicle. Today, three month’s savings for a flying holiday can make any planetary destination doable. Item / Year 1985 2015 Minimum-hourly salary $3.35 $7.25 Avg. domestic flight $595 $337 Hours worked 177.61 46.48 My research showed that in 1985 USA, the price of a domestic flight was around 3.
CONVENIENT CONSUMERISM
Organic oranges, freshly squeezed with refreshing ice cubes on a cup “to go”. Thirst can be quenched healthfully from the pleasant-tropical temperatures whilst contemplating the glorious-red glow of a life changing sunset in Indonesia, an ultimate holiday destination. At the end of the spectacle: an empty cup, a cup of nuisance, must get rid of the nuisance. Except we avoid responsibility for our existence, just as much as the locals, expelling the waste unconsciously.
DEFINE FREEDOM
In an interview in Grand Canaria, a German journalist “cornered” me with “What is freedom?” Faithful to my axioms, keeping in mind the human predisposition to idolize words and concepts, the mind thought of Socrates, Jesus and Augustine. Idealist men, who fearlessly put “their money where their mouth was” in the face of death. So I claimed it was “transparency”, which in philosophy is the antonym of cynicism. Doing as you say, saying as you think.