Day 125 and a half
Miriam chiming in after the fact…a liminal blog between blogs… Being with change and the subtle (and not so subtle) shifts of conditions and experience is one of the gifts I have appreciated from this passage. The 24 hours from last night’s watch to now have been so many things and it is a blessing to be slow and spacious enough to be with it all. Last night was fierce wind gusts (22 knots) filling the sails and pulling us upwind, calling my strength into wrestling the helm under an ominous overcast sky with occasional lightning in the far distance bringing my nervous system to high alert. And then a cold, rainy morning, slow and sleepy like winter (okay, maybe more like Spring) in the Pacific NW of the US where I last lived, motoring, movies, mochas, and crepes.
The wind picked up just in time for my day watch and suddenly we were racing upwind, a little sun peeking through to warm my skin, laughing at the giddy joy of flying, wind kissed and thrilled. Napping on the high side watching majestic islands looming out of the mists. Enjoying a delicious dinner together and marvelling at yet another epic sunset. And then tonight, waking from my nap to a heeled over (leaning towards the sail side) Bluebird and a noisy wind whipping upwind passage. Keeping Altair, the eye of Aquila (a constellation in the Summer Triangle) on the shrouds (the lines that run from mast tip to deck) and the cat eyes of Scorpio’s tail on the edge of the mainsail, whipping along just north of west on that rhumb line to Suva, eating up miles. Witnessing the stars turn as it became The Dolphin that needed to stay on the shrouds and the Sagittarius on the tip of the boom, as the moon rose a heavy half through piles of dark clouds and lit a silver path behind my right shoulder to the east. The beauty of the night ephemeral and profound, a meteor streaking across the sky in a bright flash and trail of smoke, the mist thickening to blur Venus high above. And then the wind died down to a slow 8 ish knots, Bluebird still managing to pull 5 knots of forward momentum from such paltry offerings and now I will be slowly rocked to sleep on a boat so quiet it feels almost still. For those who have not had the pleasure of trying to sleep on a boat underway, imagine the sounds of water rushing loud in your ears mere feet and a hull from your bed in all manner of splash and whoosh, not to mention staying in bed as the boat rocks or heels, rushing headlong into the night. It’s an acclimation process.
Tomorrow we will make Viti Levu, undergo the bureaucratic process of checking in, hopefully enjoy a dinner out together, and bid farewell to our dear companion, Megan. You will be so missed for so many reasons, dear one! And change, yet again, always.