Prophetic Whispers

The sun drips crystals onto the sea until she wears a gown of gems that cascades from crest to crest. I see nothing and everything and the birth of something all around me. The waves have grown small and they speak in prophetic whispers as they surf beneath the boat

Land is now 757 nautical miles behind me and 1570 before me. I pretend I’m on a lake so the vastness is not so great.

I took a shower in the cockpit yesterday. I filled a few 1 gallon jugs with hose water before leaving land, just for that purpose. I have a proper shower onboard, but I am using it for storage plus it’s nicer outside anyway.

Just as I soaped up a plane flew over. I hadn’t seen one of those in what feels like ages and I sure hope they didn’t see me. Human birds, bird birds, birds and more birds. Other than that, there is nothing showing its face in the sea or the sky.

Except for the clouds, they have faces.

Days move slow and fast and bleed too easily into night. I am riding the edge of that high and I haven’t slept in a while because the wind rises and falls and rises and falls and now my mind is full of fog. I am shocked by the mistakes I’ve made due to lack of sleep and as equally surprised by the robotic recall I seem to have for the more important elements involved in maintaining the boat.

For example, the robotic part of my brain never forgets to put the locking pins in the windvane when I motor or to shift to reverse when I’m not motoring, or to check the voltage every morning, or to check the bilge twice a day, or to disengage the preventer if I’m jibing, etc.

But the non-robotic part of my brain made lunch yesterday and put the left overs in the fridge, so I thought. But when I went to look for them in evening, I couldn’t find them, because I had put them in a cabinet not the fridge! Which is just as well since the fridge is now the temperature of a cabinet anyway.

I didn’t have the energy yesterday to crawl into my claustrophobic lazaret and inspect the compressor. I figured I’ll try for it another day and if not at least I’ve got enough astronaut food and fishing gear to survive without it… if it comes to that.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Ever since I wrote about the haunting of the boat some activity has returned. I have a clock on the wall that is set to chime every hour, but now it chimes anytime I get near it. And it is chiming now as I write this. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. It is nowhere near the top of the hour. It’s 35 minutes from it. And also some lights have been flickering. I hope there is a logical explanation to it all. Just in case, I read a proverb out-loud in my most assertive voice to both the clock and the lights.

I promise I’m not going crazy out here.

Before falling asleep cold clouds that carry rain were circling above me. Around midnight the wind was shifting every which direction and down came my first squall. It had no energy to shake me, and I no energy to be shook, even if it did.

I got the grib files to download yesterday and noticed that there is a hurricane coming up from the south towards my vicinity. It is scheduled to land where I am now by next Wednesday. I messaged Oliver and said if I have an option between wind and avoiding the hurricane, I’d choose the latter any day. He sent me a new course.

Onwards and outwards over here.

Ps- I don’t have any astronaut food onboard you silly goose. ‘Twas a joke.