Rock Your Boat

The ocean is full of mythical creatures that swam out of religions from every corner of the world. This morning I made up two of my own; a wicked one and a virtuous one.

The wicked one is named Zedar. He fell from the dark side of the moon. He is an unnerving creature who possesses the power of both an undertow and a riptide. He is cold and cutting like the ice of glaciers. He swims in the dark and is the broken chain of memories of melodies of mysteries. And he holds all that is evil in one eye and all that is good he tries to crush with the other. With his sharp bones he weaves a spell that sinks deep within the skin of the living.

You must feed him leis and fish guts and coconuts. If not, when you least expect it- when your afraid and waiting for dawn to break while bobbing up and down in the open ocean with ripped sails on a windy night- he’ll make your body stop it’s natural order of function. Breathing will be a struggle. Heaviness falling all around you. Crumbling. Tears. Gasping. Heavy. So heavy. Falling. Down. Drowning. Down, down, down, until you’re nothing but a lost echo of the moon.

You won’t know this until your long gone, but he was able to get to you through your fear an desperation. As much as we try to hide it, fear and desperation can always be felt.

There are others like Zedar down there. Ones that will try to capture everything that shines within you. Hard-shelled ones, slimy ones, tentacled ones, twisted ones, slithering ones, male ones, female ones, androgynous ones. But because the ocean is both good and evil, like everything on earth is both good and evil, there are beautiful benevolent ones down there too.

The virtuous one is named Salynya. She fell from the sunrise and is always bathed in magenta hues. She sings all day long and she smells like morning glories and dream pop and vanilla and ecstasy. She is the that glow at the crest of every wave and she pulses through all that is phosphorescent in the ocean at night. She carries, in her palm, a potion that is the catalyst of love. And she has the power of a following sea that glides boats, like an arrow shot from a bow, towards their destination. Her eyes are bright blue and she needs nothing in return from you. So long as you are kind to the sea, all she wants to do is give you a feather so that you can fly across it.

If you have the pleasure or meeting her, you will be elevated above earthly desires in a perpetual dance towards something in the distance that you have yet to see, but can’t hardly wait to.

I can’t see Tahiti yet, but we are getting close. It’s about 120 NM until we enter the pass to Papeete. If these winds sustain, we reckon we’ll get there by tomorrow morning. The past couple or days, some hours have drifted by without enough wind to toot a horn. That makes everybody but me antsy. I’m not really in a rush. That’s sailing. That’s life too.

Sometimes you have more wind (or anything) than you want and sometimes you have less. It all boils down to how you handle these moments I think. The goal is to get to the point where, under these less than ideal circumstances, you are in the same state of mind that you are in when you have the exact amount of wind you want. To not let anything “rock your boat” so to speak.

That’s tough though. Who doesn’t have moments of weakness along the way? I sure as hell do.

When we get to shore the first thing the mermen want to do is have a beer, shower, and put on some fresh clothes. Josh also wants to eat a loaf of bread that he didn’t bake.

Me? Well I don’t know. I definitely need to shower. Hot coffee fell onto my head this morning. Coffee grinds are stuck in every strand. And I crave fresh fruits and vegetables. We have been eating mostly carbs and a few canned fruits for a week now. The other night I found two carrots and one clementine hanging on strong in the fridge. We ate them immediately.

We’ve been fishing too, but haven’t caught anything since the three little babies in a row, that we threw back so they could grow.

Hawaiians made maps of the moon phases that determined when it was best to fish and farm. Full moons are the best for both and new moons are only good for fishing. The full moon is around the corner. Maybe we will catch something today!

The nights lately have been cold enough for a sleeping bag. I love that feeling of needing warmth. As I laid in the cockpit in one, I saw a bright meteor fall out of the sky. I think it landed in the ocean close to Hawaii. That’s what it was falling towards. It was there to remind me how far we’ve come.

I have a string of random thoughts and sentences that I keep in my notebook. I was reading them this morning. I don’t know if this was a dream or just something I made up. But I like how funny it is and how befitting it is for our arrival, so I will leave you with this bizarre little bit…

I sailed there from the land where the dragon’s daughters sky dance. And on the day that I arrived, on that exact day, it was the same temperature in Tahiti as it was at the arctic circle. And I was wearing a bear skin jacket and in my right hand there was a harpoon and in my left a kazoo. And nobody seemed to care about the dead flying fish in the cockpit. But I was still nervous about getting deported because I smelled like onion flowers.

***Want to know where we are? We have a tracker. Donate any amount you feel to receive the password for this adventure. Check the “Contribute” page or “Tracker” page via the main menu on Wildernesofwaves.com both will lead you there. It automatically sends a message to you with my satellite email in copy when you donate. If you donated and can’t find the email, look in your junk mail for a message from Olivia & Juniper Or Olivia.wyatt@gmail.com. If you still can’t find it, message me on my satellite email – oliviaowyatt@satxgate.com and I can send it your way.

****If you are reading this and would like to receive the posts straight to your Inbox, put your email in at the bottom of any page on the blog and click “Sail Along” then go to your email and confirm that you would like to follow.