Author: wildernessofwaves

Let’s assume that one day pirates ransack my boat and steal all of my electronics, most of my provisions, and my nice chronometer watch. All I have left onboard are a few cans of corn, a sextant, a chart, and a table of monthly declinations of the sun and altitude corrections. I also have a...

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The space between breaking and leaving is liminal, and the people that surround me feel surreal. There is a sailor in the marina who looks like he might worship aliens and always wants to show me something onboard, like his batteries and other things I honestly have no interest in. “Come here and look at...

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Everything is romantic on a sailboat until something breaks. It’s been a whirlpool of brokenness here in Saldanha Bay, followed by me chanting to sea gods with petals, roots, salt, sage, and spells. I think I might have just made it through to the blinding bright side, where angels sing ancient notes with golden vibrations...

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I think I might have upset some Sea God because there is a gremlin haunting my engine and monkeying around with my rudder. Or maybe some witch along my path cast a spell upon me with leopard toad tail and tortoise shell, in an attempt to disrupt my future. Or it could be that the...

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Don't you sometimes wish there was a button that you could press and fate would open up for you and reveal everything all at once? Would it be soothing or overwhelming? Would it make you want to sloth around or set fire to your feet? What is my fate? I don't know. At the moment,...

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I’m on the hard again. My boat looks gorgeous on the water and on land, so I took a photo of her with some begonias in the foreground. A man came up to me and asked, “What are you capturing?” I said, “See that boat right there? She’s beautiful, and she’s mine, and she’s more...

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The clouds are on the verge of dripping in the dying red light of the day. It's going to rain. I always know because my left foot aches so badly I have to hobble. They had to fix some ankle bones down there when I was a kid and I'm a walking barometer. I'm still...

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They say that sailors write their plans in the sand at low tide. There are plenty of reasons for that. It's because we are bound by the wind. It's because one minute Mother Nature has the face of God and in a flash she's got the grin of the grim reaper. It's because sometimes we...

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There is polar air blowing up from Antarctica and straight into my bones. It is a deep glacial chill that slips in through every crack and is amplified by the water. My whole body responds, quivering, shaking, shivering. It is midday. I departed Hout Bay an hour ago on the rising tide. I am long...

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I can't move without bumping into something wild in this country. It's like make-believe. Imagine walking along the beach and seeing this creature called a dassie, something that looks like a large rat but is most closely related to an elephant. The dassie is sitting there and then another one comes up and they just...

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