Author: wildernessofwaves

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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Hout Bay is drop-dead gorgeous. A little seaside fishing town surrounded by green and pink mountains on all sides. It reminds me of Colorado without the snow. It’s summer here, but at night I sleep beneath five wool blankets. The locals say, “the wind was made in Hout Bay.” I have not met the mountain...

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The moon is new. I sleep hard and long and sail slow into the night. Celtic. Star Calypso. Dominator. Cape Sunrise. Golden Karoo. All traveling beside me. I rise before the day turns to gold. There is still an hour before sunrise and 17 NM until I'm at the Cape of Good Hope, or Cape...

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I missed the sunrise. I was sleeping. It's high in the sky now. The wind is blowing harder and the water is getting bumpier and bluer and colder as I sail west. It is all a shock to my system. I had a lot of cargo traffic last night. I was too tired and the...

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