SailBlog

What a beautiful day..today was the warmest day since the Atlantics... I woke to just the most balmy, pristine day...and it was serene, sun poking out between clouds, the petrels flying their patterns around the boat...I just sat with mother ocean for my breakfast and took it all in. It had been a better night for sleeping last night so I am rested today. Ready to have an active, outdoors day, enjoying the sea and this beauty all around me. The sea is just so jewel like, that crystal cobalt like blue, so bright, delightful, bringing an inner joy that resonates so amazing within. It is so incredible to consider the extent I have gone to have this opportunity to be able to bask in this day so far from human energy, yet so near in heart and inner beingness to the very essence of all who I love and adore tucked in my heart, but so actively amidst my being in love. It is such magnificence.

I was happy to have plenty of outside work to keep me busy... the projects that I had been looking at, for the last few weeks but unable to get to, are on my list for today. I made sail repair patches and stitched all the new tears in the mainsail from the spreader flag halyard block and some from the sitting on the boom... it was a feat to get the tears in a position where I could reach both sides of the sail, but leaning across my new boom box, I managed to find a way.

Then I went at putting my dodger back together. It is my old dodger, I purposed not to make a new one knowing it would take so much abuse on this trip...I would make the old one last..but the fabric is sunworn and rotting in areas...I have been holding it together with Gorilla tape... And now I found that the tape actually made a relatively sound 'fabric' to use as a conduit for the repair of the top edge... The velcro I used to connect my front windows to the body of the dodger had simply rotted as well...I am very surprised as that work was only done last season... so it didn't last very long. But I was able to tack the edge together through the strataglass...too thick for me to actually sew. So, I think the dodger should hold up pretty well for a while. My hands look like they got caught in a shreader though, so many cuts and pokes... but they will heal. With all the hand work these last weeks, they will be happy to just be 'sailing hands' for a while.

I am barefoot today!!! but I couldn't muster up the energy to take a bath...it is hours of work...to debride and then lotions... feet, hands... My skin is going to need some real soaking and tender care, though I have to say that there won't be any 'sun damage'... my body hasn't seen any sun since we left the N. Atlantic...so I am going to hold off on beautification until I can get in the water in the Atlantics... I will be able to swim and take regular showers then. By the time I am home, I will look fresh and full of youth.

My friend Joan just happened to pick a position between where I am and the Horn to give me an idea what the weather is there this week...well it is the same weather I am getting now except later... Last trip...I was at exactly that position on Dec. 30...right before I did a huge 50kt storm...the one that rolled Ken Barnes' 44' ketch, he lost both his masts and was rescued... I was able to relay info to family by Sat phone as I actually saw ship on its way to pick him up and heard the radio transmissions of the airplanes on reconnaissance.

Memory lane is not necessarily all good... I have to keep the anticipation down... I just can't afford to spend energy in anything but faith thoughts. Believing for a good rounding... I did have a great rounding... it was getting there and then getting away that was a bit troublesome. I reached Cape Horn on Jan 7th... A week later in drizzly variable winds...but then i went up into Beagle channel to visit with Jon Selby and his wife Roxanne for 2 weeks...the Xaxero sponsors working with Luis... I met Jon in NZ in a fortuitous meeting ...

I am in the calm day before the storm. I managed to get all the way to nearly 41*S with the W winds that slowly shifted to SW overnight, shifting my course from ENE to NE and for a while it was actually NNE...but I tacked when I got up at 0600. Now on a E course. When the winds pick up...I iwill stay on this tack for the westerlies and start to make my descent...I just need to stay above 42*S until after the 29th.

I am now well out of harms way with only a touch of 30kt winds... but mostly 20-25kts the whole next set of days... a long period of W winds to SW/ SSW... then a light trough and back to WNW to SW again... and then there is still another front on Feb 2.. They are like a train beneath me...one car after another... but each one leaving a huge swell on the ocean...It will reach as high as 20' on Saturday, the big rolling mountains as they did the last storm I did on the 10th... so will be intense but incredible to watch..it is one of those magnificent times as I feel relatively safe but the magnitude of the surroundings is so vast... The whole earth rolls under me and then I am on top of the world, then in the trough..

I am not sure how I am going to descend to Cape Horn amidst the stream of fronts...but we must. Last time...I stayed near to 45*S near to 100*W than went to 48*... so we will see how it works this time. I am going to go the great cirlce route, which is the shortest distance from here to Cape Horn, but it means going south first to get into the smaller latitudes... so trusting for a good window of weather this next few weeks.

Oh... I am ready for sleep...I think my eyes are tired from being out in the sunshine much of the day...a glorious problem to have. The winds are going to pick up through the night so I am going to be up reefing sails later on... another good night to get to my rest watches early... I may beat the dusk at this rate... once I download this blog, I will be getting ready to try to sleep.

Keepin On Sailin On Caring... It is so vital for me to not neglect quietness...the time to listen and avail myself of communion with the sea...Today, as I sat on my perch on the Pelican box, and began to focus my attention on the sea, I realized how rare these moments are. I could barely keep concentration. I know that over these next three months remaining, that this must be my focus... and from there I can write and be...to be quiet and be in presence with the sea...with universe's energy source. Communion must be a conscious decision...it doesn't 'just happen' accidently. I have actually chided Wise Mother Ocean when I have become frustrated throughout a task and then turn to her and ask why she isn't empowering me...? And the answer is so simple...'You didn't ask'...I never brought my moments being into presence with my source of Life. My ego was in control...not God Consciousness, Life. I will not be successful when I return home if I have not mastered remaining empowered by Life... I have already exhausted the possibilities of my ego and I am ready to become alive in true Life energy... its taken me a long time to figure that out... and I cannot leave the sea, this journey, without acquiring that conscious discipline I spoke of early on in the trip... It is time to focus.

" No matter how complex and confusing a situation looks, leadershp is possible when you are comfortable with uncertainty. Once they see the hidden spiritual order that lies beneath what seems to be chaos, inspired leaers thrive on uncertainty. You must learn how to manage the fact that situations are tangled, otherwise the group you lead will be crippled by turmoil... Fear, survival, competition and creativity, beliefs and personaltities make their demands, but underneath the jumbled surface there is only one voice, the silent whisper of spirit, which understands everything." Deepak Chopra, The Soul of Leadership, p.216

Fairest of Winds and the Love of the Ocean Only Gratitude Donna

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