SailBlog

The west end of Cuba is coming up fast�... it is exciting to consider where I am in the world. We are having another brilliant fast day of sailing, the currents of the entire Caribbean flowing toward the Canal de Yucatan, maxing at 4kts moving north into the Gulf of Mexico. This is an entirely new part of the world for me to sail�...even to consider. I am on the same latitude as Belize, a destination still on my list of places to go. I have yet to explore the entire southern United States, by land or by sea. I will be only a hundred miles from Mexico when I sail between Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula. Texas, laying to the NW of the Gulf�... I have to say�...my imagination goes wild considering what it must be like to be a cruiser on a sailboat on the coast of Texas. With new computer charts, the entire coast of Texas comes alive with ports, a barrier island, filled with names I have only heard in songs by the most clandestine of country singers�... Corpus Christi, Baffin Bay, Galveston, San Antonio, and Houston�... Then there is New Orleans�... For me it is all about the music. One day. Bob and I will take it all in, whether by sea or by land.

For now, the calling to go home is ringing in my ears as I am starting to get near to the US Coast. With this push from the currents and favorable winds, I will make it to the west end of Cuba a full day ahead of when I originally thought. With the forecast, that will give me a full day of continued east winds to help me around the corner of Cuba. Then the winds are to settle down and become more variable coming from the NE and then N before clocking back to the ESE later in the week�... I was playing with the computer chart, considering tacking angles and making the most of the Gulf Stream current that begins to flow as I round the corner into the Florida Keys/Cuban straits. My estimates are looking conservative but just about right at this point�... It is going to take a few days of light winds to get at the longitude of Key West and then a few more once the winds fill in to get clear of the Keys and on my way north.

Bob was doing some research regarding the Coast Guard presence in this part of the world and I should expect to see some USCG Ships along the way, as well as the normal commercial shipping traffic. When I consider all the history of this area, it is amazing to me how close it all is�... Mexico, Cuba and the Gulf�... the Keys�... at points, they are all 100miles from each other. The political and military events of this area are amongst the most controversial in history for the US. I guess I better have a life jacket handy, and will have to get out my US flag�... I rarely fly it in near underdeveloped countries, but I will need it where I am going.

We are still not making any attempts at planning an ETA for my arrival�...there are just so many variables. But once I pass home in Florida, the Palm Beach Inlet, and we have a forecast, we should be able to nail down a good idea. The Herreshoff museum is booked solid for Memorial Day weekend so we are planning to avoid arriving then. Making it by the 27th is a long shot, but not out of the question�... but if not Friday, even if I do sail into the bay during the holiday weekend, I will hold up somewhere until Tuesday, May 31�... By then I will have crossed my outbound track, with my arrival into Narragansett bay via the East Passage.

It is wild to consider, but given I left from RI and headed nearly due east toward the Azores, and then crossed the equator on the east side of the Cape Verdes Islands, even if I had made it around Cape Horn, I would not have crossed my outbound track without going all the way east to 21W�... or I would have had to wait until I arrived back into Narragansett Bay. Certainly, coming from the Panama, I will not cross my track until I am passed Castle Hill and actually in the channel entering the East Passage channel. When I left, I had headwinds coming out the bay so I did tack fully from the coast at Fort Adams over nearly to Beavertail Light in the course of tacking out the bay�... so as long as I sail back into the East Passage channel, I am sure to have crossed my track.

It is incredible to remember back to that day�... sailing alongside of Sail Newport boats, out for a Saturday afternoon sail. One of the boats recognized my boat and wished me fair winds on my circumnavigation, as they headed back to the dock at Fort Adams�... they would all enjoy a beer and dinner and talk about the incredible day of sailing on the bay�... while I was the only boat to keep going that day as the afternoon sun drifted toward the horizon for my first night offshore, no GPS, following my compass heading, watching the lights off of Martha�'s Vineyard come into view as the dusk turned to night, the huge full Blue Moon escorting me offshore�... Anticipation tugged at me keeping me wide awake, no way to imagine or need to know what was to come�... we would handle it, that was all I knew.

My arrival will come exactly ten months, to the day, from the day I left if I arrive on May 31. A bit of synchronicity I would say. And what an amazing journey it has been, so unlike my first circumnavigation where Inspired Insanity and I powered our way around the world, meeting gales head on, climbing the mast hand over hand, conquering the great Capes�... This second circumnavigation unfolded unlike any expectation that I could have imagined�... though I did plan it to avoid the harshest of weather, I would not have chosen this journey to go as it would go�...

Yet by faith, along my way during nine months on the sea sailing the world�'s most challenging oceans, I did wholly trust life would fulfill my truest of intentions and desires for this incredible opportunity; to open my capacity to be able to discover how to live my life in communion with my true self, living from the infinite source of natural life energy�... But, I could not have designed such a venture that would so masterfully have brought it to be�... that was all synchronicity�... which has been the greatest privilege possible.

Each day lead to new discoveries in the sailing venue, �'soft sailing�' without a boom, light wind sailing techniques, hove to variations, solutions to every day�'s equipment failures, as well as experiencing the breadth of being embraced by the wildlife, the hundreds of varieties of birds, whales, dolphins, sea lions, fish�.... My flying fish antics bringing a chuckle to my days in the Atlantics and Pacific.

Each moment of 24 hours a day tore into my concepts, asked more and more of me than ever before, shook my comfort levels in every way, even to the point where Inspired Insanity and I were not able to sail as we have always sailed, so powerful together�... Instead we were knocked down over and over... it was inconceivable yet it was happening.

Every aspect of my egoic self was discovered, for better and for worse, Seamadness overwhelming my emotions over and over, while the visitations of dolphins and the birds comforted me in a way that lifted my spirits soaring no matter how distraught I might have been�... the waves of the sea became the melody, the clouds the bass lines, the winds the lofty airs of songs that filled my days and nights, night watch after night watch, day through to the next day,�...

Time truly marched by quickly, even flew by it seemed, one meal to the next, a rhythm set in a pattern that rarely broke. It was the constancy that flowed beneath the continual changing of the weather patterns, the unpredictable moments, the continual rattling, jostling, creaking, groaning of the hull and heaps of boxes and bins tussled in the V berth, the rigging banging in resonance, the rhythmic tone of a jar shifting side to side.

Though there would seem life must have been monotonous, there were no two segments of time of the journey that were even similar to each other�... each day took on a life of its own with surprises, the unexpected becoming evident, the need to attend to a sound or broken something, or a going to break something else, keeping each day off balance. There was never a moment of comfort that was not interrupted or truly not really that comfortable. That is unfortunate. Not a place to sit or lay where there is not something dangling in my way, just too hard, too pointy, my clothes too wet, too smelly, to sweaty soaked again and again�... My hair stringing in my eyes, my contacts just not focusing�...how is it possible to be so uncomfortable for so long?�... it becomes a constant droning essence to existence, somehow no longer in the field of perception. Something else seems to take precedence.

Even when I came to land for a time, it seemed I was unable to find a way to end the discomfort. I had nearly forgotten how to relax. In fact, I exclaimed when I went onto someone else�'s boat, a fellow who was a radio guru�... they had two lazy boy-like chairs in their salon!!! I sat down in one and for a few minutes, I was comfortable. Why do we make sailboats with such daggone uncomfortable seats? There is truly nowhere in my cockpit to sit with any thought of being comfortable�... I had promised myself I would change that after my first circumnavigation. Somehow, making a comfortable seat in the cockpit did not rate important enough during my preparation�... in hindsight, that was wrong.

The moon is growing daily, a brilliant sliver for the first few hours tonight�... the stars obscured by squally clouds passing by, passing over, keeping the winds fresh. The seas are growing and confused with a NE swell and an ESE breeze, the wind angle once again just at that point between a beam reach and a running reach�... I have the pole flying for if I don�'t, we fall off the swells to stern and the jib flogs mercilessly�... yet to keep course, I have to play that line between the aft quarter and a beam angle�... the jib wanting to buckle at times when a gust pulls us around too far. But I am getting into closer quarters and I want to keep to a heading as best I can. It is such a blessing to be able to be on a rumline, I hate to wander.

Tomorrow night will be the last night sailing with a bit of room �... by tomorrow night, we will be approaching the west of Cuba and for the next week to 10 days, I will be sailing coastally�... the hardest type of sailing for a solo sailor�... I would have avoided it if I could. It certainly wasn�'t my intention when I left on this circumnavigation, to spend so much time near coastal sailing, but there is no option. I have a good alarm clock and will have to find some way to make a bearable place to sit on the companionway for watches. It is going to be a long haul before I am north of the Florida coast, out in the Gulf stream far offshore and out of main traffic schemes for me to dare fall asleep�... If I could. Lately, it seems that sleep doesn�'t come�... I am managing on lots of hours of resting and deep breathing�... meditation seems to be a near sleep alternative.

So�... off to resting�... It is already past 2300 hours�... the night will be a short one, the dawn showing its colors by 0530�... but the seas are riling and boisterous tonight�... there will be little rest for the weary.

Keepin On Sailin On Caring�... bliss�... Bob and I managed to enjoy an uninterrupted chat�...the satellite connection holding�... All is going to work out fine�... though there seems to be no end to the juggling of details and endless changes to the plan, we are both smiling�... soon we will be together, talking in person, and there will that touch of embrace�... never again to be taken for granted, each moment cherished, for that alone I am so grateful for this incredible journey in time.

Fairest of winds and the love of the oceans Only Gratitude, Donna