Tonight, this night will be my last night off soundings. It will be my last night at sea, sailing the open ocean. Tomorrow night I will be in the Straits of Juan de Fuca anxiously watching the commercial traffic steam past while the tide does with me whatever it chooses. Although I am rushing to get there, I am filled with anxiety about arriving.

Tomorrow I know will be literally oceans apart from what I am doing now. Strangely, now is comfortable. Now I know. It is the polar opposite of my feelings when I was near this very spot last October.

Between October and now I have tried to create windows into my tiny world. Glimpses into my experiences, good, bad or otherwise, as I experienced them. I cannot say if I succeeded as what resonates with one, another is deaf to. What then can be said of success if a thing produces two or more wildly different outcomes? Are we to take the average and force-feed ourselves mediocracy? I hope not.

Success it seemed to me lay in honesty. Which I suppose is rather obvious. But it is something else to be honest while trying to capture yourself and your feelings all the while wishing you could open a hole in the ocean and crawl in. Or out depending on your mood. In that, I can say I tried. And if I succeeded in any way, it is only because I made, as they say, an honest effort.

I wish to say thank you for sharing this adventure with me. How lucky can one person be? How blessed? Although a world apart from everything and everybody, I have never felt more connected and more a part of it than I have during these past few incredibly rich and extraordinary months. And for that I will be forever grateful.