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Coyote 2 - The ultimate road trip



We’re just over 1450 nautical miles (2700km) into our trip, and hope to celebrate the halfway point tomorrow.  Suggestions for the party are: 
-Fancy dress (though we don’t have any)
-Masked ball (but somehow one suspects we’ll still recognize each other)
-Moustache party (all the gents are well on the way and the ladies have found a black marker)
 
We will keep you posted. 
 
  It’s been several days since we’ve seen another boat (though our modern communications equipment keeps us up to date on the position and progress of others).  The days roll into one another and our little arc seems more like home, as our team becomes more closely knit.  By the time we arrive, we will have crawled out of our bunks for roughly 150 shifts, which make it seem like as many days.  
 
   Starting to think about our return, we have been pondering how we can possibly describe to friends and family the essence of what it’s like to sail a 40’ boat out here in the middle of the Atlantic. How to describe the way each wave requires the complete attention of the person on the wheel, and how we’ve become attuned to the direction of wind on our ears, the time of moonrise, and the exact position of Jupiter at any time of night?  And how do nine people eat, sleep and cook in a space about the size of an average living room?  But above all, how to convey the unceasing motion of the boat?  That home is no longer a solid place, but one which is constantly changing orientation, where if you put something down, it’s likely to end up picking itself back up and landing on your lap?
 
  Though we knew what we were signing up for, it took a while for this reality to sink in.  Imagine you embark on a road trip with several friends.  Loading the car up to the rafters with food, clothing, music, and whatever else you can think of for the journey, you set off.  At first you have to remind yourself that, unlike other trips you’ve taken, there will be no stops for any items you’ve forgotten to pack.  After the first day, there is no way to decide not to continue, that you’d rather do something else.  In fact, there are very few things you’ve ever undertaken which were quite as impossible to quit.
 
  On this road trip, you’re constantly being overtaken by watery semis 2-4m high, and you get pushed all over the road, so steering sometimes feels like it’s on a knife edge.  Just about the time you’re thinking it will be good to stop somewhere, have a stretch, maybe eat a meal, the next driver sidles up to you behind the wheel, asking, “Okay, what are we steering here?  How’s she handling?  Is that cloud getting closer?”.  The new driver then unclips your seatbelt, slides around behind you and takes the wheel, all while following the demands of the road.  You swerve all over the road the first few times, but eventually you get better at this.  At night, you can’t see what’s in front of you whatsoever, but since the wave traffic is all coming from behind, it’s sufficient to begin to feel yourself being overtaken through a slight shift under you feet.  Barrelling along blindly at night by the feel in the soles of you feet takes some getting used to.
 
  Fortunately, your car has the top down, since you often need to rummage in the trunk or check on the engine.  Clipping a seatbelt to us, we climb up onto the side, teeter along the fenders, get lunch out of the trunk, or make some adjustments under the hood.  There’s no use thinking “This will be a lot easier when we’ve stopped pitching and rolling all over the place”, since that’s just not in the forecast.  If you need to brush your teeth, set your watch, make a sandwich, or take a nap, you’ll be doing it while pitching from about 10 degrees one way to about 30 degrees the other way and unpredictable intervals.  If you’ve ever made lunch for nine people in the passenger seat of a car racing around a serpentine track, you’ll be really good at doing this.  Our car has no counter space apart from the sink and lid of the fridge.  There are a lot of opportunities for high quality slapstick in this, as well as a lot of bruising.  From the cockpit, we watched Steve take a pratfall across the cabin that made us all gasp, when the deck went from level to sharply inclined in less than a second.  Like a man making dinner unexpectedly being shot out of a cannon.  In the worried silence that followed we heard him say, “Karyn, your rice is here,”  (meaning all over the nav station, and indeed, some of it on top of his hat). 

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