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Mary Jo - Yesterday and today



16 deg. 38 mins. North,
041 deg. 37 mins. West
 
First Mate's Log, Stardate:- 1630/08/12/2012 GMT, Current Epoch.
 
A beautiful sunny day, wind's dropped; a vast horizon and a tall sky. The big lines of white and grey puffy clouds sit low over the water in the distance in all directions so that you can see their full, towering heights; they cast big pools of shadow over portions of the sea. There is rain under some of them.
I had a shower under one such just yesterday, windswept, cooling, fresh water straight from the sky - a gift to one who was parched....
 
It is very hot now, for the first time - panting like dogs, sweat providing the only cooling possible.
Luckily we still have a fridge and so the water is cold; mixed with a little lime squash and concentrated lemon juice, one has, if not quite an actual cocktail, at least refreshment.
 
Yesterday we were right smack in the middle of the Atlantic - as far away from
land as you could possibly get in these parts - a thousand miles from the East or the
West .
 
This is precisely where I wanted to get to; this was the destination - one has to go at least a week's sailing in any direction to find land.
For a short period, here we are, free; about as far from the world of Man (other than what we take with us) as one could reasonably get.
 
Here, adversity is not in the form of an enemy or an opponent, a tangible marauding capitalistic tyrant whose guile is to be countered with strategy and understanding;
here, there is no coercive force, no shape or substance to be villified and cast down. No goodies, no baddies. No victory, nor defeat; they have no meaning, both lost in the clean reality of right now. The real battle must be fought within ourselves and, so I come slowly to understand; it is not by score, comparison nor by money that we are set free...
 
The Ocean gave me a clue last night; it is in its music.
As the yacht passes over and through, the water makes various sounds: a cross wave swishing the stern around produces an urgent rushing thrash of cascading water.
As each large wave swells up behind the boat, towers over us, the tops curling and falling down - a sound like pebbles on a beach, avalanching straight at us... and yet, almost unbelievably, as it overtakes the boat, it lifts her up, high and above.... and then we are speeding down the face with an urgent charge, like a knight, mounted with his jousting spear - a call to arms. With a final crash and a thrum we are overtaken and left behind, slow now; a more sturdy, solid, rolling little figure than we had been when at the top. All of this, relating to our passage through.
 
Behind this however, is the more subtle sound of the Ocean herself, waves on top of waves, with little wavelets on top of those, each producing their own distinct chuckle, crackle and bass roar, in harmony and beginning to sound like music.... Unaffected by our passage, this is the constant music of the individual waves, large and small, as they all contribute to the oceanic harmony.
 
Does the Ocean hear its own sound? Does it take us to hear it, like the tree falling in the woods? If it is true that it takes life to appreciate beauty, then how did beauty become in the first place? How did it know how to be so beautiful?
 
Tony has caught two 4lb flaming blue and yellow Dorado already this morning. We had one five pounder between us last night – plenty big enough, I fried the uppers of the fillets in a touch of oil and sea salt and then sat the fillets skin-side down in the hot pan and poached them in lemon juice and shoyu. Served on a bed of japanese rice on top of which, a generous layer of malaysian-inspired ratatouille displaying a cocky garlic and sweet chili attitude....
 
Tonight, I am going to make a variation on a Bouillabaise; potatoes, carrots, onions, plenty of garlic, all together with vegetable stock, chopped tomatoes, red peppers, a hint of turmeric and fresh ginger.
The Dorado fillets to be added right at the end that, themselves had been flash-boiled in mid-atlantic seawater.
 
I'll have to go - have to slow the boat down to land another one!
 
Love you!!!
Nick



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