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Fryderyk - Day 10 - Nov 29th, 2022



Day 10
Date: Nov 29th, 2022
Position: 20'55,211N; 34'08,413W
Distance to destination: 1584nm

Swell. I didn't know this term neither the experience. Today, according to ARC official forecast, is when the swell should be climaxing through tomorrow 30th. So waves are, you know, just waves, but swell is like gargantuan wave cluster that holds all of smaller waves. In consequence everything you see changes dramatically as those gigantic blocks of water move your boat up and down. Normal Atlantic ocean has pretty straight horizon line where you can see up to 10-15 miles ahead. During big swell as we have today, each time you ascent or descent horizon changes. When you're down in between two giant wave clusters you feel like your passing a valley made of water and you see only this "close" or mid range horizon that feels like water mountains surrounding that valley. Next you are lifted up and feel like on top of the world seeing very far horizon, just like an instant mountain has risen below your feet. No lines are straight, everything constantly changes and evolves one into other. It's like the ocean itself woke up from a slumber and decided to stretch its back, raise some mountains here and there, and hell, it's the ocean, it can do anything it wants!

And as I walked down from the fly deck to grab my laptop willing to describe all of this I saw something on the water. Animal life on the ocean has been quite modest so far with mostly flying fish entertaining us with their air tricks and a few hungry birds trying to spoil their fun. So now, as I saw some dark shape first I thought it was a bird hunting for a fish. But it disappeared completely in the water. Few seconds later it emerged again and I knew instantly it was not a bird at all. It was a big black fin. And a moment later I saw her dark long back. She was swimming alongside our boat, not more than 150m away. I cannot be sure what exactly she was, but she was circa 10m long, and she was no dolphin nor shark, at least not like ones I've ever seen. She was to my east and the sun was already shining from west so I got really clear view through the blue water. When I was in Boston in May this year, as part of PAX East conference, we had one free day that we spent on a whale watching cruise. I saw a lot of whales that day (it was awesome!) and what I saw here today reminded me of a minke whale. It's a smaller type of whale but believe me, watching her now as we both were carried up and down by the giant clusters of waves in the middle of the playful ocean, is some next level shit!

I stared at her for a while admiring her majestic flow and started to yell at the crew "a whale, a fish, big fish, whale!" As they jumped on deck agitated asking "where, what, show exactly!"... she was gone already. I was lucky as hell to see her. And it's all true! :)


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