8 October 2010
I am sitting in Voyageur's cockpit looking out over the great grey waste of the Indian Ocean and a phrase pops into my head, 'the lonely sea and the sky'. It is the title of Sir Francis Chichester's first book! My own personal seafaring hero, after Captain James Cook. If I were French it would be Bernard Moitessier. if I were American it would be Joshua Slocum. Why should we be lonely? David and I have each other for company. The loneliness is when the stars and planets are obliterated by a heavy covering of cloud. Most difficult is that interval when the moon is betwixt and between which is upon us now. Darkness is in its entirety, for fully twelve hours. It makes for a very long night indeed. The sea, the ocean, it would appear is devoid of life. We see nothing of the creatures of the deep. The only evidence of life beneath the waves are the myriad of flying fish from as little as one centimetre in length to twenty centimetres, gathered daily from Voyageur's spray soaked decks. We have seen just other one boat in the last ten days. Just before dawn a fishing boat, two miles off to starboard. Ablaze with lights we could not read them. As we rose and fell in the ocean swell we only briefly caught a glimpse of a red over white. But which direction he was going in we could not tell. His port or starboard we could not identify. David hailed him on the VHF radio on channel 16. No response. A Marie-Celeste? No of course not but it did the trick for suddenly it shot across our bow. We breathed a sigh of relief and put Voyageur on a more northerly course to give him a good clearance. There has been not a single sea bird since we were halfway across. The sky, grey and overcast, merges with the steely grey of the ocean at the level of the horizon. There is no sign of life in it or upon it. It is just the three of us, David and I and Voyageur. We may be very much on our own out here but we are not lonely......
Riding the waves
Last night Voyageur turned her trot into a canter. I lie in my bunk and can sense the change. At last the adverse current of the last 24hours has released us from its grip. In my mind's eye I picture her as a mare making her final dash to the finish. Her head is raised, nostrils flaring, ears pinned back. The reins which held her back all day yesterday have been loosened. Now unharnessed she runs free with the wind. She is such an absolute thoroughbred and we love her......
Susan Mackay