We might even say: seventy-six days held captive by Covid at sea.
Today is day 77. However you look at it, this self-sufficient passage has gone on for a very long time.
Today we used OpenCPN to look at what this Pacific crossing from Australia to Tahiti would have been like if the world had remained the way it used to be.
From Tasmania we would have gone to Sydney — seven days. Then Brisbane, another week. Direct to the southern tip of New Zealand: three weeks. We would have visited the fjords; they are said to be beautiful.
After spending more than a month in New Zealand, Lady Mary would have reached the North Island and from there flown to the Kermadec Islands — a week. Then a week to Tonga. From Tonga perhaps another week, allowing for sailing against the wind, to Niue, and from there the Cook Islands would be close.
You could stop every couple of days at a new paradise island. Unforgettable Suwarrow, of course, then other islands only days later. Another week and Christmas Island would have let us in, and from there only a final two-week dash to French Polynesia.
In other words, even with unlucky weather, the longest leg would have been Australia to New Zealand and would probably not have exceeded three weeks.
But the plague arrived, and today marks eleven weeks of self-isolation.
As the song says: “And we, my friends, are sailors, recently back from a voyage — eleven weeks we stayed upon the water.”
Which lockdown is better?
It is good that we have already been to Polynesia. At least it is not quite so painful to sail past everything.
We hope the pandemic will not last forever and that we will return to this part of the ocean. The deckhand insists we begin with New Zealand. We agree.
And for now, admit it: a lockdown at sea is even better than a lockdown on land.
As the captain says, our apartment is small but the swimming pool is enormous.
For one whole week we had an effectively uninhabited atoll, with coral swimming, entirely to ourselves. That alone was worth fighting the trade wind.
Sailors also have salt wind, blue waves, whale songs and dolphin games.
Isolation in the ocean is brightened by magical sunsets and freedom. Freedom not to approach any shore. Or to approach one and see what happens.
We were lucky enough to get stuck in Australia in the states that were most free of Covid. During more than a year in Western Australia we wore masks for only a month and a half. In three months in Tasmania we did not need them at all.
And today the deckhand and I are sewing masks out of white jersey fabric for Polynesia. It feels so strange after the freedom we had even while the rest of the world was unfree.
Friends, how have these two years changed you?
The pandemic made us more patient. In recent months it has also made us lonelier.
The circumnavigation finish is close. What comes next?
In six days we will complete the biggest task of our last decade.
We will stop, repair whatever cannot wait, breathe out, and set off for home before New Year.
Another three months, once again across an ocean closed with a mop handle across the door.
This time we will make attempts to go ashore. If the pandemic drags on, we will save whatever useful leads we find for other Pacific yachts. We are not the only people who need to reach a continent by a certain date.
Nastya is ordering pretty masks. It is a shame they will not look like the veil of an Arabian princess. Though the captain is one hundred per cent not sorry about that :).
In spring we will return home.
To friends, family, schools, business and our own house.
What will it be like? How much have we changed over these years? Where and when will we go on a new expedition? What will we answer ourselves when a damp November arrives, we sit opposite one another and say, “So what now?”
We need to have an answer.
A close friend asked me today what I am thinking six days before the finish. More or less this.
Progress of the operation :)
We are still sailing close-hauled into the trade wind, which means heel, bouncing and closed hatches.
Yesterday it was +33°C inside the boat. Today it is a freezing +32.
The deckhand has started baking a chocolate cake. We squeezed more than a litre of coconut milk, and the oven has heated our floating home like an open-hearth furnace. At nine in the evening the galley is +33, exactly as it was at midday. What could be more like paradise?
For the second day a little rain has been trying to start, but it manages only five minutes of sparse drizzle.
Hugs from 9°39′ S, 154°43′ W.
Thank you to everyone who worries about us and keeps a finger on the pulse. Thank you to everyone who supports the crew's morale through YooMoney and PayPal. May your dreams come true, dear friends.
To see where we are now, visit travely-family.com and open the Route tab. It shows Lady Mary's track from the Rockstar Iridium 360 tracker provided by MVS Telecom.
Sent by satellite.