Four weeks of ocean have glued themselves into one long, viscous, hot sentence: “day-evening-night-morning-day-evening-night…”
Salt wind has soaked every scrap of clothing and skin, every thread and every hair.
The yacht presents her side to the heavy waves.
About once every half-hour a dull impact announces that another portion of sea is about to enter the boat.
Once again we do not open the hatches. It is a pity to waste fresh water washing the galley walls and the wheelhouse curtains.
Alone in the ocean
Everything alive during the last twenty-nine days is the four of us in the infinity of the sea.
There are rare birds, visiting dolphins, the squeak of the satellite modem in the evenings, and distant voices of friends rustling through letters into the one email address shared by the entire crew.
Those voices share thoughts, reflect, ask questions, encourage us and speak in different kinds of news.
There is still no good news.
The wake boils with blue sparks of glowing plankton.
A couple of times each night I go onto deck to look around for ships.
I do it only for form's sake, because there will be no ships until Japan.
If the yacht is obeying the windvane, I keep watch alone while everyone else sleeps in the cabins.
The deckhand sleeps in the saloon, which doubles as her classroom.
Andrey and Nastya are in the aft cabin on the large bed divided by a high plywood partition.
My place is the small sofa in the wheelhouse.
Several times each night I fall into sleep.
“Do you know why I am so funny? Because I was born on 1 April.”
That is what the deckhand used to say when she was younger.
The day after tomorrow our little bell will turn eleven.
The child has grown :).
My birthday is the day after Lada's.
I want so much to make her happy that day.
Should we invent a quiz? A concert? A competition?
Friends, do you have any ideas for a children's birthday in these conditions?
We agreed to celebrate the deckhand's birthday properly again when we get home.
The greatest joy on a two-month passage would be land, but there is none. The nearest shore along our route is almost two thousand kilometres away.
Those will be Japanese islands, and they will not be able to receive us. Perhaps they are still closed because of Covid, perhaps now because of everything else as well.
We make dark jokes about “at last we will learn what Japanese captivity feels like.”
The night watch is ending.
I need to lower the side of the cockpit awning, hand-steer through a squall, and make breakfast — or delegate that to Nastya.
Boil tea. Make plans. Solve problems.
The deckhand is preparing for her birthday. She plans a major cleaning operation, lots of balloons and Olivier salad.
Balloon-inflating practice is already under way.
Yesterday Lada brought a large bright-pink balloon too close to the deck exit, and the cheerful wind tore it from her hands.
We reacted too slowly and did not immediately turn the yacht for a “something overboard” manoeuvre.
We have already performed that operation a couple of times this month, recovering a large container and the funnel used for collecting rainwater.
Those first attempts succeeded.
This time the bright-pink balloon vanished without a trace among the high waves.
All we achieved was a pointless turn and another bout of bouncing against the wind.
We have already been on starboard tack for thirty days.
We are honestly fed up with jumping across the waves.
One month is gone. Another remains.
Soon we will enter a zone of variable winds, start changing tacks, sitting in calms and sailing close-hauled.
We will probably lose speed.
And time is running out. We need to be home as soon as possible.
It feels as though the time allocated in Vladivostok for laying the yacht up, meeting people, packing, finding and testing a large vehicle before the onward journey across half the country is absurdly short.
Sent by satellite on day 30 at sea.
Coordinates: 18°20′ N, 156°35′ E.
Enormous thanks to Vladimir K., Mikhail P. and the owner of card ending 7981 for a birthday present for the deckhand.
Thank you to everyone who supports the ship's fund and the crew's morale through YooMoney.
Thank you for the comments and messages on the website. Receiving them through our shore team makes us very happy.
You can find our real-time position under the Route tab. It shows the track from the Rockstar Iridium 360 tracker provided by MVS Telecom.