Day 15 at sea
We have passed the four-thousand-miles-to-go mark before the turn south of Japan. We are flying as if on angel wings.
With a spring in her step Lady Mary entered the equatorial current and is now racing along at around seven knots. The system cheerfully promises that at this speed we will reach the southern corner of Japan in twenty days.
After that there will be another thousand miles against the wind, and then our home shores.
Will they be welcoming? We shall live and see. The important thing is that at last they are going to happen. We have waited five years for the chance to be home.
An uninhabited island
Yesterday we left the waters of the Phoenix Islands in Kiribati.
Of all the uninhabited atolls in the archipelago — all but one are uninhabited — the only place where landing is possible is Rawaki, a tiny patch of land.
We had dreamed up palm trees and a chance to get hold of coconuts, and waited with excitement for land to appear. Though we had begun to suspect that this particular scrap of earth might be rich only in guano.
The following current was planning to push the yacht toward the island during the night, so we had to slow down. Instead of seven nautical miles an hour we crawled along at four.
It hurts so much to throw away speed. But in exchange there would be an atoll.
Or would there?
There would not.
— Land! the captain shouted.
Every pair of eyes aboard fixed on a golden line at the boundary between sea and sky. Not even a line really — just a brushstroke. Five miles remained.
The gold of the shore made it obvious that the only things growing there were birds.
And guano.
As confirmation, a cloud of black frigatebirds was already circling above the yacht, mixed with a puzzled haze of boobies.
The boobies were completely unafraid of people. A winged piece of evidence immediately settled on one of our solar panels and did not even retreat from the captain's hand.
The captain shooed the curious bird away despite the first mate's pleas for a beautiful photograph: — It will crap all over the panels. You can clean them yourself! — What a quartermaster you are. Not a shred of romance, I laughed.
We came closer, looked at the backs of the surf waves, passed along the shore and finally reached the lee side.
The air suddenly smelled strongly of bird droppings.
That decided the final plan: we would not anchor and we would not explore the underwater world. Our eyes were already watering.
Besides, the atoll has no enclosed lagoon, and there could be great white sharks around. Nobody was desperate to swim with sharks, so we set more sail and escaped into the freshness of the ocean wind.
During the day another uninhabited atoll slipped past unnoticed nine miles to the north. Reaching it would have meant going directly against the wind.
The trade wind does not always blow exactly from the east. For the last week it has been north-north-east.
In the darkness of night we saw from the deck a small piece of land — one of the motu of Kanton Atoll. Its uninhabited part was dark with palms, but not a single light or wisp of smoke reached our lonely sails.
The crocodile is not biting
In fifteen days we have caught not one fish, even though the fishing line is out throughout every daylight hour.
The captain inspected and repaired the tackle. Judging by the number of birds hunting over the sea near the atoll, it ought to be a good fishing area.
Three times we almost proved that. The reel rattled energetically, but all three lures were bitten off together with the line by unknown monsters from the depths.
The value of the hooks we have lost now exceeds the value of the fish we have caught by an infinite multiple, because the number of fish caught is zero.
And I had already started dreaming that we would make jars of stewed fish and take them home as provisions.
The wind continues striking us from the side, sometimes curling onto the starboard bow, and the high beam sea makes it impossible to sleep or open the hatches.
Another portion of ocean has poured through every imaginable and unimaginable gap. The mattresses are drying and the bedding is waiting to be washed.
And this is only the beginning of the route.
Who knows what the remaining 4,600 miles — 8,500 kilometres — will bring while the yacht moves around the clock at roughly the speed of a runner.
Waiting for good news
The ridges of waves, steadily or chaotically, roll the yacht from side to side with melancholy persistence, fighting gravity and the crew's sense of balance.
The ocean feels like a crack between worlds, carrying our floating home from the familiar world into a new reality where things will never again be as they were…
Thank you to everyone who supports the expedition budget through YooMoney. Special thanks to the owners of cards 7067 and 4524, Valery K., Dmitry M. and Sergey Zh. You have become part of our shore team :).
We thank our shore team — Sergey Yakubenko, Olesya Porsina and Yulia Galushina — for publishing the chronicles on the project's social media, forwarding news and comments, and covering our rear on a grand scale.
Thank you, team.
And enormous thanks to our friends and like-minded people who stay in touch. It matters so much to share thoughts and be heard.
Hugs to everyone who sends warm words through website messages and comments.
Peace to the world.
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.
Sent by satellite on day 15 at sea. Until we cross the 180th meridian it is still 14 March here, so we are writing to you from the past.
Coordinates: 2°20′ S, 173°19′ W.
Tomorrow Lady Mary will cross the equator and enter the Northern Hemisphere, where she will remain for a long time — for the first time in four years.