Treacherous Mountains in the South Atlantic Ocean: Day 29

Blog 13-- Tuesday, December 7, 2010

So imagine that you wake up in the morning and your house is on such a slant that you have to walk on the moldings to get to the bathroom  That is exactly what I had to do this AM.  Gravity pulls at you like a giant serpent wanting to throw you down.  You fight with every knuckle, every limb, and all your core strength to move inches at a time.  Occasionally, it will mix it up and heave you a foot in the air then gravity finds you.  You put down your best Spiderman landing and try to stick.

Anna flying!  

No one is allowed on deck without a life vest and strapping in.  On my 2am-6am watch I was eating oatmeal when a wave decided I had enough.  It washed me 6 feet across the cockpit and stole my oatmeal. The Sea State is "roughly" a six with gale force winds in the 30s.  We're making great time and could be in Cape Town on the 8th.  As I sit here at the saloon table typing, shards of sunlight flicker through the gallery windows as waves crash over the bow.  Chelsea came down from the deck since she is on her. She checked on her -20˚ freezer that doesn't like working on a slant.  She stood dripping, pounded by the waves.

We are less than 300 nautical miles from Cape Town and will have to endure these treacherous mountains until the end.  Cape Town is near the horn of South Africa where two ocean currents wrestle it out for control.

I am reading "Adrift," by Steven Callahan.  It's a true story of him surviving 76 days at sea in his emergency raft he named "Ducky."  It happened in 1983.  I'll leave you with this passage from the book and why what we are doing out here matters.

"We [Steven and his raft] drift through a line of weed piled up like autumn leaves.  The Sargasso is laced with trash.  For sixty days the ocean has been pristine, a world that might never have been touched by man.  Ships and a single chuck of Styrofoam have been the only evidence of man still inhabits the earth.  Suddenly my surroundings are full of their excrement-- our excrement... The highway of trash stretches from South to North as far as I can see.  For hours Ducky wades through one lane of rubbish after another.  The highway is miles wide."


This is from his 61st day lost at sea.  He must have found the high-pressure system also known as the accumulation zone where we habitually find plastic pollution.

More later.

Bonnie Over the Ocean