[Dar Es Salaam - Phuket] Day 3 -- Sailing

I woke up in the morning of the third day with a different feeling. My headache had disappeared. I felt reborn. On deck I discovered the dead body of the first fish that Hartmut had reeled in during the night, a snake makreel. Not the kind of fish you'd get too excited about. We gave the "corpse" a proper sea funeral about midday before the cook could think of making it into a soup. A proper sea funeral, well, for such a fish a slight push over board that is.

It was late morning when we stopped the engine to try our luck sailing. We did okay, but with a lot less speed than we had anticipated. The steering of the heavy wooden bathtub proved to be an art. We had to find the autopilot also not being able to stay on course, a fact that brought up curses from the captain and first officer, being my brother.



With the only noises being the wind and the dim low buzz of the rudder every now and then and with my sea sickness gone I stared at the endless ocean and started to touch with this inconceivable desert made of water. We weren't even far off the coast, but there was nothing but water in every direction up to the horizon. The thought of the distances that water streches made it appear to me like an universe of its own, with dimensions the human mind cannot actually conceive in full. In many ways, the ocean is like a desert, many of which I have already seen and travelled to. There is nowhere to stop inbetween, there is nowhere to get help from on the way. Everything you need is in your boat, even fresh water has to be carried and fish being the only resource to get a hand on along the way. And what you had to handle, you had to handle with what you'd taken with you.

With adjusting the sails every once in while and getting used to the very unresponsive hydraulic reinforced steering the day passed quickly. Once at sea the rythm of the day had changed, getting up early, if you didn't have the night watch, and going to bed soon after eating dinner shortly after dark. It is so natural to live with the daylight and rest when light is gone. Good for the night watch though, the full moon provided some good light during our first nights.

captains log:
0300 unreel genoa
problems with autopilot
1200 S5°00 E41°15
1430 off E, half diesel gone
upSS, fock
2100 up fock