Category: Uncategorized

Three Days at Sea

This and the next few posts are being added significantly delayed because Paul forgot the email address he set up to post to this blog by email.

May 16th 2016

We are now three days into our first true blue water passage. We departed Port San Luis on Friday the 13th (a date selected to ensure the best possible luck on the journey), after refueling subsequent to a two day motor down the coast. As luck would have it we have stumbled into a marvelous 7 day forecast of fair winds and a stable high pressure pattern to the Northwest, in a season when that high pressure system is notoriously unreliable and had previously failed to develop. The result has been three days of excellent sailing, despite a bit of unsettling swell. The beginning of our passage hasn’t been without its share of mishaps, including: running over a 4 foot log that made quite the unsettling “BOOM”, and an incident with the water maker, wherein a valve left in the wrong position by yours truly resulted in the entire contents of our primary water tank getting pumped overboard. Luckily there was no damage from the log, and an extra 8 hours running the water maker replenished the water supply. Happily we’ve been getting excellent mileage out of several of our recent installations and upgrades, including our new autopilot that steers a course relative to the wind, our wind generator that helps us keep up with the power requirements of said autopilot, and our water maker that has kept our water supply at maximum despite the occasional operator error.

As we pass the 20% mark in our voyage to Hawaii, one thing in most striking: the incredible vastness of the Pacific. We’re just a fraction of our way across this expanse of blue, and yet the remarkable emptiness is palpable.

Remember, slower pizza’s more luscious

The pizza took a long time.

This wasn’t unexpected – in fact, we had ordered appetizers to stave off our hunger, though they seemed to do more to whet our appetites than satiate them. I think we all agreed in the end that the results were worth putting up with the extended though minor physical discomfort . But it was more than just the experience of Chicago deep dish pizza(a truly epic creation) that made the wait worthwhile. It was the people I was waiting with that made the simple event one of the highlights of the whole trip.

We had been hanging out all weekend, seeing other old friends and making new ones. The night before we had partied hard at Justin and Danielle’s wedding, dancing with wild abandon and generally having a good time. The spirit of camaraderie, of mutual enjoyment of each others’ company, had been building up to the point when we sat down, hungry for pizza.

It wasn’t that we talked about anything deep and meaningful. We laughed at things on TV, threw stuff at each other, joked around. The conversation was as random and shifting as it was silly, funny, and clever. But that was the best part – that was what kept me grinning like an idiot and laughing until my eyes teared up.

As we did our best to finish off the last of the hearty slices, someone joked that if we didn’t eat it all, the pizza would not be self-actualized. We continued to joke about the term and ponder its proper definition as we struggled with our last filling bites. In the context, we really used it to mean “fulfilling the purpose which something was created for”. To that end, the pizza was generally victorious.

But among us, I felt a different sense of completion. There with my close friends, I experienced a wholeness, a feeling of being where I ought to be. It was Happiness – feeling thrilled just be around them, hardly able to wait to hear the next words to come out of their mouths. It was hard not to feel thankful for them, and for all the other friends and family with whom I’ve shared similar experiences.

Not to mention extra gratitude for the slow pizza that made it all possible : )