Silently Mo Glides
Day 35
Noon Position: 28.01S 124.24W
Course/Speed: SSE 4
Wind: E 6
Sail: Full
Bar: 1024
Sea: S 10; E 6 (old rollers), otherwise the sea is flat.
Sky: Mostly clear; some cumulus; occasional squall
Cabin Temp: 79!
Water Temp: 75
Miles last 24-hours: 118
Miles since departure: 4547
Silently Mo glides through a silent sea.
Those words most days would be a nonsense. But today we ghost on a steady zephyr and have done so since yesterday noon, moved noiselessly, one hour like the next.
No wind, and Mo bangs and rattles to drive one mad. In a good breeze the wind thumps the ears, the rigging thrums, white-caps clap and crash. One does not come to the sea expecting the stillness of a forest or one is disappointed. The sea is not a contemplative.
But today there is force enough in the small stirrings from the east to quiet Mo and give her momentum without waking the water.
And then you realize you haven’t heard this, this…nothing…in weeks.
The sensation: moving through an emptiness–except for the blue and the cloud–so vast that movement is irrelevant. Beyond boarder or threshold, beyond here or there. Beyond time. Beyond end. Wandering.
And there is a deliciousness to it I can’t explain. A feeling, but of what? Not of being lost or isolated, there is no impatience to arrive; today we are not fighting the sea to make miles. Today we are … home. No, not at home. Simply, home. Just boat and man and firmament. Here is the all that in them is. This is the most of the world.
A lone petrel cruising nearby, winged brown against blue, breaks the reverie. Ah, not quite empty. And then you see the swell from the south, a slow heaving, a gentle rolling of hills so large they prick the horizon, the space between, secluded valleys to be enjoyed for a moment and then gone. Ancient giants from a battlefield far away. Soon you will join their kin.
The sun sets. The full moon. Orion, no longer prone, but standing tall over his sky. And silently Mo glides through a silent sea.
As a metaphysican, the above was a description of the Oneness. Beyond self, the boundaries blur, there is an expansion a melting into Allness. Have cruised the open sea beyond the edge of land, deep in the vastness and have never felt so “Home”. Somehow felt like being in the womb. Can’t explain it—was always a little sad when land interrupted the endlessness.
Great share;!
👍, Mahalo, Pierre, I live on the mystic N. Shore of Kauai. If not on s boat, then Kauai good alternative, on a rock in the almost, middle of the Pacific. Actual met Randal here.
Randall,
There is no destination, just the journey at which you are now at what is called home. Been there…