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Above all, there is the great and most beautiful unknown, the sea itself.
A distant gale probably, but a very violent one to have sent a residual swell this big so far north. Best not head further south than necessary. It is still spring down there; the gales are more frequent, and their average path runs further north than during the favourable summer season.
My spirits start to rise, though I hate landfalls. They upset the normal cadence of things; they alter the very slow inner rhythm a sailor develops after a time away from the dangers of the coast, in the security of the open sea where everything takes its true place, without demanding but also without deception.
Sailing is a compromise between distance covered and mounting fatigue, for both crew and boat; and fatigue can snowball fast.
one prefers to give a wide berth to similar phenomena when they are on an oceanic scale.
it is all the same, since we are at sea in our boats.
there is a lot to feel in the waters of a great cape. And that takes all the time in the world. So one forgets oneself, one forgets everything, seeing only the play of the boat with the sea, the play of the sea around the boat, leaving aside everything not essential to that game in the immediate present. One has to be careful though, not to go further than necessary to the depths of the game. And that is the hard part . . . not going too far.
