Good morning. I’m sailing today from Palermo, Sicily bound for some port on Sardinia’s South Coast. It’s about 220 miles of sailing and should take me about 3 days given the weather. It looks mild…probably too mild. While my overall direction of sailing is west-northwest, I’m not sure if I’ll initially stay south to try to catch some more predicted wind, or work north where the current appears to be favorable.
Zooming out for a moment. Last night was a sleepless night given the anticipation of sailing and, more to the fore, what I posted yesterday. So, being awake early I spent some time sketching out my anticipated overall sailing itinerary for the rest of the year (and maybe into early next year). I also wanted to layout some of the options that I have (specifically visiting the Madeira Islands before the Canaries and Cape Verde Islands after). I’m sure the drawing and table is cryptic to anyone but Rhett or me who have been living this, but the bottom line is that there is a lot of sailing and a lot of coordination. It’s a little daunting and reminds me of the spring of 2022 and being several days out of Bermuda bound for the Azores and making the mistake of zooming out on Hazel’s chartplotter and seeing just how big the North Atlantic Ocean is and how little of it I had covered. While the bird’s eye view (perhaps satellite view?) is helpful, “one day at a time” is all that really counts. One piece of good news is that as I work eastward, and particularly get out of the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic, I’m confident the winds will be fair, stronger, and more consistent which should help our average speed considerably.
On the above image, point A to B in the upper right corner is my upcoming sail and I’ll try to make daily micro-blog updates on the tracker of our home page. Thanks for following along.
So much for the hard technicalities of navigation and on to the soft side.
As I say this, I’m disoriented as it feels like hard is soft and soft is hard. It’s like Macbeth’s witches said: “Fair is foul and foul is fair.” While I’m confident I’ll figure out the hard technicalities and—at the end of day—I’ll either stay south or go north as I work my way to Sardinia, the soft side is vexing.
Fair is foul and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.
Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, Scene I
If you’re the reader of the blog who clicks-through emails you get from me via hjsailing to the online version of the blog post, you may have noticed that I retracted yesterday’s post. If you just read posts directly from the email you receive and you haven’t yet read yesterday’s post, do me a favor and don’t—just delete it.
This has been a challenging time for me emotionally. Sailing solo, especially in mild conditions, gives me more time than I probably should have to over-think things. It’s lonely, there’s no two ways about it. “Solitude” is a nice euphemism, but “lonely” is more accurate. Adding on to the above soft-hard and fair-foul irony, if conditions were really harrowing I could just focus on the task at hand and block out everything else, but I haven’t had a lot of that lately.
I could just blame my actions on the month of August and all that’s happened during previous Augusts—but that would be the easy way out.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is that this middle path that I’m seeking, somewhere between Scylla and Charybdis, is an affirmation to a fulfilling life together with Rhett, to family and being there for family when they need me, and to balancing home and adventure. Yesterday’s post was intended to introduce my mind’s searching for the path and I was excited to build on the theme in the future posts. However, my half-baked thoughts did not communicate well and it hurt and I’m sorry.
I know this doesn’t make up for everything and maybe it doesn’t make up for anything, but I’m trying.
I’m sorry, I love you. Fair winds and following seas.
