It was four in the morning, and I was lurched over the basin in the head. I had just barely made it here from my bunk, stumbling and falling, as the boat was heeled at 30 degrees, and gravity seemed to be pulling at me from every direction except the from the floor beneath my feet, where it belonged. I had now come to the conclusion that my body did not find this angle, combined with the steady rocking of the boat through the waves, altogether agreeable. The head (boat-speak for bathroom) is the last place to be when you’re feeling seasick – it’s small, poorly ventilated and more prone to rocking than the rest of the boat. I needed to get on deck. Not just for the salvation of fresh air, but also to start my first four-hour watch shift. I went over the steps in my head that were between me and my goal: (1) wash my face; (2) stand up; (3) stumble the few paces back to my bunk where my life jacket (or the politically correct “personal flotation device”) lay waiting; (4) get on deck.
That first night was a long one. It is now day five of our journey, and thankfully conditions have calmed down significantly. Too much so, in fact. We haven’t had much of a breeze for more than a day and have had to use the engine in order to continue on our course. What struck me then, and has stuck with me since, is the importance of the immediacy of my surroundings. This was a strange concept for me to accept. Key West lay behind, and there was no turning back. Bermuda was, and remains, somewhere off in the distance. I found myself in a place where few ships sail, no planes fly, and progress is measured in days. I cannot trust that the wind will blow the same tomorrow as it did today, as it would shift 180 degrees or disappear completely without much notice. I cannot trust that the instrument panel in front of the helm will work tomorrow, as it appears to be adversely affected by lightning strikes. Here, I follow each movement of the ship that appears in the distance with much excitement, and I greet every seabird like a long lost friend. It didn’t matter how I would make it to Bermuda, what would happen tomorrow, or even how I would survive those first four hours. What mattered was those four steps.
Grasping this allowed me to embrace the endless horizon around me and accept the things that I might normally find peculiar: that water does glow when the moon has set; that sometimes, stars do fall out of the sky; and that some fish can in fact fly.
-Ruan du Plessis, May 6, 2014
