Land Ahoy! Well not quite yet but we are getting close. I can feel it, and like me, you notice that the crew is getting excited, too. After this long ocean voyage, working hard trawling the ocean for plastic, spotting plastic with the ocean clean up app, “New sighting -> Plastic -> 1 piece -> Fragment -> 1-10 cm -> Please write a comment: There is too much plastic!!,” and tough day and night watches, it is time again for some solid ground underneath our feet and a fresh cold drink in our hands. We deserve it!
Back on deck for my last watch, enjoying another dreamy and, for now, last ocean sunset. We can cross off another exciting Atlantic day from our list.
While charging for land like Vikings, having a big red and white spinnaker on the bow of the boat, we come to enjoy some of the marine life, the rising sea mountains, and closing coastline supports. Besides the overdose of Portuguese man of wars that now float around us as a big minefield, protecting the Portuguese waters, we started to spot some other more magical sea creatures.
First a little turtle popped out of the water to come and say hello to us. As quick as it came, it disappeared again, fading away in the infinite mass of ocean water, making you wonder how such a little creature is able to survive here all by himself.
Then, after another delicious lunch, it got really exciting. Our first whale! And from really close! He was just enjoying a nice siesta at the surface when we passed by. Drifting about and splashing around, giving us a water fountain show using his blowhole. Amazing to experience, and everybody really enjoyed it, to finally see this mythical animal in real life. Still, I couldn’t help it to think that even a whale, such a great animal, even looked small in this blue water mass.
After a great day of sailing and our last supper of our haute cuisine, we got – as a final touch – a little bird playing around in the last lights of the sunset. Now the sun made place again for the twilight that will slowly take us to our last ocean night with stars above us, leading the way, and lights underneath us in the water, carrying the boat back to land to Horta, Azores, Portugal.
Back from the unknown we call the ocean
Back from the unknown where our spirits are free
Back from where nature is in control and always in motion
Back to our daily life, back to reality
Muito obrigado a todos. It was great!
– Tim de Rooij, The Ocean Cleanup Gyre Expedition, Bermuda to Azores, July 12, 2015