Welcome to Bori’s blog!

As you can tell, I am sailing aboard Schooner Maggie B to Brazil with five other intrepid souls from all around the world. I was one of the lucky first sailors to travel from Nova Scotia, back in January. We have come a very long way, and have many more miles to go.

En route to Brazil, here is what I am thinking:

These are the first lines I am able to write since we left Barbados. Down below in the saloon under a little night light, keeping my leg wrapped around the legs of the table so I don’t roll off the seat, I try to hold myself up to write. It is almost midnight, a night of full moon it seems and I can’t sleep. We are on the Atlantic, sailing between Latin America and Africa, East/Southeast towards the inter-tropical convergence zone where winds from the northern and southern hemisphere meet. We will cross the equator soon. Now, we are sailing in the dark only with the light of the moon. Fish accidentally end up jumping on deck. We try to save them, we throw them back so they can continue their journey.

We continue ours. We squeeze lime juice into our bowls of rice and truly appreciate the concentrated memory of the land. Just like a drop of lime juice or a grain of sand dried onto our deck after the rain - sand maybe from the deserts of Africa - we also become concentrated, boiled down to our essence. So far from everything the truth comes to the surface. Notions like “love”, “family”, a “purpose in life”… take on a different, somehow more real meaning. It is as simple as having to go away to know where home is or being away from people we love to know what we truly feel. Now, we listen. We travel through the water towards ourselves.

Location: 9° 25.0 N, 54° 09.0 W
Saturday 12:00, 06.10.2006

The Schooner Maggie B’s noon position on 10 June was 9° 25.0 N 54° 09.0 W, or about 420 NM East of Trinidad and 290 NM North of Cayenne, French Guyana.

Our wind has favored us some by backing to about 080 degrees and lightening to 15-18 knots. Seas are still confused and the Maggie B still, from time to time, launches herself off of a big one to flop like a breeching humpback. Possibly she is trying to break off the last of the algae from Barbados.

We are now on a course of about 110 degrees, which should allow us to make our doldrums turn point of 5N/28W. But that is a ways away. We have gone about 420 NM and Natal is about 1420 NM, as the crow (Shearwater?) flies.

With this course, we will be able to head off the coast gradually. We have about 1/2 knot of adverse current. We are making 5.5 to 6 knots through the water but only 5 to 5.5 over the ground. The further off the coast, the less current.

We can tell that we are downstream from the Amazon because we are already seeing some pieces of trees float by. We are about 650 miles from its mouth.

We saw one small fishing boat rather close last night. 200 miles off the coast! We sail with our LED decklights on which give a moonglow to the sails. The night watch had spotted a white light ahead, and as we closed on it, they put on a red light above, signifying “fishing at night.” A container ship passed on a reciprocal course only two miles away and we just had a low flying four engine plane check us out. I wonder who it was.

The crew has all recovered and there is talk of a chicken stew this afternoon. Yum!

All is well.