Between Knysna and Durban

We are now on our way to Durban, there are only 170 nm left. We may arrive there tomorrow before sunset if we can pick up some speed but on this trip so far we’ve been motoring, there is barely any wind.

We try to stay close to the shore to reduce the adverse current, we are within half a mile from the land on an average. We’ve seen several shipwrecks on the rocks, mysteriously telling their stories through the fog.

This weather reminds me of Nova Scotia. As I stood on my watch in the rain looking out from under the beak of my cap that framed everything, I imagined this journey as a movie. I watched the genets with fascination. I find them both elegant with their long white bodies and black wing tips and tails and funny with their yellow heads as if they had been fishing in split pea soup. I can’t keep myself from smiling when I see them. Then, in my movie under my cap and in the fog, a mother humpback whale swam by our boat with her calf. They were only two boat lengths away and surely as big as our boat. They gently surfaced and dove again. They reminded me of my mother and myself as a little girl.

As sailing feels timeless and days melt into one another, motoring feels like riding the train and counting the miles, looking at the villages through the windows. Non-numerical vs. numerical, floating in timelessness vs. being aware of the constant movement, just being vs. traveling.

I look forward to watching the sun rise in Durban on Wednesday morning. We will be in a new port again; we are like snails, carrying our house with us… or I should correct myself and say that our house carries us. Most things are different in this movie… and even the four of us onboard are filming this journey from a different perspective. This is just mine. I like watching the birds fly above the ocean.