Day 24

26 September, 2003

Awake to a stormy and windy sea, but still surrounded by fishing boats. We pass up the Strait of Taiwan, technically leaving the tropics behind (the tropics are defined by Cancer and Capricorn). I read and write as we are beset by both fishing boats and storms. The storms are easy for us (although having such a strong headwind doesn’t help) and gives me admiration for those bobbing Chinese. We also have less then optimal depth beneath our keel for speed. If it gets to less then seventy-five fathoms (450 feet) there is not enough water to be pulled by the propellor, so it starts pulling the ship down in the water, slowing the ship a few percent.

Before bed, I go outside and hide in a protected area listening to the howl of the wind and smelling the crashing and wild sea. I absolutely adore the open ocean, and will have to return regularly. Whether the faceful of negative ions, or the symbolism of water=female, I don’t care, I just like it. We now have a near full load with sealed (meaning loaded) containers. The only gaps I suppose are to be filled in during our relatively quick stops in Japan. When the wind blows from the right direction, it whistles loud clear tunes through the containers. The notes, for musicians would be in ascending order B flat, C then G. (5,6,3). Like the first three notes to the intro to Ma Cherie Amour (as performed by Stevie Wonder, although I have a strange memory that the original was in four or five flats). The notes go up and down in different rhythms and stresses, wonderfully tipping between an inverted minor relationship of the B flat and G, and the more ambiguous fifth, C and G.

Once, in 1971, as I was running down Mount Grosglockner in Austria (not an easy feat), I whistled Ma Cherie Amour most of the way. I was trying to get back down to my hotel in the town of Kals, before a huge storm hit. I saw it coming as I approached the summit of the mountain, a big black front was bearing down over the alps from the northwest. I just made it to the applause of an unexpected audience of other guests that had been watching me from the balcony of the hotel, and probably making bets on the crazy Yank.

To bed, the clocks go ahead an hour, my tossing and turning being done for me by the ship.

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