What a difference a day makes

Finally on 27 May we have arrived in Panama after far too long motoring. Our race finished on 17 May and since then we have been motoring sometimes motor sailing and sometimes towing or being towed to save on fuel.  Not quite what we expected, but such is life – perhaps best to expect the unexpected!  Our Canal transit is on 30th and our race up to New York starts of 2 June.

Reflecting on our race…  after being in the lead for days we saw all our hard work frustrated by several days of ghosting around in light and fluky winds. Futile efforts to find zephyrs of breeze, avoid adverse current and have the most appropriate sails up were all in vain.

Bizarre to find we were all bunched up and together in what turned out to be a lottery. We couldn’t help but reflect that if the race had been called at the first finish gate it would have been more representative of the overall race. We weren’t alone in the topsy turvey mayhem. I reflected on how we all started together and almost finished together, then perhaps not obviously related but such is the topsy turvey nature of a tired mind…I was reminded that we sometimes say… ‘we come into this world with nothing and we go out with nothing.’

Whilst this might be true in a concrete sense in a more subtle sense this is far from the case.

It is surely about the journey and the traces and tracks that we leave on ourselves, others and our environment.  I have been touched and inspired by many and even in this simplest sense perhaps their evolutionary influence runs through and with me and beyond. Ripples extending.

I speak with Sunrise, one of our Chinese ambassadors who writes exquisitely beautiful blogs for our crew diaries. He acknowledges and appreciates my encouragement. He wants to write poetry and I suggest he experiments and is not constrained by any conventional understanding of what poetry is or is not.

As we started our motor further south the seas were glassy with flying fish creating delightful tiny tracks on the surface of the ocean, the occasional small clouds reflected in what could be a mirror, punctuated with solitary turtles drifting apparently aimlessly by. Each day seems to bring an increase in temperature and humidity, somewhat sapping our energy. The expansive cloud and sea-scapes infinitely layered, dynamic and quite beautiful.

Our track took us down the surprisingly long length of Mexican coast line and past Guatemala – sadly we cannot pause to explore. Instead we had time to pause and reflect on our own journeys – and for sure any internal exploration of what is happening to us, in ourselves, is so much more challenging than any external adventure.