Tuesday, June 19

---

Our best day yet! Leaving San Luis Obispo, we decided to play it by ear in terms of sailing all day and through the night, or stopping off in Monterey after about 90 miles, which would still be a very long day. As things turned out, we all felt really good (Peter finally put on the patch last night and said today, “Wow, I feel so much better!” Duh.) and the weather was perfect, so we decided to keep going!

We saw an amazing thing today, too. A whale was slapping his big old tail on the surface of the water over and over and over. He must’ve done this for over thirty minutes, because we saw him start it off in the distance, and actually got quite close (not on purpose - we were staying the course) and even passed him/her while the flapping was going on. I have about fifty pictures of the same thing because he did this for so long. We’ve been wondering if this flapping thing is a message. Like, get the hell out of my playground, or something like that. They’re such magnificent and huge, lumbering beasts.

I’d been pretty nervous about sailing through the night. It’s not like driving a car, where you can turn on the brights and see what’s in front of you. The best you can do on the ocean in the dark is see the white of the breaking waves. And frankly, if the waves are breaking, you’re too close to shore, so that’s not going to be much help. My nervousness wasn’t eased at all by the fact that I wouldn’t actually be taking a watch during the night sail; Peter and Harry would trade three-hour shifts and I’d get a break given my (arduous) efforts in the galley.

I’ve read stories and heard accounts like this: a guy and his wife are cruising across the ocean and taking turns being on watch. When the guy wakes up one morning, he notices he’s slept way past the time when he should be on watch, and wonders why his wife didn’t wake him. When he goes up to the cockpit, SHE’S NOT THERE. He turned the boat around and sailed back for hours, hoping to find her but never did.

Ok, so there’s a story to roll around in your head while you’re being tossed about in the bunk and your husband is in the cockpit in the dark. Or your friend, Peter, is in the cockpit in the dark.

Harry is Captain Safety, though, and his rule about night watches is mandatory lifejackets and being harnessed to the boat. That way, if they fall out of the cockpit, they’ll just be dragged along behind the boat until the next person comes up on watch. No biggie.

I finished up my last watch at 9 (my watches are from 10-noon and from 7-9pm, until Peter de-boats, at which time my watches will become considerably longer) and it was nearly dark at that time. Also, it had grown very cold. I put together some snacks for Peter and Harry to have available for them during their watches, and went below in hugely rolling seas to try to sleep. How silly. I felt like a ball in a tennis match. I was tossed from side to side to side not at all gently for hours on end. It only got easier when Peter went up to relieve Harry, and I could wedge myself against Harry and roll back and forth slightly less.

Being in the cabin in the dark while we’re powering through the ocean, rolling in the waves, was a surreal experience. Every pitch that moved just a few degrees beyond the last one made me tense up. I even gasped a few times. I didn’t doze or sleep until after three a.m., and then only for an hour or so. Harry and Peter both had similar stretches of sleep, so that at 6am, when I expected Harry to come below to rest and he didn’t, I popped up into the cockpit and they both looked at me a little wildly.

---

Photos

Harry's back!
It's good to have the Captain back in his pants.

Flapping whale.
This guy was incredible. The sound of his tail flapping on the water was thunderous.

Now I'm cold.
Hot. Cold. Hot. Cold. We end up with piles of clothes strewn about the cockpit as we put them on, take them off, put them on again.