Saint Helena to Fernando de Noronha - Day 6 1300UTC
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Wed 22 Mar 2023 13:35
11:59.74S 14:6.16W COG 310T SOG 5.5+kts Wind SSE F4 Hardly a cloud in the sky today - just a few Cumulus inconsequentialis (I made the inconsequential bit up, forgetting what the proper term is). The sun is blazing, wind steady. Proper passage making. The Duogen ran smoothly overnight. I discovered yesterday that the steel tube for the shaft bearing could be screwed down into place. The plastic collar also fell into place and I couldn’t get it out again to epoxy it. It did fall out overnight when the pole was inverted and has now been epoxied. Hopefully there will be an email from Peter advising whether the shaft should revolve within the tube or whether they revolve together because when I screwed the tube into place it had gripped the shaft. I’ll replace the whole bearing along with the plastic yaw arm. Annie and I are both anxiously waiting to be back in Blighty and resuming “normal” life. Sailing around the world has been a truly wonderful experience and we will always have that perspective. Just at the moment, however, we are focused on getting home in one piece as quickly as possible which means three months of more or less continuous sailing. Three months that at times will seem interminable but in the context of the whole trip will pass very quickly. Therein lies our current dilemma. Neither of us is getting any younger and with 70th birthdays fast approaching life is zooming by. We think often about how many active years we may have left and what we would like to do with them. In some ways this is pointless speculation but it brings home the fact that three months at our time of life seems a bigger chunk of our remaining existence than it would have done earlier in our lives. On watch at three in the morning one has time to ponder these things. The human condition of self awareness is both a blessing and a curse. Why are we here? What is the point? We have invented religion to try and provide answers and address the ever present reality of our finite mortality but I actually find it a comfort to know that Shakespeare and Darwin give us the best perspective. Shakespeare gives us an understanding of what it means to be human and Darwin explains how this has come about. Evolution has brought us from life-forming chemical reactions to sentient beings able to cogitate about their existence. The only “point” of our existence is, within our evolutionary context, to pass on our genes to the next generation as articulated by Richard Dawkins in “The Selfish Gene”. I sometimes wonder about why it is that I am living and experiencing my life now. Why wasn’t I alive at some point in the past or the future? This is a question that could have been asked by every creature that has ever lived, had it been capable of doing so. The fact that it is me at this moment in time is because I am the product of the biological processes that have given rise to me and my consciousness. I am unique, a one off never to be repeated phenomena, as we all are - you, me and every living creature that has or will ever live. This is a “miracle” far greater than anything dreamed up in some religious folk tale. And the fact that I am a human being that can think about and experience these things is a gift beyond comprehension. This is why I am drawn to philosophies such as Stoicism that focus upon making the most of our circumstances, of having the best possible lived experience and concentrating upon those fundamentals that are most relevant to achieving this. My particular solace lies in knowing that I have a lived experience that will endure. I won’t be around to articulate it but I have experienced it and that will forever be the case and for that I will be eternally grateful. Of course there are distractions. We live within complex social structures that require coordination through politics, rules, regulations and so forth that lead to very different circumstances for individuals. Some are dealt better circumstances than others. This is why I believe we all have a duty towards those in less fortunate circumstances and why we should be less tolerant towards those that seek to constrain the lives of others. The fact that I can choose how I spend my time and have the option to spend three months of it at sea is a blessing that not many have. Being reminded of this while bobbing across oceans may not be such a bad thing. |