Noon Position: 34 33.0 S 053 49.5 W
Course: Southwest, Speed: 5.5 knots
Wind: North nor’ east F4 - moderate breeze
Weather: Sunny, warm
Day’s Run: 100 nm

Land, Uruguay to be precise, just off Cabo Polonio to be a little more precise.

80 miles to go, the wind is light which with the Rio de le Plata’s reputation for some nasty winds - the Sudestadas and the Pampero - is fine by me. If the breeze holds we will be in Piriapolis sometime tomorrow morning.

Ships and fishing boats kept me occupied last night and I expect tonight will be the same, otherwise an uneventful 24 hours. The most significant event to report is that I finished “War and Peace” this morning. Yahoo! A strange book, part novel, part history, and part philosophy. I think Tolstoy’s major point is that free will is an illusion - no argument from me. His closing lines compare our pre-Copernican perception of reality with an historiography which includes the notion of free will:

“In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.”

Thus ends page 1455, I suspect he could have drawn this conclusion in a slightly more concise manner, but then it wouldn‘t be “War and Peace“.

Meanwhile the low sandy coast and shallow green waters of Uruguay sails by.

All is well.

Bob Cat:

Ah, delightful! Light breeze, sun shining, an ever so gentle little roll. Now this is feline cruising. I enjoyed a little bit of sun in the cockpit this morning, now as it warms up back to the quarter berth. More of the same please . . . Zzzzzzz.