Caroline writes:

And yet the heart’s desires

Incite me now that I myself should go

On towering seas, among the salt waves’ play;

And constantly the heartfelt wishes urge

The spirit to venture, that I should go forth

To see the lands of strangers far away

No, I’m not a great poet - this is part of Hamer’s interpretation of ‘The Seafarer’ which is an Anglo-Saxon poem written in the year 904.  However, it touches on the ambivalence I feel about my trip across the Atlantic.  I so love exploring new places by sea and get really excited by the thought of visiting far-away lands and it is this promise that is the lure: it is what persuades me that it quite rationale to spend days at sea with rarely another vessel to be seen.  I shall reserve judgement on ocean sailing until I have got to the States, but so far it’s given me joy and a little sadness.

True to form I was seasick at the start of the voyage, but managed to stand my watches. Fortunately, before setting off I had prepared some meals – chicken and bean soup, Bolognese, beef stew, cauliflower cheese, fruit salad, date and nut chews, with other reserves in the freezer. I’m a bit like my Mother in that respect – I don’t like the thought of people going hungry.

After a frustrating start to the journey, with winds on the nose and then going very light, we have picked up the northerly winds from a low just to the south of us and are whizzing along at between eight and ten knots, even though we are sailing cautiously with reefed main and genoa. (John being a sensible skipper needs to temper my enthusiasm in wanting to go flat out – although we have just done 200 miles in the last 24 hours).  We have white puffy clouds and blue sea.  Last night the sky was just saturated with stars – a couple so bright and so low that for a second I thought they were stern lights. Although cold, I had to stay outside (or ‘on deck’ as you would say on a monohull) just because it’s such a rare treat to see shooting stars whizzing across the sky – fantastic!

A couple of days ago an exhausted and bedraggled swift arrived in great need of some respite – how do such tiny creatures ever manage to fly such huge distances? I think it must have got blown off course and was trying to battle against really strong headwinds.  It came in to the cabin for a while, but I was amazed that when I was sitting outside it came and sat right beside me and then hopped up on my lap.  It was cold and raining at the time, so I protectively wrapped my jacket around my knees and very soon the bird was asleep.  When I came off watch I nestled him in to my thermal jacket, but poor thing was just too exhausted to make it through the night: a great sadness, but I felt very privileged to be able to give him some comfort at least.