After 23 days the sun skimmed the water in a golden blue light. I harnessed up and left the boat diving into the big blue yesterday. Free from the boat at last, I doned my mask and stared in absolute awe at a bottomless clear blue. Nothing, just blue. Nothing but everything! Life, water, purity indescribable. This life-giving water, evaporating to shed its weary load on high mountains thousands of kilometers away, the streams to rivers coming back to their birth place. And I am in it, far far away from land, I am truly surrounded my magic as I dive as far as my breath will allow. I wish I could suck her in, breathe her, be one.
I scraped the hull clean of new barnacles and immediately had multi colored fish surround me from nowhere. They were not afraid and swam right up to my mask as if to ask ‘what is this strange new thing?’ I am in awe again after much fatigue, blisters and a cracked rib. Nature has restored my Soul yet again.
Until now we have had 3 days of intermittent sunshine. These are marine layers stretching for hundreds if kms and are not good for moral! Apart from sense of humour failure, it is difficult to keep our batteries charged as the solar panels need lots of sun. As a result, we restrict ourselves to 4 liters of water a day. This is just sufficient for coffee, ‘boil-in-the-bag’ freeze-dried dehydrated rations, drinking and washing water. As we move more westerly on a 300 degree heading we anticipate easterly winds driving us towards Rio! We will continue in a North Westerly direction until approximately 19 degrees latitude before moving West. This should be around the 4th March, Wayne Robertson’s 51st birthday.
Our AC / DC inverter, after trying to fix it, has finally blown a circuit board! We have McGivere’d some chargers so are still able to charge Orms camera batteries and the Iridium emergency sat phone. Thus far, we are minus one rowing seat, therefore only one of us can row at a time, which we do pretty much 24/7 for 2 hrs each.
We have also lost our spare dagger board, our plastic hand-held bilge pump, our two spare drogue anchors (both snapped in big seas).
We make food, eat and catch up together in the cabin. On a positive note, our rationed food is really good and tasty! Apart from high kilocals (800 per serving per person) they really are great to eat and, resultantly, we relish our meal times! It is a brand called Expedition Foods and seriously beats the crap I ate on my South Pole expedition! When it says chicken tikka or beef and vegetables, it really tastes like it! On reaching certain milestones, or getting safely out of a severe storm beating, we reward ourselves with ‘comfort food’ like a piece of chocolate, jelly babies or sour sweets!
Nigel and Debra King from XL Travel Head Office Thank you again for all the food you bought us! Reminded me again the power of team. Will never forget all the help.
I have only seen the majestic heavens three times in 23 days as this cloud canopy seems to permanently hover over us. It is supposed to clear in the next 5 days…I really hope so!
On we go, purpose-driven and passionate as ever to create a better future for all species! #DOTChallenge
In the photo - A rare day of seeing the sun.
PLEASE get on the free DOT Challenge App and pull with us to make a difference to our only home. Also, please ‘like’ and ‘share’ the Do One Thing FB page.
Our website at www.dotchallenge.org and help us to make all this to happen: https://bit.ly/DOTChallenge
To learn more about the DOT Foundation - www.thedotfoundation.org
#OudeMolenCapeBrandy #REMAXSA #maverickscapetown #LeopardTV#LoveShimmy
#MyPlanet #PoweredByASEA #xltravelnumberone
#xltravelbeyondtheordinary #NandosSouthAfrica #ishootwithorms#iprintwithorms