This morning I was rudely awakened at a ridiculous hour to the sound of alarm bells - well, an alarm buzzer at least. Deciding it might be worth finding out what it was, I reluctantly swung myself round and switched on the lights. I was just over two miles from Alaska, apparently. It must have been a long night!
As it turned out, this was not the state that should be many thousands of miles away, not to mention the other side of a fairly sizeable land mass, but rather a ship. Sticking my head out the door, I saw three lights, all quite a long way apart - it was a fairly big ship! Thankfully, the buzzing instrument also told me that Alaska was not heading towards me and was simply passing by; why it couldn’t have worked this out for itself and left me to sleep, I’m not entirely sure.
The ocean has seemed absolutely huge today; not in a scary way, more of an awe-inspiring magnificence. Rather than the choppy waves I’ve been struggling with for the last few days, today I faced a seascape filled with massive rolling hills. Needless to say, they were not going the right way.
Luckily, Pete deals with this kind of unhelpfulness a lot better. After a bit of sulk in the morning (I think one a week is probably allowed), I got him pointing in the direction. Not only was I exceeding the 1 knot I’d been struggling to achieve yesterday, but I even got over 3 knots at times! This may seem like slow progress - it is - but compared to the last couple of days, this was a big step forward. I expect that my progress for the last 24 hours will still look fairly disappointing, but when you consider that every single one of those miles in the right direction has come in the past 10 hours, and all against the weather, I’m actually fairly satisfied with today.
The close encounter with another ship this morning was not the first I’ve experienced. In the first few weeks of the crossing, I listened to music on headphones while rowing a few times. I found out this was a bad mistake in several ways. The first indicator was when I was rowing along, quietly enjoying the sun and the music without a care in the world. As one of the songs came to an end, I heard a bit of activity on the VHF radio. Thinking I should have a listen, I put the oars down and unstrapped my feet. As I clambered to the cabin, I happened to take a quick glance to my left; there, plain to see, was a ship quietly sailing alongside me. Oops!
The second occasion that resulted in the headphones being put to sleep was rather more uncomfortable. Daydreaming is a skill that seems to come in very handy. On a calm day, you can make the hours seem like, well, marginally less than an hour. On the day in question, music was my escape, specifically Guns & Roses. It probably helps if you know the song, but Welcome to the Jungle came on. As it began, the head started nodding. Then came a bit of side to side head movement. As the big build-up came, my whole body started to get involved.
Exactly what happened next, I’m not entirely sure. It may have been an unsighted rogue wave. Sadly, I have to admit that I expect it was probably caused by the breakout of some inadvertent, and highly inappropriate, air-drumming. Regardless of the cause, I found myself disassociated from my seat, oars flung into the air, and my bum colliding with the rather solid cross bar under the slide.
Since then, I’ve been a little more careful with both my music and my day-dreaming. I don’t fancy another rock and roll bruise!
