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October 29
Another good day for rowing, I can hardly believe my good fortune. I am
beginning to see more fish than I had earlier in the journey. Most are
small and tinker about the boat. Late in the morning, I saw a swordfish
the length of a grand piano about 100 yards off leaping out of the water
like a dolphin. It rose four times and then disappeared again into the
deep.
The afternoon was gruesomely hot. In search of a distraction I turned to
my recorded library. As a joke a friend had given me a copy of "For Love
Alone," by Ivana Trump. As a joke, I took it with me and intended a full
report on the merits of the work. I only lasted through about 25 minutes
of beautiful people conspicuously consuming goods, services and one
another, before I dispatched Ivana overboard. (It was the first
non-biodegradable thing I purposely tossed. I'm a tiny bit sorry for that,
but snob that I am, I just didn't want to have her on board any longer.)
I passed the late afternoon with music: listening to Bach (a good family
man, Bach).
The evening brought a few light showers and still more rainbows set off by
the sinking sun.
October 30
The weather seems to be clearing. There is less wind, but the waves are
more confused than they have been for sometime. I'm not sure what this
means. Dane Clark reports that there is nothing special going on. I
cannot convey what a difference it makes to one's psychological well being
to receive regular weather reports. I try to pick up the weather
broadcasts via the short-wave radio, but it is only one day in ten that I
get it with enough clarity to know what to expect. Last summer, I received
no weather reports at all. I made my own observations. When the remnants
of hurricane Bonnie swept through and capsized my boat, I noted in my log
for the day "big storm passed, winds in excess of 45 knots."
Hurricane season is at an end. Winter has begun to settle in over the
Northern Hemisphere and this dismantles nature's machinery for the
production of hurricanes in this part of the Atlantic. Still, I will not
breathe a sigh of relief until I pass the 900-mile mark. (When I am 900
miles from land.) I passed the 1000-mile mark just before sunrise this
morning. Ordinarily this would be a great milestone, but since I was
between 1000 and 900 miles from France last summer when Hurricane Danielle
beat the tar out of me and effectively ended my trip, I am not yet ready to
begin celebrating.
I just saw a bug! "What kind of bug?" you might ask and I would respond,
"a flying bug." It was yellowish brown and shaped like a moth. It was
about two inches long, but never landed on the boat. The little creature
is very far from land, but it is nice to see something novel.
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