A Crossing the Pacific Story

We are leaving La Paz, cargo full of artisan pitas, Baja Wine and chipotle. A nice strong wind spits us out of the Sea of Cortez, we are flying under a dramatic sunset. One morning, I emerge from a troubled sleep to find a troubled skipper; opening the hatch, I find Rekka in a partially submerged cockpit knee deep in an uninvited sea. 

Our auto-pilot dies, gone are the days of pressing "play" and hiding from the weather.

Another day, we run out of non-root non-onions fresh vegetables, we eat the last of our tasty food. Soon, I celebrate my birthday, with watermelon from the market. We are now crossing the equator, and open a bottle of porto given to us by our friends on SV Essencia. We have left the tradewinds for the squalls of the doldrums. 

I spend my night shifts reading, I read more than 25 books this month. Every morning, we host the "Pino Bookclub", in which we discuss our nightly readings and enjoy an expresso. There are flying fish everywhere around us, some land on Pino. We toss them back into the ocean.

We learnt to read the clouds, and recognize the constellations. Weeks into adventure and the sunsets have not lost their charm and humbling intensities. As we cross timezones, we reajust our shifts and it shapes our waking hours. Our wind meter dies.

I manage to enjoy my musings of code, writing and composition - one hour a time, each day. We discuss games and books and projects we would love to do. We talk about building a small house to apply our off-grid knowledge. We eat canned food everyday but seem to always find creative new ways of using spices. 

We catch water from the storms, we are surprised of the ease with which we handle ourselves in them. We are anxious to arrive, to walk again and eat fruits. We are hoping that our friends at sea are doing as well as us, and look forward to meet with them again at the Pacific Islands. We exchange emails.

A killer whale emerges next to us, as if to greet us. Ahead, we see the silhouette of the islands. A storm creeps over us, as if to greet us. We spend our last night heaving-to and waiting for the winds to die. 

We motor into the bay, it's absolutely gorgeous. We are humming the Jurassic Park theme song.

We are now working on our next video that shows all that I have told. 

Devine & Rekka 

List of books we read during the crossing:

Borges                A Universal History of Infamy
Carroll                Alice's adventures in Wonderland
Mark Twain     Collected Short Stories
Nietzsche         Ecce Homo
Abbott               Flatland
Nock                   Fourteen: A Daughter’s Memoir
Greger               How Not To Die
Moran                How To Be a Woman
K. Dick               I hope I shall arrive soon
Borges               In Praise of Darkness
Eagleman         Incognito
Soseki                Kokoro
Kropotkine     La conquete du pain
Kafka                  Letter to My Father
Simon                 North To The Night
Invisible            A nos amis
Ariely                 Predictably Irrational
Pardey               Self-Sufficient Sailor
Pardey               Seraffyn's Oriental Adventure
Roach                 Stiff
Coelho               The Alchemist
Borges               The Aleph & Other Stories
Sun Wu              The Art of War
Campbell          The China Study
K. Dick                The Man in the High Castle
Kafka                   The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Eco                        Travels in Hyperreality
Thoreau             Walden