Free Maiden Voyage by Tania Aebi Page B

was heeled over at a 30-degree angle. I no longer had to walk on the walls of a house that felt as if it had fallen over on its side. The sails didn’t have to be changed once onthis entire trip other than for little tweaks and adjustments to the course. The wind remained steady and true at about 25 knots from east. For a couple of days the waves swelled and broke over the Monitor into the cockpit. But no matter what happened, I just rejoiced as the taffrail log ticked away the miles. “No more of this nonsense about beating into the wind anymore,” I thought. “Now, I’m just going to zoom my way around the world with the wind at my back.”
    For the first time, my days took on a shape and character. I awoke with the sun, around five-thirty or six. Varuna was heading west and the rising sun in the east shone in through the companionway and right onto my bed. The sun was my alarm clock, and if a pillow over my head permitted me a few extra minutes of sleep, Dinghy would prod me with his nose and begin walking all over me, anxious for breakfast. When the sun rose to about 15 degrees above the horizon, I would take the first sight with the sextant, then calculate and plot it on the chart. The next one was at noon and, in the meantime, I worked around the boat, making repairs, rearranging things, cleaning out the litter box, reading, munching away on crackers or fruit. At noon, after taking the second sight and crossing the lines of position with the earlier one, what I thought was an exact fix could be established. By then the sun was at its zenith and Varuna turned into an oven. During the afternoon, it was too hot to do anything too strenuous other than fitfully read, munch and drink, and throw buckets of water over my head. This simple way of life was broken up by the odd ship wandering over the horizon, or frighteningly nearby, with whose radio operator I would chat over the VHF.
    I was becoming very much at home with myself and content with my monastic lifestyle, knitting or crocheting when the text of my books began to blur. Loneliness was never a problem, although whenever there was a particularly beautiful sight before my eyes, and there were many—a breathtaking sunset, a pod of pilot whales or a herd of cavorting, squealing dolphins playing in Varuna’s bow wave—I wished there were someone to share the moment or to share my enthusiasm when a sun sight worked out. Dinghy was there, but he didn’t get too excited.
    In the evenings, after the sun had made its full arc across the sky, the temperature cooled and I’d pull out my pressure cooker, chop up an onion, potato or cabbage, mix in a can of something and a cube of bouillon and make my meal for the day. This became standard fare and I never tired of it. I fed Dinghy, celebrated the sunset, then curled up in my bed again to read until the Sandman arrived.
    I made my permanent bed on the port bunk with a lee cloth tied by two lines to the rail above on the ceiling stretching the length and forming a sort of cradle that stopped me from falling out as the boat tossed around. I arranged a sleeping bag inside the cradle for maximum comfort and I’d bundle up in this cocoon with Dinghy, as Varuna rocked us to sleep.
    For my stimulation-starved unconscious, sleeping at sea was an adventure of its own. Every time I drifted off, my imagination created a dream world gone wild. Often, I’d awaken, calling out to somebody or reaching up to grab for a roast chicken, an ice cream cone or a fresh salad. After the food dreams, which were the worst, I could never go back to sleep and worked myself up into a state of salivation over the gastronomic mirage. Upon awakening, I would reach up onto the shelf above my head for the flashlight, pull myself out of bed and go outside to check the course and the horizon. Black shadows of clouds cloaked the constellations that were becoming as familiar and reassuring to me as old friends. There