The wind is blowing a gale, whistling and howling around our building. Gusts were 46 knots at the nearest recording buoy the last time I checked. And the temperature is 64°F/18°C. All the ice and snow I photographed two days ago vanished overnight.
Our respite from winter will be brief. Temperature Sunday will again be around freezing.
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The storm that nine days ago was briefly thought to be headed for New Zealand still lives. It is now a cyclone named Winston that has meandered around, changed direction, run over Vavau, Tonga, twice, and is now headed toward Fiji as a category 4 that may become a category 5.
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Ryan Finn reports a new best twenty-four hour run in JZERRO of 294 miles, and this with twenty year old sails and in prevent damage mode.
JZERRO is a very impressive boat.
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This journal went online ten years ago this coming August.
This morning I attempted to calculate how many words I have written in it.
Taking three random years, I found that I posted an average of 147 times a year. Checking the word count of eighteen random posts I found an average of 445 words a post. This comes to 65,415 words a year, about the number in an average book. Times ten is 654,150. Adding the 145,000 words in the fifth circumnavigation passage logs and the 34,000 thus far in GANNET passage logs makes a total of 833,150 words. However, I did not post while at sea on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA or GANNET, so subtract 70,000 words or so and call it 750,000.
Whatever the number, it is a lot of words, and far greater than all my other writing combined.
