I have said that the fastest speed I have seen GANNET make was about 13.7 knots. I was wrong. In rereading the log of the passage from Durban, South Africa, to St. Helena, I found that one night I was awakened by feeling that GANNET was going too fast. She was. Her SOG read 14.1 knots. The tiller pilot couldn’t keep up. I quickly went on deck and reduced sail.
Also in that passage log I read:
The monastery of the sea was beautiful.
Waves as low as the sun. Directly toward the sun was a narrow inverted pyramid of blinding white. Elsewhere millions of constantly changing facets of light, shades of blue, some white crests, near the hull white bubbles and foam. Pristine, untouched natural beauty. I had heard no world news for weeks. Those last two sentences are not unrelated.
I was standing in the companionway, sipping red wine and listening to my requiem playlist. A line from Lucy Kaplansky’s ‘Scorpion’, “I’ll sting you with a taste of my skin.”
Women taste best fresh from the sea.
