Day 70. 6,000 kilometres travelled

Third day of stormy weather in the Southern Ocean.  Since the transition to the Chilean sector, the weather has not been favourable to me.  This storm is the most difficult and exhausting from the day of the start, and it would not abate.  Each new storm will be more powerful than the previous one, as autumn approaches.  The waves are huge, the distance between the waves is half a kilometre (Note: the Windy.com site shows average wave heights of 6 meters in the area where the rowing boat “AKROS” is currently located).  Powerful foamy wave crests pass over the boat.

It is not possible to cook anything, I just drink water, the main storage of water is now empty, I take water from the reserve storage.  The main storage are consumable canisters, which I fill with water from the desalination unit, but I couldn’t turn it on due to bad weather for the last week.  When the boat is thrown from side to side, there is a danger of snagging air into the desalination unit, a heeling is such that the water intake under the bottom of the boat is often in the air.  If you take air in the desalination unit, you will have to disassemble it and expel the air, and this is not an easy exercise, and this can be done only in good weather, which I have not observed for a very long time and it is not clear when it will come.

But that is OK, with God’s help, the boat and I will live through it this time as well.  We are now united with her, I feel any change in the movement of the boat, any knock or sound on the hull have a meaning to me.  I can’t even imagine how I would step on hard ground, where nothing swings, where I don’t have to bump up my arms and legs against the bulkheads, I don’t have to balance the boat with my weight.  70 days on board a rowing boat in the Southern Ocean is a seriously long time, and it begins to seem like there is no other world.

Cape Horn is 2222 miles away.

Fedor Konyukhov

48’20 South

128’00 West