One month in the Ocean
Messages from Fedor Konyukhov via Iridium Go:
“One month on the route. It feels like there’s nothing in the world other than the ocean and my boat. Grey ocean and grey sky. Good thing that the boat’s color is orange, offering at least some visual contrast. In the ocean you start to miss colors, on land we see a change of colors every minute: the facades of buildings, the greenery of trees, in any home interior we will find the whole color scheme. In the ocean, if there is no sun, and here it’s hidden 80% of the time, grey color dominates. You also don’t see vertical lines, only the horizon.
One month in the ocean, and you begin to disconnect from civilization. Everything happening on land is perceived as in another world. Yes, there is a satellite phone, but it is only a means of exchanging information, the phone doesn’t provide the same emotions as face-to-face communication. It’s like listening to the radio — you get the information, but not the emotions.
What’s left? You’re left alone with yourself and your thoughts. When I first sailed around the world on the “Karaana” yacht in 1990-1991on the Sydney – Sydney route (222 days), I was 40 years old, and loneliness was so overwhelming, those two hundred days lasted like two years. But the older I get, the easier solitude becomes. Solitude is an opportunity to draw intermediate results, sort out the events, and reflect on everything that has happened over the past 5 years, while I haven’t been on a major expedition.
Every day, I thank God for allowing me to live another day in the Ocean, and I ask for His blessing for a new day. Nothing here is guaranteed. You don’t know how the day will unfold or how the night will end. The sun is coming out (you can’t see it, but there is a glow), and you wonder, what awaits me today?
I am currently in an area as far away from all continents as possible, an area equidistant between South America, Africa and Antarctica. Every day I move farther from South America and get closer to the African sector.
A centimeter of composite hull of the boat separates me from the cold waters of the Atlantic. I lie in the cabin and listen to the water rushing along the hull, thousands of waves every day. I’m lying alone with my thoughts. Thinking about my life, analyzing my actions.
The nights are dark now, dense clouds with no moon. When you go out on the deck at night and turn off the navigation devices and lights, you immediately find yourself in thick darkness. My senses of smell and hearing are heightened to the limit, as I listen to the breathing of the ocean. There is no smell out here… There is a smell on the coast — seaweed, shells and the ocean wildlife on the shore gives us the familiar scent of the sea, but there is no smell in the open ocean.
I look at the distance covered and feel that the miles left astern are the past that cannot be returned. In the city, you don’t mark the day you’ve lived and its irretrievability, but in the ocean, you constantly see your route on the map, with marks showing where you were yesterday and the day before. Inevitably, you recall what happened at those coordinates, what events took place there, and what the weather was like. It allows you to appreciate the moment you’ve lived here and now.
Dolphins swam up – it’s a joy, a reminder that there is life in the ocean. A new moon appeared in the sky — it’s a joy, each night will get brighter in the ocean, as the moon is growing.
At around 20 degrees west longitude lies the midpoint of the South Atlantic Ocean, if we take the borders from Cape Horn to the Cape of Good Hope. That marks half way across the Atlantic. I set myself a goal to reach these coordinates by January 5th, completing half of the Atlantic crossing, but I’m still behind schedule (today the boat is at 27 degrees west longitude). It’s not critical, but some temporary guidelines are needed, they discipline and motivate: the Greenwich Meridian, the longitude of the Cape of Good Hope, the transition from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. These are important psychological milestones.”
AKROS position :
47’45 South
27’50 West
The route map is here.