Realizations

Well, I am still alive. I made it through the ordeal that was sailing down from San Quintin to Cabo San Lucas.

I have determined that sailing is not my thing. Sailing out on the bay for a couple hours or even a day is cool with me. I would do that every once in a while. Sailing blindly through the night while huge waves crash over your boat while it is constantly taking on water and your captain has no knowledge or opinion about what to do to fix any problem we get into is certainly not for me. I lost count of the number of things that broke on our boat during our trip. One of which was our outboard engine which is basically a lawnmower engine designed to push around little tiny boats through the water, but this was being used to push a 28 foot Piver Trimeran built in 1964. In the sailing community these boats have a terrible reputation. The designer of the boat, Mr. Piver, basically sold the blue prints for his boat design and then touted that it was the greatest things since sliced bread and that anyone regardless of their experience could use his designs and build one of these boats in their backyard and then sail them safely around the world without issue. Needless to say, people did build them in their backyard and people did sail them around the world except some people did not build them as good as they could have been built and people died. Thankfully, that did not happen to us. The boat did seem to run into problem after problem, though, day after day. Practically every night when the sun went down I was in fear that that would be the last night in a fully functional sailing vessel. The two other crew mates seemed to share my fear, however, thankfully, they had some experience with sailing; come to find out they seemed to have more knowledge of the boat we were sailing on then the captain himself. If it was not for Jason and Pete I probably would not be typing here today.

With every day feeling like they could be my last I was thinking about death a lot. Prior to my days in High School I used to be very afraid of death. It used to scare me to the point of throwing up just by the mere thought of it. I have since lost my fear of death until this trip. It is not so much the fear of actually dying that was getting to me, it was the fact that once I was gone I would never see certain people in my life ever again. That thought really struck a strong chord and I can now say that I am indeed afraid of death once again. It was a realization that death is for certain and that I only have a limited amount of time to spend with those whom I love.

To sum up, this sailing trip has taught me two things: 1) That I have absolutely no passion what-so-ever for sailing. 2) Seeing and spending time with those people that I love is probably the most important thing in my life. Time is limited and there is no telling what tomorrow will bring.

Now onto other lighter matters. While I was sailing I saw lots of wonderful things which include: whales, dolphins, fish, a turtle, lots of birds, bio luminescence, starry skies, shooting stars, many sunrises and many sunsets. All of which were exceptional and amazing. The one memory that stands out in particular happened just yesterday during the day. We looked behind our boat and saw about 20 or so dolphins skimming the surface on our right side. They were traveling fairly fast and looked to be playing. After watching them for about a minute they all changed direction and started heading straight for our boat. At which point we looked to our left and saw a huge mass of dolphins literally surround the rear of our boat in a U shape and then they all converged at the center of the U all at the same time. They must be some of the most intelligent creatures around. Basically what they did was drive a school of fish to the very rear of our boat and surrounded them. Scarred by the noises that our boat was making on the water as it passed over the surface the fish did not dare come close to us and in essence the dolphins trapped the entire school. Once they had them all surrounded the dolphins pounced and it was a feeding frenzy. There must have been at least 200 or so dolphins all working together in coordination. They knew exactly what they were doing and executed it perfectly. Certainly not the first time they have done it before either because the birds in the area were privy to the action. They were swooping and swarming around the center trying to pick off what fish they could. I find it amazing how humans have disturbed so much around us and destroyed much life, but still many species continue to thrive and actually use us in order to survive. Utterly brilliant animals.

I did get a couple pictures of the event although I doubt they will come out to be anything of significance to look at. I am hoping to be able to come back to the internet cafe tomorrow in order to sort through what pictures I have taken and hopefully I will be able to upload a good number of them.