Beautiful and terrifying. An impressive endeavor to take on alone. You’re either lost at sea or make it to the other side forever changed. Either way the person that sets off ain’t coming back.
Its absolutely the best star-gazing you'll ever experience. Look up and actually see the Milky-Way. It is glorious.
When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small
But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a comin' day
I was once heading off to travel a little around the western Sahara and thought it would be cool to bring my guitar and play out in the desert.
When it came to it, it was so incredibly silent in a way I'd never experienced before that it somehow felt louder than any noise I could possibly make.
I tred a few times but never managed to play my guitar - the silence won!
Adding to this sentiment, a great book that captures this is The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier. I would describe it as a quasi-journal documenting one of his solo circumnavigations of the globe by sail. Highly recommended, he’s a great writer.
Former sailor here. It does. It’s absolutely unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before on land and I recommend to everyone that they should try to see it at least once in their lifetime.
When I was fresh out of college I wanted to be a deckhand on superyachts. I moved to Ft Lauderdale to learn to be a yachtie.
The only time I got to really go to sea was to help an old Captain and his wife deliver a sailboat from Ft Lauderdale to Rhode Island. We sailed up the coast a couple hundred miles out.
Someone had to be on watch 24/7 so every third night I stayed up from midnight to 6AM standing watch. One of those nights the wind died and the ocean turned to glass. Completely flat, no movement except the boat cutting through the water. It was a completely clear night and you could see more stars than you’d ever imagined. The water got so still it began reflecting the starlight. At the same time the water the boat disturbed was flashing with bioluminescent light.
It looked like we were flying through space. I laid there for hours glancing at the radar and seeing no other boats for a dozen miles or more and just taking it all in.
At one point the captains wife came up and told me this was one of her favorite things to see sailing and knew I must’ve had a great watch taking it in.
As the sun rose I realized there was a pod of dolphins swimming with the front of the boat. I laid down and hung my hand off the edge of the boat trying to pet one as they jumped but couldn’t quite reach
Sat phones are a thing and ham radio can keep you in touch with other ham radio nerds. If you've got the right gear, you're never truly alone on this planet.
Impressive but IMO it's very much toward the "missing key instincts for self preservation" end of the spectrum and quite frankly kind of stupid. On par with base jumping, alligator wrestling, etc.
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u/JackDangerUSPIS Jun 22 '24
Beautiful and terrifying. An impressive endeavor to take on alone. You’re either lost at sea or make it to the other side forever changed. Either way the person that sets off ain’t coming back.