Day 20: Pacific Crossing: 🐬 dolphins
What a beautiful final day before seeing land again.
The Pacific suddenly felt almost gentle. Sun all day, almost steady wind, and finally the waves coming mostly from behind us instead of from the side. The difference this makes onboard is enormous. The boat moved calmly, almost stable for once, without the constant violent rolling that had accompanied us for so many days.
So. Today... everything felt light.
Then, around 140 nautical miles before reaching the first island of French Polynesia, the first signs of land life appeared.
Birds. White long-tailed tropicbirds circling above us. They are beautiful creatures.
After weeks surrounded almost exclusively by water, suddenly seeing birds again felt strangely emotional. Like the ocean itself quietly informing us:
You’re getting close now. And then came the dolphins. A huge group of them racing toward the boat. Different from the ones we had seen earlier during the crossing. Grey bodies, pale almost white snouts, moving effortlessly through the water around us.
What a spectacle. Nobody even needed to say it out loud anymore.
Land was near. Only one more night shift left.
Tomorrow morning, when I wake up, there will already be mountains on the horizon. Real land. Solid ground close.
Honestly, I felt relieved more than anything else. I sat for long at the bow looking at the dolphins and just thinking we almost made it.
The whole afternoon we made dumplings together onboard. The captain’s wife is Chinese, so this was about as authentic as dumplings can possibly get while floating somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
It felt almost strangely domestic considering where we were.
Meanwhile Jason and I probably played our hundredth round of "Cabooo" while the sun slowly disappeared behind the ocean. By now the game had become part of daily life. Same cards. Same jokes. Every day...but so much fun and good to kill time.
The captain had started feeling slightly sick though. Maybe he had now caught wh