Anonymous Aquatic Existence

July 15, 1506(L)/2306(Z); Now 560NM to the Straits. I report this as there are folks connecting at the other end and I want to keep all appraised on our progress. It was a slow day making only 90NM good to course. Today I am taking a break from the blog and passing the baton to Dom who has kept a journal the whole trip. Below is one of his journal entries.

Once we enter the Straits it is another Rolling, heaving, peaceful aquatic monoliths capable of tearing down both man's ego and structures. I sit bundled up in winter fashion practically ready for snow, when this is truly a mid-pacific's walk in the park sort of day. It laughs at my attempts to
comprehend or even conform to what it's capable of. Yet it smiles at me in acknowledgment of being willing to put to test its ability to conquer any understanding of what secrets it holds under its ever darkening robe. Monstrous towers of shivering waves like I've never seen. Not just in size, but volume. Age old rollers that seemingly have no start, no finish, they simply ARE. Eight foot sets carry hundreds of thousands of pounds of water, shining and sliding gracefully past the beam of this insignificant speck of a fiberglass boat's existence. I feel the lack of our ability to control much more than our
flotation (and that barely at best in proportion to her power)very humbling and yet also utterly freeing. I taste the salty, palpable sting of the bitterly cold, crisp air as it enters cleaner than anywhere I've ever been. I feel numbness bite on my fingers and toes yet savor the satisfaction the now brilliant sun's rays share generously on my head. I feel my body sway in
correction as I am but a fish tossed to land, incapable of natural balance or cohesion to my environment. I smell...nothing. A beauty in and of itself to be so removed from external influence that genuinely nothing charges me scent-ually
aside from the wind's chilly grip on my nose. I hear the waves ripple as they are suddenly stopped mid-course by the hull. Are we effecting a wave right now as a section doesn't break on the west coast from where our tiny hull lies? I hear the canvas as it gently luffs, pulling us along; a gift from the placid
zephyrs now being placed on our quarter. It is welcomed as the absence of breeze reminds one they are at the mercy of a few thousand miles of aquatic turbidity and convective wind patterns. I cannot explain the vastness and depth of wave
expanse here. Looming corduroy lines appear that seem large enough to topple the boat should they build and break. I watch them build then break just as they reach me. I take off surfing on the most impeccably perfect, pristine, glassy
wave ever to be ridden...in my mind. This I imagine is what the outsides of those big breaks Piahi or Mavericks feel like. Translucent, velvety shimmering giants rising out of the horizon creating something beautiful. Pure. Never before seen just the same. Always constant in power, ever changing in personality. Perfection. I lose the horizon as our tiny 65 feet of unnatural
flotation slides off the swell as if coming off a piggy-back ride. I'm lost in it's tranquility. I feel, even if just for this moment, absolute anonymity; the outside world has faded. There are no concerns, no pending obligations, no past, no future, nothing but here and now. Present. Endless. Perfection. This IS existence. "The journey IS the destination." Dominick Gambino