Sea Observations Part 1
17th December. Snow, hail and strong winds – the sea is wild and wavy, white spray against the boat, a dark aquamarine meeting the bruised brown sky at a black horizon.
18th December. The sea is light grey-turquoise, lively and choppy, each wave capped with white
20th December. It’s breathtakingly windy. The dark grey-blue sea looks sculpted – solid and fluid at once. As the boat ploughs through the unyielding waves, it shatters them – revealing glimpses of bright turquoise and sending huge sheets of white spray up onto the containers. The sky is cold blue grey today.
21st December. The sea is breathing and we, travelling across her belly, feel every inhalation and exhalation. Sometimes she breathes deep and slow, sometimes she pants excitedly and our huge vessel feels like a toy, tossed from side to side, trembling.
(Later) the nose of the boat bounces slow motion up and down through the waves, huge crests of white spray bursting with every down-stroke. I see rainbows in the spray.
22nd December. What a night. The sea has been unrelenting, tossing the boat violently all night. I didn’t get much sleep: it was an effort to stay in bed.
Skittish waves playing in the sun, spray whipped off them by the wind: a moment of gold, a handful of glitter in the sunlight.
23rd December. Another rough night, lightening flashed on the horizon and rain lashed the boat and the sea flung us about.
(later) I just went up onto the bridge, looked out at the stormy seas. There was a small black bird following the boat, keeping up in the buffeting wind. Is it seeking shelter or looking for food in the turbulence caused by the boat? it is a small black bird with white spots on the top and a white underside to each wing. It’s the first animal I have seen on this journey, apart from seagulls.
25th December. Christmas day and my first day of sunbathing. It’s windy but hot and the sea has calmed down – is even resembling blueness. I am sunburnt.
26th December. An amazing sunset and dolphins following the boat, jumping along beside it. We go to the front of the boat for the first time, scary and exhilarating – we stand on a precarious ledge, looking over a railing out to sea. Nothing but sea.
27th December. It is hazy hot, the sea a silver mirror fading into the sky.
28th December. Today the sea is light blue-grey, ruffled by the wind into a million tiny waves.
29th December. The seascapes, the horizons, are a flow – a changing continuum. I have tried and failed to capture the horizon each day in a painted sketch, tried to capture a snapshot. But it doesn’t work, it doesn’t tell of the continual slipping by of the sea, of all the shades and shapes that run into one another. I try to stop time, to steal a moment. But my hand is not a camera and as soon as I start painting, that moment is gone. Or perhaps, as Bergson suggests, it exists along with all the other moments.
Katy was gazing out to sea, and asked – what if we haven’t been moving at all? Could it be a hoax – there’s nothing to tell us that we’ve covered any distance, apart from the changing stars, of which we are mostly ignorant. I think about the changing seascapes, and suddenly think of them as a blanket of scenes pulled past our static boat to create the illusion of movement.
31st December. We induced the wrath of Neptune, by crossing the equator without seeking his permission. But after being put through an endurance test involving being dunked in beetroot soup and smeared with engine grease and mustard, we were brought before Neptune and forgiven, and christened with our new Seafarer’s names.
Rebecca Beinart
