It is the 3-6am shift. My shift tonight..

Current location: N 41º 04′.97 W 60º 35′.71

It has been a while since I’ve written at any length for the blog. Not the kind of thoughtful entries I was doing prior to our departure. Well, at least I thought they were thoughtful. The truth is that I have been swamped with so much that I just blocked it out and didn’t write. Just let it all be absorbed.

I’m deeply saddened by the death of my aunt Auri. Some times even knowing that someone is terminally ill does not help you prepare for the inevitable. It didn’t in the case of the death of my dear Grandmother, but at least with her I felt I had a chance to say goodbye. I knew last summer when I last kissed my grandmother that it would be the last, and she did too, and she just smiled and told me that grown man don’t cry and we had one of those of bittersweet moments that I’ll cherish the rest of my life. In making plans for Spain this summer, my wife Kristi and I had agreed that we would stop by Madrid to see my aunt Auri and uncle Alfonso independently of their trip to my parents’ house at the end of the summer. I knew that they wanted to see our kids really badly but we also wanted to see them and enjoy some time with them without the kids. Now, it can be no more. Not the same way of course, and that leaves me with an uneasy unresolved feeling. My dad is saddened too, but he just leaves it all bottled up. Some times it is all right for grown man to cry…

It is raining here as I write. I’m below deck with the radar, instruments, and autopilot on. I just check above deck periodically and keep my eyes and ears open for the radar alarms which seem to be triggered easily with all the rain. I just went up to the deck to find bread pieces all over. Apparently according to José Manuel we had a bird passenger for a while overnight. Everyone else is asleep. It is so peaceful right now.

A week or two ago I was sitting in front of my computer looking a weather patterns in the eastern United States. Other than some small low pressure systems everything was looking perfect for our departure. These systems were small in nature and were moving northwest along the eastern coast. On the eve of the departure one of these systems look a little bigger than the rest had been in the past week. But I was so anxious with our departure that I didn’t make much of it. Besides, I have always boasted that while I have thrown up at sea, I have never gotten “seasick.” I don’t know who cared about that “distinction” but growing up sailing in the Caribbean sea I had somehow engrained it into my brain.

Earlier this week, the distinction became moot in my mind, because as far as I was concerned I was not performing 100% to my sailing abilities and my father and José Manuel had to make it up. All sorts of things cross your mind at those moments. After all, let’s be real, this trip had happened because of me. Yes, we were all adults and we had independently made our own decisions to be here, but I had in no uncertain terms ignited whatever spark in all of us that moved us to do this. So there we are in the beginning of a journey in full-blown gale forces with our bodies not quite ready for this and I was not pulling my weight? What the hell? What was I thinking? Who was in charge of looking at the weather again?

Yup, I guess I was sick. It happened at sea. Everything else is just academic…