By the beginning of the 10th (in
fact it’s the 9th day as I am writing about yesterday) day, the
glorious day of our mountain celebration, Thula had steered right into a large
(meteorological) low, giving us heavy rain for a several hours straight.
Instead of taking up our usual daytime activities – tanning, fishing, looking
out for whales, dolphins etc. – those of us not on watch suddenly found
themselves confined to the inside of the boat. While the outer deck on sunny
days usually resembles a seal colony, with solitary, pairs and groups of seals
scattered on the deck, permanently on the lookout for warm, sunny patches, the
interior of the boat on bad weather days reminded me more of a rabbit hole.
Whichever cabin you entered you were able to spot in a corner another rabbit quietly
minding its own business. One common challenge all rabbits had to deal with at
the same time was the gigantic rolling movement of the boat. After we had been
granted a little break from the waves the day before yesterday, the swell was
right back at its maximum height yesterday with the boat again leaning from one
side to the other like a gigantic pendulum. And as if the permanent leaning of the boat wasn’t
frustrating enough already, it also results in the boat producing noises that
make you think the boat ought to be falling apart into tiny little pieces any
second. Every cupboard, any floor plate any piece of cutlery or wood makes a
different kind of creaking, moaning, groaning or squeaking sound – all
combining to keep going the incredibly deep and melodic “hundertstimmige” Thula
symphony that we have gotten used to during the last week. The sky finally cleared in the afternoon enabling
the rabbits to gradually emerge from their hole and re-join Markus and Jimmy
who had manoeuvred the Thula through the rain clouds in the meantime while
listening and dancing to ACDC’s “TNT” at full volume. Luckily we all came back
out in time since only shortly afterwards Jimmy “The Eye” Holm-Olsen suddenly spotted
a whale right next to our boat. We all turned around instantly only to see a
white (!) shadow disappear slowly into the depth of the ocean. Staring
intensely at the area where it had disappeared for another 10 minutes we were
able to see the back fin of the whale(s) in the waves two more times but
unfortunately not long or clear enough to say which whale we had even seen. At some point of time in the evening we
officially decided that we had now left half of the total distance behind us
and were now positively finding ourselves on the second half of our journey
(1450 miles to go!). To savour this historic moment we had a little “sundowner”
with snacks and drinks (one beer OR glass of white wine each, that is). This
was again followed by a fantastic Tandoori Chicken prepared by Liesel (who had
to show some serious acrobatic skills and very strong nerves to prepare the
dinner in this ocean rollercoaster).