August 3, 2007
Wind SE 15-20 knots, Course SW, Speed 4-5 knots, Position: 18° 14 S, 32° 59 W

Thank you for another beautiful day, another gorgeous sunrise, each more beautiful than the next and also for the fair breezy warm wind blowing over the sparkling sea. I soak it in and deeply appreciate it.

Our course turns a little more to the south and we progress every day further into the lonesome blue distance towards the undefined point that will mark the bottom of the course of the heart. Where will the winds blow us? Will it allow us the big dream of drawing a heart as big as an ocean? All of the courses that man have sailed could be drawn on a giant globe and would have endpoints from here to there. Those sailors have their place in history, their identities, their presence, and personal wishes marked along those lines. I think they are wishing for us to break that pattern of rushing from here to there. The courses of man rally together and want us to put a heart among them so that their realm would have an obvious graphic representation of love.

There could be more love in the history of the sea. More and more people of the sea are more skillful mariners than their predecessors and will express love on the sea. The sea has a way of accepting this sentiment. We and the sea are like mirrors that reflect love back and forth. The ocean's love is like a great underwater current that surfaces and a mass of new life rises into the love of the sun. Our small bit of love soaks into this eternal and great movement of energy and we experience humble glimpses of how we are connected to infinity.

We sail onwards towards an infinite horizon though we have a multitude of unanswerable questions. What about the forces which work constantly to wear us down, break, and corrode the best that we can build? What about our doubts and fears and weights that we need to unload? And why sail to those parts of the ocean that make it harder and harder until it becomes the ultimate test of boat and human? Can we still express and live by love when we are being tossed in the cold cauldron feared by all men? What draws men and women to experience the furthest points on the ocean?

The current seems to sweep us away. The winds often blow against us especially in areas where the pilot charts say the wind will never blow from that direction. It's as if the wind is testing our resolve - do we really want the purest untamed spaces? We fear turning back much more than going forward. We work hard on a lot of little details while a plethora of mysteries surround us. We want to understand the unknown. But we understand that we have to keep working and living to get there.