March 18: Day 6

The swells out of the North are tremendous. When I look out of the aft window of the cockpit it switches from a grey blue sky to a wall of water and back again. The cobalt blue that was the water of yesterday has been replaced with a frothing steel grey. At their highest these waves are only six feet but out here, on their terms, these waves do not crumble and crash on a shore but scream resolutedly past me. Their crushing weight extends as far as my eye can see in all directions and the horizon has become a mirage of changing shapes with white caps. A mast in the distanace? No. Just another mass of blue pushed up from her depths and whipped to froth by the wind. My birds are still with me. Weather they are celebrating the wind as they skim the changing landscape of the ocean only to flap furiously to escape gravity and rise, plunging again and again, or if they are in a struggle for life and death it is impossible to tell. But they seem to be showing off for me, flying within feet of me, so close that I feel if I put my hand out I could touch them. Them, wheeling off to tempt both sky and sea. the sea seems also to have churned up the flying fish: they are skimming the surface of the water only they dive back into her depths concealed by the reflection of steel clouds and a white capped sea.