Just before leaving Malaysia, I was put in touch with an artist working on a painting project in which he was trying to capture a sense of the ocean's waves. He was looking for offshore photos of the deep blue. I told him our own attempts at photographing the ocean -- many years of it -- are never very successful, as it's nearly impossible to capture the depth and breadth in a camera lens. We have no perspective other than our sea-level view, and there is no comparative element. We also can never capture the movement of the waves: how they come at you with great speed at times, lift you, push and pull you. The movement of the boat is what defines our existence at sea -- up and over waves, one moment after another. Patterns of holding on and letting go, of balancing on one foot or the other, become second nature to an offshore sailor. But those can't be captured either. The kinetic energy of life afloat is wholly elusive when it comes to a digital capture. I'm sure professional photographers do a much better job of it, with better equipment and a better sense of the
how to of it.
But I liked thinking of this artist with his white and blue and grey canvas. Indeed, I thought of him all the way across the Indian Ocean, wishing I could contribute something of the variety of the ocean for his 'research'. So we tried with our own modest Nikon to capture the sea state, taking hundreds of photos of blue and more blue. We experienced real variety, too: at first a very calm sea, then building with increasing wind and then very steep seas as we made our way further south and got into the heavy tradewinds. But we don't venture outside with the camera when the seas are especially nasty; you'll not find any photos of those days when waves the size of two-storey houses were breaking over
Momo.
Below are some samples from our 25 days between Sumatra and Madagascar -- some 3000+ miles (you can see our track
here). Even if you can't get a sense of the height or depth or frequency of the waves from these views, you can at least see the infinite blue.
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Departure day, August 1
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| Sailing into the sunset, first days out |
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| August 8, wind increasing and waves building |
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| August 8 -- the day the first wave swamped Bernie and me in our cockpit. No capture of that wave. |
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| More from August 8. Wind was 25 knots the night prior, but lessened at dawn. The seas were still quite boisterous, however. |
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| More from August 8 |
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| View along the starboard side -- we were on a port tack most of the way to Madagascar. |
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| August 10-11 we had waves breaking over us fairly regularly. They don't have to be monstrous to be dangerous. |
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| August 11 -- wave coming up the stern |
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| More from August 11 |
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| Frothy seas, August 11 |
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| Hard to capture the constancy of the breaking seas -- and the size. |
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| My birthday, August 16, and a rainbow ever so briefly |
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| August 18 -- rollicking seas, still under grey skies |
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| August 17 -- and then, it was suddenly sunny |
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| ...and warm enough to try to dry some of our sopping sarongs and towels that we used to mop up saltwater that found its way through our ports and hatches during the preceding week of wet |
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| August 23 -- approaching Madagascar and the day we spotted land for the first time. But this is looking aft at the frothy seas behind us. |
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| August 23, 25 miles from Cape D'Ambre, and the seas are still kicking up under bright skies |
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| August 23, view over the port side |
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| More of the same bright blue |
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| August 23, frothy seas all around Momo |
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| August 23 -- the foam of a crashing wave just to port |
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| August 23 -- sometimes even the smaller seas race right at you with force |
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| August 23 -- view out over the water |
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| August 23 -- seas up our stern |
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| Riding a wave, then another wave |
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| Welcome committee just off Madagascar |
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| Frothy greetings from the seas as they get shallower, approaching the coast |
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| More froth and foam |
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| And more, with Momo racing down some of the waves |
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| Dancing waves to port |
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| Yeah, we have hundreds of photos like this |
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| Riding a wave, view to starboard |
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| August 23, late afternoon view of Cape D'Ambre -- we did not capture the whales who breached on our bow and wandered on down our port side. But what an amazing thing to see just off the coast! |
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| August 23, late afternoon, coming into more protected waters |
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| August 23, Choppy seas off of Cape D'Ambre, with the lighthouse now to the south of us |
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| August 23, Cape D'Ambre rounding: swells are down but chop is up |
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| August 23, one more view of the lighthouse at Cape D'Ambre, Madagascar. You can't hear us dancing, but we are. |
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| Looking back at the lighthouse. View from astern is pretty nice! |
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| August 23, sailing into the sunset at the top of Madagascar. Protected waters and smooth sailing all the way to midnight -- when we lost our breeze and drifted till dawn; we then picked up the breeze at daybreak and landed three fish on Aug 24, Jana's 11th birthday. A grand arrival. |
