I’m a Sailor! I’m Sailing! I Sail!

Hello from the middle of the sea.

That’s right – the MIDDLE OF THE SEA!  The reason I know that we are here is because if you make the precarious climb to the dock deck of our floating city you will see nothing to all horizons except for two shades of blue flecked with white for miles and miles and miles.

We are also reminded of this every 6 seconds as our ship crests the next wave.  This is a unique experience in our ship – one akin to getting cannonballed by pirates or barely surviving an earthquake.  We are halfway through our sail at the moment and we have gotten to the point where the dining room is full of people casually snatching up their plates as their chairs slide from one table to the next.  The sight of a full cup on a counter is one of terror and people rush to grab it while others reprimand the forgetful owner of the beverage.  People have adopted a strange sideways walk as gravity moves from one end of the hallway to the other.  We have started playing a new game where we see how many steps we can walk on the walls before the ship rights itself again – the current record is three.

Now this does sound like a lot of fun – and at times it is – but believe me when I say that most people are over it.  The ship rocks so much at night that sleep has become a myth for most people.  Last night as I wandered the halls (and walls) I kept catching glimpses of pale ghost-like people shuffling around caught in that twilight zone between waking and sleeping and being violently sea sick.  I know that you will probably read this after we are safely on land, but do pray for any poor souls sailing these waters.  Or start praying for when the ship has to sail away from Madagascar!

Of course there are good times.  Anytime a group of people survives something together they form a unique bond.  Our evenings this sail have been spent bonding as we slide around the dining room, writing poetry in my office and having deep conversations.  Small talk is a thing of memory – no one wants to talk one more time about how many degrees we would have to tilt before the ship flipped over (38 degrees apparently).

But what about the mission?  What about why we are all here?  Good question mysterious interrogator!

Everyone is looking forward to Madagascar.  When we arrive in port the President himself will be there to greet us and it just goes to show how valued we are to be doing this work.  For us it so quickly can become about the process and the job, but for the Madagascarians we are there to save lives and make their country a better place.  We have a lot of new crew on board who has never been in country with the ship before and the stories and memories that us longer-term crew can tell never fail to spark their heartstrings.

My job is going to be busy as we are attracting a lot of local media as well as international media.  At the moment we have a media team flying to Madagascar each week to do stories on the ship and crew.  It was an exciting time telling Cape Town about what we do and I look forward to spreading the news to the rest of the world.

I’m sure I could go on and on about sailing but honestly i need to get out of this room.  It’s like being inside on those 4D shows at Disney world except that the show is broken and on 10x speed and the only thing you can look at is the increasingly huge waves that crash against your window.

Thanks for reading and I appreciate your prayers and thoughts and also money.  Hopefully this short blog post will be a nice glimpse inside the world that you are all helping to make happen.  God bless you all.