Update, day 66: "doublethink"
George Orwell's dystopian sci-fi novel, 1984, was famous for many things. Flying helicopter cars, centralized authoritarian governments and projections about excessive drug use. He also coined the term "doublethink", the concept that you can hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time and believe them both to be true. I'm feeling a little doublethink coming on at the moment. One the one hand I cannot wait to pass Cape Horn for the third time and head northwards away from the cold, away from the icebergs floating above the exclusion zone, back to temperate climates, sunny skies and eventually, fresh food and the warm embrace of family and friends. On day 66 I yearn for these things. And yet.... I love the south. I love the raw power of the waves, the sometime terrifying fury of the wind and the knowledge that it's only thanks to the expertise I have worked so hard to accumulate, and the hard work and ingenuity in the moment, that I am able to survive and thrive in such an environment. I love my lonely sentinels that are the wandering albatross, even if I look down on them from above during a misadventure up the mast. I love the purity of the air and that there is no smell. I am already restless to return, homesick for a place I have not yet left. Even as I have been recuperating these last few days after being wiped out by recent dramas, I know I have more to give on the sporting side and that my three runs through these unfriendly waters will allow me to sprint with the leaders the next time. So it is with dreams of the next time that I take pleasure in soaking up the now, my hands around my cup of coffee and stare out over the breaking slate blue rollers, baby blue sky and menacing black clouds. In this mix of innocent blue sky with the impending black squall, it seems that mother nature is caught up in doublethink too! 500 miles to the Horn.
Illustration by © François Denis
