A grimace looks down on me. White full beard with deep-set gray eyes. The mouth, through the many hairs on the face, only to guess. The forehead, also white like his beard, drawn long upwards. On the head sits a kind of student hat. Broadly extending from the inside white, outwardly becoming darker gray, even almost black. His facial expression changes. A tortured, distorted face, as if something was scratching his throat and he was about to start coughing. He grins at me, the old, coughing white man. I lie on my back in the cockpit and look up at the sky.
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| In the middle of the Pazific |
The calm ocean lives up to its name. Gently, the wave lifts us up, and sinks half a meter back down. It is hot, the sun burns mercilessly and the air is heavy. I wonder when this old, coughing white man, will step in front of the sun and block it out. We've been walking for days now. Let me think, it's been a whole week. You lose track of time so quickly out here and your thoughts focus on what you perceive here. It's not much. If there are waves, first and foremost, the waves. You don't just see them, you feel them. They keep you moving. On days like today, not even that. The sea is like lead in front of us, and if I didn't know for sure, I would think about whether the heat that currently prevails comes from the sun, or from the leaden sea. Probably from both. It's like the forecourt of hell, and the old, coughing white man is happy that I'm finding my way alone. Every now and then a booby flies by and looks what we are doing here. Last night one landed on our bow basket and settled in for the rest of the day. When I changed the bow during the night and put the genoa on port, he complains loudly. Still, he stays put and doesn't fly away until morning. Of course he shat all over the bow. Gaby and I clean up the mess the next day. If I knew whether gannet soup tastes good, he would end up in the pot next time. I blink and the old, coughing, white man, is still grinning. The rim of his hat is getting bigger and darker. As I said, the weather has been looking like this for a couple of days. Rarely over five knots of wind, rarely over three knots of speed in the ship. A certain indifference sets in and I stick my tongue out at the old, coughing white man. Knowing full well that you don't do things like that, and that you should have respect for your age. But who still has respect for age today. I try to open my eyes again, which I only partially succeed in doing. Pinched together, I notice on the wind indicator that the old, coughing white man has coughed again. If you ask me, he doesn't do it much longer, because what comes out lasts half an hour at most. And what comes after that isn't much either. Five knots of wind, that's it. It reaches a maximum of two nautical miles, and then it's back to lying on your back and looking at the grimace of the old, coughing white man. Cumulonimbus is his name, I've been told. He just doesn't like to be spoken to. I try anyway. He gets angry. First, he changes color. The white clouds, which were already black at the edge of his hat, become gray to dark gray. His face disappears so slowly and in its place long gray-beige threads reach into the sea. The sun is blocked by the brim of the hat and it cools down noticeably. Now, at the latest, the old, coughing white man should be taken seriously. I set the autopilot to wind control 45°. The gray-brown wall creeps up from behind. It comes closer and closer. Like a curtain, it conceals what lies behind it. The forecourt of hell, I suppose. The wind increases and our ship picks up speed. At fifteen knots, the first raindrops reach us. The previously leaden sea boils behind us. Now I already ask myself whether the thought with the forecourt to the hell, was so absurd. I would rather not know. With a wind angle of 45°, we make seven knots of speed in 15 knots of wind, now and then the eight shows up. The curtain moves from port to starboard behind us and we only catch a few raindrops. As fast as the wind has increased, so fast it decreases again. We slowly trundle out again and after passing a residual swell we lie again in the leaden sea, like in a glue pot, floating on top, stuck. Oh no, nowadays, one sticks heavy things with superglue firmly. I lie on my back and squint into the sun. A grimace looks down on me. There he is again, the old, coughing white man. What I've always wondered if the hidden mouth has teeth, too. But some things one perhaps doesn't want to know so exactly.
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