Horizons of the world E-Book

Cinzia Codato

• Herausgeber: Cinzia Codato
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

These are horizons that have passed before my eyes in two years of my life, the two years of my sailing trip around the world. This book is not a marine navigation manual, nor a guide to tropical countries, or a naturalistic documentary, or a love story, but it's a bit of everything. This is my life of the two years that have opened my eyes, not only in the physical sense, to the reality of the world, which has expanded this way my "horizons".

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Cinzia Codato

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Table of contents

HORIZONS OF THE WORLD

INTRODUCTION

NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATION

PART I - From Antibes to New Zealand

FROM ANTIBES TO THE CARIBBEAN

FROM THE CARIBBEANS TO PANAMA

FROM PANAMA TO TAHITI

FROM POLYNESIA TO NEW ZEALAND

PART II - New Zealand: here my life has changed.

ONE STEP BACK: THE CHANGE

TRIP ACROSS NEW ZEALAND

THE RETURN AND "AFTER"

PART III – From New Zealand to South Africa

NEW ZEALAND TO AUSTRALIA

FROM AUSTRALIA TO INDONESIA

CROSSING THE INDIAN OCEAN

MADAGASCAR, SOUTH AFRICA AND ARRIVAL

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

About the author

HORIZONS OF THE WORLD

These are horizons that have passed before my eyes in two years of my life, the two years of my sailing trip around the world.

They are not only geographical horizons, physical ones, but also cultural horizons, natural, spiritual, and not least, sentimental ones.

This book is not a marine navigation manual, nor a guide to tropical countries, or a naturalistic documentary, or a love story, but it's a bit of everything: this is my life.

The life of an ordinary person, a normal woman, that did one experience a bit less "normal".

This book is my diary of the two years of my life that have opened my eyes, not only in the physical sense, to the reality of the world, which has expanded this way my "horizons".

INTRODUCTION

This diary is born as a chronicle of travel. So at the beginning it was not a secret diary, it was rather a chance to share the experiences of my trip with family and friends. In fact, every time I wrote them a letter, I sent a photocopy of my diary.

For this, from the events of the first part, little can be predicted of what happens in the second part, precisely because, being an open diary, I was not in the position of being able to write too much about personal facts.

The second part was written almost all in one go when the “waters were a bit calmed down”, and it's very intimate, secret, until now unpublished, never been read to (or by) anyone.

The reader will thus be a bit caught off guard by learning things he did not expect (and maybe that even I didn't expect to happen...), but I decided not to give an explanation or justification of it, so to leave the diary as it is, and also for strictly personal reasons.

For these same reasons I had to change or omit some names; but the situations and events described are entirely real.

In the third part then I restarted the public narrative of my journey, with the difference that I was much freer to express even my personal feelings.

I remind the reader, that this book was not born as a novel or a short story, but is simply a diary of lived life.

Enjoy the reading!

NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATION

"Please note that I (the author) did the translation from Italian to English.

Being English my second language it's probably not the best, completely correct English written book. I'm not Ken Follet and I don't pretend to be a professional writer!

But I decided to do the translation by myself because I wanted to maintain as much as possible the style and the spontaneity of a daily diary, as it originally was.

So take it with a pinch of salt and enjoy the reading, keeping in mind that is written by an Italian!"

PART I - From Antibes to New Zealand

FROM ANTIBES TO THE CARIBBEAN

From Antibes to Gibraltar

Antibes, Wednesday, January 29th, 1992

It's been nearly 500 years since Christopher Columbus made this trip, but now that it's our time, despite all the modern technology, I still feel the thrill of the adventure, to face what, for me, is still the unknown: the crossing of the Atlantic.

After four months of hard work to prepare the sailing boat, a 24 meters sloop that will take us through this ocean, we are finally ready to set sail.

From the port of Antibes, in France, we are going, on the first step, towards Gibraltar, passing along the Balearic Islands.

There are seven crew members: Mario, the skipper, my husband, Aaron and Clint, two New Zealanders as permanent crew members, Rick and Julie, a New Zealand couple who will be with us during the crossing, Isabel, a French girl, and me.

It is 18:00 o'clock and the sunset surprises us almost immediately, just out at sea, and it is my turn in the galley. I prepare gnocchi with meat sauce and fennels baked with cheese, with great joy of the whole crew.

Then, from 21:00 to midnight, it's my first watch, with Rick, who will be my companion on duty for the whole trip.

And now I meet my dear friends, the stars, again! After a long time of life "on the ground" I finally see a magnificent starry sky, with no moon. Towards the South-West, I find Orion on my left, Sirius, brighter than ever in Canis Major, is rising now. Then I see my constellation, Taurus, with Aldebaran and the Pleiades on the masthead, and then Auriga, Gemini, Cassiopeia and Pegasus, and the inevitable Big Dipper, aft, dipped down towards the sea.

To my great pleasure, I see that Rick is also interested in the night sky, so I teach him to recognise some constellations, but sometimes there are problems with the names (how are they called in English?).

It's a bit cold, but I resist well under my new wet weather gear and thermal suit.

Then I go to sleep in my bunk and fall like a stone.

We couldn't sail, there is too little wind, but we hoisted the mainsail to stabilise the boat.

Thursday, January 30th

At 6:00 starts another watch duty. The sky around us has changed: to the East, a crescent moon has risen and near it, Venus and Scorpio are visible while Orion has set on the other side (the hunter and his enemy are never present at the same time in the sky, as the mythology wants). Jupiter is also dazzling in Lion, and above us dominates the Northern Crown, but all the stars are fading because dawn is painting the sky, with intense orange before, then with yellow.

The sea is slightly rippling, and the easterly wind increases a bit, but not enough to be able to sail, because we want to get away as quickly as possible from this dangerous area that is the Gulf of Lion.

The atmosphere on board is much more relaxed and joyous than the recent days. Although it is a bit hard to get used to the watches and the movements of the boat, after having been stuck on the land for so long, the nervous tension of the final preparations disappeared and we can now breath an atmosphere of excitement and adventure.

Every hour we mark the spot of our position on the chart and we "do the log" (that is, you write all the navigation data on the logbook).

When I was at the helm in the afternoon, we made another particular encounter: the dolphins! Two small ones have approached the boat with big jumps and then stayed for a while to play in front of the bow.

It's great to see these animals, when you are so far away from the shore when around there is apparently not a soul, and it is a good omen for sailors to see dolphins.

The guard duty is organised in three shifts of two people each while the skipper remains available at all times.

Each round lasts 3 hours with 6 hours rest; each day each group's watch jumps down a turn, so not to do it always at the same time, and restarts every three days. This system also involves the galley, so every group cooks twice in a row then washes the dishes twice in a row, then rests for two more times, so there is not a fixed cook on board.

Tonight we are already ahead of the Balearics, we are sailing fast, 9.5 to 10 knots, but always motoring, as there is no wind and it's rather cold.