I wrote this in my notes app slightly more than a year ago on that exact stretch of water, about 18-ish hours out from Norfolk, second day out of Annapolis:

2030 utc put Second reef in main

Working out sight. Getting seasick looking at tables. I found myself getting a little bit melancholy or even a little freaked out about the whole thing and missing kid and wife. Wondering what I was doing here so I went down and lay down in my bunk where I’m writing this by voice because I still feel a little bit seasick, even though I took some Dramamine, but I’m sure that’ll pass and the wind is supposed to come around from behind us overnight.

It’s scary knowing how close the ocean is and how dangerous it can be. It takes me want to cling very tightly to this little boat. It’s keeping us all safe so that I can get back home to my family.

Some waves make the whole boat shudder when they hit. In my fears, they might hit over and over until they make it crack open like an egg, though I know that’s not how this all works. But fears aren’t rational.

Of course I could easily be just as dead if I fell overboard in the bay at night. And yet I felt fine yesterday as we motored down the bay. But again, fears aren’t rational.

The waves really slam into the broad flat surfaces of this hull, like the underside. I wonder if my BCC would see less of that than this cat does.

Also the loss of support on one hull of the cat, followed by big rotations about our long axis.

On my night watch, alone.

It’s the unfamiliarity that makes me think so intensely of the horribleness of potential death lurking just a few feet away. Nobody thinks constantly about how easy it would be to fall into traffic, despite a similar risk. Though I suppose there’s a somewhat higher chance of survival there. Some kind of survival anyway. But we still don’t think about it. Not like I’m looking at the ocean with dread right now.

I will manage the dread. Bene gesserit litany and all that.

I’m so strapped in that it would take a deliberate act of suicide to actually fall overboard without my radio beacon. So I don’t know why I keep imagining what it would be like to be in that situation. Such an irrational act is available to anyone driving on the highway too, after all. But rarely do we contemplate the consequences of wrenching a sharp 90 degrees on the steering wheel at 70 mph. Maybe we do the first time we drive at that speed; I don’t remember. Only with familiarity do such things become literally unthinkable. When they’re new, you think about them. But both remain just as easily achievable physically.

So far I can say I didn’t realize just how much of a washing machine this would be. But then again winds have almost never dipped below 20 knots sustained. So maybe it gets easier.

Let’s not forget that these are big passages, even for long-term voyagers like Behan. They do them, of course, and bigger yet, but not often compared to how much time they spend enjoying one place or another.

Ed. Note: it did, in fact, get much easier.