The End Of The World As We Know It?

I seem to be going through a spate of audiobooks around the theme of
time and time travel. The Time Traveler's Wife, The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy, and now Fractal Time by Gregg Braden.

It reminds me of a time in 2004, before I decided to start rowing
oceans, when I retreated alone to a small cottage on the west coast of
Ireland, near Sligo. I arrived with a rucksack full of books and treated
myself to a one-month binge of reading, thinking and writing. At that
time, too, I seemed to have accidentally hit on a number of books around
a single theme. The books were about the Hopi prophecies, Edgar Cayce's
visions, pole shifts, and climate change – and the theme was the end of
the world as we know it.

I discovered that there is a growing body of literature, from the realms
of science, spirituality, and cosmology, indicating that we are
approaching the end of an era, and something significant is going to
take place on Dec 21, 2012. When I first started to see this message
emerging, I took it very seriously and very literally.

Now I am not quite so sure. It is, of course, possible to find
"evidence" to support almost any hypothesis (creation vs evolution, the
existence/non-existence of God, and conspiracy theories galore). When
the evidence is coming from many different spheres of human knowledge,
and from well-respected and credible authorities, then you have to take
it seriously. But there have been several previous dates that have had
various groups of people declaring that the end of the world is nigh,
only to look distinctly embarrassed the day afterwards.

But either way, what I took away from that Sligo retreat was the
incontrovertible truth that one day – whether in 2012 or not - MY world
is going to end. It was in Sligo that I really confronted for the first
time the fact of my own mortality. I realized that I didn't have an
endless supply of tomorrows, so that if I was ever going to do something
interesting with my life, I'd better get on and do it soon.

Regardless of if/when the world is going to end, or humans are going to
end, or this crazy era we live in is going to end, we can do a lot worse
than be prepared – not in the sense of going out and stockpiling enough
canned goods to last half a century – but in the sense of being
psychologically and spiritually ready to face the next stage of our
individual or collective existence - whatever it may bring.

Other Stuff:

This morning, just before I jumped overboard for my first plunge of the
day, I saw a lovely fish under my boat – a blue fellow with a yellow
tail, probably about 2ft long. Any ideas what he might have been?

It's shaping up to be quite a bouncy old Saturday night here on the
ocean. As the sun set, the wind was whipping up and I was regretting
having had my bucket-bath at 6pm. After being doused by several waves
coming over the side I had to do it all again so I didn't go to bed
salty – not good for the skin.

Lovely moon tonight – just a whisker away from full.

This evening I've been listening to Black Wave, a story about a family
shipwrecked on a coral reef in the South Pacific. Doesn't sound like
much fun – to be avoided, definitely!

Quite happy with progress today. Not a spectacular mileage, but I've
done well to make as much south as I have despite a wind coming straight
out of the East. It's all good.

Weather:
Position at 2015 HST: 18 02.801N, 161 01.222W
Wind: 20kts from E
Sea: Waves 6-8ft

Weather forecast, courtesy of weatherguy.com

Forecast below is for a SWerly course.
Date/Time HST Wind kts Seas (ft)
06/1800-08/0600 E-ENE 18-23 7-8
08/0600-11/0000 E-ENE 15-20 6-7

Sky conditions return to mostly clear with little chance of rainshowers.