June 7 welcomed the return of two Japanese sailors who circumnavigated the globe nonstop: Kenichi Horie and Minoru Saito. I have a special admiration for these men because June also marks the first anniversary of my rescue from the sea while attempting to cross the Pacific in a yacht to Australia.
On June 3, three of us were 400 km off the coast of Japan, headed for Guam, our first port of call. We had already sailed through a couple of small storms that kept us busily pulling on ropes and reefing the main sail, but these storms were short and sweet. You can see them coming -- and what really struck me was how fast they come up. The wind starts getting strong and suddenly, just 10 minutes later, you're in the woes of rain, wind and heavy gusts. One minute you're sitting on the deck drinking wine and eating cheese and saying, "Wow, isn't this fantastic!" and the next minute you're reefing down the sails. It's that fast.
Paul, the other crew member, and I were doing the 11:00 to 14:00 shift at the helm while the skipper slept. The seas were relatively calm and the wind was blowing from the northeast. There were whitecaps, which meant the wind was over 15 knots, but that was nothing to worry about.