May 27, 2017

Shannon Zellerhoff
Jul 29, 2017 · 1 min read

The 147th day of the year.

053 degrees, 49 minutes, one-hundred and twenty-eight seconds south.

066 degrees, 13 minutes, nine-hundred and seventy-three seconds west.

Speed over ground 12.7 knots

I can smell the land.

It smells like salt straw or beach grass.

The waves of the dunes and faintly, soil; in a damp, homogenous way.

I walk many laps around the bow and up the stairs to the 04 deck then back down and around again.

I am startled by a lost bird. I think it was a shag. I bent over to grab it. To throw him back. He bit me.

I moved my hand involuntarily my fingers wound around its neck and I flung it into our bow wake.

I never saw it surface.

I trust it would have though; later on, in the dark, out of the turbulence, cursing me.

I carry two trash bags up to the incinerator.

Reveling in the feeling of the salt spray cloaking my bare arms like a rind.

We are just south and east of Cabo des Hornos.

Cape Horn.

Steaming in the dark of dawn for the Straits of Magellan.

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