May 27, 2017

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.
