“No one is looking at you!” » This sentence was whispered to me just before my departure. It is engraved in my memory as its echo seems just and symbolic to me. And as if to distrust my mind which might do me the clever affront of putting it away in the cupboard, I wrote it in my cockpit. To not give in. Do not give in to the temptation of comparison. Stop worrying about others and refocus on myself, on my boat and the elements that carry me and disturb me.
It’s 8 p.m. UT. I have just lost 40 miles on my main competitors in 24 hours, I am now even 60 behind. My nerves are on edge. I jump from the back to the front of my nutshell, barefoot, tired, fragile. I change the sail. Rolled. Unroll. Optimize my route. I download the latest satellite images to find a corridor in this giant “escape game” called the Doldrums. I beg the sky to let me pass, the clouds to get out of my way. Why won’t my door open! I jump on mapping every 4 hours, like a destructive and crippling addiction. And every 4 hours, a new uppercut caresses my face and my mind. My playmates have escaped from this delicious random torture of which I remain prisoner.
The “black friend” who, like a good friend, doesn’t always tell you what you want to hear but always what makes you grow.
Connection can be poison. I feel it even more at sea because it takes me away from the present moment. I think back to my Mini Transat whose singularity of the exercise, having no means of communication with the earth, summons the irresistible necessity to abandon oneself to one’s own trajectory, instinctively, without obtaining a response before passing. from the finish line. This is the state I want to return to.
So, as a resolution to myself, I click on the little cross that closes the “mapping” tab of my on-board computer. I stick my head out of the boat. I observe again what I no longer saw: the flying fish, the ball of birds which wander gracefully in the residual air. The birds seem to whisper to me: “You are out of the Doldrums, my friend. When you come back through here, you will have traveled around the world and, this time, you will have the duty to savor your mark because it will be yours, and, in that, it will be beautiful! »
The wind returned. Théophile is settled and heading south, towards the equator. Just the mention of this next deadline makes me smile. With a light, relaxed heart, fluid like the last flying being left in my wake, I let the journey take over again. I’m playing for myself again because “no one’s looking at me!” »
His previous logbooks:
1. “The Devil and the Details”
Morocco
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