January 4, 2010 – 10:49 am
So with Christmas behind us and a sparkling new year ahead I realised that I really haven’t really covered some of the questions that have been coming in on the comments. I think the adaptation from ocean to land life is almost complete but there have been several stages along that route.
1 - Land legs - Quite surprisingly both Mick and I found that within a few hours of being back on land we were rather comfortable with walking again. Whilst any walking of more than a couple of blocks tired us out we weren’t walking with sea legs as both of us had expected.
2 - Speed - Having been in a boat for six months where 3 kt feels fast getting used to speed again has been probably the most exhilarating of the steps on the road to recovery. Kathie (my Dad’s second cousin who had come up from L.A. to see us in) kindly drove us back to our hotel and the sensation of speed was scary. This was going through the car park at 20mph! Since then I’ve got more used to the feeling of going fast but I can empathize with the first passengers to use steam locomotives, going faster than they could have previously imagined.
3 - Food and water - Having gone for so long without any real variety in our diet it was (and still is) a treat to be able to want a particular type of food and then be able to buy and eat it. On the afternoon of the first day I went for a wander and ended up outside Walgreen’s (an American version of Boots with more food in). Eventually I ended up inside walking round like a kid in a sweet shop. The colourful packaging looked enticing but I don’t think I bought anything. It was enough to just know that I could if I wanted to. Whilst I did stuff my face with as much as I could at every meal time I found that my stomach had shrunk so I had to eat smaller meals but 8 times a day instead of 4. Gradually this has improved so I’m back now to a more normal eating cycle. Thank goodness!
4 - Comfort - One of the things that I missed most was being able to sit down in comfort. On Bo there really wasn’t anywhere to do this and by the end of the trip everywhere was uncomfortable. Even the cabin mattress failed to supply the required level of cushioning for our bag of bones. Lying on a big soft bed the afternoon when we came in was certainly a hi-light of the return to land. I lay there with a big grin on my face for quite a while.
5 - Water - Whilst we were never short of water on Bo it was always something on my mind. Now I can just turn on a tap and there it is, gushing out. Whilst being dirty isn’t something that (being a man) I worried about too much whilst out in the Pacific, it is a treat to be back in a place with a shower and a bath.
6 -Sleep - Having spent half a year awake for 2 hours then asleep for 2 hours attempting to break out of that cycle has been more challenging than I thought it would be. I know that Mick has had even more trouble that I have had returning to a more normal sleep pattern. The first sleep I had lasted for a beautiful 5 hours (over double our normal rest period) before I woke up feeling dreadful at 3am. It wasn’t until 7am that I could catch a few extra hours to last me until the afternoon. It’s been a bit like recovering from jet lag but with a lot of lag to catch up on.
7 - Health- Dr Aenor Sawer was kind enough to give us a medical examination when we arrived at the Golden Gate Yacht Club. Apart from a few infected cuts on my hand and in Mick’s foot she reported that we were both in fine health. Later in the week we were also given a body composition test which reported our fat percentage. It seems that I had lost quite a bit as I was 8.8% fat. When we arrived I was 74kg but 10 days later I had somehow managed to boost that to 84kg. Weight-gain-tastic!
The one thing that the period of re-entry has taught me is just how privileged and lucky we are in the western world without even realising it. We have all these things around us, most of which we don’t actually need and yet it’s all too easy to believe that we do. Take a moment now to look around you and see which things you really really need and can’t do without! I think you might be surprised at just how much unrequired stuff there is in our lives.
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