“There was a shocking amount of rain again during the night. I crawled out of the cabin half an hour after it had stopped. The sun had just come up and I could see blue skies before my eyes in the direction the wind was blowing. Sadly the nice sunny blue was quickly swept away by angry-looking drab grey clouds that soon burst and shed their loads. And yes, I might be getting them bursting above me as well what with all this bad weather I’ve been having.

Despite the bad weather I’d had the wind with me the past couple of days so I was making a bit of progress to the west again, but of course it didn’t last long. Within half an hour the wind changed from east to north and I received a text telling me I’d landed up in a new depression that would cause me to be rowing anti-clockwise in a circle for the next few days. What’s this about a new depression? This is all one big depression and I’ve been inside it for weeks. I’ll be getting a bit depressed myself before long! There’s not much point in trying to row against a force-4 wind coming from the north-west, so I gave up for today.”

“It’s been three weeks now and I’ve still not got into any sort of rowing rhythm. One minute I can get back to rowing normally again, the next I can’t, then it’ll be raining too hard again or the wind will turn against me once more, and there’s another new depression. It makes no sense at all and it’s incredibly frustrating. So here I am sitting on this little boat waiting for an improvement in the weather, or in any case the wind. I can’t handle it at all, all this useless sitting around waiting. I’m not the patient type. It’s horrible! A complete waste of time. I feel as if I’ve been camping in my little tent in the pouring rain for a few weeks and I haven’t been able to go outside in all that time, just cook some food in the porch and wait till it gets better. I have to break this cycle of useless waiting and try to spend my wasted time as usefully as possible. I’ve been doing an awful lot of reading on account of all this bad weather, whereas I should actually be using it to relax between rowing sessions.

I cleared up the deck and emptied the entire front section. Sought out a few things I hadn’t been able to find for a while, then repacked everything in the front again. Prepared the anchor, anchor chain and ropes. After all, with the weather being this unpredictable I can see myself being driven towards a reef in the vicinity of Vanuatu. By taking measures like these I should have the chance to avoid a second shipwrecking in any case. If I do end up stranded again I’ll surely be making history with the most shipwrecks suffered by an ocean rower. Let me go and pump some more water. Always fun if you’ve got nothing to do.”

“A while later I saw a storm brewing around me again. Fierce flashes that even struck the surface of the water. The dull grey cloud cover was hanging low and the impending disaster was heading my way. I decided not to wait for it but folded down the Sea Me antenna and dived into the cabin. Shortly thereafter it started pouring down and I could see flashes of lightning around me, striking the water around the boat as well. Strangely enough I paid no heed to it and quickly fell asleep, though I was regularly woken up again by the pain in my back. The less I row, the worse it gets. The storm stayed around for most of the rest of the night.

In the morning the wind had shifted to south-west, even reaching force 5. Totally useless to row in, so that’ll be more ground I’m losing to the east, lying nicely across the waves with water regularly splashing in over the deck. The sun was actually coming out a bit more, and despite the fact that the batteries are still virtually discharged I decided to let the laptop recharge for a while.”