Chilli has landed

This final chapter could not have been more dramatic (well it always could, my fantasy flew in all directions of disastrous, and very possible, outcomes during the final approach), but wow. What more to ask for.

Det var en mørk of stormfull aften.

The Norse sea hasn`t changed since the last time I tested it. The last 48 hours was indeed challenging, and I`ll start there, the rest will come later. “- This is Norwegian coastal radio south with the latest navigation information and gale warnings” – First VHF contact with Norwegian soil! I listened carefully just for the entertainment of hearing the voices in a familiar language crackling through the radio. “Utsira – Galeforce 7 is expected from 1800 hours”, my waters, just to get prepared for a party. Its already blowing 25 knots, and I`m sailing as close-hauled (upwind) as the waves allowed. I`ve had 30-40 and even 50 knots of wind in the Atlantic, so another round should be ok, I thought. The Norse seas are different. The mainsail was all down, with only the fock and a meter of genoa to get a bit more speed. I was healing way too much. The wind came with a few bullets of warning of what’s to come. I knew I had to reef the fock; a manoeuvre I haven’t needed to perform so far on the trip. Thirty soaked minutes later it was done. The boat moved stabile in the increasing waves and wind, 30- building to 40knots, shiverings in the hull and submerged in breaking waves but all ok. 02.30am, the last bullet for this night. “Well done girl, we did it,” I said and “knocked on wood”. A brief rest and a couple of hours of sleep. Much needed.

Next morning; new gale warning, this time force 8 – 9. 12 hours left, ok. The seasickness made a last visit to my physiology, resulting in redemption for the breakfast from the horrors of my gut, to a second fate in the freedom of the ocean. Seas continued to build throughout the day as the wind continued to increase. Minutes felt like hours, waves were building to an impressive landscape of white mountain tops with deep dark valleys. Chilli gradually became more and more a mountaineering submarine with mast, gradually developing new leaks. A constant flow of water beneath the floors from the bathroom where the air-inlet had become a hole in the roof after the fire a few days earlier. I manually pumped out water from the bilge every fifteen-minute. Occasional heavy rain, no use of hiding from the water. Thankful beyond belief I didn’t have more than a few hours left to shore, calm conditions, friendly faces and a dry bed; or did I?

I contacted the coastguard to get information of the safest entrance in to Farsund; if there was areas with even more severe conditions than out here. –“It`s all a chaos; entirely up to you to decide of an attempt to enter coastal waters or not. If anything would go wrong, a rescue operation would be impossible. You might look for another safe haven”. Great.

I marked out a passage which looked advantageous. I could sail on a close reach and keep the depth of 250-300m before turning 90 degrees towards shore and get everything from behind and surf in over the more shallow waters.

The big turn closed in and the waves and wind continued to rise, the cockpit got more frequently filled with water. The life-buoy and got loose and entangled itself in the 30m rope after the boat. “Should I attempt this at all?”- the question was racing constantly in my mind when I scouted the shore to get a glimpse of the conditions further in; white mist and breaking waves with occasional white explosions at the reefs.

I turned, tacked and headed straight towards where a light-buoy supposedly was. It was not. Blue-screen on the navigation computer for the first time in two years. The nav-pad outside was so full of water that the screen was unusable. No navigational data. I understand that the coarse is changing; the wind wane is not awake; shit. A rope has entangled itself around the air vane, so tight I could not get it loose right away. I apply the autopilot and luckily it steered fairly good. We were surfing at an impressive speed towards shore as the waves get even higher because of the gradually more shallow water. Down at the chart table, the computer reboots and are back in the game! But again, wrong coarse, headed straight for the rocks some hundred metres away, what now!? The autopilot as having a nervous breakdown, probably water damage somewhere. Down to manual steering, and memory of the map. The wind was screaming in the rigging, and the stamps-sized sail (reefed fock) was flapping violently

Finally the lighthouses got more visual and the path clear. A much-welcomed shelter behind a reef. It`s over, we fucking made it, pardon my Portuguese. Two years, 19 countries and about 15 000nm, still afloat.

A committee of wet, flag-waving family and friends at the dock, what more to wish for. Life is good. Thank you all.

I`m Home.

Maps of the journey

Another Life

Hello world! Life is pretty insane as always, and more than ever after my arrival back to Belèm. Life breath. After the two months more or less as a hermit in Soure, I returned to the city with just enough understanding of the language that it allowed me a completely new ticket to this society and to experience being a part of a community this different to the west has needless to say been “other-worldly”. Much thanks to a absurdly encounter of a now true friend for life, Fillipe, whom have taken us on some mindbogglingly adventures the past weeks.

As some of you know, on my passage back to Belèm I got a serious problem with the boat. More specifically it was the bearing supporting the axle through the hull (between the engine and propeller) which disappeared, leaving me with a heartbreaking banging sound and heavy vibrations when motoring. After three weeks and a tremendous amount of adrenaline Chilli was brought on land, and still is, now four weeks later. The axle repair took two days, but i’m using the opportunity to to a complete refit of the bottom paint (and scraping down 10 years of paint takes time..) Looking at finishing in about a week.

Update; last Thursday, while fighting some bottom-paint, the 1,20m structure I stood and worked on collapsed, resulting in a straight fall, chin first in the asphalt. Five stings in the chin, strained ankle, wrist and jaws. Luckily ‘m in the best hands, with friends helping me with everything from navigating the medical system, making me dinners and making sure I have what I need! I’m recovering in an completely ridiculous speed, so I believe I’ll survive!

One does not exactly get fat by working dawn to dusk scarping the hull all week and then Ayahuasca every weekend

I understood fairly early in life that pleasure is not necessarily suppose to be pleasurable. Humans are simply not designed to be only happy (as certain aspects of the current world leads us to believe). Pleasure therefore became voluntary suffering, where I would maneuver myself to explore and expand my limits, knowledge and understanding. We will suffer anyway so lets make the best of it, be the one who choose, be the one who invite.

In this quest my interest in the psyche really ignited about the age of 15, experimenting with meditation and later hypnosis. A few years later it may be no surprise that I found the introduction to alcohol and marijuana extraordinary interesting. Luckily, I was at the same time pretty hard computer nerd, and knew how to do my research. I researched everything. I understood what was bad, and what was less bad, and what`s not bad. By this I bypassed the the (especially at the time) standard belief system of putting everything except coffee, paracetamol and alcohol in the same big ugly category of drugs.

Despite the dangers of life, always live for the sake of Self-transformation

Nietzsche – Zarathustra

This journey continued through my early 20th, experimenting with LSD, Psilocybin and MDMA. Some of the absolutely most important experiences for my development, and the end of years of depression.
Moving to the UK did`t actually restrict the supply of psychotropics, but a darker truth of how a culture heavily based upon substances came forth. The UK is collectively alcoholics and has an extremely damaging party culture. The goal of a week is to stop being hangover, usually by breaking and drinking more and wait for the weekend to get smashed (How to mid-life crisis..). I had friends getting lost to cocaine, alcohol, weed and ecstasy, and I lost more and more interest in participating in this reality in my last years in the UK.

It did`t support life.

I withdrew and gained a huge interest in health and foods. Being alive seemed like a lot better idea than continuously try to kill my self.
Half a year later I found found Ayahuasca, now five years a go. I found the opposite of what society was struggling with. Support of Life.

December 2014 I received my fist batch of the master plants, and had my first journeys. The same Christmas I came back to Norway as a light, and regained contact with my father after years of bad waters. The same Christmas I got the idea and decided to do the circumnavigation. I would not have been sailing without the influence and inspiration of Ayahuasca.

Knowledge should always be sought first and foremost for the purpose of energizing Life.

– Nietzsche

The point I`m making is that Ayahuasca is a tool to unveil the potential of life and the human experience the same way my dear vessel, Chilli, is a tool to unveil the potential of learning, experience and relatively understand a part of the world, and the more one know and understand the more one may contribute to align this reality in to something better. I ought to participate in that responsibility.
To do so I have to keep my head out of the sand; uncompromised and functional, sharp and resourceful. Dare to face, to see, to manifest and practice things not for the purpose of pleasure or happiness, but to positive progression of the whole. It has not been easy, time after time, hanging over the side of the boat puking my guts out due to seasickness, but I do not stop. It has not been easy giving up alcohol, sugar and every other destructive drug, which to a horrifying degree defines the current human society, but it is no longer a part of me. It does not support life, do contribute negatively to inevitable future, and directly opposes the much needed progression in the countless critical challenges we subjectively and collectively are faced with. This is unconscious consumption, and unconscious consumption is our time biggest sin. This behavior has to die.

Your responsibility is to sharpen and wield the tools that makes you you, because if not, you are in best case dead-weight to humanity, contributing only on the journey down to the abyss; because hell exist, and it is not a place you go after you die. It is something growing in to our very reality when we do not pay attention.

On the bright side, the world is full of things that does not try to kill us, but rather to a immensely fascinating degree makes us more alive and sustain it! I theorize that the reason humanity is much more caught up with the opposite is that escaping reality, that is to say, out of conscious action, limit conscious capacity and induce sleep, is to stay on safe grounds. You don`t dare explore the deep woods at night, but then you also may not discover the forest-fire before it`s too late.
Escaping “in to” reality is uncomfortable. One sees things, sees truth, and this amplify the need to stay alert, resourceful, strong, alive. The red pill.

There is a scale to “Aliveness”.

On the one end one is unconscious, deprived of sensory input and with no output. Nothing matters, because one is not a part of it. Sleep.
On the other side, the life-experience is an unbearable overload of information, every life process is revealed and existence is an absolute exhausting prison. Everything matter, everything is your responsibility and burden to bare, the continuation of life as a whole is on your dependence.

– what to desire?

Ayahuasca is far from the only tool to pursue an amplification of life and is just as sailing around the world, not for everyone. But taking responsibility for ones own life is a contract we signed on our parents conception (free will? maybe not completely).

Family of Tonantzin

What I fundamentally want to inspire to is that you, my beautiful tribe of followers, explore what might improve you to be you!

In my studies of health, bio-hacking, psychology, sleep, psychotropic- and medicinal plants I’ve come across some gems, and the result of this (other than me functioning like superman, and able to bob around on the high seas alone) is a comprehensive paper I call “Sailors Life – Upgraded”, attempting to summarize these discoveries. Im sending it out on personal requests, but do not want to make it public just yet. Send me a mail if you`re eager to explore 🙂

Collection of “tools” I’ve worked with and recommend; My Garden

The further plan is stay until August, where as my visa runs out, and sail to Suriname (unless I get another extension!) By then I will have completed the Stop It At Source campaign in Marajó, and built my self a life here it will be heartbreaking difficult to leave.