Missing Velella……………………………………………………...……… .Melinda Taylor

Missing Velella

Melinda Taylor

What is it really like to be stuck 4,000 nautical miles away from your boat, unable to get to her or have her brought to you?

I suppose it comes down to just what the boat means to you personally, is she, and sailing, just one of many types of adventures you plan to experience in your lives? Or is she, and sailing, an all-consuming passion that defines the very essence of who you are?

I’m firmly in the second camp. I put 40 years into educating myself to get to the point of being fully competent to skipper my boat around the world. I saved, and worked, and hunted for the boat I believe is the best boat for me to take on this voyage — probably the last major adventure of my life. The day we left Australia to start our circumnavigation was the happiest day of my life. We’d all watched the sci-fi movies and read the books, but we didn’t really believe it was going to look like this, a world stopped.

I understand the separation from loved ones is incredibly hard, heartbreakingly so, but that’s your story to write, while this is mine. And you should write it, it’s very cathartic.

Velella is never out of my thoughts. I worry about all the myriad of things that can fail on a boat. I dream of thru-hulls failing, fittings giving out, rats, corrosion, rotting sails, electric fires, gas explosions — you name a catastrophe that can happen to a boat, and it forms some part of my day or my nightmares.

Or the worst, we’ll never get back and she’ll just be yet another one of those sad boats you see, half sunk and beyond repair. And of course, the typhoons. Having been through

one super typhoon there, at 100 knots, I know that if we hadn’t been on board, we probably wouldn’t have her now.

I have her in a good place at Puerto Galera Sailing Club on one of their moorings that are lifted and checked every year. I have a dedicated boat man who does me proud every day. I realise, in this, I am incredibly lucky.

The other major torment for me is I have aggressive arthritis. I know my sailing days are numbered and this number is not high. This causes me great anguish. This pandemic could not have come at a worse time for me. Ultimately, my mental health is suffering, and I feel powerless.

Please do not accuse me of privilege or bring up the suffering of others and the terrible hardship of people everywhere, and the heartbreak of the loss of life and loved ones. I am very aware of all the horror out there. I

Velella.

was asked to write an article about being separated from my boat and that I have done.