Madness takes its toll
Hour after hour, day after day in searing heat sometimes just less than 40 degrees. I tear my paddles trough the water stroke after stroke. Without a sound around me, except the slosh-slosh of the water as my paddles continuously break the surface. No land in sight for hundreds of km, nothing to break the monotony or to take your mind off the toil of the paddle. To add to this the excruciating pain begins to build in my lower back from sitting in one position, my legs begin to go numb, there is no respite from this, one just has to push on and hope that you can suppress it to in your mind which is now screaming trying to find some shred of sanity in what is going on.
The ocean seems to be dead devoid of any life, 3-5km deep at this point and noting is visible, not a hint of life. If it’s a good day I might see a few birds for a short spell following some skip jacks feeding. Just these few minutes help to take my mind of the pain. The heat just continues to bake down, now midday and the horizon begins to go hazy. My water bottles are over 30 degrees in temperature as I try and quench my thirst, my lips swollen and blistered seem to recoil in pain as the warm sweet fluid seeps into the cracked flesh.
I’m now screaming within, I don’t know if I can handle this any longer, the monotony, the pain and just not knowing where I am going. Then, a dog barks. I look around, some one calls out and I turn again. What the hell is happening, its just rolling ocean wherever I look. Finally some one calls me and I answer.
“Has madness begun to take its toll?”