Emma Ringqvist sailed the Atlantic Ocean for nine months, including sixty-seven days where she was completely out of reach of both land and people. It was the purest experience of loneliness.
The waves are rocking the boat. They rob you of your balance, pushing and pulling up and down. Your body feels the sea's movement. It has to react to it, to counteract the force or to go with it. It really depends on what you are planning on doing right now, right here, in the middle of the ocean. The stars look like diamonds studded in the darkness above and around you. Underneath you is the water, filling the Atlantic basin. You are floating above mountains, above an unknown world. Occasionally creatures from beneath break through the surface of the water. Dolphins swim alongside you. The song of whales is the only thing you hear.
It goes against human nature to be alone at sea for so long. Human beings are social creatures: sociality has been at the heart of our survival as a species. But when Emma Ringqvist sailed the Atlantic Ocean alone on her yacht, S/Y Caprice, for over nine months, covering 15,000 nautical miles, she went against both of these traits. She avoided sightseeing and "had no real destination in mind". At the end of the journey, she spent sixty-seven days without setting foot on land. During that time the only contact she had with other people was via satellite phone, and only to check in once every few days. The goal of the journey was to explore loneliness itself. It is fair to say that she found what she was looking for.
Emma did not expect to get stuck in the middle of the Atlantic, but it happened when her engine broke at 37° 6' S, 12° 17' W, near Tristan da Cunha - a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic, and among the most remote islands in the world. From then on, Emma was dependent on the wind. Without it, the sail would not fill and the boat would not move, and around the equator there is no wind. This is where the northeast and southeast trade winds converge. The intense heat of the sun forces the warm, moist air upwards into the atmosphere, leaving little wind on the surface. Sailors call this area "the doldrums", and Emma knew what was about to happen. A call from a friend on the satellite phone confirmed it: eight full days without wind. Frustration. "You don't have any control anymore," Emma told me. "As a human being, when you have an engine, you turn it on, and you get away from the high-pressure area and find the wind again. But if you don't have the engine, you are just completely lost to nature." At first she was angry and upset - for two or three hours - and then she thought: "Okay, so are you going to spend these days being unhappy and angry, or are you going to learn to just let go and to be in this moment?" It became the best part of the journey.