The Power of Nature

It must be stormy out there. I can hear the sea from my garden and I'm about 1/2 a mile from the coast. I'll find out when I drive into town later. It was windy overnight but the sun's out and I bet the waves are crashing on the shore.

I sat and watched a documentary last night, about the 1979 Fastnet Race in which 16 people lost their lives when Force 10 winds devasted over 300 boats. Unimaginable what they must have gone through with those horrendous conditions and the horror of being capsized by massive waves and surviving for hours in small liferafts before being rescued.

I've sailed before, something I only started a few years ago. I did a race a couple of years ago where we raced from the Isle of Wight down to Falmouth with the intention of sailing across the Bay of Biscay to southern Spain. The trip to Falmouth was bad enough, the first time I've felt really sea-sick and got cold and wet having to be up on deck for most of the trip, in the dark, rather than be rolled around down below.

We decided not to do the second leg which was just as well, as there were Force 10 winds in the Bay and many of the crews ended up deck for 2 days because it was too rough to go below for more than a few minutes. I enjoy sailing and even the odd rough sea gets the adrenalin going and can be exhilarating (when it's all over) but that really isn't my idea of fun. An experience certainly but definitely not fun.

It all goes to reinforce the power of nature and that, when it comes down to it, we really are very insignificant in the grand scheme of things. You can never hold back the force of a hurricane or the power of an earthquake. Look at the devastation of the Boxing Day Tsunami, the city of New Orleans laid bare and the impact of the earthquake in Pakistan.

We may think we have the upper hand in the end, nature will always win.