Yacht travel in the Seto inland sea ①　In the beginning....

Leaving myself in the movement of the waves and the winds, heading for the shore and staring the ocean. I realized that I touched the chin strap too much. The greenery grawing thick in the islands in front of me, and I found a little port a long way off. Changing the point of view to the sea, I found the jerryfishes drifting and some sea birds floating on the sea. I was not playing there to enjoy the landscape. I was checking if there was any trash floating on our direction. The trashes and the seaweeds could be accumulated in the borderline of the tides. When the little boat like this ran into them, the screw could catch the trashes. So, if I found the trashes, we should have to change the course or to stop the engine. This role was actually important. This was the first task for me to be a crew of the yacht.

I obtained this opportunity to get on the boat by chance, I was able to travel around the port towns. It was the first time for me to visit the Seto inland sea and also to get on the yacht. Born in the heart of the mountains of Nara, the sea gave me the fresh inspiration every time. The smell of the sea in the airand the solty winds are the ones that I could never feel in Nara. The sea was something unusual for me, and the yacht, too. I never thought to stay on the boats for several days.

But now, I happened to go around by a yacht and to stay in the cabin, and wrote my travel record. It was miraculous. In fact, staying on the yacht was not comfortable than being in the car or ferry. Honestly saying, it was not very pleasant. I felt myself swaying in the little cabin, and I needed to save the water, and the dust was fetting accumulated little by little. I could not reach to the destination at high speed to go sightseeing efficiency. However, going slowly to the next destination was a congenial trip for me. There were not fixed course, fixed orders of the way, fixed place to stay, and I could decide the time and to go to any destination and I could take a nap on the yacht whenever I wanted. Of course, it was nice to travel in comfort, but this free feeling reminded me how it was nice to discover something new. It was the travel like this.

Sitting on the boat and staring the sea, I found the trashes so that I called out for stopping the engine. Opening the sail, and going forward by the winds so that I could drive under this condition, but it was not easy to let the boat going forward. I struggled hard to catch the winds to the sail behind the wheel, and then the flupping sail finally full opened and could be going forward smoothly. It was my first experience to catch the winds.