Maisu Log '26⑤ Hallucinations, May 5
Wind Voyagers of Changbin
Original version in Chinese
✐ Isin (Guanyuu) ✐
A house. And right beside it, a mountain.
I shake my head, telling myself: No, there is nothing there. It is just the open sea ahead.
Then, another image appears: a flight of stairs right in front of me, with a few people sitting along the side.
I shake my head again and again, blinking hard to force the images away. I don’t want to see anything else. But God, I am tired. I am just so, so tired.
My watch begins at midnight and runs until 6:00 AM, then shifts to 12:00 PM until 6:00 PM. Basically, whenever the clock strikes 12, day or night, my shift begins. Each watch lasts six hours, totaling twelve hours of duty every single day.
With a schedule like this, normal sleep at night is impossible, and afternoon naps are out of the question. When I finally survive the night and try to sleep in the morning, it is broad daylight. The canoe is in full swing—cooking, chatting, and singing fill the air. To make matters worse, the Bluetooth speaker by the steering paddle blares high-energy island music at top volume. Even with earplugs in, the noise is overwhelming. In the mornings, I usually just collapse into a heavy, dead sleep, only to be jolted awake shortly after.
Later on, as our latitude dropped lower, the daytime sun became fierce and unforgiving. By around 9:00 AM, the cabin would turn into an absolute oven, making sleep out of the question. Trying to catch up on rest in the morning was an endless struggle.
Things improved slightly after sunset. Yet, if the Bluetooth speaker still had plenty of battery, the music would keep blasting, making deep sleep elusive. Not to mention during rougher seas, the chaotic crash of waves against the hull and my hammock slamming into the cabin walls made rest impossible.
Of course, this grueling schedule has its rewards. I have witnessed every single sunrise and sunset, along with the rare, shifting beauty of the late-night constellations. The colors of the clouds at dawn and dusk allow us to predict the weather for the next twelve hours—a very important part of my observations and learning. As for the late-night sky, I stared at it so intensely every day that the moving stars are now permanently printed in my mind like a movie.
Still, this routine is incredibly draining. At my age, if it were only for a few days, it would be manageable. But I have been doing this for fourteen days now since we departed Okinawa—two full weeks of sleep deprivation and staying up all night. Just before dawn, around 3:30 AM, a wave of heavy sleepiness hits that is almost impossible to fight off.
I want to sleep so badly. I can no longer tell whether my eyes are open or closed; dream and reality blur into one, and the ambient sounds around me seem to fade away. I begin to see all sorts of imaginary things drifting around the bow and the sides of the canoe. I have to keep reminding myself: It’s not real. It’s just a hallucination.
Yet, strangely, some of these hallucinations actually bring me comfort. The Satawalese language spoken on board—which I originally couldn’t understand at all—suddenly makes sense to me. The pronunciation of Satawalese shares a slight resemblance to Taiwanese. In that state of extreme exhaustion and faintness, my brain simply gave up its guard and began translating on its own. I started hearing all kinds of Taiwanese words, conversational particles, and random, meaningless phrases piecing themselves together and playing in my ears. In that moment, I actually felt a spark of warmth—a faint, gentle comfort...
I tell the crew I need to lie down. The waves are high, and seawater forces its way through the gaps in the deck, spraying directly over me. But I am prepared—I am already wearing my rain jacket and pants. I collapse onto the deck, turning my face to the side. I let the ocean spray me however it wants; I don’t care anymore. I don’t want to hear a thing. Nothing can stop me now. I am simply too exhausted, and I have to sleep.
Post-edited by Yulun Huang (Yaya)