This concludes the regular programming, at least for now. We crossed three thousand three hundred and fifteen nautical miles to get here, which makes nine thousand for the journey so far, and almost none of those last three thousand were generous. I have been through worse weather. I have not been through a leg with this much steady accumulating wear, the kind that grinds a boat and the person inside her down through the simple repetition of being pounded. Two shrouds had quietly failed by the end, not one. Cloud Nine got us here anyway, which is the kind of thing you only really thank a boat for after you have stopped moving and the stillness sits down in the cabin with you.

For the last two days the sea state was the worst part. Waves arrived from every direction at once and there was a ghost in the cabin who occupied himself with my food. You set down a coffee, you take your hand off it for a second to do anything else, and the next time you look the cup is across the room. Then you do this with breakfast. Then you give up and just hold the plate. I will probably be holding plates for several days after this on instinct. The whole of it was the kind of fatigue that makes the simplest tasks feel theatrical, which is its own slow comedy when you have nothing left to be sentimental with.

The arrival itself was its own piece of weather. We were running for the anchorage with the light going and squalls walking through the channel, and a few hundred meters off to the left the waves were dropping into pools the colour of a swimming pool, with the mist turning the spray into something that looked like the ocean was breathing. We were doing seven and eight knots in all of it. I am extremely happy to report that the mast is still standing and Cloud Nine is on her hook in the bay, sitting on flat water for the first time in days, like she is taking the kind of breath you take after you finally walk through the front door.

Rikitea is the sort of place that is large for here and small for everywhere else. I have not made it into town properly yet, but yesterday a supply ship pulled in with fresh fruit and vegetables, and the whole village and most of the boats in the bay turned out at six in the morning to shop. I will go for that bread tomorrow. While I have been quietly putting one wave behind another, my photography site at jimmyjamesnorth.com has come together. It is still in beta, the store is not yet open, the photos are not fully curated, but if you have five minutes there is plenty up there already. Cloud Nine rests. The regular programming will, eventually, resume.