Chapter 13

13. Shakedown. Out at sea, Sophie writes about how her sense of time is being warped by being out on the open ocean. She says that, out there, “there isn’t day and night and the new day.” There’s no yesterday or tomorrow—time is just one big now, one massive present moment.

Sophie says that when she was on watch, peering through the fog, she suddenly had a bout of loneliness—and felt like she didn’t want to leave North America. She says she didn’t have long to be mournful, though, since she had to get back to work to steering the boat: the wind had picked up and the waves started to swell.

Sophie’s earlier description of the ocean as a place where all time is connected comes alive here. Faced with the vast,seemingly limitless stretch of sea across the horizon, it seems like days can’t measure the sense of vastness she feels.

Here Sophie has her first doubts about the voyage. The pull she feels towards the ocean lets up, and feelings of fear threaten to push her away. Again, the “push-pull” dynamic to Sophie’s relationship with the water is at work.