29 August 1969, Day 37. Position: 32° 28' North 72°10'West I couldn't sleep. The air was thick and sticky, unbearably hot. But it was the sea that concerned me. I could feel an uneasy shift in the wave pattern - a lurching, unpleasant roll, unnatural. I lay in darkness, wondering, my knees aching. Then Rick called from the cockpit, 'Nat, come up here.' A weak dawn struggled against the night. 'Weird waves,' he said. 'Hard to steer. Something doesn't feel right.' On a port tack, under three lowers in fifteen knots of southwest wind, we were making good time and on course, just as we had been when my watch ended at one o'clock. But now the easy wind-driven sea was colliding with an easterly swell, making a hobbly mess, smacking our lee side, shoving the bow, spanking the rudder.
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