The pain rushes upon me in the dead of night, when I am most alone. Andrew is sleeping next to me, Katherine Hepburn at our feet. Sonrisa sways gently in a small swell entering the anchorage, movement gentle and pleasant any other time. The pain coming over me is so intense, I know when I try to move it will get worse, but if I don't move now I’ll be trapped anyway. I pull momentum from the center of my soul to do the most basic of tasks: peel myself out of the bed. I try and fail to swing my legs around and exit the V-Berth without yelping, cussing, or kicking any of my loved ones.

“Whats the matter," a groggy, mostly still asleep Andrew asks.

I respond with hyperventilating breaths and a long groan. I pace the three or four steps Sonrisa has to offer me between the hallway outside the V-Berth and her companion way stairs, poking my thumbs into mysterious muscles clenching and screaming in my middle back. Fire shoots down my leg, a thousand vile minions stab at my body with flaming daggers.

Desperation swoops over me and covers my face in a black cloak, I can no longer see Andrew or Kitty, though her green eyes glow in the dark as her worried face watches me in silence. I am alone inside my skin, I can't reach outside to connect with anyone else, and I know the panic that closes my throat is mostly pain but black, bloody, dripping terror as well. “Breathe, Leslie You have to breathe.” I tell myself as I dangle, my hands clutching the tallest shelf ledge Sonrisa has to offer, taking some of my own weight from the structure of bone usually designed to keep me upright.

Whether I like it or not, this current round of back troubles has come at another decisve moment in our journey, and it is bringing me a fairly clear message:

The schedule for my life is out of my hands.

This situation isn't as sudden as it feels this particular night. It probably started all the way back in La Digue where we were making our way through our checklist of key tourism experiences.

Ride bicycles around the island - Check!

Get a smoothie at the beach bar - Check!

Meet some wild giant tortoises - Check!

Spend the day at a beautiful beach - Check!

We were enjoying the wonderful scenery of the Seychelles while the majority of the cruising fleet had departed to South Africa. Taking a now what seems to be the Oddgodfrey approach to Covid Sailing Strategies - let our friends let the waters first - we couldn't help but wonder if we were letting fear control our decision making. Are we putting our continued circumnavigation at a disadvantage by further delay? Though these worries bubbled in our minds, it was easy to stay in the Seychelles just a little bit longer because he had yet to cruise the outer islands. We arrived later than everyone else, so we felt justified in hanging around later than everyone else.

The day after our beach adventure with Grin, we decided to hike to the top of the island, then enjoy a local Seychellois lunch at a restaurant owned by a local and perched right at the top of the cliff. We called ahead so he could procure the best fish, then we gathered our sneakers, and took the dinghy-caravans from anchorage to shore.

On shore, spirits were running high. The Seychellois had their election the night before and for the first time in over 25 years had elected a change in governance. The polls were open the whole day prior and at 3:00 a.m. we could hear cheers and shouting, whoops of happiness from all the way out on anchor.

Then, the shooting of flares and fireworks began. “They must have finished counting the votes,” Andrew had said through a fog of sleep. I poked my head out of the hatch to see bright orange rescue flares being shot into the sky, making their great arch, then falling downward into the anchorage.

“I hope one doesn't land on Sonrisa.” I say.

Kitty's sleep is disturbed, so she decides to levitate vertically from the bed, through the hatch, and to the forward deck where she partakes in a particularly voracious scratch of her clawing leather. We both watch the flares land a few feet from Sonrisa's hull, glowing orange as they floated on the water's surface and then fizzle out. By morning time, the mood was no less jovial on shore, but at least the flares had been put away until nightfall. A new President had been named, and his supporters were cheerful in the streets waving flags, riding their bikes, and tooting horns to commemorate the experience.

“My president won today! And YOU need a bike!” A man wearing a woven rasta style cap intercepts us as we disembark from Grin and make our way down the dock toward town. He's right about both things, so we introduce ourselves, and he declares his name to be "Bob" He clarifies this is not his given name but one he has embraced out of a devotion and love to Island God and musical genius, Bob Marley. We follow him to his shop and pick out four bikes.

Our bike ride took us through neighborhoods packed inside the jungle with houses nested inside flower and fruit gardens. We pedal until the roads become too steep, and then we tuck our bikes into the bushes on the side of the road, next to a pen with two very large tortoises getting a bit “Jiggy” without the least bit of self-consciousness about the whole process.

“I wonder how old those two are?” I ask Andrew, scandalized by the noises and too embarrassed to look!

No one really knows how old these Seychellois Tortoises are. They have been around longer than any human who has attempted to record their lifespans. But to think: 200 year old Grandpa-Tortoise Sex? It boggles the mind.

No! I didn’t take a photo of the tortoises having sex! What’s wrong with you? : )

Eventually, our road it turns to a single track dirt trail with helpful tree roots and strategically tied ropes offering assistance to pull ourselves along the cliff face, and the village below us falls away. Enormous jungle leaves turned crisp and brown in the sun gather picnic trails of black ants and pools of rainwater. They crunch beneath our feet. “Oy!” We all complain a time or two before reaching our destination, which in the end we find worth the climb. We watch rainclouds slide past the island of Pralin in the distance, giant bats gliding across the skyline, and the bright orange Madagassese Finch flit from branch to branch of a bare tree just beyond the cliff's edge.

We pause at the top to take a “Family Photo.” Can you see tiny Sonrisa just below?

“Just beautiful enough to work up an apatite.”

We close the loop and land at the end of the trail in a restaurant usually bustling with tourists, but now lying empty. The owner welcomes us an asks if we are indeed ready for lunch. We are. He serves us cold, bubbly beers and a delicious lunch complete with local foods like chicken curry, lentils, barbequed chicken, rice, and green papaya salad. A whole grilled fish is offered as the centerpiece to the meal, crisp blackened skin with a delicious spice rub of red onion, garlic, minced ginger, lime juice, and orange habanero peppers minced and soaked in rice vinegar and a little sugar. The restaurant contains beautiful carving on most of the wood surfaces, all hand done by the owner's brother. The view remains spectacular as we watch storm squalls roll over the sea and smash into the side of the very cliff we rest upon.

These storms had us looking for a "weather window” to make our climb back down to shore, and alas we got drawn in by a “Sucker’s Wind.” It wasn't long before it was pouring tropical rain on our heads, we attempted to shelter with any number of large leaves growing by the side of the road, tearing giant banana leaves away from their stalks and using them as rather effective umbrellas.

We arrive back to Grin looking like wet dogs.

That night, we started receiving word of our fellow sailor's progress in South Africa. Visa denied. Or at least visa delayed. Despite opening for tourism on October 1, 2020, South Africa had only planned to accommodate tourists arriving via airplane. Sailors arriving by sea were to be dealt with like commercial sea farers. The captain is allowed to go ashore to provision for food, but other than that, all crew must remain quarantined on their boat.

"They'll get it ironed out eventually," we all say, knowing the way these things eventually work. That didn’t make us any more enthusiastic about taking the task on ourselves.

That night, our anchorage grew untenably wavy and we spent the night rolling around in our bunks like hotdogs on a convenience store roasting wheel. And so, the next morning we upped anchor and made a run for a more sheltered anchorage on the back side of Mahe, Beau Vallon. I placed my hands on my lower back and stretched backward as I stood before Sonrisa's helm while I waited for Andrew's tasks lifting the anchor at the bow were complete. Flickers of electrical energy bit me in the right leg, lightly, more like nibbles, maybe, but enough to raise my hackles.

The sail to Beau Vallon was beautiful. We had more than enough wind to get both of these heavy girls up on their hips, and Steel Sapphire left us quickly in her wake. Katherine Hepburn joined us for the sail, electing to nap in her “sailing shelf.” We caught another small tuna, but Andrew lost his biggest lurer when something snapped his 400lb test line, with wire lead like it was a dry straw of hay. “Damnit!” Andrew said, inspecting the loose end. “Jeeze, I wonder what that was."

“Kraken.” I said, it's the only explanation.

Andrew remained on the lookout for said Kraken the rest of the sail, but he never returned with the lurer.

Beau Vallon was as calm and beautiful as we'd hoped. We spent a few days embraced by gorgeous scenery, golden light, white beaches, and enjoyable evenings playing cards with our friends. It felt a bit more normal; like we were back to our “cruising life.”

Each night before bedtime, I employed more diligent attention to my somatic exercises and the physical therapy plan that usually keeps my back supple, reliable, and “ghost-free”. Yet, I could feel myself losing ground. I was slowly losing my flexibility, my sciatic pain becoming more frequent and intense, and I’d look down at my body only to see my torso becoming shifting off the topside of my hips, inches over to my left.

"Oh my god, you are so crooked!” Andrew wonders aloud to me.

“Mmmfph. Yes.” I say, dismayed that my efforts are developing for naught.

Friends and family alike have been asking “Are you ever coming home?” And, with everything shaping up as it is: challenges for entry in South Africa, Covid borders admissions changing all the time, and to pair that with my physical condition being less than that of a “Supple Leopard” - it is really starting to look like our “five year journey” is to be delayed, yet again.

I know in the depth of my soul I cannot venture into the Mozambique channel with a back issue brewing.