Finish in Sight!

Much of this journey has been a fight against wind and tide. Just a week ago, it seemed that I was at least three weeks away from closing the loop of the circumnavigation. A double dose of typhoons could easily have prevented completion. In actuality, I got lucky with the weather. A string of days with settled weather and kind south-westerly winds set up a trio of crossings that now puts me one short hop away from Onjuku, where the journey began.

First, I crossed from Omaezaki to the Izu Peninsula; then I crossed to Oshima Island; and yesterday I leapfrogged Sagami Bay and Tokyo Bay to make landfall in Chiba-ken. With those jumps I missed out on saying arigato gozaimasu in person to some contacts who had offered their support. I would have liked to say hello, but when the conditions finally came good I couldn't ignore them.

The crossings were plain sailing and the most difficult parts, as always, came when land was close-by. At Oshima the currents were strong and there were powerful gusts in the wake of the island. There were shipping lanes to cross, but visibility was excellent and I had a nice breeze to plot a confident course through them. On Oshima, I ate my last freeze dried camp meal (which I'd been carrying for 14 months!), and was woken in the morning by the monkeys in the trees above my tent.

Here are a few pics from these recent days before the final hop (in theory, I can't leave out that caveat!)...