180° South Page #3

as any walls in the world.

The biggest one of all was the North American wall

on "El Capitan".

My friends Chuck Pratt,

Royal Robbins, Tom Frost and I,

we made the first ascent

over a period of 10 days.

The wall overhangs the entire way,

and it's questionable whether you could ever get down

if you got half way up and couldn't go any further.

It's very similar to the first guys to ride

really big waves like at Waimea,

they didn't know whether they could get held down

by one of these big waves

to where they'd just die.

The fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all,

but we just went for it.

Keith and Timmy couldn't make the long Pacific crossing,

but hopefully, they'll be meeting me down in Patagonia.

I have the sunrise watch every morning.

It has taken me a month to get into the mindset

of long distance sailing.

As each day passes,

I feel more detached

from my scheduled life back home

and more in rhythm with what surrounds me.

Whoa!

Mast down !

Mast over the deck !

This morning, during my watch,

our 70 foot mast was ripped-off

and snapped like a twig.

We were adrift

in the middle of nowhere.

Everything was down in the ocean,

smashing against the hull.

I thought that was obvious

that we'd to cut everything loose,

but Alan had a different plan.

He came up on deck with a knife in his hand and

announced that everything would be coming back on board.

Twelve long hours later,

we finally have the broken mast

and everything else on board.

It turned out a defective piece of rigging was to blame.

But it was hard not to feel like

I should have seen some early sign of this.

Tonight, we are too tired to eat,

we don't have enough fuel to get to mainland Chile,

so our only option is to motor 400 miles to Rapa Nui,

otherwise known as Easter Island.

The word adventure has just gotten overused.

For me, adventure is

when everything goes wrong.

That's when the adventure starts.

A month and a half at sea,

and we are finally lumped in

to the most remote island in the world, Rapa Nui.

We'd only planned to be on Rapa Nui

for a few days to resupply,

but it looks like we're gonna be here

a lot longer than that.

The first person I met is a girl named Makohe,

I saw her teaching some kids to surf

on the inside of the bay.

She's born and raised here

and she's promised to show me around the island.

It's nearly December,

but for the first time, I'm not as worried

about getting to Corcovado before the ice melts.

Coming to Rapa Nui is like going back to the past,

and the people, they have like

their history in their blood.

My mom, she used to live in the time when the plane

came over the island and drop something in the ocean,

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