"“How far is it to the horizon?” That's what I was thinking about when I was sailing from California to Hawaii [with] a couple of friends, on deck, middle of the night, all on my own. We hadn't seen another vessel for maybe two weeks, something like that. All alone at sea; two friends sleeping down below. I'm responsible for them and I'm on deck, and suddenly I see this light straight ahead. White light. Slightly triangular shape and getting bigger quite quickly, so obviously coming towards me, and I take a bearing on it - if the bearing stays constant then we're on a collision course. So I take another bearing and sure enough the bearing doesn't change, this thing is coming towards me fast and we're on a collision course. It's getting bigger and bigger. I should be able to hear the sound of its engines. I'm starting to get worried about this, and then another light appears beside it, and these two things are bearing down on me, getting bigger and bigger and I can't hear the sounds of their engines and I can see no other lights at all - what is this? I got my hand on the gearstick ready to go into full reverse to avoid these things coming towards me, and I'm just about to do that when the two lights join up, and I see that it's the moon rising. Two limbs of the crescent moon, brand new moon, rising in front of me, very beautiful. And in Europe we never see the moon right on the horizon because of all the pollution - the atmosphere is too thick - but out on pacific, no pollution, and you can see lights right down to the horizon. So, as far as I know I'm the only mariner to have taken avoiding action to avoid hitting the moon."

[Murray Longmore, aboard his boat Irish Eyes]
[11am, Funchal marina, Madeira, December 2014]

"But yeah I don't know, I guess I just don't find it that special because, like, it's the still same letters, sort of, you know? But I can understand the amazement of words and stuff being amazing because that's what it was like in India. You did sort of hurt a little because there was so much to see and everything was new, you know? Sort of. But I don't know... Maybe even though I've travelled with my family as a child, it has still been so much travelling that, seeing different villages... I love travelling, obviously. Most of the time when one goes travelling one just realises that even though one has gone to a new place, one is still the same inside, you know? Like you're still the same person no matter where you are. You might be much a happier and tanned person, who has less clothes, obviously it's not freezing but still.... Yeah, there's a really good animation TV series called Pasila in Finland, where there's this kind of angst police officer called Kyösti Pöysti, and he's always planning a trip to go to Goa and find himself and then when he finally does that he meets the Dalai Lama in his mind, and the Dalai Lama tells him “how can you expect to find yourself in Goa when you've lost yourself in Pasila?”, you know? Like how can you expect to find yourself abroad when you've lost yourself where you already were? I don't know. I just think that that's an awesome saying, sort of. Perhaps finding yourself means... dying. Which is sort of like, also I think joyful in a way. And that that's something that happens to everyone, you know? Like that... basically if you don't include rocks who exist forever, and I guess that would be like the ideal life to have, would be to be a rock, because you would... you would see so much stuff... if you were a rock."

[Laura Lehtinen, on the balcony of her apartment]
[3am, Mellunmäki, Finland, May 2014]