During my four full months in the Caribbean, I lived a small life where I met interesting people, learned new skills, experienced solo navigation, and was disappointed in what I did every day. During this time, I understood exactly what my trip around the world should not be like.

When I met the captains and crew, I heard a lot of stories, and all of them were stories of lonely people. They all looked real and happy, but they were all on their own. Everyone was either talking about freedom at sea or having good money at this job.

I remember feeling free underwater. In Barbuda, I was swimming in a coral reef and was carried away by a sea turtle that slowly floated in the water, allowing me to swim side by side. We went deeper and deeper together while holding our breath and reached the sandy bottom together. I felt a little pressure on my body and looked up. I had 15-20 meters of water above me, and we were in a coral well, the walls around me were alive and colorful. I felt that I was not afraid and comfortable that I was here on equal terms with the turtle, and she trusted me, allowing me to be close to her in her world. This dive taught me to love the quiet noise and smoothness of underwater life. Since then, I haven't had any other entertainment in the Caribbean; I swam for hours and dived wherever I could, playing life under water. At those moments, everything that was making noise in me on the surface calmed down, and what was living inside woke up.

I was turning into a lonely and happy person and increasingly looked like these random people. Others started getting to know me and listening to my stories about how I came to this world. I once suggested sailing alone from Tortola to Antigua; if memory serves, it was only 240 nautical miles. It was more convenient for Peter to travel by plane to attend an event, but I was ready for my offer and had wanted to go for a walk alone for a long time. Remembering the most important rule for singles: always sleep when possible. I left the port, cooked some food and went to bed in the cockpit, but I was clearly overexcited by what was going on, and my happiness was troubling me. As a result, I woke up at night, and when I inflated up to 25 stable knots with gusts of up to 35, I wanted to sleep. I slept under the same staysail all night, with the engine running and all the lights off, waking up every 30 minutes to check my AIS, radar and visual surveillance, and I went back to bed for 30 minutes. It was still windy and overcast in the morning. I was so exhausted that night that all the happiness hormones I had spent did not recover, and I fell into a depression hole. Where, sitting at the bottom, I asked myself why I needed all this, didn't I need a normal family life with a radius of movement around a static home, limited to work and a grocery store. I had a week ahead of me preparing my yacht and leaving Antigua for Marmaris, which was probably the same mood for another 5,500 nautical miles. I wanted to give up everything that was going to happen and give up everything that was coming and return to my place in the Karelian forest.

After 44 hours of walking, I moored alone, logging into a dead end customs pontoon, getting off the yacht and leaving it at low speed, filled the aft boat in a timely manner, turned it into a spring, and reached the prepared bow with a hooker. I saw that all the fenders were working at the right level and in the right places, the yacht was smoother than ever, and the quay wall was a meter from the bowsprit. It seemed to me that I had merged with my horse and now we are one.

Dharma looked at me and said she knew where we were going next and knew that I would leave her, but she confessed her love and I loved her more after that sleepless night than before.

Having completely calmed down in the first five minutes on the shore, I realized that this is now what I can and understand, but this is only the beginning, and I have just felt the ground under my feet. And I may be ready to share with others what I already know, but I still have so much to figure out on my own.

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